+ I did not leave that night—Chen Qingyang caught me and asked me to stay in the name of our great friendship.
+ She admitted that she'd been wrong to slap me, and that she hadn't treated me well.
+ But she said my great friendship was phony, and the reason I had tricked her into coming was to study her anatomy.
+ I said if she thought I was a faker, why did she believe me?
+ I did want to study her anatomy, but that was with her permission, too.
+ If she didn't like the idea, she could have told me before.
+ In any case, slapping me was unfair.
+ She laughed hard for a while and said she simply couldn't bear the sight of that thing on my body.
+ It looked silly and shameless, and whenever she saw him, she just couldn't help getting angry.
+ We didn't have a stitch on while we argued.
+ My little Buddha still stuck out, glittering in the moonlight as if wrapped in plastic.
+ I was a little offended by what she said and she realized that too.
+ So to make peace, she softened her tone and said, "Anyway, he is breathtakingly ugly—don't you agree?"
+ Standing there like an angry cobra, the thing was indeed homely.
+ I said, since you don't even want to look at him, let's just forget the whole thing.
+ I began to put on my pants, but again she said, Don't!
+ So I started smoking.
+ The moment I had the cigarette finished, she embraced me and we did it on the grass.
+ Until my twenty-first birthday I was a virgin, but that night I lured Chen Qingyang up the mountain with me.
+ At first there was moonlight, then the moon set and a sky full of stars came out, as numerous as dewdrops in the morning.
+ There was no wind that night either; the mountain was very still.
+ Having made love to Chen Qingyang, I was no longer a virgin.
+ However, I wasn't feeling happy at all.
+ That was because when I was doing it, she didn't make a sound; she simply put her arms under her head and looked at me in a very thoughtful way.
+ So from beginning to end it was just my solo performance.
+ In fact, I didn't last too long.
+ I finished almost right away.
+ After that I was angry and upset.
+ Chen Qingyang said she couldn't believe it: I actually had the impudence to display my ugly male organ in front of her, without feeling the least embarrassed.
+ The thing didn't feel embarrassed either; it just forced its way straight into the hole between her thighs.
+ Because there is this hole in a woman's body, a man thinks he has to use it, which just doesn't make sense.
+ When she had a husband before, he did this to her every day.
+ All the time she kept the question to herself, waiting for the day when he felt ashamed of himself and would explain why he did this to her.
+ But he never apologized, and then he went to prison.
+ These were things I didn't want to hear.
+ So I asked her if she hadn't felt like doing it, why had she agreed?
+ She said she didn't want to be considered small-minded.
+ I said, You're a small-minded person anyway.
+ Then she said, Never mind, let's not fight about it.
+ She told me to return that evening, and we'd try it one more time.
+ Maybe she'd like it.
+ I didn't say anything.
+ In the foggy dawn, I left her and went down the mountain to herd buffalo.
+ I didn't go to see her that night, instead I went to the hospital, the reason being: when I got to the cattle pen in the morning, a bunch of people couldn't wait for me and had opened the pen and dragged the buffalo out.
+ Everyone was trying to pick out a strong one for plowing the fields.
+ A local youth called Shan Men Er was pulling out a large white one.
+ I went over to tell him that the buffalo had been bitten by a poisonous snake and couldn't work.
+ He didn't seem to hear me, so I snatched the tether from him and he slapped me without thinking.
+ I shoved him right in the chest, pushing him down on his butt.
+ Then people began to gather, forming a tight ring around us and urging us to fight.
+ With the students from Beijing on one side and the country boys on the other, everyone chose a weapon, either a wooden stick or a leather belt.
+ They argued for a while, then decided not to fight but to make Shan Men Er and I wrestle.
+ Unable to beat me at wrestling, Shan Men Er began to punch me.
+ I kicked him into a manure pit right in front of the cattle pen for a shit bath.
+ He got up, grabbed a pitchfork, and tried to stab me, but somebody stopped him.
+ That was what happened in the morning.
+ When I came back from herding buffalo in the evening, the team leader accused me of beating peasants, saying that he was going to call a meeting to denounce me.
+ I told him that he could take his chances and give me trouble, but I was no pushover.
+ I also told him that I would get some people together for a gang fight.
+ The team leader said he didn't want to give me a hard time; it was Shan Men Er's mother who was giving him a hard time.
+ The woman was a widow, a real bitch.
+ He said that's the way it goes around here.
+ Later he said he was not going to arrange a denouncing meeting but a helping meeting.
+ I could just stand in front of people and do a self-criticism.
+ If I still didn't agree, he was going to let the widow come after me.
+ The meeting was a complete mess.
+ The locals all talked at once, saying that the city students had gone too far—we not only took their chickens and stole their dogs, but also beat their people.
+ The city students said, That's bullshit!
+ Who stole your chickens and dogs?
+ Did you catch us in the act?
+ We're here to build up our country's borderland.
+ We aren't some criminals in exile.
+ Why should we put up with casual slander?
+ Standing in front of the crowd, I didn't do self-criticism but called them names.
+ I didn't expect Shan Men Er's mother to sneak up from behind, pick up a heavy stool, and slam my lower back, right on my old injury.
+ I passed out instantly.
+ By the time I came around, Luo Xiaosi had gathered a group of city students and was threatening to burn the cattle pen.
+ He also said he'd make Shan Men Er's mother pay with her life.
+ The team leader took a bunch of locals to stop them.
+ Meanwhile, the vice team leader told someone to take me to the hospital on an ox cart.
+ The nurse said they shouldn't try to move me since my back was broken, and I'd be done for.
+ I said, My back seems OK and you guys can just carry me.
+ However, since none of them was sure about whether or not my back was broken, they were all afraid to move me.
+ So I had no choice but to stay put.
+ Finally, the team leader came over and said, Go phone Chen Qingyang.
+ Let her check his back.
+ After a short while, Chen Qingyang ran over, with messy hair and puffy eyelids.
+ The first thing she said was: Don't worry.
+ If you're paralyzed, I'll take care of you for the rest of my life.
+ Then she checked my back and her diagnosis was the same as mine.
+ So they carried me to the ox cart and sent me to the hospital at the farm headquarters.
+ That night Chen Qingyang accompanied me to the hospital and waited until the x-ray of my lower back was developed.
+ She left after making sure everything was fine.
+ She said she would come back to visit me in a couple of days, but she never did.
+ I was hospitalized for a whole week, and once I could get around, I went straight back to see her.
+ When I walked into Chen Qingyang's clinic, I carried so many things on my back that my pack was overflowing.
+ In addition to a wok, bowls, a basin, and ladle, there was enough food for two of us to eat for an entire month.
+ When she saw me come into her clinic, she gave me a faint smile and said, Are you completely recovered?
+ Where are you going with all that stuff?
+ I said I was going to the Qingping thermal springs to bathe.
+ She leaned back languidly in her chair and said, That's a great idea.
+ The thermal springs might cure your old injury.
+ I said I wasn't really going to the thermal springs.
+ I just wanted to stay on the back slope of the mountain for a few days.
+ She said there is nothing on the back of the mountain.
+ Better go to the thermal springs.
+ The Qingping thermal springs were mud pools located in a valley, surrounded by nothing but wild, grassy hills.
+ The people who built huts on the hills and lived there year-round were usually patients with a variety of diseases.
+ If I went there, not only wouldn't it cure the pain in my lower back, but worse, I might get leprosy.
+ However, the lowland on the back slope of the deserted mountain was crisscrossed with gullies and ditches; and fragrant grass grew lush in the sparse woods.
+ I could build a thatched hut in some deserted spot, an empty mountain with no human trace—gurgling water with fallen petals.
+ A place like that would help cultivate morality and nourish the inner nature.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this she couldn't help smiling.
+ How do you get to that place?
+ Maybe I'll go there to visit you.
+ I gave her directions and even made a map for her, and then went into the mountains alone.
+ After I got to the desolate mountainside, Chen Qingyang didn't come to see me right away.
+ The strong wind of the dry season blew endlessly, shaking the thatched hut.
+ Sitting in a chair and listening to the sound of the wind, Chen Qingyang would look back at what happened and begin to have doubts about everything.
+ It was hard for her to believe that she had come to these backwoods in a haze, had begun to be called damaged goods for no reason, and then turned into real damaged goods.
+ The whole thing was just unbelievable.
+ Chen Qingyang said that sometimes she would step out of her room and look in the direction of the back slope of the mountain, seeing the many paths winding through the valley and leading deep into the mountains.
+ My words still echoed in her ears.
+ She knew that any of those paths would take her to me.
+ There was no doubt about it.
+ But the more certain something was, the more doubtful it became.
+ Maybe the path didn't lead anywhere; maybe Wang Er was not in the mountains; maybe Wang Er didn't exist at all.
+ A couple of days later, Luo Xiaosi brought several people to the hospital to see me.
+ No one in the hospital had ever heard of Wang Er, so nobody knew where he had gone.
+ At the time the hospital was rampant with hepatitis.
+ The uninfected patients all fled to their homes to recuperate, and the doctors went down to the production team to provide medical care.
+ Luo Xiaosi came back to the fourteenth team and found my stuff gone, so he went to ask the team leader whether he had seen me.
+ The team leader said, Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ Luo Xiaosi said, Just a few days ago you called a meeting to denounce him, and the vixen hit him with a stool and almost killed him.
+ Having been reminded that way, the team leader was even more reluctant to refresh his memory about me.
+ It just so happened that at the time a relief delegation from Beijing was coming to investigate how the city students were treated in the countryside, especially whether any had been tied up, beaten, or forced to marry the locals.
+ Because of this, the team leader was even more unwilling to remember me.
+ Luo Xiaosi then made his way to the fifteenth team, asking Chen Qingyang whether she had seen me, and hinting in a roundabout sort of way that she'd had an indecent relationship with me.
+ Chen Qingyang then told him that she knew nothing about me.
+ By the time Luo Xiaosi left, Chen Qingyang was confused.
+ It seemed many people didn't believe Wang Er so much as existed.
+ That's what confused people.
+ What everyone thinks exists must not exist, because everything before our eyes is illusion; what everyone doesn't think exists must exist, like Wang Er.
+ If he didn't exist, where did his name come from?
+ Unable to overcome her curiosity, Chen Qingyang finally dropped everything and went up the mountain to look for me.
+ After the vixen knocked me out with a stool, Chen Qingyang ran all the way down the mountain to see me.
+ She even cried in public and declared that if I didn't recover, she would take care of me all her life.
+ It turned out not only did I live, but I wasn't even paralyzed, which was a good thing for me though she wasn't crazy about it.
+ It was almost as if she'd confessed publicly that she was damaged goods.
+ If I'd died, or become paralyzed, it would have then been morally justified.
+ But I had only stayed in the hospital for a week and then run away.
+ To her, I was the precise image of someone seen from behind, hurrying down the mountain, a man in her memory.
+ She didn't want to make love to me, nor did she want to carry on a love affair with me either.
+ So, without a very important reason, her visiting me would be the act of a woman who was truly damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she decided to head up the mountain to search for me, she didn't have anything on under her white smock.
+ Dressed like this, she crossed a stretch of hills behind the fifteenth team.
+ Those hills were thick with grass, and under the grass lay red soil.
+ In the morning the wind blew down the mountain to the plateau, cold as a mountain spring, and in the afternoon the wind returned, full of heat and dust.
+ Chen Qingyang came riding on a white wind to look for me.
+ The wind got under her clothes and flowed all over her body, like caresses and lips.
+ In fact, she didn't really need me, nor did she have to find me.
+ When people said she was damaged goods and I was her lover, she came to see me every day.
+ It seemed necessary back then, though.
+ Ever since she admitted in public she was damaged goods, and I was her lover, no one said she was damaged goods anymore, let alone mentioned my name in front of her (except for Luo Xiaosi).
+ People were so afraid of this kind of damaged-goods behavior in broad daylight that they didn't even dare talk about it.
+ As for the Beijing relief delegation sent to investigate the city students' situation, everyone in the local area knew about it except for me.
+ That was because lately I had been off herding buffalo, which required going out early in the morning and coming back late at night; besides that, I had a bad reputation and no one bothered to tell me.
+ Later, when I was in the hospital, nobody came to see me either.
+ When I left the hospital, I went deep into the mountains almost right away.
+ I saw only two people before my trip, one of whom was Chen Qingyang, who hadn't mentioned it; the other one was our team leader, who also hadn't said anything other than telling me to take a good rest at the thermal springs.
+ I told him that I didn't have anything (food, utensils, etc.), so I couldn't go to the thermal springs.
+ He said he could lend me some things.
+ I told him that I might not be able to return them.
+ He said it didn't matter.
+ So I borrowed plenty of homemade smoked meat and sausages.
+ Chen Qingyang didn't give me the information because she didn't care about it—she was not one of the city students.
+ The team leader didn't tell me because he thought I knew already.
+ He also thought that since I took so much food with me I probably wouldn't come back.
+ That was why when Luo Xiaosi asked him where Wang Er had gone, he said, Wang Er?
+ Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ For those like Luo Xiaosi, it would have been a great advantage to find me—I could prove that the city students in the area were treated badly, often beaten senseless.
+ For our team leader, my nonexistence was very convenient, because then no one could prove any of the city students had been beaten senseless.
+ To me, it didn't really matter whether I existed or not.
+ If no one came to look for me, I could grow some corn around the place and never leave.
+ So I didn't really care whether I existed or not.
+ I also thought about the problem of whether I existed or not in my little thatched hut.
+ For example, others believed that Chen Qingyang had slept with me and that proved my existence.
+ In Luo Xiaosi's words, Wang Er and Chen Qingyang took off their pants and screwed.
+ Actually he didn't see any of it, but the extent of his imagination was that we took off our pants.
+ And there was Chen Qingyang, who said that I hurried down the mountain in my green fatigues.
+ It never crossed my mind that I didn't look back as I walked.
+ Since I couldn't imagine these things, they must be evidence of my existence.
+ Then there was this little Buddha of mine, stiff and straight, and that was something I couldn't invent either.
+ I always expected Chen Qingyang to come to see me, but she never came.
+ By the time she finally showed up, I had learned not to expect her.
+ I used to believe that Chen Qingyang would come to see me immediately after I went up the mountain, but I was wrong.
+ I waited for a long time and then decided to give up.
+ I sat in my little hut, listening to the leaves rustling all over the mountain, finally reaching a state where object and subject were both forgotten.
+ I listened to the mighty air currents surging over my head, and just then a wave rose from my soul, as flowers bloom in the midst of the mountains and bamboo husks fall from the shoots and the bamboo stands up straight.
+ When the wave receded, I would rest calmly, but I wanted to dance while the wave was at its peak.
+ Chen Qingyang arrived at my thatched hut precisely at that moment and caught sight of me sitting naked on the bamboo bed.
+ My penis was like a skinned rabbit, red, shiny, and a foot long, frankly erect.
+ Panicked, Chen Qingyang immediately screamed.
+ Chen Qingyang's search for me could be summed up as follows: Two weeks after I went into the mountains, she went up the mountains to look for me.
+ It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but she took off her underwear, like women who sneak out for sex at midnight, and wore only a white smock, walking barefoot in the mountains.
+ She crossed a sunlit meadow, entered a dry gully, and walked for a long time.
+ Even through the maze of gullies, she didn't make a single wrong turn.
+ Later she emerged from the gully, walked into a valley facing the sun, and saw a thatched hut that seemed newly built.
+ If there had been no Wang Er to tell her the route, she wouldn't have been able to find such a tiny hut in the vast, wild mountains.
+ But as she entered the hut and saw Wang Er sitting on the bed, his little Buddha stiff, she was frightened into screaming.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said she just couldn't believe everything she had experienced was real, because something real needs to have a cause.
+ Yet at the time she just took off her white smock, sat beside me, and stared at my little Buddha, thinking he was the color of a burn scar.
+ Just then my thatched hut began to shake in the wind, streams of sunlight leaked through the roof and spattered her body, like stars.
+ I reached out my hand and touched her nipples, until her face flushed and her nipples turned hard.
+ Suddenly she woke from her trance, her face blushing with embarrassment.
+ Then she embraced me tightly.
+ It was the second time that I made love to Chen Qingyang.
+ When we first made love, many details puzzled me.
+ Not until much later did I finally figure out how much she had really taken to heart being called damaged goods.
+ Since she couldn't prove she wasn't damaged goods, she consented to becoming damaged goods, like the women caught in the act and summoned on stage to confess the details of their adultery.
+ The confessions would reach a point when the audience, unable to restrain themselves, their faces twisted into hundreds of masks of lust, would shout, Tie her up!
+ Then someone would rush onto the stage and bind her into the loops of a five-petal knot with thin hemp twine.
+ She stood like this in front of the crowd, submitting herself to all the shame and insults.
+ That didn't bother her at all.
+ She wouldn't have been afraid of being stripped naked, strapped to a millstone, and thrown into a pond; nor would she have feared being forced to dress up, like the wives and concubines of wealthy men, their faces covered with water-soaked yellow paper, sitting upright until they smothered to death.
+ No, these things wouldn't have bothered her at all.
+ She was not the least bit worried about becoming actual damaged goods, which she much preferred to being damaged goods in name only.
+ What disgusted her was the act that made her damaged goods.
+ When I made love to Chen Qingyang, a lizard crawled out of a crack in the wall and crossed the ground in the middle of the room, moving intermittently.
+ Then suddenly startled, it fled quickly, disappearing into the sunshine outside the door.
+ Just at that moment Chen Qingyang's moans flooded out, filling the entire room.
+ I was scared and stopped, leaning over her body.
+ But she pinched my leg and said: Hurry, you idiot!
+ I sped up and waves of vibration passed through me as if from the earth's core.
+ Afterward, she said she had fallen deep into sin and karma would catch up with her sooner or later.
+ When she said that, the band of flush was fading from her chest.
+ At the time we hadn't finished our business yet.
+ So she made it sound like she would only be punished for what she had just done.
+ Suddenly a shudder traveled from the top of my head to my tailbone and I began to ejaculate wildly.
+ Since this had nothing to do with her, perhaps I would be the only one punished for it.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that Luo Xiaosi had looked for me everywhere.
+ He went to the hospital, and people there told him that I didn't exist; then he went to our team leader, who also said that I didn't exist; finally, he went to Chen Qingyang.
+ Chen Qingyang told him that since everyone said he didn't exist, maybe he didn't.
+ She had no problem with that.
+ When he heard this, Luo Xiaosi couldn't help crying.
+ I felt very strange after I heard her words.
+ I shouldn't come into existence simply because a vixen hit me, nor should I stop existing because she hit me.
+ Actually, my existence was an indisputable fact.
+ So I became obsessed.
+ To prove the indisputable fact, I went down the mountain the day the relief delegation arrived and took part in the delegation's hearing.
+ After the hearing, the team leader said, You don't look sick at all.
+ I think you'd better come back to feed the pigs.
+ He also arranged for people to trail Chen Qingyang and me, trying to catch us in the act of adultery.
+ Of course, it was not easy to catch me because I walked so fast.
+ No one could successfully track me.
+ However, this got me into a lot more trouble.
+ By then I began to realize that it was really unnecessary for me to prove my existence to others.
+ When I fed the pigs for the production team, every day I had to carry buckets of water.
+ It was really a tiring job, and impossible to slack off.
+ The pigs would squeal if they didn't get enough food.
+ I had to chop tons of vegetables and cut piles of wood.
+ Originally there had been three women to do the job, but now the team leader assigned it all to me.
+ I found that I could not manage three women's work, especially when my back hurt.
+ I really wanted to prove that I didn't exist then.
+ At night Chen Qingyang and I would make love in my small hut.
+ In those days, I was full of respect for the task, enthusiastic about every kiss and caress.
+ Whether it was the classical missionary position, or man-from-behind position, man-from-side position, or woman-on-top position, I performed them in sober earnest.
+ Chen Qingyang was very satisfied with my performance, and so was I.
+ At those moments, I felt it was unnecessary to prove my existence.
+ I drew a conclusion from these experiences: never let other people pay attention to you!
+ Beijingers say: Better a thief should steal from you than keep you in mind.
+ You should never let other people keep you in mind.
+ After a while, the city students in our team were all transferred to other positions; the men landed work at the candy factory, and the women got to teach at the agricultural middle school.
+ I was the only one left feeding those pigs.
+ According to them that was because I was not reeducated enough, but Chen Qingyang said it was because someone kept me in mind.
+ This "someone" might have been the military deputy on our farm.
+ She also said the military deputy was a jerk.
+ She used to work in the hospital, but when the military deputy tried to grope her, she gave him a big slap, and afterward, she was sent down to the fifteenth production team to work as a team doctor.
+ The fifteenth team's water was bitter, and there wasn't much to eat either.
+ She got used to it after a while.
+ But it was clear from the start the military deputy just wanted to make trouble for her.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the military deputy would definitely not go easy on me, perhaps I would be kept-in-mind half to death.
+ I said: What can he do to me?
+ If things get really bad, I can simply run the hell away.
+ What happened later all started there.
+ That morning, right at dawn, I went down the mountain to feed the pigs.
+ As I passed the village well, I saw the military deputy at the well stand brushing his teeth.
+ He took the brush out of his mouth and talked to me with a mouth full of froth.
+ I thought he was very disgusting, so I left without a word.
+ Shortly afterward, he ran to the pigpen and shouted at me: How dare you walk away from me like that?
+ I kept silent as I heard the words.
+ Even when he accused me of playing dumb, I still said nothing.
+ After a while I walked away again.
+ The military deputy came to our team to do some grassroots investigation and then stayed.
+ According to him, he wouldn't give up until he made Wang Er talk.
+ His visit could be accounted for in two ways: one was that he came down to our team for the investigation, but when he met someone like me who played dumb with him, he got pissed off and decided to stay; the other was that he came down to our team not for investigation, but to pick on me, after hearing that Chen Qingyang and I had a love affair.
+ Whatever brought him to our team, I made up my mind to stay mute.
+ He couldn't do anything about it.
+ The military deputy had a talk with me, asking me to write a confession.
+ He said that the masses were very angry about my love affair with Chen Qingyang.
+ If I didn't confess, he would mobilize the masses to deal with me.
+ He also said my behavior met the criteria for my classification as one of "the bad elements," and I should be punished by the proletarian dictatorship.
+ I could have defended myself by saying I didn't have a love affair.
+ Who could prove I did?
+ But I just stared at him, like a wild boar, like an idiot, like a male cat staring at a female one, until his anger vanished under my stare.
+ Then he let me go.
+ In the end, he still couldn't get anything out of me.
+ He wasn't even sure whether I was a mute or not.
+ People told him that I wasn't a mute.
+ He couldn't be sure since he had never heard me speak a single word.
+ To this day, whenever he thinks of me, he still can't figure out if I am mute or not.
+ It makes me very happy whenever I think about it.
+
+ 那天晚上我没走掉。
+ 陈清扬把我拽住，以伟大友谊的名义叫我留下来。
+ 她承认打我不对，也承认没有好好待我，但是她说我的伟大友谊是假的，还说，我把她骗出来就是想研究她的结构。
+ 我说，既然我是假的，你信我干吗。
+ 我是想研究一下她的结构，这也是在她的许可之下。
+ 假如不乐意可以早说，动手就打不够意思。
+ 后来她哈哈大笑了一阵说，她简直见不得我身上那个东西。
+ 那东西傻头傻脑，恬不知耻，见了它，她就不禁怒从心起。
+ 我们俩吵架时，仍然是不着一丝。
+ 我的小和尚依然直挺挺，在月光下披了一身塑料，倒是闪闪发光。
+ 我听了这话不高兴，她也发现了。
+ 于是她用和解的口气说：不管怎么说，这东西丑得要命，你承不承认？
+ 这东西好像个发怒的眼镜蛇一样立在那里，是不大好看。
+ 我说，既然你不愿意见它，那就算了。
+ 我想穿上裤子，她又说，别这样。
+ 于是我抽起烟来。
+ 等我抽完了一支烟，她抱住我。
+ 我们俩在草地上干那件事。
+ 我过二十一岁生日以前，是一个童男子。
+ 那天晚上我引诱了陈清扬和我到山上去。
+ 那一夜开头有月光，后来月亮落下去，出来一天的星星，就像早上的露水一样多。
+ 那天晚上没有风，山上静得很。
+ 我已经和陈清扬做过爱，不再是童男子了。
+ 但是我一点也不高兴。
+ 因为我干那事时，她一声也不吭，头枕双臂，若有所思地看着我，所以从始至终就是我一个人在表演。
+ 其实我也没持续多久，马上就完了。
+ 事毕我既愤怒又沮丧。
+ 陈清扬说，她简直不敢相信这件事是真的：我居然在她面前亮出了丑恶的男性生殖器，丝毫不感到惭愧。
+ 那玩意也不感到惭愧，直挺挺地从她两腿之间插了进来。
+ 因为女孩子身上有这么个口子，男人就要使用她，这简直没有道理。
+ 以前她有个丈夫，天天对她做这件事。
+ 她一直不说话，等着他有一天自己感到惭愧，自己来解释为什么干了这些。
+ 可是他什么也没说，直到进了监狱。
+ 这话我也不爱听。
+ 所以我说：既然你不乐意，为什么要答应？
+ 她说她不愿被人看成小气鬼。
+ 我说你原本就是小气鬼。
+ 后来她说算了，别为这事吵架。
+ 她叫我晚上再来这里，我们再试一遍。
+ 也许她会喜欢。
+ 我什么也没说。
+ 早上起雾以后，我和她分了手，下山去放牛。
+ 那天晚上我没去找她，倒进了医院。
+ 这事原委是这样：早上我到牛圈门前时，有一伙人等不及我，已经在开圈拉牛。
+ 大家都挑壮牛去犁田。
+ 有个本地小伙子，叫三闷儿，正在拉一条大白牛。
+ 我走过去，告诉他，这牛被毒蛇咬了，不能干活。
+ 他似乎没听见。
+ 我劈手把牛鼻绳夺了下来，他就朝我挥了一巴掌。
+ 我当胸推了他一把，推了他一个屁股蹲儿。
+ 然后很多人拥了上来，把我们拥在中间要打架。
+ 北京知青一伙，当地青年一伙，抄起了棍棒和皮带。
+ 吵了一会儿，又说不打架，让我和三闷儿摔跤，三闷儿摔不过我，就动了拳头。
+ 我一脚把三闷儿踢进了圈前的粪坑，让他沾了一身牛屎。
+ 三闷儿爬起来，抢了一把三齿要砍我，别人劝开了。
+ 早上的事情就是这样。
+ 晚上我放牛回来，队长说我殴打贫下中农，要开我的斗争会。
+ 我说你想借机整人，我也不是好惹的。
+ 我还说要聚众打群架。
+ 队长说他没想整我，是三闷儿的娘闹得他没办法。
+ 那婆娘是个寡妇，泼得厉害。
+ 他说此地的规矩就是这样。
+ 后来他说，不开斗争会，改为帮助会，让我上前面去检讨一下。
+ 要是我还不肯，就让寡妇来找我。
+ 会开得很乱。
+ 老乡们七嘴八舌，说知青太不像话，偷鸡摸狗还打人。
+ 知青们说放狗屁，谁偷东西，你们当场拿住了吗？
+ 老子们是来支援边疆建设，又不是充军的犯人，哪能容你们乱栽赃。
+ 我在前面也不检讨，只是骂。
+ 不提防三闷儿的娘从后面摸上来，抄起一条沉甸甸的拔秧凳，给了我后腰一下，正砸在我的旧伤上，登时我就背过去了。
+ 我醒过来时，罗小四领了一伙人呐喊着要放火烧牛圈，还说要三闷儿的娘抵命。
+ 队长领了一帮人去制止，副队长叫人抬我上牛车去医院。
+ 卫生员说抬不得，腰杆断了，一抬就死。
+ 我说腰杆好像没断，你们快把我抬走。
+ 可是谁也不敢肯定我的腰杆是断了还是没断，所以也不敢肯定我会不会一抬就死。
+ 我就一直躺着。
+ 后来队长过来一问，就说：快摇电话把陈清扬叫下来，让她看看腰断了没有。
+ 过了不一会儿，陈清扬披头散发眼皮红肿地跑了来，劈头第一句话就是：你别怕，要是你瘫了，我照顾你一辈子。
+ 然后一检查，诊断和我自己的相同。
+ 于是我就坐上牛车，到总场医院去看病。
+ 那天夜里陈清扬把我送到医院，一直等到腰部X光片子出来，看过认为没问题后才走。
+ 她说过一两天就来看我，可是一直没来。
+ 我住了一个星期，可以走动了，就奔回去找她。
+ 我走进陈清扬的医务室时，身上背了很多东西，装得背篓里冒了尖。
+ 除了锅碗盆瓢，还有足够两人吃一个月的东西。
+ 她见我进来，淡淡地一笑，说你好了吗，带这些东西上哪儿。
+ 我说要去清平洗温泉。
+ 她懒懒地往椅子上一仰说，这很好。
+ 温泉可以治旧伤。
+ 我说我不是真去洗温泉，而是到后面山上住几天。
+ 她说后面山上什么都没有，还是去洗温泉吧。
+ 清平的温泉是山坳里一片泥坑，周围全是荒草坡。
+ 有一些病人在山坡上搭了窝棚，成年住在那里，其中得什么病的都有。
+ 我到那里不但治不好病，还可能染上麻风。
+ 而后面荒山里的低洼处沟谷纵横，疏林之中芳草离离，我在人迹绝无的地方造了一间草房，空山无人，流水落花，住在里面可以修身养性。
+ 陈清扬听了，禁不住一笑说：那地方怎么走？
+ 也许我去看看你。
+ 我告诉她路，还画了一张示意图，自己进山去了。
+ 我走进荒山，陈清扬没有去看我。
+ 旱季里浩浩荡荡的风刮个不停，整个草房都在晃动。
+ 陈清扬坐在椅子上听着风声，回想起以往发生的事情，对一切都起了怀疑。
+ 她很难相信自己会莫名其妙地来到这极荒凉的地方，又无端地被人称做破鞋，然后就真的搞起了破鞋。
+ 这件事真叫人难以置信。
+ 陈清扬说，有时候她走出房门，往后山上看，看到山丘中有很多小路蜿蜒通到深山里去。
+ 我对她说的话言犹在耳。
+ 她知道沿着一条路走进山去，就会找到我。
+ 这是无可怀疑的事。
+ 但是越是无可怀疑的事就越值得怀疑。
+ 很可能那条路不通到任何地方，很可能王二不在山里，很可能王二根本就不存在。
+ 过了几天，罗小四带了几个人到医院去找我。
+ 医院里没人听说过王二，更没人知道他上哪儿去了。
+ 那时节医院里肝炎流行，没染上肝炎的病人都回家去疗养，大夫也纷纷下队去送医上门。
+ 罗小四等人回到队里，发现我的东西都不见了，就去问队长可见过王二。
+ 队长说，谁是王二？
+ 从来没听说过。
+ 罗小四说前几天你还开会斗争过他，尖嘴婆打了他一板凳，差点把他打死。
+ 这样提醒了以后，队长就更想不起来我是谁了。
+ 那时节有一个北京知青慰问团要来调查知青在下面的情况，尤其是有无被捆打逼婚等情况，因此队长更不乐意想起我来。
+ 罗小四又到十五队问陈清扬可曾见过我，还闪烁其词地暗示她和我有过不正当的关系。
+ 陈清扬则表示，她对此一无所知。
+ 等到罗小四离开，陈清扬就开始糊涂了。
+ 看来有很多人说，王二不存在。
+ 这件事叫人困惑的原因就在这里。
+ 大家都说存在的东西一定不存在，这是因为眼前的一切都是骗局。
+ 大家都说不存在的东西一定存在，比如王二，假如他不存在，这个名字是从哪里来的？
+ 陈清扬按捺不住好奇心，终于扔下一切，上山找我来了。
+ 我被尖嘴婆打了一板凳后晕了过去，陈清扬曾经从山上跑下来看我。
+ 当时她还忍不住哭了起来，并且当众说，如果我好不了要照顾我一辈子。
+ 结果我并没有死，连瘫都没瘫。
+ 这对我是很好的事，可是陈清扬并不喜欢。
+ 这等于当众暴露了她是破鞋。
+ 假如我死，或是瘫掉，就是应该的事，可是我在医院里只住了一个星期就跑出来。
+ 对她来说，我就是那个急匆匆从山上赶下去的背影，一个记忆中的人。
+ 她并不想和我做爱，也不想和我搞破鞋，除非有重大的原因。
+ 因此她来找我就是真正的破鞋行径。
+ 陈清扬说，她决定上山找我时，在白大褂底下什么都没穿。
+ 她就这样走过十五队后面的那片山包。
+ 那些小山上长满了草，草下是红土。
+ 上午风从山上往平坝里吹，冷得像山上的水，下午风吹回来，带着燥热和尘土。
+ 陈清扬来找我时，乘着白色的风。
+ 风从衣服下面钻进来，流过全身，好像爱抚和嘴唇。
+ 其实她不需要我，也没必要找到我。
+ 以前人家说她是破鞋，说我是她的野汉子时，她每天都来找我。
+ 那时好像有必要。
+ 自从她当众暴露了她是破鞋，我是她的野汉子后，再没人说她是破鞋，更没人在她面前提到王二（除了罗小四）。
+ 大家对这种明火执仗的破鞋行径是如此的害怕，以致连说都不敢啦。
+ 关于北京要来人视察知青的事，当地每个人都知道，只有我不知道。
+ 这是因为我前些日子在放牛，早出晚归，而且名声不好，谁也不告诉我，后来住了院，也没人来看找。
+ 等到我出院以后，就进了深山。
+ 在我进山之前，总共就见到了两个人，一个是陈清扬，她没有告诉我这件事。
+ 另一个是我们队长，他也没说起这件事，只叫我去温泉养病。
+ 我告诉他，我没有东西（食品、炊具等等），所以不能去温泉。
+ 他说他可以借给我。
+ 我说我借了不一定还，他说不要紧。
+ 我就向他借了不少家制的腊肉和香肠。
+ 陈清扬不告诉我这件事是因为她不关心，她不是知青。
+ 队长不告诉我这件事，是因为他以为我已经知道了。
+ 他还以为我拿了很多吃的东西走，就不会再回来。
+ 所以罗小四问他王二到哪儿去了时，他说：王二？
+ 谁叫王二？
+ 从没听说过。
+ 对于罗小四等人来说，找到我有很大的好处，我可以证明大家在此地受到很坏的待遇，经常被打晕。
+ 对于领导来说，我不存在有很大的便利，可以说明此地没有一个知青被打晕。
+ 对于我自己来说，存在不存在没有很大的关系。
+ 假如没有人来找我，我在附近种点玉米，可以永远不出来。
+ 就因为这个原因，我对自己存不存在的事不太关心。
+ 我在小屋里也想过自己存不存在的问题。
+ 比方说，别人说我和陈清扬搞破鞋，这就是存在的证明。
+ 用罗小四的话来说，王二和陈清扬脱了裤子干。
+ 其实他也没看见。
+ 他想象的极限就是我们脱裤子。
+ 还有陈清扬说，我从山上下来，穿着黄军装，走得飞快。
+ 我自己并不知道我走路是不回头的。
+ 因为这些事我无从想象，所以是我存在的证明。
+ 还有我的小和尚直挺挺，这件事也不是我想出来的。
+ 我始终盼着陈清扬来看我，但陈清扬始终没有来。
+ 她来的时候，我没有盼着她来。
+ 我曾经以为陈清扬在我进山后会立即来看我，但是我错了。
+ 我等了很久，后来不再等了。
+ 我坐在小屋里，听着满山树叶哗哗响，终于到了物我两忘的境界。
+ 我听见浩浩荡荡的空气大潮从我头顶涌过，正是我灵魂里潮兴之时。
+ 正如深山里花开，龙竹笋剥剥地爆去笋壳，直翘翘地向上。
+ 到潮退时我也安息，但潮兴时要乘兴而舞。
+ 正巧这时陈清扬来到草屋门口，她看见我赤条条坐在竹板床上，阳具就如剥了皮的兔子，红通通亮晶晶足有一尺长，直立在那里，登时惊慌失措，叫了起来。
+ 陈清扬到山里找我的事又可以简述如下：我进山后两个星期，她到山里找我。
+ 当时是下午两点钟，可是她像那些午夜淫奔的妇人一样，脱光了内衣，只穿一件白大褂，赤着脚走进山来。
+ 她就这样走过阳光下的草地，走进了一条干河沟，在河沟里走了很久。
+ 这些河沟很乱，可是她连一个弯都没转错。
+ 后来她又从河沟里出来，走进一个向阳的山洼，看见一间新搭的草房。
+ 假如没有一个王二告诉她这条路，她不可能在茫茫荒山里找到一间草房。
+ 可是她走进草房，看到王二就坐在床上，小和尚直挺挺，却吓得尖叫起来。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她没法相信她所见到的每件事都是真的。
+ 真的事要有理由。
+ 当时她脱了衣服，坐在我的身边，看着我的小和尚，只见它的颜色就像烧伤的疤痕。
+ 这时我的草房在风里摇晃，好多阳光从房顶上漏下来，星星点点落在她身上。
+ 我伸手去触她的乳头，直到她脸上泛起红晕，乳房坚挺。
+ 忽然她从迷梦里醒来，羞得满脸通红。
+ 于是她紧紧地抱住我。
+ 我和陈清扬是第二次做爱，第一次做爱的很多细节当时我大惑不解。
+ 后来我才明白，她对被称做破鞋一事，始终耿耿于怀。
+ 既然不能证明她不是破鞋，她就乐于成为真正的破鞋。
+ 就像那些被当场捉了奸的女人一样，被人叫上台去交待那些偷情的细节。
+ 等到那些人听到情不能持，丑态百出时，怪叫一声：把她捆起来！
+ 就有人冲上台去，用细麻绳把她五花大绑，她就这样站在人前，受尽羞辱。
+ 这些事一点也不讨厌。
+ 她也不怕被人剥得精赤条条，拴到一扇磨盘上，扔到水塘里淹死。
+ 或者像以前达官贵人家的妻妾一样，被强迫穿得整整齐齐，脸上贴上湿透的黄裱纸，端坐着活活憋死。
+ 这些事都一点也不讨厌。
+ 她丝毫也不怕成为破鞋，这比被人叫做破鞋而不是破鞋好得多。
+ 她所讨厌的是使她成为破鞋那件事本身。
+ 我和陈清扬做爱时，一只蜥蜴从墙缝里爬了进来，走走停停地经过房中间的地面。
+ 忽然它受到惊动，飞快地出去，消失在门口的阳光里。
+ 这时陈清扬的呻吟就像泛滥的洪水，在屋里蔓延。
+ 我为此所惊，伏下身不动。
+ 可是她说，快，混蛋。
+ 还拧我的腿。
+ 等我“快”了以后，阵阵震颤就像从地心传来。
+ 后来她说，她觉得自己罪孽深重，早晚要遭报应。
+ 她说自己要遭报应时，一道红晕正从她的胸口褪去。
+ 那时我们的事情还没完。
+ 但她的口气是说，她只会为在此之前的事遭报应。
+ 忽然之间我从头顶到尾骨一齐收紧，开始极其猛烈地射精。
+ 这事与她无关，大概只有我会为此遭报应。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，罗小四到处找我。
+ 他到医院找我时，医院说我不存在。
+ 他找队长问我时，队长也说我不存在。
+ 最后他来找陈清扬，陈清扬说，既然大家都说他不存在，大概他就是不存在吧，我也没有意见。
+ 罗小四听了这话，禁不住哭了起来。
+ 我听了这话，觉得很奇怪。
+ 我不应该因为尖嘴婆打了我一下而存在，也不应该因为她打了我一下而不存在。
+ 事实上，我的存在乃是不争的事实。
+ 我就为这一点钻了牛角尖。
+ 为了验证这不争的事实，慰问团来的那一天，我从山上奔了下去，来到了座谈会的会场上。
+ 散会以后，队长说，你这个样子不像有病。
+ 还是回来喂猪吧。
+ 他还组织人力，要捉我和陈清扬的奸。
+ 当然，要捉我不容易，我的腿非常快。
+ 谁也休想跟踪我。
+ 但是也给我添了很多麻烦。
+ 到了这个时候我才悟到，犯不着向人证明我存在。
+ 我在队里喂猪时，每天要挑很多水。
+ 这个活计很累，连偷懒都不可能，因为猪吃不饱会叫唤。
+ 我还要切很多猪菜，劈很多柴。
+ 喂这些猪原来要三个妇女，现在要我一个人干。
+ 我发现我不能顶三个妇女，尤其是腰疼时。
+ 这时候我真想证明我不存在。
+ 晚上我和陈清扬在小屋里做爱。
+ 那时我对此事充满了敬业精神，对每次亲吻和爱抚都贯注了极大的热情。
+ 无论是经典的传教士式，后进式，侧进式，女上位，我都能一丝不苟地完成。
+ 陈清扬对此极为满意。
+ 我也极为满意。
+ 在这种时候，我又觉得用不着去证明自己是存在的。
+ 从这些体会里我得到一个结论，就是永远别让别人注意你。
+ 北京人说，不怕贼偷，就怕贼惦记。
+ 你千万别让人惦记上。
+ 过了一些时候，我们队的知青全调走了。
+ 男的调到糖厂当工人，女的到农中去当老师。
+ 单把我留下来喂猪，据说是因为我还没有改造好。
+ 陈清扬说，我叫人惦记上了。
+ 这个人大概就是农场的军代表。
+ 她还说，军代表不是个好东西。
+ 原来她在医院工作，军代表要调戏她，被她打了个大嘴巴。
+ 然后她就被发到十五队当队医。
+ 十五队的水是苦的，也没有菜吃，待久了也觉得没有啥。
+ 但是当初调她来，分明有修理一下的意思。
+ 她还说，我准会被修到半死。
+ 我说过，他能把我怎么样？
+ 急了老子跑他娘。
+ 后来的事都是由此而起。
+ 那天早上天色微明，我从山上下来，到猪场喂猪。
+ 经过井台时，看见了军代表，他正在刷牙。
+ 他把牙刷从嘴里掏出来，满嘴白沫地和我讲话，我觉得很讨厌，就一声不吭地走掉了。
+ 过了一会，他跑到猪场里，把我大骂了一顿，说你怎么敢走了。
+ 我听了这些话，一声不吭。
+ 就是他说我装哑巴，我也一声不吭。
+ 然后我又走开了。
+ 军代表到我们队来蹲点，蹲下来就不走了。
+ 据他说，要不能从王二嘴里掏出话来，死也不甘心。
+ 这件事有两种可能的原因，一是他下来视察，遇见了我对他装聋作哑，因而大怒，不走了。
+ 二是他不是下来视察，而是听说陈清扬和我有了一腿，特地来找我的麻烦。
+ 不管他为何而来，反正我是一声也不吭，这叫他很没办法。
+ 军代表找我谈话，要我写交待材料。
+ 他还说，我搞破鞋群众很气愤，如果我不交待，就发动群众来对付我。
+ 他还说，我的行为够上了坏分子，应该受到专政。
+ 我可以辩解说，我没搞破鞋。
+ 谁能证明我搞了破鞋？
+ 但我只是看着他，像野猪一样看他，像发傻一样看他，像公猫看母猫一样看他。
+ 把他看到没了脾气，就让我走了。
+ 最后他也没从我嘴里套出话来。
+ 他甚至搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 别人说我不是哑巴，他始终不敢相信，因为他从来没听我说过一句话。
+ 他到今天想起我来，还是搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 想起这一点，我就万分的高兴。
+
+ The boots reached the door, and came on into the room.
+ Trinket peeped out from behind the table-cloth.
+ From the size of his footwear, the new arrival seemed to be a boy like himself.
+ He heaved a sigh of relief, and put the pancake in his mouth.
+ He didn't dare to take a bite out of it, but softened it with his saliva, and then swallowed it silently down.
+ Meanwhile he could hear noisy munching coming from the table above him.
+ The new boy was clearly tucking in.
+ 'Why, he's just another scavenger like me!' thought Trinket to himself.
+ 'I'll jump out and scare him off, then I can carry on eating to my heart's content.'
+ His thoughts ran on: 'What a fool I was just now!
+ I should have stuffed a whole plateful in my pocket and buggered off!
+ This isn't like home.
+ They wouldn't miss a little thing like that, or expect me to pay for it!'
+ All of a sudden there was a series of noisy thumps.
+ The new scavenger had started hitting something.
+ His curiosity aroused, Trinket poked his head out from under the table.
+ What he saw was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, in a short gown, punching at one of the bags that hung from the beam.
+ After a while, the boy moved across and started attacking one of the oxhide cut-outs.
+ He struck the figure first on the chest with one fist, then reached forward with both hands and grappled it by the waist, forcing it to the ground.
+ It was very much the same sort of technique as the one used by the Manchu wrestlers in the inn the previous day.
+ Trinket chuckled to himself and darted out from beneath the table.
+ 'Why fight a dummy!' he cried.
+ 'Why not try me?'
+ The other boy's first reaction was one of alarm, at the sight of this strange apparition with its head swathed in bandages.
+ But alarm quickly turned to delight when he realized that he had found a sparring partner.
+ 'Very well!' he replied.
+ 'On guard!'
+ Trinket sprang forward and seized the boy's arms, intending to give him a sharp twist, but the boy turned smartly, and hooked him with his right foot, sending Trinket crashing to the floor.
+ 'You're hopeless!' he jeered.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling!'
+ 'Who says I don't!' protested Trinket, leaping to his feet again and reaching for the boy's left leg.
+ The boy made a grab for his back, but this time Trinket dodged in time and the boy seized a handful of air.
+ Trinket recalled Whiskers' fight with the seven wrestlers at the inn, and shot out a quick left that caught the boy hard, fair and square, on the lower cheek.
+ The boy stood there stunned for a few seconds, and a momentary look of anger came into his eyes.
+ 'You're hopeless!' cried Trinket with a grin.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling.'
+ The boy said nothing, but feinted with his left fist.
+ Trinket fell for it and dodged, and as he did so, the boy's elbow came crashing across into his midriff and winded him completely.
+ He crumpled up and fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
+ The boy now came at Trinket from behind, slipped both hands under his arms and laced his hands together around his throat, throttling him, and pressing him harder and harder down on to the ground.
+ Trinket kicked frantically with his right foot, but then the boy loosed his hands and gave him a terrific shove which sent him rolling across the room like a puppy chasing its own tail.
+ Trinket was furious.
+ He came tumbling back, wrapped both arms round the boy's legs, and tugged at him with all his might.
+ The boy crashed down right on top of him.
+ He was quite a bit bigger than Trinket, and had soon succeeded in throttling him again and pinning him to the ground.
+ Trinket began to choke, thrashed out with his feet to extricate himself, and finally managed to wriggle on top of the boy and hold him down.
+ He was too light to maintain the upper hand for long, however, and soon the boy was back on top of him again.
+ Ever a crafty fighter, Trinket now let go of the boy's legs, got behind him, and landed him a good kick on the backside.
+ The boy quickly grabbed his right leg and tugged at it, sending Trinket crashing down on his back.
+ The boy leapt astride him, pinned his head to the floor, and cried: 'Well!
+ Surrender?'
+ Trinket had meanwhile managed to hook his left foot round the boy's waist, and started to rub it up and down the small of his back.
+ The boy, it transpired, was extremely ticklish, and he couldn't help giggling, and loosened his grasp.
+ Trinket seized his chance, leapt up, and pinned his opponent down by the throat.
+ The boy now used a standard wrestling ploy, gripping Trinket by the back of the neck and pulling him to the ground with considerable force.
+ Trinket went out like a light.
+ When he regained consciousness, he found that he was temporarily immobilized.
+ The boy burst out laughing.
+ 'Well?
+ Had enough?
+ Give in?'
+ But Trinket was not finished yet.
+ He eventually succeeded in jumping up and landing a head-butt right in the boy's midriff.
+ The boy groaned and staggered back a few steps.
+ Trinket lunged after him, the boy leant a little to one side, put out a leg, and brought him tumbling to the floor.
+ Trinket reached out frantically as he fell, clutching at the boy's legs, and the two of them went down together.
+ They struggled for a while, each one gaining the upper hand for a moment, then going under, ringing the changes more than a dozen times, until finally they were in a complete deadlock, panting and staring fixedly at each other.
+ And then suddenly, at exactly the same moment, they both burst out laughing.
+ There was something about the clinch they were in that struck them both as terribly funny.
+ Slowly they let go.
+ The boy reached out a hand and began removing the bandages from Trinket's face.
+ 'What did you want to wrap your face up for?'
+ Trinket was about to snatch the bandages back, when he reflected that the boy had already seen most of his face and that it would achieve nothing.
+ 'I didn't want anyone to recognize me taking the cake.'
+ 'I see,' said the boy, chuckling and standing up.
+ 'So you make a habit of coming here and taking food, do you?'
+ 'No, I don't,' said Trinket.
+ As he rose to his feet, he stole a closer glance at his opponent: there was something at once impressive and attractive about the boy's features, a clearness of brow, a noble look in the eyes, an expression in the face, that drew Trinket towards him.
+ 'What's your name?' asked the boy.
+ 'Laurel,' replied Trinket.
+ 'And yours?'
+ After a moment's hesitation the boy replied: 'Mine's . . .
+ People call me Misty.
+ Which of the Goong-goongs do you work for?'
+ 'I'm with Hai Goong-goong.'
+ Misty nodded, and used Trinket's bandages to mop the sweat from his brow.
+ He helped himself to a cake.
+ Trinket was not going to be outdone.
+ If this young fellow could continue calmly scavenging, so could he.
+ He popped another slice of layer cake nonchalantly into his mouth.
+ 'I can see you've never done any wrestling,' laughed Misty.
+ 'But you're a quick mover all the same!
+ You managed to get away that time.
+ A few more goes and I'd have had you, though—'
+ 'Is that right?' protested Trinket.
+ 'Come on then: let's see—'
+ 'At you!'
+ The two of them set to again.
+ Misty clearly knew a few wrestling moves, and was the older and stronger of the two.
+ But Trinket had the benefit of years of experience in the streets of Yangzhou, where he'd had to deal with all manner of bullies and thugs, big and small, and in this respect he was definitely Misty's superior.
+ But for one reason or another (partly Whiskers' lecture, partly because this was, after all, only 'play-fighting' and not in deadly earnest) he didn't avail himself of a single one of the dubious tricks at which he excelled: the finger-twist, the pigtail-pull, the throat-bite, the eye-poke, the ear-yank, the grip-o'-the-balls.
+ As a result he eventually came off the loser again, with Misty sitting on his back, and no hope of throwing him off.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'Never!'
+ Misty burst out laughing and jumped up.
+ Trinket went for him again, but this time Misty shook his head.
+ 'No more for today!
+ Tomorrow, if you like.
+ But I don't see the point: you'll never be able to beat me!'
+ Trinket was not having this.
+ He pulled a piece of silver from his pocket, about three taels' worth: 'Tomorrow we fight for money!
+ You'd better bring three taels yourself!'
+ Misty seemed somewhat taken aback by this but then concurred.
+ 'All right.
+ We fight for money.
+ I'll bring my stake.
+ See you here at noon tomorrow.'
+ 'Live or die!
+ Excellent kungfu!
+ My word is my wand!' cried Trinket, and Misty burst out laughing.
+ 'It certainly is!'
+ And with that he left the room.
+ Trinket helped himself to a big handful of cakes and stuffed them inside his jacket.
+ Then he too left the room.
+ As he went, he found himself thinking of Whiskers' heroic stand at Victory Hill: now there was a man!
+ Whiskers had pledged his word to fight, and nothing could have stood between him and the fulfilment of that pledge, not the walls of his prison cell, not even his own wounds.
+ How many times Trinket had sat listening to the storytellers' tales, and how many times he'd dreamed of one day being a hero himself—Trinket the Brave Man and True!
+ Now, he'd said he would fight, and there could be no going back!
+ He had pledged his word!
+ And if he was to be a man of his word, he would have to forget about escape—at least for the time being.
+ He would have to go back to the old eunuch that evening.
+ He therefore decided to retrace his steps to the room where they had been gambling earlier in the day — and from there he took a direction opposite to the one he had taken earlier (which had led him deeper and deeper into the mansion), followed two covered walkways, vaguely remembered one or two shrubs he had passed by in the courtyards on the way, and somehow, by hook or by crook, navigated his way back to the old eunuch's quarters.
+ As he drew near the entrance, he heard the old fellow coughing.
+ 'Goong-goong?
+ Are you feeling any better?'
+ 'Better my arse!' muttered the eunuch.
+ 'Get a move on, will you!'
+ Trinket hurried over to him.
+ Old Hai was sitting at a table (the broken one had been replaced).
+ ''How much did you win?'
+ 'I won a dozen taels,' replied Trinket.
+ 'But I—'
+ 'You what?' snapped the eunuch.
+ 'I lent them to Wu.'
+ In actual fact he'd won twenty and lent twelve to Wu: the remaining eight he wished to hang on to.
+ Old Hai scowled at him.
+ 'What do you want to go lending money to that Wu fellow for?
+ He doesn't even work in the Upper Library, dammit!
+ You could at least have lent to one of the Wen brothers!'
+ Trinket didn't follow this at all.
+ 'But they didn't ask me for a loan.'
+ 'Then you should have found a way to offer one.
+ Have you forgotten everything I ever told you?'
+ 'It's just that. . . what with killing that boy yesterday, I can't seem to think straight, it must have gone clean out of my mind.
+ I ought to have lent the money to one of the Wen brothers, that's right, I remember now, you told me.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'What's so alarming about killing?
+ I suppose you're only a child though, you've never done it before.
+ Now, about the book— I hope you haven't forgotten.'
+ 'The book?'
+ Old Hai humphed again.
+ 'Have you forgotten everything?'
+ 'Goong-goong, I... I've got this terrible headache . . . and I'm so worried about your cough ...
+ I just can't keep my mind on anything!'
+ 'Very well.
+ Come over here!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked a few steps closer.
+ 'I'm going to repeat it for you once more.
+ Forget this time, and I shall kill you.'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!' piped Trinket, thinking to himself, 'Just say it once, and I'll never forget it, not in a hundred years!'
+ 'Listen: you're to win money from the Wen brothers.
+ Then you're to lend them money, the more the better.
+ Then, after a few days you're to ask them to take you to the Upper Library.
+ They'll have to say yes, if they owe you money.
+ If they try to fob you off, you tell them that I'll report them to the Chief Librarian;
+ I'll tell him they refuse to pay their debts, and ask him to wait for His Majesty to—'
+ 'His Majesty?'
+ 'What?'
+ 'Oh . . . nothing.'
+ 'If they ask you why you want to go to the Upper Library, you say that you're longing for a glimpse of His Majesty, so you just want a chance to perform some little errand there.
+ Of course the Wen brothers won't let you see His Majesty; when they take you, His Majesty won't even be in the Upper Library.
+ That's when you find a way to steal the book . . .'
+ Something was beginning to fall into place in Trinket's mind, with all these references to 'His Majesty'.
+ 'Could this be the Palace, the Forbidden City itself!' he thought silently to himself.
+ 'Have I been wrong all this time, about it being the number one whore-house in Peking?
+ Aiyeeh! Of course!
+ That must be it!
+ These people are all eunuchs working for the Emperor. . .'
+ As a boy, Trinket had heard people talk about the Emperor, the Empress, Princes and Princesses, Palace Ladies, Palace Eunuchs, but he hadn't the faintest idea what these grand beings actually looked like.
+ All he knew was that the Emperor wore a Dragon Robe.
+ In Yangzhou he'd seen all sorts of plays, but the eunuchs on stage were never dressed anything like Old Hai, or his new gambling friend Wu.
+ And the stage eunuchs always held those long horsehair fly-whisks, and kept waving them around in the air.
+ And anyway, he had never understood a word of what they were singing.
+ So this was what real Palace Eunuchs were like!
+ 'Cripes!' he cried silently to himself.
+ That means I've become a little Palace Eunuch myself!
+ I've lost my balls!'
+ 'Did you take in what I said just now?' growled Old Hai.
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong, yes!
+ I've got to go to His Majesty's Upper Library!'
+ 'And why have you got to go?
+ To play?'
+ 'To steal a book.'
+ 'Which book?'
+ 'I... I... can't remember.'
+ 'I'll tell you once more.
+ And this time, don't forget.
+ It's a Sutra, called the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.
+ It's very old.
+ There are several copies of it.
+ Just bring them all to me.
+ Got it?
+ Now—what's it called?'
+ 'The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.'
+ Trinket sounded very pleased with himself.
+ 'What are you so happy about?' snapped the old eunuch.
+ 'I'm just happy about. . . about remembering it the minute you mentioned it again.'
+ In actual fact, when Old Hai had spoken of stealing a book, Trinket's heart had sunk.
+ The 'stealing' part was no problem; it was the 'book' part that presented what seemed at first like an insurmountable obstacle.
+ The trouble was that Trinket could barely read.
+ He couldn't decipher more than a word or two, let alone book titles.
+ Then he heard the eunuch say that the book was the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections, and his heart leapt: what the word Sutra looked like he had not the foggiest notion, but numbers were something he could read.
+ So the second part of the title was a walk-over!
+ Wasn't that sufficient reason to be pleased?
+ 'Now,' went on Old Hai, 'if you go stealing books from the Upper Library, you've got to be very smart, very careful.
+ If anyone spots you, you're as good as dead.
+ A hundred times over.'
+ 'I know,' said Trinket.
+ He suddenly thought of something, and added: 'If I did get caught, I'd never dream of dragging you into it, Goong-goong!'
+ Old Hai heaved a strangely unconcerned sigh.
+ 'Drag me in or drag me out, it's all the same to me . . .'
+ He had another coughing fit, and went on: 'You've done quite well today.
+ At least you've won something.
+ What did the others think?
+ Were they suspicious?'
+ Trinket chortled.
+ 'Oh no, why should they be?'
+ He was about to boast, but thought better of it.
+ 'Well then, don't sit around doing nothing.
+ Eat your lunch, and if you've no jobs to do, go and practise with the dice!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked across to the dining-table, where bowls and chopsticks had been laid, four dishes and a soup, all untouched.
+ 'Goong-goong, aren't you eating?
+ Let me serve you!'
+ 'I'm not hungry.
+ You go ahead.'
+ Trinket was delighted, and without bothering to fill his bowl with rice, he attacked a dish of stewed meat.
+ The food was cold, but he was hungry, and to him it was indescribably delicious.
+ 'I wonder where they get the food from?
+ Oh well, I'd better not ask too many questions, just keep my eyes open and pick things up one at a time.
+ If this really is the Forbidden City, then old Wu and the Wen brothers and little Misty must all of them be eunuchs.
+ I wonder what the actual Emperor and Empress look like?
+ I must try and get a look.
+ Then one day when I'm back at home, ha ha!
+ I can tell people who I've seen.
+ Just imagine the look on their faces!
+ 'I wonder if Whiskers got out safe?
+ They didn't say anything about someone getting caught when we were gambling . . .
+ Most probably he got away all right.'
+ When he had finished eating, he went through the motions of practising with the dice so as not to arouse the old eunuch's suspicions, throwing them noisily across the table.
+ After a while his eyelids began to feel heavy.
+ He hadn't slept all night.
+ In minutes he was sound asleep.
+ He slept till evening, when a junior eunuch brought in their supper.
+ Trinket waited on Old Hai as he ate a bowl of rice, and then helped him to bed.
+ Afterwards he went to lie down on the smaller bed, thinking to himself: 'Tomorrow, whatever else happens, I must win my fight with Misty!'
+ He lay there, trying to remember Whiskers' fight with the wrestlers in the tavern.
+ He wished he could remember the details more clearly.
+ 'If only I'd taken old Whiskers up on his offer!
+ With him as my teacher I could have learnt a thing or two on the way up here, and then I could have put Misty in his place—even though he is stronger than I am.
+ If he gets me on the ground again tomorrow, I'll die of shame!
+ Little White Dragon—forget it!
+ I'd never dare show my face among the Brothers!'
+ Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
+ 'The wrestlers were no match for Whiskers; but Whiskers was no match for Old Turtle-head—why don't I get him to teach me a few moves?'
+ He asked the old eunuch at once: 'Goong-goong, if you want me to go stealing books from the Upper Library, there's just one problem.'
+ 'What's that?'
+ 'Well, after today's game, I met this . . . little eunuch, who stood in my way and asked me to give him some of my winnings.
+ I wouldn't, so we ended up fighting.
+ That's why I was so late for lunch.'
+ 'He beat you, presumably.'
+ 'He was bigger than me, and stronger.
+ He says I've got to fight with him every day, until I can beat him.
+ Then he'll let me off.'
+ 'What was the little fellow's name?
+ Which part of the Palace was he from?'
+ 'He's called Misty.
+ I don't know where he's from.'
+ 'You must have been acting too pleased with yourself after your win—that's probably what annoyed him.'
+ 'I won't let him get away with it!
+ I'm going to fight him tomorrow!
+ But I just wonder if I can beat him.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'You want to wangle some moves out of me, don't you?
+ The answer's no, so it's no use trying.'
+ 'Clever Old Turtle-head!' thought Trinket, silently cursing to himself.
+ 'This little fellow Misty,' he began again, out loud, 'he wasn't such a good fighter really.
+ I wouldn't need to learn much to beat him.
+ I don't need you to teach me, either.
+ I had him on the ground today, it's just that he was too strong for me: he managed to buck me off.
+ Tomorrow I'll get a proper grip on him.
+ That should fix the little bugger!'
+ He had been trying so hard all day to keep his language clean.
+ 'If you want to stop him bucking you, that's easy!' said Old Hai.
+ 'I didn't think it would be hard.
+ I just get him in a good shoulder grip, then—'
+ 'That's no good!
+ Bucking comes from the lower back.
+ You have to knee him on the vital point in the small of his back.
+ Come over here and I'll show you.'
+ Trinket hopped out of bed and was at Old Hai's bedside in a trice.
+ The old eunuch felt around in the small of his back and pressed lightly.
+ Trinket felt his whole body go limp.
+ 'Can you remember that?'
+ 'Yes, I'll try it out tomorrow.
+ Let's hope it works.'
+ 'Works?
+ Of course it will work.
+ It's absolutely foolproof!'
+ Old Hai reached out his hand and pressed lightly on either side of Trinket's neck.
+ Trinket let out a gasp of pain.
+ He had a choking sensation in his chest, and could hardly breathe.
+ 'Get him on these two points,' said Hai, 'and he'll have no strength to fight with.'
+ Trinket was pleased as punch.
+ 'Well, that's it then!
+ Tomorrow, I win!'
+ Trinket went back to bed, and fell asleep dreaming of Misty surrendering to the Little White Dragon!
+ Wu came to fetch him again the following morning.
+ It was the Wen brothers' turn to be bankers.
+ Trinket had soon managed to win over twenty taels off them.
+ It was a bad day for the bank altogether.
+ In less than an hour they had to pay out fifty taels, which was all they had.
+ Trinket lent them another twenty, and by the end of the day's play that was all gone too.
+ All Trinket could think about was his appointment with Misty.
+ As soon as the gambling was over, he hurried to the 'cake room'.
+ The table was piled high again with good things to eat, and this time Trinket tucked in with a vengeance.
+ Then he heard the flip-ploy of cloth boots again.
+ He ducked under the table, just in case it turned out to be someone other than Misty.
+ 'Laurel!
+ Laurel!'
+ It was Misty's voice calling from the doorway.
+ Trinket sprang out, and with a big grin on his face, called back: 'Live or die!'
+ 'I live, you die!' laughed Misty, striding into the room.
+ Trinket noticed at once that he was wearing a completely new outfit, and couldn't help feeling jealous.
+ 'Huh!' he muttered to himself.
+ 'Just you wait!
+ You won't be so pleased when I've made a big rip in that smart gown of yours!'
+ He let out a great war cry and threw himself straight into the attack.
+ 'Excellent kungfu!' cried his opponent, grappling him with both arms, and delivering a swinging kick with his left foot.
+ Trinket lost his balance, tottered and fell, bringing Misty down with him.
+ As Trinket rolled and spun round, he managed to pin Misty face down on the floor.
+ He remembered Old Hai's little demonstration, and felt for the vital point in the small of Misty's back.
+ But he had never done this sort of thing before, and it was hard to find the point at his very first attempt.
+ Misty meanwhile had spun round, gripped Trinket's left arm, and twisted it back.
+ 'Hey!' screamed Trinket, 'that's not fair!
+ Twisting my arm like that!'
+ That's what wresding's all about!' laughed Misty.
+ 'Who says it's not fair!'
+ Trinket took advantage of the fact that Misty was busy speaking and momentarily off his guard, to launch a counter-attack.
+ He brought his head down with all his might on to Misty's back, shot his right hand under his armpit, and flung him up into the air as hard as he could.
+ Misty went flying over his head and landed widi a crash on the ground.
+ He leapt to his feet again, crying: 'So you know the Bucking Antelope too!'
+ Trinket had never even heard of the Antelope.
+ He'd just been improvising and thrashing around, and somehow or other had managed to outwit his opponent.
+ He was pretty chuffed.
+ 'The Antelope is nothing!' he cried.
+ 'I know plenty more, and they're a lot worse.
+ You haven't seen anything yet!'
+ 'Perfect!' cried Misty in delight.
+ 'Go to!'
+ Trinket engaged in a quick moment's reflection: 'Misty has obviously had lessons—that's why he keeps getting the better of me.
+ But that's no problem.
+ All I have to do is watch his moves and copy them.
+ He can throw me a few times— I'll soon get the hang of it.'
+ Misty started coming at him.
+ Trinket lunged back, but it was a feint: Misty stepped aside, let Trinket surge on, and chopped him on the back with the side of his hand.
+ Trinket was unable to rein himself in, and went crashing to the ground.
+ Misty gave a great cry of delight, leapt forwards, and planted himself astride Trinket's back.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'No!
+ Never!' protested Trinket, but when he tried to straighten himself up and get to his feet, he felt a sudden numbness in the small of his back.
+ Misty had beaten him to it!
+ He had pressed on exactly the spot Old Hai had been trying to teach him the previous evening.
+ After struggling futilely for a moment longer, he finally gave up.
+ 'All right!' he cried.
+ This time I surrender!'
+ Misty laughed and set him free.
+ As Trinket got up, he suddenly shot out one of his feet.
+ Misty toppled over, and Trinket punched him in the small of the back.
+ Misty gave a cry of pain and bent double.
+ Trinket leapt on him from behind and gripped him tightly round the throat with both his hands.
+ Misty lost consciousness for an instant, and fell flat on the ground.
+ Trinket held on and demanded triumphantly: 'Surrender?'
+ Misty gave a little grunt.
+ Then suddenly he drove his elbows hard into Trinket's ribs, and Trinket went reeling over on to the floor, screaming with pain, certain that he must have several broken bones.
+ Misty spun round and sat astride his chest, once more the victor, though this time a winded and exhausted one, panting for breath.
+ 'Do . . . you . . . give in?'
+ 'Give in my arse!' panted Trinket back.
+ The answer's no!
+ A hundred times no!
+ You were lucky just now, that's all!'
+ 'Then get up ... and fight!'
+ Trinket stretched and heaved with all his might (what little of it he had left), but his opponent was still astride his aching ribs, and his efforts were to no avail.
+ After several more minutes of futile struggle, he surrendered yet again.
+ Misty rose to his feet.
+ His arms were sore and limp with exhaustion.
+ Trinket staggered to his feet and took a few tottering steps across the room.
+ 'Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I'll take you on again . . . and I'll beat you for sure!'
+ Misty laughed.
+ 'If we fight a hundred times, you'll. . . you'll always lose!
+ If you've got the guts, come again tomorrow!'
+ 'You're probably the one who's not got the guts!
+ I'm not afraid.
+ Live or die!
+ My word is my wand!'
+ They had both been quite carried away by the fighting, and neither of them had mentioned the money, or the bet they had laid.
+ Or to be strictly accurate, Misty didn't mention it, and since he didn't, Trinket was more than happy to pretend to have forgotten.
+ If he had emerged the victor, it would have been a very different story.
+
+ 靴声响到门口，那人走了进来。
+ 韦小宝从桌底下瞧出去，见那靴子不大，来人当是个和自己差不多年纪的男孩，当即放心，将烧饼放入口中，却也不敢咀嚼，只是用唾沫去浸湿烧饼，待浸软了吞咽。
+ 只听得咀嚼之声发自桌边，那男孩在取糕点而食，韦小宝心想：“也是个偷食的，我大叫一声冲出去，这小鬼定会吓得逃走，我便可大嚼一顿了。”
+ 又想：“刚才真笨，该当把几碟点心倒在袋里便走。
+ 这里又不是丽春院，难道短了什么，就定是把帐算在我头上？”
+ 忽听得砰砰声响，那男孩在敲击什么东西，韦小宝好奇心起，探头张望，只见那男孩约莫十四五岁年纪，身穿短打，伸拳击打梁上垂下来的一只布袋。
+ 他打了一会，又去击打墙边的皮人。
+ 那男孩一拳打在皮人胸口，随即双臂伸出，抱住了皮人的腰，将之按倒在地，所用手法，便似昨日在酒馆中所见到那些摔交的满人一般。
+ 韦小宝哈哈一笑，从桌底钻了出来，说道：“皮人是死的，有什么好玩？
+ 我来跟你玩。”
+ 那男孩见他突然现身，脸上又缠了白布，微微一惊，但听他说来陪自己玩，登时脸现喜色，道：“好，你上来！”
+ 韦小宝扑将过去，便去扭男孩的双臂。
+ 那男孩一侧身，右手一勾，韦小宝站立不住，立时倒了。
+ 那男孩道：“呸，你不会摔交。 ”
+ 韦小宝道：“谁说不会？”
+ 跃起身来，去抱他左腿。
+ 那男孩伸手抓他后心，韦小宝一闪，那男孩便抓了个空。
+ 韦小宝记得茅十八在酒馆中与七名大汉相斗的手法，突然左手出拳，击向那男孩下颚，砰的一声，正好打中。
+ 那男孩一怔，眼中露出怒色。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“呸，你不会摔交！”
+ 那男孩一言不发，左手虚晃，韦小宝斜身避让，那男孩手肘斗出，正撞在他的腰里。
+ 韦小宝大叫一声，痛得蹲了下来。
+ 那男孩双手从他背后腋下穿上，十指互握，扣住了他后颈，将他上身越压越低。
+ 韦小宝右足反踢。
+ 那男孩双手猛推，将韦小宝身子送出，拍的一声，跌了个狗吃屎。
+ 韦小宝大怒，翻滚过去，用力抱住了男孩的双腿，使劲拖拉，那男孩站立不住，倒了下来，正好压在韦小宝身上。
+ 这男孩身材比韦小宝高大，立即以手肘逼住韦小宝后颈。
+ 韦小宝呼吸不畅，拼命伸足力撑，翻了几下，终于翻到了上面，反压在那男孩身上。
+ 只见他人小身轻压不住对方，又给那男孩翻了上来压住。
+ 韦小宝极是滑溜，放开男孩双腿，钻到他身后，大力一脚踢中他屁股。
+ 那男孩反手抓住他右腿使劲一扯，韦小宝仰面便倒。
+ 那男孩扑上去扠住他头颈，喝道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝左足钩转，在那男孩腰间擦了几下，那男孩怕痒，嘻的一笑，手劲便即松了。
+ 韦小宝乘机跃起，抱住他头颈。
+ 那男孩使出摔交手法，抓住了韦小宝后领，把他重重往地下一摔。
+ 韦小宝一阵晕眩，动弹不得。
+ 那男孩哈哈大笑，说道：“服了么？”
+ 韦小宝猛地跃起，一个头锤，正中对方小腹。
+ 那男孩哼了一声，倒退几步。
+ 韦小宝冲将上去，那男孩身子微斜，横脚钩扫。
+ 韦小宝摔将下来，狠命抱住了他大腿。
+ 两人同时跌倒。
+ 一时那男孩翻在上面，一时韦小宝翻在上面，翻了十七八个滚，终于两人互相扭住，呼呼喘气，突然之间，两人不约而同的哈哈大笑，都觉如此扭打十分好玩，慢慢放开了手。
+ 那男孩一伸手，扯开了韦小宝脸上的白布，笑道：“包住了头干么？”
+ 韦小宝吃了一惊，便欲伸手去夺，但想对方既已看到自己真面目，再加遮掩也是无用，笑道：“包住了脸，免得进来偷食时给人认了出来。”
+ 那男孩站起身来，笑道：“好啊，原来你时时到这里偷食。”
+ 韦小宝道：“时时倒也不见得。”
+ 说着也站了起来，见那男孩眉清目秀，神情轩昂，对他颇有好感。
+ 那男孩问道：“你叫什么名字？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我叫小桂子，你呢？”
+ 那男孩略一迟疑，道：“我叫…… 叫小玄子。
+ 你是哪个公公手下的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我跟海老公。”
+ 小玄子点了点头，就用韦小宝那块白布抹了抹额头汗水，拿起一块点心便吃。
+ 韦小宝不肯服输，心想你大胆偷食，我的胆子也不小于你，当即拿起一块千层糕，肆无忌惮的放入口中。
+ 小玄子笑了笑，道：“你没学过摔交，可是手脚挺灵活，我居然压你不住，再打几个回合，你便输了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“那也不见得，咱们再打一会试试。”
+ 小玄子道：“很好！”
+ 两人又扭打起来。
+ 小玄子似乎会一些摔交之技，年纪和力气又都大过韦小宝，不过韦小宝在扬州市井间身经百战，与大流氓、小无赖也不知打过了多少场架，扭打的经验远比小玄子丰富。
+ 总算他记得茅十八的教训，而与小玄子的扭打只是游戏，并非拼命，什么拗手指、拉辫子、咬咽喉、抓眼珠、扯耳朵、捏阴囊等等拿手的成名绝技，倒也一项没使。
+ 这么一来，那就难以取胜，扭打几回合，韦小宝终于给他骑在背上，再也翻不了身。
+ 小玄子笑道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“死也不降。”
+ 小玄子哈哈一笑，跳了起来。
+ 韦小宝扑上去又欲再打。
+ 小玄子摇手笑道：“今天不打了，明天再来。
+ 不过你不是我对手，再打也没用。”
+ 韦小宝不服气，摸出一锭银子，约有三两上下，说道：“明天再打，不过要赌钱，你也拿三两银子出来。”
+ 小玄子一怔，道：“好，咱们打个彩头。
+ 明天我带银子来，中午时分，在这里再打过。”
+ 韦小宝道：“死约会不见不散，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 这“驷马难追”的“驷”他总是记不住，只得随口含糊带过。
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，说道：“不错，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 说着出屋而去。
+ 韦小宝抓了一大把点心，放在怀里，走出屋去，想起茅十八与人订约比武，虽在狱中，也要越狱赴约，虽然身受重伤，仍是誓守信约，在得胜山下等候两位高手，这等气概，当真令人佩服。
+ 他听说书先生说英雄故事，听得多了，时时幻想自己也是个大英雄、大豪杰，既与人订下比武之约，岂可不到？
+ 心想明日要来，今晚须得回到海老公处，于是顺着原路，慢慢觅到适才赌钱之处。
+ 先前向着右首走，以致越走越远，这次折而向左，走过两道回廊，依稀记得庭园中的花木曾经见过，一路寻将过去，终于回到海老公的住所。
+ 他走到门口，便听到海老公的咳嗽之声，问道：“公公，你好些了吗？”
+ 海老公沉声道：“好你个屁！
+ 快进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进屋去，只见海老公坐在椅上，那张倒塌了的桌子已换过了一张。
+ 海老公问道：“赢了多少？”
+ 韦小宝道：“赢了十几两银子，不过…… 不过……”
+ 海老公道：“不过怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不过借给了老吴。”
+ 其实他赢了二十几两，除了借给老吴之外，还有八九两剩下，生怕海老公要他交出来，不免报帐时不尽不实。
+ 海老公脸一沉，说道：“借给老吴这小子有什么用？
+ 他又不是上书房的。
+ 怎么不借给温家哥儿俩？”
+ 韦小宝不明缘由，道：“温家哥儿没向我借。”
+ 海老公道：“没向你借，你不会想法子借给他吗？
+ 我吩咐你的话，难道都忘了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我……我昨晚杀了这小孩子，吓得什么都忘了。
+ 要借给温家哥儿，不错，不错，你老人家确是吩咐过的。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“杀个把人，有什么了不起啦？
+ 不过你年纪小，没杀过人，那也难怪。
+ 那部书，你没有忘记？”
+ 韦小宝道：“那部书…… 书…… 我…… 我……”
+ 海老公又哼了一声，道：“当真什么都忘记了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“公公，我…… 我头痛得很，怕…… 怕得厉害，你又咳得这样，我真担心，什…… 什么都胡涂了。”
+ 海老公道：“好，你过来！
+ “韦小宝道：“ 是！”
+ 走近了几步。
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你倘若再不记得，我杀了你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是。”
+ 心想：“你只要再说一遍，我便过一百年也不会忘记。”
+ 海老公道：“你去赢温家哥儿俩的银子，他们输了，便借给他们，借得越多越好。
+ 过得几日，你便要他们带你到上书房去。
+ 他们欠了你钱，不敢不依，如果推三阻四，你就说我会去跟上书房总管乌老公算帐。
+ 温家兄弟还不出钱来，自会乘皇上不在……”
+ 韦小宝道：“皇上？”
+ 海老公道：“怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“没…… 没什么。”
+ 海老公道：“他们会问你，到上书房干什么，你就说人望高处，盼望见到皇上，能够在上书房当差。
+ 温家兄弟不会让你见到皇上的，带你过去时，皇上一定不会在书房里，你就得设法偷一部书出来。”
+ 韦小宝听他接连提到皇上，心念一动：“难道这里是皇宫？
+ 不是北京城里的大妓院？
+ 啊哟喂，是了，是了，若不是皇宫，哪有这等富丽堂皇的？
+ 这些人定是服侍皇帝的太监。”
+ 韦小宝虽然听人说过皇帝、皇后、太子、公主，以及宫女、太监，但只知道皇帝必穿龙袍，余人如何模样就不知道了。
+ 他在扬州看白戏倒也看得多了，不过戏台上的那些太监，服色打扮跟海老公、老吴他们全然不同，手中老是拿着一柄拂尘挥来挥去，唱的戏文没一句好听。
+ 他和海老公相处一日，又和老吴、温氏兄弟赌了半天钱，可不知他们便是太监，此刻听海老公这么说，这才渐渐省悟，心道：“啊哟，这么一来，我岂不变成了小太监？”
+ 海老公厉声道：“你听明白了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是，明白了，要到皇…… 皇帝的书房去。”
+ 海老公道：“到皇上书房去干什么？
+ 去玩吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是去偷一部书出来。”
+ 海老公道：“偷什么书？”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个…… 这个…… 什么书…… 我…… 我记不起了。”
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你好好记住了。
+ 那是一部佛经，叫做《四十二章经》，这部经书模样挺旧的，一共有好几本，你要一起拿来给我。
+ 记住了吗？
+ 叫什么？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“叫做《四十二章经》。”
+ 海老公听出他言语中的喜悦之意，问道：“有什么开心？”
+ 韦小宝道：“你一提，我便记起了，所以高兴。”
+ 原来他听海老公说要他到上书房去“偷书”，“偷”是绝不困难，“书”却难倒了人。
+ 他西瓜大的字识不了一担，要分辨什么书，可真杀了头也办不到，待得听说书名叫做《四十二章经》， 不由得心花怒放， “章经”是什么东西不得而知，“四十二”三字却是识得的，五个字中居然识得三个，不禁大为得意。
+ 海老公又道：“在上书房中偷书，手脚可得干净利落，假如让人瞧见了，你便有一百条性命也不在了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个我理会得，偷东西给人抓住了，还有好戏唱吗？”
+ 灵机一动，说道：“不过我决不会招你公公出来。”
+ 海老公叹道：“招不招我出来，也没什么相干了。”
+ 咳了一阵，说道：“今天你干得不错，居然赢到了钱。
+ 他们没起疑心罢？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“嘿嘿，没有，那怎么会？”
+ 想要自称自赞一番，终于忍住。
+ 海老公道：“别躲懒，左右闲着没事，便多练练。”
+ 韦小宝应了，走进房中，只见桌上放着碗筷，四菜一汤，没人动过，忙道：“公公，你不吃饭？
+ 我装饭给你。”
+ 海老公道：“不饿，不吃，你自己吃好了。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，来不及装饭，夹起一块红烧肉便吃，虽然菜肴早已冷了，吞入饥肠，却是说不出的美味，心想：“这些饭菜不知是谁送来的。
+ 这种小事别多问，睁大眼睛瞧着，慢慢的自会知道。”
+ 又想：“倘若这里真是皇宫，那么老吴、温家哥儿，还有那个小玄子都是太监了。
+ 却不知皇帝老儿和皇后娘娘是怎么一副模样，总得瞧个明白才是。
+ 回到扬州，嘿嘿，老子这说起来可就神气啦。
+ 茅大哥不知能不能逃出皇宫去？
+ 赌钱时没听到他们说起拿住了人，多半是逃出去啦。”
+ 吃完饭后，只怕海老公起疑，便拿着六颗骰子，在碗里玎玲玲的掷个不休，掷了一会，只觉眼皮渐重，昨晚一夜没睡，这时实在疲倦得很了，不多时便即睡着了。
+ 这一觉直睡到傍晚时分，跟着便有一名粗工太监送饭菜来。
+ 韦小宝服侍海老公吃了一碗饭，又服侍他上床睡觉，自己睡在小床上，心想：“明日最要紧的是和小玄子比武，要打得赢他才好。”
+ 闭上眼睛，回想茅十八在酒馆中跟满洲武士打架的手法，却模模糊糊的记不明白，不禁有些懊悔：“茅大哥要教我武艺，我偏不肯学，这一路上倘若学了来，小玄子力气虽比我大，又怎能是我对手？
+ 明天要是再给他骑住了翻不过来，输了银子不打紧，这般面子大失，我这‘小白龙’韦小宝在江湖上可也不用混啦。”
+ 突然心想：“满洲武士打不过茅大哥，茅大哥又不是老乌龟的对手，何不骗得老乌龟教我些本事？”
+ 当即说道：“公公，你要我去上书房拿几本书，这中间却有一桩难处。”
+ 海老公道：“什么难处？”
+ 韦小宝道：“今儿我赌了钱回来，遇到一个小…… 小太监，拦住了路，要我分钱给他，我不肯，他就跟我比武，说道我胜得过他，才放我走。
+ 我跟他斗了半天，所以…… 所以连饭也赶不及回来吃。”
+ 海老公道：“你输了，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他又高又壮，力气可比我大得多了。
+ 他说天天要跟我比武，哪一日我赢了他，他才不来缠我。”
+ 海老公道：“这小娃娃叫什么名字？
+ 哪一房的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他叫小玄子，可不知是哪一房的。”
+ 海老公道：“定是你赢了钱，神气活现的惹人讨厌，否则别人也不会找上你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我不服气，明儿再跟他斗过，就不知能不能赢。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“你又在想求我教武功了。
+ 我说过不教，便是不教，你再绕弯儿也没用。”
+ 韦小宝心中暗惊：“老乌龟倒聪明，不上这当。”
+ 说道：“这小玄子又不会武功，我要赢他，也不用学什么武艺，谁要你教了？
+ 今儿我明明已骑在他身上，只不过他力气大， 翻了过来。
+ 明天我出力掀住他，这家伙未必就能乌龟翻身。”
+ 他这一天已然小心收敛，不说一句粗话，这时终于忍不住说了一句。
+ 海老公道：“你想他翻不过来，那也容易。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我想也没什么难处，我明天一定牢牢掀住他肩头。”
+ 海老公道：“哼，掀住肩头有什么用？
+ 能不能翻身，全仗腰间的力道，你须用膝盖抵住他后腰穴道。
+ 你过来，我指给你看。”
+ 韦小宝一骨碌从床上跃下，走到他床前，海老公摸到他后腰一处所在，轻轻一按，韦小宝便觉全身酸软无力。
+ 海老公道：“记住了吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，明儿我便去试试，也不知成不成？”
+ 海老公怒道：“什么成不成？
+ 那是百发百中，万试万灵。”
+ 又伸手在他头颈两侧轻轻一按。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声叫了出来，只觉胸口一阵窒息，气也透不过来。
+ 海老公道：“你如出力拿他这两处穴道，他就没力气和你相斗。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“成了，明儿我准能赢他。”
+ 这个“准”字，是日间赌钱时学的。
+ 回到床上睡倒，想起明天“小白龙”韦小宝打得小玄子大叫“投降”，十分得意。
+ 次日老吴又来叫他去赌钱。
+ 那温家兄弟一个叫温有道，一个叫温有方，轮到两兄弟做庄时，韦小宝使出手段，赢了他们二十几两银子。
+ 他兄弟俩手气又坏，不到半个时辰，五十两本钱已输干了。
+ 韦小宝借了二十两给他们，到停赌时，温家兄弟又将这二十两银子输了。
+ 韦小宝心中记着的只是和小玄子比武之事，赌局一散，便奔到那间屋去。
+ 只见桌上仍是放着许多碟点心，他取了几块吃了，听得靴子声响，只怕来的不是小玄子，心想先钻入桌底再说，却听得小玄子在门外叫道：“小桂子，小桂子！”
+ 韦小宝跃到门口，笑道：“死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子也笑道：“哈哈，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 走进屋子。
+ 韦小宝见他一身新衣，甚是华丽，不禁颇有妒意，寻思：“待会我扯破你的新衣，叫你神气不得！”
+ 一声大叫，便向他扑了过去。
+ 小玄子喝道：“来得好。”
+ 扭住他双臂，左足横扫过去。
+ 韦小宝站立不定，晃了几下，一交跌倒，拉着小玄子也倒了下来。
+ 韦小宝一个打滚，翻身压在小玄子背上，记得海老公所教，便伸手去拿他后腰穴道，可是他没练过打穴拿穴的功夫，这穴道岂能一拿便着？
+ 拿的部位稍偏，小玄子已然翻了过来，抓住他左臂，用力向后拗转。
+ 韦小宝叫道：“啊哟，你不要脸，拗人手臂么？”
+ 小玄子笑道：“学摔交就是学拗人手臂，什么不要脸了？”
+ 韦小宝趁他说话之时一口气浮了，全身用力向他后腰撞去，将背心撞在他头上，右手从他臂腋里穿了过来，用劲向上甩出。
+ 小玄子的身子从他头顶飞过，拍的一声，掉在地下。
+ 小玄子翻身跳起，道：“原来你也会这招‘羚羊挂角’。”
+ 韦小宝不知“羚羊挂角”是什么手法，误打误撞的胜了一招，大为得意，说道：“这‘羚羊挂角’算得什么，我还有许多厉害手法没使出来呢。”
+ 小玄子喜道：“那再好也没有了，咱们再来比划。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“原来你学过武功，怪不得打你不过。
+ 可是你使一招，我学一招，最多给你多摔几交，你的法子我总能学了来。”
+ 眼见小玄子又扑将过来，便也猛力扑去。
+ 不料小玄子这一扑却是假的，待韦小宝扑到，他早已收势，侧身让开，伸手在他背上一推。
+ 韦小宝扑了个空，本已收脚不住，再给他顺力推出，登时砰的一声，重重摔倒。
+ 小玄子大声欢呼，跳过来骑在他背上，叫道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不降！”
+ 欲待挺腰翻起，蓦地里腰间一阵酸麻，后腰两处穴道已被小玄子屈指抵住，那正是海老公昨晚所教的手法，自己虽然学会了，却给对方抢先用出。
+ 韦小宝挣了几下，始终难以挣脱，只得叫道：“好，降你一次！”
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，放了他起身。
+ 韦小宝突然伸足绊去，小玄子斜身欲跌，韦小宝顺手出拳，正中他腰间。
+ 小玄子痛哼一声，弯下腰来，韦小宝自后扑上，双手箍住他头颈两侧。
+ 小玄子一阵晕眩，伏倒在地。
+ 韦小宝大喜，双手紧箍不放，问道：“投不投降？”
+ 小玄子哼了一声，突然间双肋向后力撞。
+ 韦小宝胸口肋骨痛得便欲折断，大叫一声，仰天倒下。
+ 小玄子翻身坐在他胸口，这一回合又是胜了，只是气喘吁吁，也已累得上气不接下气，问道：“服…… 服…… 服了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“服个屁！
+ 不…… 服，一百个…… 一…… 一万个不服。
+ 你不过碰巧赢了。”
+ 小玄子道：“你不服，便…… 便起来打过。”
+ 韦小宝双手撑地，只想使劲弹起来，但胸口要害处给对手按住了，什么力气都使不出来，僵持良久，只得又投降一次。
+ 小玄子站起身来，只觉双臂酸软。
+ 韦小宝勉力站起，身子摇摇摆摆，说道：“明儿…… 明儿再来打过，非…… 非叫你投降不可。”
+ 小玄子笑道：“再打一百次，你也…… 也…… 也是个输，你有胆子，明天就再来打。”
+ 韦小宝道：“只怕你没胆子呢，我为什么没胆子？
+ 死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子道：“好，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 两人打得兴起，都不提赌银子的事。
+ 小玄子既然不提，韦小宝乐得假装忘记，倘若是他赢了，银子自然非要不可。
+
+ Qin-shi was surprised to hear Bao-yu call out her childhood name in his sleep, but did not like to pursue the matter.
+ As she stood wondering, Bao-yu, who was still bemused after his dream and not yet in full possession of his faculties, got out of bed and began to stretch himself and to adjust his clothes, assisted by Aroma.
+ As she was doing up his trousers, her hand, chancing to stray over his thigh, came into contact with something cold and sticky which caused her to draw it back in alarm and ask him if he was all right.
+ Instead of answering, he merely reddened and gave the hand a squeeze.
+ Aroma had always been an intelligent girl.
+ She was, in any case, a year or two older than Bao-yu and had recently begun to have some understanding of the facts of life.
+ Observing the condition that Bao-yu was in, she therefore had more than an inkling of what had happened.
+ Abandoning her question, she busied herself with his clothes, her cheeks suffused by a crimson blush of embarrassment.
+ When he was properly dressed, they went to rejoin Grandmother Jia and the rest.
+ There they bolted a hurried supper and then slipped back to the other house, where Aroma profited from the absence of the nurses and the other maids to take out a clean undergarment for Bao-yu to change into.
+ 'Please, Aroma,' Bao-yu shamefacedly entreated as she helped him change, 'please don't tell anyone!'
+ Equally ill at ease, Aroma giggled softly.
+ 'Why did you...?' she began to ask.
+ Then, after glancing cautiously around, began again.
+ 'Where did that stuff come from?'
+ Bao-yu blushed furiously and said nothing.
+ Aroma stared at him curiously and continued to giggle.
+ After much hesitation he proceeded to give her a detailed account of his dream.
+ But when he came to the part of it in which he made love to Two-in-one, Aroma threw herself forward with a shriek of laughter and buried her face in her hands.
+ Bao-yu had long been attracted by Aroma's somewhat coquettish charms and tugged at her purposefully, anxious to share with her the lesson he had learned from Disenchantment.
+ Aroma knew that when Grandmother Jia gave her to Bao-yu she had intended her to belong to him in the fullest possible sense, and so, having no good reason for refusing him, she allowed him, after a certain amount of coy resistance, to have his way with her.
+ From then on Bao-yu treated Aroma with even greater consideration than before, whilst Aroma for her part redoubled the devotion with which she served him.
+ But of this, for the time being, no more.
+ The inhabitants of the Rong mansion, if we include all of them from the highest to the humblest in our total, numbered more than three hundred souls, who produced between them a dozen or more incidents in a single day.
+ Faced with so exuberant an abundance of material, what principle should your chronicler adopt to guide him in his selection of incidents to record?
+ As we pondered the problem where to begin, it was suddenly solved for us by the appearance as it were out of nowhere of someone from a very humble, very insignificant household who, on the strength of a very tenuous, very remote family connection with the Jias, turned up at the Rong mansion on the very day of which we are about to write.
+ Their name was Wang and they were natives of these parts.
+ A grandfather had held some very small official post in the capital and had there become acquainted with Wang Xi-feng's grandfather, the father of Lady Wang.
+ Conceiving an admiration for the power and prestige of this greater namesake, he had sought to link his family with the latter's clan by becoming his adoptive nephew.
+ Only Lady Wang and her elder brother – Wang Xi-feng's father – who chanced at that time to be staying with their parent on his tour of duty at the capital, knew anything about this.
+ The other members of the clan were unaware that any such relationship existed.
+ The grandfather had long since died, leaving an only son called Wang Cheng who, having fallen on hard times, had moved back into the countryside somewhere outside the capital.
+ Wang Cheng in his turn had died leaving a son called Gou-er, who had married a girl from a family called Liu and now had two children, a son called Ban-er and a daughter called Qing-er.
+ The four of them depended on agriculture for their living, and since, with Gou-er himself busy most of the day on the land and his wife busy about the farm drawing water, pounding grain, and the like, there was no one to look after Qing-er and her little brother, Gou-er invited his mother-in-law, old Grannie Liu, to come and live with them.
+ This Grannie Liu was an ancient widow-woman, rich in experience of the world, who, having no son or daughter-in-law to cherish her, eked out her solitary existence by scratching a livelihood from a miserable half-acre of land.
+ She therefore embraced her son-in-law's invitation with alacrity and threw herself enthusiastically into the business of helping the young couple to make a living.
+ The season was now at the turn between autumn and winter.
+ The cold weather was beginning, but none of the preparations for winter had yet been made.
+ By drinking to allay his anxiety, Gou-er merely put himself more out of temper.
+ He returned home to vent some of his spleen on his long-suffering wife.
+ Grannie Liu could eventually stomach no more of his wife-baiting and intervened on her daughter's behalf.
+ 'Now look here, son-in-law: probably you will think me an interfering old woman; but we country folk have to be grateful for what is in the pot and cut down our appetites to the same measure.
+ When you were little your Ma and Pa could afford to indulge you; so now you're grown-up you spend all your money as soon as you've got any, without stopping to count the cost; then, when it's all gone, you start making a fuss.
+ But what sort of way is that for a grown man to behave ?
+ 'Now where we live may be out in the country, but it's still "in the Emperor's shadow", as they say.
+ Over there in the city the streets are paved with money just waiting for someone to go and pick it up.
+ What's the sense in rampaging around here at home when you could go out and help yourself?'
+ 'It's easy for you to sit on your backside and talk,' said Gou-er rudely, 'but what do you expect me to do?
+ Go out and rob?'
+ 'No one's asking you to rob,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But can't we all sit down peaceably and think of a way?
+ Because if we don't, the money isn't going to come walking in the door of its own accord.'
+ Gou-er snorted sarcastically.
+ 'If there were a way, do you suppose I should have waited till now before trying it out?
+ There are no tax-collectors in my family and no mandarins among my friends.
+ What way could there be of laying my hands on some money?
+ Even if I did have rich friends or relations, I'm not so sure they would want to be bothered with the likes of us.'
+ 'I wouldn't say that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Man proposes, God disposes.
+ It's up to us to think of something.
+ We must leave it to the good Lord to decide whether He'll help us or not.
+ Who knows, He might give us the opportunity we are looking for.
+ 'Now I can think of a chance you might try.
+ Your family used to be connected with the Wang clan of Nanking.
+ Twenty years ago the Nanking Wangs used to be very good to you folk.
+ It's only because of late years you have been too stiff-necked to approach them that they have become more distant with you.
+ 'I can remember going to their house once with my daughter.
+ The elder Miss Wang was a very straightforward young lady, very easy to get on with, and not at all high and mighty.
+ She's now the wife of the younger of the two Sir Jias in the Rong mansion.
+ They say that now she's getting on in years she's grown even more charitable and given to good works than she was as a girl.
+ Her brother has been promoted; but I shouldn't be surprised if she at least didn't still remember us.
+ Why don't you try your luck with her?
+ You never know, she might do something for you for the sake of old times.
+ She only has to feel well disposed and a hair off her arm would be thicker than a man's waist to poor folks like us!'
+ 'That's all very well, Mother,' put in Gou-er's wife, 'but just take a look at us!
+ What sort of state are we in to go calling on great folks like them?
+ I doubt the people at the door would bother to tell them we were there.
+ Who's going to all that trouble just to make a fool of themselves?'
+ Gou-er's cupidity, however, had been aroused by the words of his mother-in-law, and his reaction to them was less discouraging than his wife's.
+ 'Well, if it's as you say, Grannie, and being as you've already seen this lady, why not go there yourself and spy out the land for us?'
+ 'Bless us and save us!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'You know what they say: "A prince's door is like the deep sea."
+ What sort of creature do you take me for?
+ The servants there don't know me; it would be a journey wasted.'
+ 'That's no problem,' said Gou-er.
+ 'I'll tell you what to do.
+ You take young Ban-er with you and ask for Old Zhou that stayed in service with your lady after she married.
+ If you tell them you've come to see him, it will give you an excuse for the visit.
+ Old Zhou once entrusted a bit of business to my father.
+ He used to be very friendly with us at one time.'
+ 'I knew all about that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But it's a long time since you had anything to do with him and hard to say how he may prove after all these years.
+ Howsomever.
+ Being a man, you naturally can't go in your present pickle; and a young married woman like my daughter can't go gallivanting around the countryside showing herself to everybody.
+ But as my old face is tough enough to stand a slap or two, it's up to me to go.
+ So be it, then.
+ If any good does come of the visit, we shall all of us benefit.'
+ And so, that very evening, the matter was settled.
+ Next day Grannie Liu was up before dawn.
+ As soon as she had washed and done her hair, she set about teaching Ban-er a few words to say to the ladies at the great house – an exercise to which he submitted cheerfully enough, as would any little boy of four or five who had been promised an outing to the great city.
+ That done, she set off on her journey, and in due course made her way to Two Dukes Street.
+ There, at each side of the stone lions which flanked the gates of the Rong Mansion, she saw a cluster of horses and palanquins.
+ Not daring to go straight up, she first dusted down her clothes and rehearsed Ban-er's little repertoire of phrases before sidling up to one of the side entrances.
+ A number of important-looking gentlemen sat in the gateway sunning their bellies and discoursing with animated gestures on a wide variety of topics.
+ Grannie Liu waddled up to them and offered a respectful salutation.
+ After looking her up and down for a moment or two, they asked her her business.
+ Grannie Liu smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I've come to see Old Zhou that used to be in service with Her Ladyship before she married.
+ Could I trouble one of you gentlemen to fetch him out for me?'
+ The gentlemen ignored her request and returned to their discussion.
+ After she had waited there for some considerable time one of them said,' If you stand at that gate along there on the corner, someone from inside the house should be coming out presently.'
+ But a more elderly man among them protested that it was 'a shame to send her on a fool's errand', and turning to Grannie Liu he said, 'Old Zhou is away in the South at the moment, but his missus is still at home.
+ She lives round at the back.
+ You'll have to go from here round to the back gate in the other street and ask for her there.'
+ Grannie Liu thanked him and trotted off with little Ban-er all the way round to the rear entrance.
+ There she found a number of sweetmeat vendors and toy-sellers who had set their wares down outside the gate and were being beseiged by a crowd of some twenty or thirty noisy, yelling children.
+ She grabbed a small urchin from their midst and drew him towards her.
+ 'Tell me, sonny, is there a Mrs Zhou living here?'
+ The urchin stared back at her impudently.
+ 'Which Mrs Zhou?
+ There are several Mrs Zhous here.
+ What's her job?'
+ 'She's the Mrs Zhou that came here with Her Ladyship when she was married.'
+ 'That's easy,' said the urchin.
+ 'Follow me!'
+ He led Grannie Liu into a rear courtyard.
+ 'That's where she lives,' he said, pointing in the direction of a side wall.
+ Then, bawling over the wall, 'Mrs Zhou, there's an old woman come to see you!'
+ Zhou Rui's wife came hurrying out and asked who it was.
+ 'How are you, my dear?' said Grannie Liu, advancing with a smile.
+ Zhou Rui's wife scrutinized her questioningly for some moments before finally recognizing her.
+ 'Why, it's Grannie Liu!
+ How are you?
+ It's so many years since I saw you last, I'd forgotten all about you!
+ Come in and sit down!'
+ Grannie Liu followed her cackling.
+ 'You know what they say: "Important people have short memories."
+ I wouldn't expect you to remember the likes of us!'
+ When they were indoors, Zhou Rui's wife ordered her little hired help to pour out some tea.
+ 'And hasn't Ban-er grown a big boy!' said Zhou Rui's wife; then, after a few inquiries about the various things that had happened since they last met, she asked Grannie Liu about her visit.
+ 'Were you just passing by, or have you come specially?'
+ 'Well, of course, first and foremost we came to see you,' replied Grannie Liu mendaciously, 'but we were also hoping to pay our respects to Her Ladyship.
+ If you could take us to see her, that would be very nice; but if that's not possible, perhaps we could trouble you just to give her our regards.'
+ From the tone of this reply Zhou Rui's wife was already able to make a pretty good guess as to the real purpose of the old woman's visit; but because some years previously her husband had received a lot of help from Gou-er's father in a dispute over the purchase of some land, she could not very well reject Grannie Liu now, when she came to her as a suppliant.
+ She was, in any case, anxious to demonstrate her own importance in the Jia household; and so the answer she gave her was a gracious one.
+ 'Don't you worry, Grannie!
+ After you've made such a long pilgrimage, we won't let you go home without seeing a real Buddha!
+ By rights, of course, Callers and Visitors has nothing to do with me.
+ You see, we each have our own jobs here.
+ My man's is collecting the half-yearly rents in the spring and autumn; and when he's not doing that, he takes the young masters out when they go on visits.
+ That's all he ever does.
+ Now my job is to attend to their ladyships and the young mistresses when they go out.
+ But being as how you are a relation of Her ladyship, and since you've put your confidence in me and turned to me to help you, I don't mind breaking the rules for once and taking in a message.
+ 'There's only one thing, though.
+ I don't expect you know, but things here are very different from what they were five years ago.
+ Nowadays Her Ladyship doesn't run things here any longer.
+ It's Master Lian's wife who does all the managing –
+ You'll never guess who that is:
+ Her Ladyship's niece Wang Xi-feng.
+ You know, Her Ladyship's eldest brother's daughter, that we used to call "Feng-ge" when she was a child.'
+ 'Bless you, my dear, for being such a help!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Oh Grannie, how can you say such a thing?' said Zhou Rui's wife demurely.
+ 'You know what the old saying is, "He who helps others helps himself."
+ It's only a question of saying a few words.
+ No trouble at all.'
+ So saying, she instructed the little maid to slip quietly round to the back of old Lady Jia's quarters and ask if they were serving lunch yet.
+ The little maid departed on her errand and the two women resumed their conversation.
+ 'This Mrs Lian,' said Grannie Liu: 'she can't be more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
+ She must be a very capable young woman.
+ Fancy her being able to run a great household like this!'
+ 'Oh Grannie, you have no idea!' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Mrs Lian may be young, but when it comes to doing things, she's got an older head on her shoulders than any I've ever come across.
+ She's grown up to be a real beauty too, has Mrs Lian.
+ But sharp!
+ Well, if it ever comes to a slanging match, she can talk down ten grown men any day of the week!
+ Wait till you meet her, and you'll see what I mean.
+ There's only one thing, though.
+ She's a bit too strict with those beneath her.'
+ As she was speaking, the little maid came back, her errand completed.
+ 'They've finished serving lunch at Her Old Ladyship's.
+ Mrs Lian is still there.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to her feet and urged Grannie Liu to do likewise.
+ 'Quick!
+ After she comes out from there she'll be free for a few minutes while she has her meal.
+ We must try and catch her then.
+ If we delay a moment longer, people will start coming in with messages and we shan't have a chance to speak to her.
+ And once she goes off for her afternoon nap, we've really lost her!'
+ Grannie Liu got off the kang, adjusted her clothing, conducted Ban-er through a rapid revision of his little stock of phrases and followed Zhou Rui's wife through various twists and turns to Jia Lian's quarters.
+ Just before they reached them, Zhou Rui's wife planted them both in a covered passage-way while she went on ahead round the screen wall and into the gate of the courtyard.
+ First ascertaining that Wang Xi-feng had not yet left Lady Jia's, she sought out Xi-feng's chambermaid and principal confidante, Patience, and primed her with a full account of Grannie Liu's antecedents.
+ 'She has come all this way today to pay her respects,' she concluded.
+ 'At one time Her Ladyship used to see quite a lot of her, which is why I thought it would be in order for me to bring her in.
+ I thought I would wait for the young mistress to come back and explain it all to her.
+ I hope she won't be angry with me for pushing myself forward.'
+ Patience at once made up her mind what to do.
+ 'Let them come in here.
+ They can sit here while they are waiting.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife went off again to fetch her charges.
+ As they ascended the steps to the main reception room, a little maid lifted up the red carpet which served as a portiere for them to enter.
+ A strange, delicious fragrance seemed to reach forward and enfold them as they entered, producing in Grannie Liu the momentary sensation that she had been transported bodily to one of the celestial paradises.
+ Their eyes, too, were dazzled by the bright and glittering things that filled the room.
+ Temporarily speechless with wonder, Grannie Liu stood wagging her head, alternating clicks of admiration with pious ejaculations.
+ From the glittering reception room they passed to a room on the east side of it in which Jia Lian's baby daughter slept.
+ Patience, who was standing by the edge of the kang, made a rapid assessment of Grannie Liu and judged it sufficient to greet her with a civil 'how-do-you-do' and an invitation to be seated.
+ Grannie Liu looked at the silks and satins in which Patience was dressed, the gold and silver ornaments in her hair, her beauty of feature which in every respect corresponded with what she had been told of Wang Xi-feng, and taking the maid for the mistress, was on the point of greeting her as 'Gou-er's aunt', when Zhou Rui's wife introduced her as' Miss Patience'.
+ Then, when Patience shortly afterwards addressed Zhou Rui's wife as 'Mrs Zhou', she knew that this was no mistress but a very high-class maid.
+ So Grannie Liu and Ban-er got up on the kang at one side, while Patience and Zhou Rui's wife sat near the edge of it on the other, and a little maid came in and poured them all some tea.
+ Grannie Liu's attention was distracted by a persistent tock tock tock tock not unlike the sound made by a flour-bolting machine, and she could not forbear glancing round her from time to time to see where it came from.
+ Presently she caught sight of a sort of boxlike object fastened to one of the central pillars of the room, and a thing like the weight of a steelyard hanging down from it, which swung to and fro in ceaseless motion and appeared to be the source of the noise which had distracted her.
+ 'I wonder what that can be,' she thought to herself, 'and what it can be used for?'
+ As she studied the strange box, it suddenly gave forth a loud dong! like the sound of a bronze bell or a copper chime, which so startled the old lady that her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
+ The dong! was followed in rapid succession by eight or nine others, and Grannie Liu was on the point of asking what it meant, when all the maids in the house began scurrying about shouting, 'The mistress!
+ The mistress!
+ She'll be coming out now!' and Patience and Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to their feet.
+ 'Just stay here, Grannie,' they said.
+ 'When it is time for you to see her, we shall come in and fetch you'; and they went off with the other servants to greet their mistress.
+ As Grannie Liu sat in silence, waiting with bated breath and head cocked to one side for her summons, she heard a far-off sound of laughter, followed presently by a sound of rustling dresses as between ten and twenty women entered the reception room and passed from it into the room beyond.
+ Then two or three women bearing large red lacquer boxes took up their positions on the side nearest the room in which she sat and stood there waiting to be called.
+ A voice in the far room called out,' Serve now, please!' at which, to judge from the noises, most of the women scuttled off, leaving only the few who were waiting at table.
+ A long silence ensued in which not so much as a cheep could be heard; then two women came in bearing a small, low table which they set down on the kang.
+ It was covered with bowls and dishes containing all kinds of meat and fish, only one or two of which appeared to have been touched.
+ At the sight of it Ban-er set up a clamour for some meat and was silenced by Grannie Liu with a resounding slap.
+ Just at that moment Zhou Rui's wife appeared, her face all wreathed in smiles, and advanced towards Grannie Liu beckoning.
+ Grannie Liu slipped off the kang, lifted down Ban-er, and exchanged a few hurried whispers with her in the reception room before waddling into the room beyond.
+ A dark-red patterned curtain hung from brass hooks over the doorway.
+ Inside, under the window in the south wall, there was a kang covered with a dark-red carpet.
+ At the east end of the kang, up against the wooden partition wall, were a backrest and bolster, both covered in gold brocade, and a large flat cushion for sitting on, also glittering with gold thread.
+ Beside them stood a silver spittoon.
+ Wang Xi-feng had on a little cap of red sable, which she wore about the house for warmth, fastened on with a pearl-studded bandeau.
+ She was dressed in a sprigged peach-pink gown, with an ermine-lined skirt of dark-red foreign crepe underneath it, and a cloak of slate-blue silk with woven coloured insets and lining of grey squirrel around her shoulders.
+ Her face was exquisitely made-up.
+ She was sitting on the edge of the kang, her back straight as a ramrod, with a diminutive pair of tongs in her hand, removing the spent charcoal from a portable hand-warmer.
+ Patience stood beside her carrying a covered teacup on a tiny inlaid lacquer tray.
+ Xi-feng appeared not to have noticed her, for she neither reached out for the cup nor raised her head, but continued picking ab-sorbedly at her hand-warmer.
+ At last she spoke: 'Why not ask them in, then?'
+ As she did so, she raised her head and saw Zhou Rui's wife with her two charges already standing in front of her.
+ She made a confused movement as if to rise to her feet, welcomed the old lady with a look of unutterable benevolence, and almost in the same breath said rather crossly to Zhou Rui's wife, 'Why didn't you tell me?'
+ By this time Grannie Liu was already down on her knees and had touched her head several times to the floor in reverence to her 'Aunt Feng'.
+ 'Stop her, Zhou dear !' said Xi-feng in alarm.
+ 'She mustn't do that,
+ I am much too young!
+ In any case, I don't know her very well.
+ I don't know what sort of relations we are and what I should call her.'
+ 'This is the Grannie Liu I was just telling you about,' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ Xi-feng nodded, and Grannie Liu sat herself down on the edge of the kang.
+ Ban-er at once hid himself behind her back and neither threats nor blandishments would induce him to come out and make a bow to his 'Auntie'.
+ 'Relations don't come to see us much nowadays,' said Xi-feng affably.
+ 'We are getting to be quite strangers with everybody.
+ People who know us realize that it is because you are tired of us that you don't visit us oftener; but some spiteful people who don't know us so well think it's our fault, because we have grown too proud.'
+ Grannie Liu invoked the Lord Buddha in pious disavowal of so shocking a view.
+ 'It's hard times that keeps us away.
+ We can't afford to visit.
+ We are afraid that if we came to see you looking the way we are, you would disown us; and even the people at the gate might think we were tramps!'
+ 'Now you are really being too hard on us!
+ What if Grandfather did make a little bit of a name for himself and we do hold some miserable little appointment?
+ What does it all amount to?
+ It's all empty show, really.
+ You know what they say: "Even the Emperor has poor relations."
+ It would be strange indeed if we didn't have a few!'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Have you told Her Ladyship yet?'
+ 'No, ma'am.
+ I was waiting for your instructions.'
+ 'Go and have a look, then.
+ If she has anyone with her, you had better leave it; but if she is free, tell her about their visit and see what she says.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife departed on her errand.
+ Xi-feng told one of the servants to give Ban-er a handful of sweets, and had just begun a desultory conversation with Grannie Liu when a number of domestics and underlings of either sex arrived to report on their duties.
+ 'I am entertaining a guest,' said Xi-feng to Patience when she came in to announce their arrival.
+ 'Let them leave it until this evening.
+ But if anyone has important business, bring them in and I will deal with it now.'
+ Patience went out and returned a minute later to say that she had asked them and no one had any business of special importance, so she had sent them all away.
+ Xi-feng nodded.
+ At this point Zhou Rui's wife returned with a message for Xi-feng.
+ 'Her Ladyship says she isn't free today, but that if you will entertain them for her, it will be just the same as if she were to receive them herself.
+ She says please thank them very much for coming.
+ And she says if it's just an ordinary visit she has nothing more to add; but if they have anything particular to say, she says tell them that they can say it to you instead.'
+ 'I hadn't anything particular in mind,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Only to look in on Her Ladyship and your mistress.
+ Just a visit to relations.'
+ 'Well all right then, if you are sure you have nothing to say.
+ But if you have got anything to say, you really ought to tell the mistress.
+ It will be just the same as if you were to say it to Her Ladyship.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife darted a meaningful look at Grannie Liu as she said this.
+ Grannie Liu perfectly well understood the significance of this look, and a blush of shame overspread her face.
+ Yet if she did not speak up now, what would have been the purpose of her visit?
+ She forced herself to say something.
+ 'By rights I ought not to mention it today, seeing that this is our first meeting: but as I have come such a long way to see you, it seems silly not to speak...'
+ She had got no further when the pages from the outer gate announced the arrival of 'the young master from the Ning mansion' and Xi-feng gestured to her to stop.
+ 'It's all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.'
+ She turned to the pages.
+ 'Where is Master Rong, then?'
+ A man's footstep sounded outside and a fresh-faced, willowy youth of seventeen or eighteen in elegant and expensive-looking winter dress came into the room.
+ Grannie Liu, acutely embarrassed in this male presence, did not know whether to sit or stand, and looked round her in vain for somewhere to hide herself.
+ Xi-feng laughed at her discomfiture.
+ 'Don't mind him; just stay where you are!
+ It's only my nephew.'
+ With a good deal of girlish simpering Grannie Liu sat down again, perching herself obliquely on the extreme edge of the kang.
+ Jia Rong saluted his aunt Manchu fashion.
+ 'My father is entertaining an important visitor tomorrow and he wondered if he might borrow the little glass screen that your Uncle Wang's wife gave you, to put on our kang while he is there.
+ We can let you have it back again as soon as he has gone.'
+ 'You are too late,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I lent it yesterday to someone else.'
+ Jia Rong flashed a winning smile at her and half-knelt on the side of the kang.
+ 'If you won't lend it, my father will say that I didn't ask properly and I shall get a beating.
+ Come on, Auntie, be a sport!
+ Just for my sake!'
+ Xi-feng smiled maliciously.
+ 'I don't know what's so special about my family's things.
+ Heaven knows, you have enough stuff of your own over there; yet you have only to set eyes on anything of ours, and you want it for yourselves.'
+ Jia Rong's smile flashed again.
+ 'Please, Auntie!
+ Be merciful!'
+ 'If it's the tiniest bit chipped,' said Xi-feng, 'I'll have the hide off you!'
+ She ordered Patience to take the key of the upstairs room and get some reliable servants to carry it over.
+ Delighted with his good luck, Jia Rong hurriedly forestalled her.
+ 'I'll get some of my own people to carry it.
+ Don't put yours to a lot of trouble!' and he hurried out.
+ Xi-feng suddenly seemed to remember something, and called to him through the window, 'Rong, come back!'
+ Servants in the yard outside dutifully took up the cry, 'Master Rong, you're wanted back again!'
+ Jia Rong came hurrying back, wreathed in smiles, and looked at Xi-feng with eyebrows arched inquiringly.
+ Xi-feng, however, sipped very intently from her teacup and mused for a while, saying nothing.
+ Suddenly her face flushed and she gave a little laugh: 'It doesn't matter.
+ Come back again after supper.
+ I've got company now, and besides, I don't feel in the mood to tell you.'
+ 'Yes, Aunt,' said Jia Rong, and pursing his lips up in a complacent smile he sauntered slowly out of the room.
+ Having all this while had time to collect herself, Grannie Liu began her speech again: 'The real reason I have brought your little nephew here today is because his Pa and Ma haven't anything in the house to eat, and the weather is getting colder, and – and – I thought I'd bring him here to see you...'
+ She gave Ban-er a despairing push.
+ 'What did your Pa tell you to say when we got here?
+ What was it he sent us for?
+ Look at you!
+ All you can do is sit there eating sweets!'
+ It was abundantly clear to Xi-feng that the old lady was too embarrassed to go on, and she put her out of her misery with a gracious smile.
+ 'It's quite all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.
+ I quite understand.'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'I wonder if Grannie has eaten yet today?'
+ 'We were on our way first thing this morning,' Grannie Liu chimed in.
+ 'There was no time to think about eating.'
+ Xi-feng gave orders for a meal to be brought in, and Zhou Rui's wife went out and presently reappeared with a guest's portion of various choice dishes on a little table, which she set down in the east wing, and to which she then conducted Grannie Liu and Ban-er for their meal.
+ 'Zhou, dear,' said Xi-feng, 'will you keep them company and see that they have enough to eat?
+ I shan't be able to sit with them myself.'
+ Then calling her aside for a moment she asked, 'What did Her Ladyship say when you went to report about them just now?'
+ 'She said they don't really belong to the family but were adopted into the clan years ago when your grandfather and theirs were working in the same office.
+ She said they haven't been round much of late years, but in the old days when they used to visit us we never sent them back empty-handed.
+ She said it was nice of them to come and see us today and we should be careful to treat them considerately.
+ And she said if they appear to want anything, she would leave it to you to decide what we should do for them.'
+ 'No wonder!' exclaimed Xi-feng when she had heard this account.
+ 'I couldn't understand how they could be really related to us if I had never even heard of them.'
+ While they were talking, Grannie Liu came back from the other room having already finished eating, smacking her lips and sucking her teeth appreciatively, and voicing her thanks for the repast.
+ 'Sit down,' said Xi-feng with a smile.
+ 'I have something to say to you.
+ I quite understand what you were trying to tell me just now.
+ As we are relations, we ought by rights not to wait for you to come to our door before helping you when you are in trouble; but there are so many things to attend to in this family, and now that Her Ladyship is getting on a bit she doesn't always remember them all.
+ And since I took over the management of the household, I find there are quite a lot of relations that I don't even know about.
+ And then again, of course, though we may look thriving enough from the outside, people don't realize that being a big establishment like ours carries its own difficulties.
+ They won't believe it if you tell them, but it's true.
+ However, since you have come such a long way, and since this is the first time you have ever said a word about needing help, we obviously can't let you go back empty-handed.
+ Fortunately it so happens that I still haven't touched any of the twenty taels of silver that Her Ladyship gave me the other day to make clothes for the maids with.
+ If you don't mind it being so little, you are very welcome to take it.'
+ When Grannie Liu heard Xi-feng talk about 'difficulties' she concluded that there was no hope.
+ Her delight and the way in which her face lit up with pleasure when she heard that she was, after all, to be given twenty taels of silver can be imagined.
+ 'We knew you had your troubles,' she said, 'but as the saying goes, "A starved camel is bigger than a fat horse."
+ Say what you like, a hair plucked from your arm is thicker than a man's waist to folks like us!'
+ Horrified by the crudity of these expressions, Zhou Rui's wife, who was standing by, was meanwhile signalling frantically to the old lady to stop.
+ But Xi-feng laughed quite unconcernedly and told Patience to wrap up the silver and also to fetch a string of cash to go with it.
+ The money was set down in front of Grannie Liu.
+ 'Here is the twenty taels of silver,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Take this for the time being to make some winter clothes for the children with.
+ Some time later on, when you have nothing better to do, look in on us for a day or two for kinship's sake.
+ It's late now, so I won't try to keep you.
+ Give our regards to everybody who ought to be remembered when you get back!'
+ She rose to her feet, and Grannie Liu, with heartfelt expressions of gratitude, picked up the money and followed Zhou Rui's wife out of the room.
+ 'My dear good woman,' said the latter when they were out of earshot, 'whatever came over you?
+ First, when you met her, you couldn't get a word out; then, when you did start talking, it was all "your nephew" this and "your nephew" that!
+ I hope you won't mind my saying so, but even if the child was a real nephew you would still need to go a bit easy on the familiarities.
+ Now Master Rong, he is her real nephew.
+ That's the sort of person a lady like that calls "nephew" .
+ Where she would come by a nephew like this one, I just do not know!'
+ 'My dear,' replied Grannie Liu with a laugh, 'when I saw the pretty little darling sitting there, I took such a liking to her that my heart was too full to speak.'
+ Back in Zhou Rui's quarters the two women sat talking for a while.
+ Grannie Liu wanted to leave a piece of silver to buy something for the Zhou children with, but Zhou Rui's wife said she wouldn't hear of it and refused absolutely to accept anything.
+ And so, with many expressions of gratitude, the old lady took her leave and set out once more through the back gate of the mansion.
+ And if you want to know what happened after she had left, you will have to read the next chapter.
+
+ 却说秦氏因听见宝玉梦中唤他的乳名，心中纳闷，又不好细问。
+ 彼时宝玉迷迷惑惑，若有所失，遂起身解怀整衣。
+ 袭人过来给他系裤带时，刚伸手至大腿处，只觉冰冷粘湿的一片，吓的忙褪回手来，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 宝玉红了脸，把他的手一捻。
+ 袭人本是个聪明女子，年纪又比宝玉大两岁，近来也渐省人事。
+ 今见宝玉如此光景，心中便觉察了一半，不觉把个粉脸羞的飞红，遂不好再问。
+ 仍旧理好衣裳，随至贾母处来，胡乱吃过晚饭，过这边来，趁众奶娘丫鬟不在旁时，另取出一件中衣与宝玉换上。
+ 宝玉含羞央告道：“好姐姐，千万别告诉人。”
+ 袭人也含着羞悄悄的笑问道：“你为什么——”
+ 说到这里，把眼又往四下里瞧了瞧，才又问道：“那是那里流出来的？”
+ 宝玉只管红着脸不言语，袭人却只瞅着他笑。
+ 迟了一会，宝玉才把梦中之事细说与袭人听。
+ 说到云雨私情，羞的袭人掩面伏身而笑。
+ 宝玉亦素喜袭人柔媚姣俏，遂强拉袭人同领警幻所训之事，袭人自知贾母曾将他给了宝玉，也无可推托的，扭捏了半日，无奈何，只得和宝玉温存了一番。
+ 自此宝玉视袭人更自不同，袭人待宝玉也越发尽职了。
+ 这话暂且不提。
+ 且说荣府中合算起来，从上至下，也有三百余口人，一天也有一二十件事，竟如乱麻一般，没个头绪可作纲领。
+ 正思从那一件事那一个人写起方妙，却好忽从千里之外，芥豆之微，小小一个人家，因与荣府略有些瓜葛，这日正往荣府中来，因此便就这一家说起，倒还是个头绪。
+ 原来这小小之家，姓王，乃本地人氏，祖上也做过一个小小京官，昔年曾与凤姐之祖王夫人之父认识。
+ 因贪王家的势利，便连了宗，认作侄儿。
+ 那时只有王夫人之大兄凤姐之父与王夫人随在京的知有此一门远族，余者也皆不知。
+ 目今其祖早故，只有一个儿子，名唤王成，因家业萧条，仍搬出城外乡村中住了。
+ 王成亦相继身故，有子小名狗儿，娶妻刘氏，生子小名板儿； 又生一女，名唤青儿：
+ 一家四口，以务农为业。
+ 因狗儿白日间自作些生计，刘氏又操井臼等事，青板姊弟两个无人照管，狗儿遂将岳母刘老老接来，一处过活。
+ 这刘老老乃是个久经世代的老寡妇，膝下又无子息，只靠两亩薄田度日。
+ 如今女婿接了养活， 岂不愿意呢，遂一心一计，帮着女儿女婿过活。
+ 因这年秋尽冬初，天气冷将上来，家中冬事未办，狗儿未免心中烦躁，吃了几杯闷酒，在家里闲寻气恼，刘氏不敢顶撞。
+ 因此刘老老看不过，便劝道：“姑爷，你别嗔着我多嘴：咱们村庄人家儿，那一个不是老老实实，守着多大碗儿吃多大的饭呢!
+ 你皆因年小时候，托着老子娘的福，吃喝惯了，如今所以有了钱就顾头不顾尾，没了钱就瞎生气，成了什么男子汉大丈夫了!
+ 如今咱们虽离城住着，终是天子脚下。
+ 这‘长安’城中遍地皆是钱，只可惜没人会去拿罢了。
+ 在家跳蹋也没用！”
+ 狗儿听了道：“你老只会在炕头上坐着混说，难道叫我打劫去不成？”
+ 刘老老说道：“谁叫你去打劫呢?
+ 也到底大家想个方法儿才好。
+ 不然那银子钱会自己跑到咱们家里来不成？”
+ 狗儿冷笑道：“有法儿还等到这会子呢!
+ 我又没有收税的亲戚、做官的朋友，有什么法子可想的?
+ 就有，也只怕他们未必来理我们呢。”
+ 刘老老道：“这倒也不然。
+ ‘谋事在人，成事在天’，咱们谋到了，靠菩萨的保佑，有些机会，也未可知。
+ 我倒替你们想出一个机会来。
+ 当日你们原是和金陵王家连过宗的。
+ 二十年前，他们看承你们还好，如今是你们拉硬屎，不肯去就和他，才疏远起来。
+ 想当初我和女儿还去过一遭，他家的二小姐着实爽快会待人的，倒不拿大，如今现是荣国府贾二老爷的夫人。
+ 听见他们说，如今上了年纪，越发怜贫恤老的了，又爱斋僧布施。
+ 如今王府虽升了官儿，只怕二姑太太还认的咱们，你为什么不走动走动?
+ 或者他还念旧，有些好处也未可知。
+ 只要他发点好心，拔根寒毛，比咱们的腰还壮呢！”
+ 刘氏接口道：“你老说的好，你我这样嘴脸，怎么好到他门上去?
+ 只怕他那门上人也不肯进去告诉，没的白打嘴现世的！”
+ 谁知狗儿利名心重，听如此说，心下便有些活动； 又听他妻子这番话，便笑道：“老老既这么说，况且当日你又见过这姑太太一次，为什么不你老人家明日就去走一遭，先试试风头儿去？”
+ 刘老老道：“哎哟!
+ 可是说的了：‘侯门似海。’
+ 我是个什么东西儿!
+ 他家人又不认得我，去了也是白跑。”
+ 狗儿道：“不妨，我教给你个法儿。
+ 你竟带了小板儿先去找陪房周大爷，要见了他，就有些意思了。
+ 这周大爷先时和我父亲交过一桩事，我们本极好的。”
+ 刘老老道：“我也知道。
+ 只是许多时不走动，知道他如今是怎样?
+ 这也说不得了!
+ 你又是个男人，这么个嘴脸，自然去不得。
+ 我们姑娘年轻的媳妇儿，也难卖头卖脚的， 倒还是舍着我这副老脸去碰碰。
+ 果然有好处，大家也有益。”
+ 当晚计议已定。
+ 次日天未明时，刘老老便起来梳洗了， 又将板儿教了几句话； 五六岁的孩子，听见带了他进城逛去，喜欢的无不应承。
+ 于是刘老老带了板儿，进城至宁荣街来。
+ 到了荣府大门前石狮子旁边，只见满门口的轿马。
+ 刘老老不敢过去，掸掸衣服，又教了板儿几句话，然后溜到角门前，只见几个挺胸叠肚、指手画脚的人坐在大门上，说东谈西的。
+ 刘老老只得蹭上来问：“太爷们纳福。”
+ 众人打量了一会，便问：“是那里来的？”
+ 刘老老陪笑道：“我找太太的陪房周大爷的。
+ 烦那位太爷替我请他出来。”
+ 那些人听了，都不理他，半日，方说道：“你远远的那墙畸角儿等着，一会子他们家里就有人出来。”
+ 内中有个年老的说道：“何苦误他的事呢？”
+ 因向刘老老道：“周大爷往南边去了。
+ 他在后一带住着，他们奶奶儿倒在家呢。
+ 你打这边绕到后街门上找就是了。”
+ 刘老老谢了，遂领着板儿绕至后门上，只见门上歇着些生意担子，也有卖吃的，也有卖玩耍的，闹吵吵三二十个孩子在那里。
+ 刘老老便拉住一个道：“我问哥儿一声：有个周大娘在家么？”
+ 那孩子翻眼瞅着道：“那个周大娘?
+ 我们这里周大娘有几个呢，不知那一个行当儿上的？”
+ 刘老老道：“他是太太的陪房。”
+ 那孩子道：“这个容易，你跟了我来。”
+ 引着刘老老进了后院，到一个院子墙边，指道：“这就是他家。”
+ 又叫道：“周大妈，有个老奶奶子找你呢。”
+ 周瑞家的在内忙迎出来，问：“是那位？”
+ 刘老老迎上来笑问道：“好啊?
+ 周嫂子。”
+ 周瑞家的认了半日，方笑道：“刘老老，你好?
+ 你说么，这几年不见，我就忘了。
+ 请家里坐。”
+ 刘老老一面走，一面笑说道：“你老是‘贵人多忘事’了，那里还记得我们？”
+ 说着，来至房中，周瑞家的命雇的小丫头倒上茶来吃着。
+ 周瑞家的又问道：“板儿长了这么大了么！”
+ 又问些别后闲话， 又问刘老老：“今日还是路过，还是特来的？”
+ 刘老老便说：“原是特来瞧瞧嫂子； 二则也请请姑太太的安。
+ 若可以领我见一见更好，若不能，就借重嫂子转致意罢了。”
+ 周瑞家的听了，便已猜着几分来意。
+ 只因他丈夫昔年争买田地一事，多得狗儿他父亲之力，今见刘老老如此，心中难却其意；二则也要显弄自己的体面。
+ 便笑说：“老老你放心。
+ 大远的诚心诚意来了，岂有个不叫你见个真佛儿去的呢？
+ 论理，人来客至，却都不与我相干。
+ 我们这里都是各一样儿： 我们男的只管春秋两季地租子，闲了时带着小爷们出门就完了；我只管跟太太奶奶们出门的事。
+ 皆因你是太太的亲戚，又拿我当个人，投奔了我来，我竟破个例给你通个信儿去。
+ 但只一件，你还不知道呢：我们这里不比五年前了。
+ 如今太太不理事，都是琏二奶奶当家。
+ 你打量琏二奶奶是谁?
+ 就是太太的内侄女儿，大舅老爷的女孩儿，小名儿叫凤哥的。”
+ 刘老老道：“阿弥陀佛!
+ 这全仗嫂子方便了。”
+ 周瑞家的说：“老老说那里话。
+ 俗语说的好：‘与人方便，自己方便。 ’
+ 不过用我一句话，又费不着我什么事。”
+ 说着，便唤小丫头到倒厅儿上悄悄的打听老太太屋里摆了饭了没有。
+ 小丫头去了。
+ 这里二人又说了些闲话。
+ 刘老老因说：“这位凤姑娘，今年不过十八九岁罢了，就这等有本事，当这样的家，可是难得的！”
+ 周瑞家的听了道：“嗐!
+ 我的老老，告诉不得你了!
+ 这凤姑娘年纪儿虽小，行事儿比是人都大呢。
+ 如今出挑的美人儿似的，少说着只怕有一万心眼子；再要赌口齿，十个会说的男人也说不过他呢！
+ 回来你见了就知道了。
+ 就只一件，待下人未免太严些儿。”
+ 说着，小丫头回来说：“老太太屋里摆完了饭了，二奶奶在太太屋里呢。”
+ 周瑞家的听了连忙起身，催着刘老老：“快走，这一下来就只吃饭是个空儿，咱们先等着去。
+ 若迟了一步，回事的人多了，就难说了。
+ 再歇了中觉，越发没时候了。”
+ 说着，一齐下了炕，整顿衣服，又教了板儿几句话，跟着周瑞家的，逶迤往贾琏的住宅来。
+ 先至倒厅，周瑞家的将刘老老安插住等着，自己却先过影壁，走进了院门，知凤姐尚未出来，先找着凤姐的一个心腹通房大丫头名唤平儿的；周瑞家的先将刘老老起初来历说明，又说：“今日大远的来请安，当日太太是常会的，所以我带了他过来。
+ 等着奶奶下来，我细细儿的回明了，想来奶奶也不至嗔着我莽撞的。”
+ 平儿听了，便作了个主意：“叫他们进来，先在这里坐着就是了。”
+ 周瑞家的才出去领了他们进来。
+ 上了正房台阶，小丫头打起猩红毡帘，才入堂屋，只闻一阵香扑了脸来，竟不知是何气味，身子就像在云端里一般。
+ 满屋里的东西都是耀眼争光，使人头晕目眩，刘老老此时只有点头咂嘴念佛而已。
+ 于是走到东边这间屋里，乃是贾琏的女儿睡觉之所。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，打量了刘老老两眼，只得问个好，让了坐。
+ 刘老老见平儿遍身绫罗，插金戴银，花容月貌，便当是凤姐儿了，才要称“姑奶奶”，只见周瑞家的说：“他是平姑娘。”
+ 又见平儿赶着周瑞家的叫他“周大娘”，方知不过是个有体面的丫头。
+ 于是让刘老老和板儿上了炕，平儿和周瑞家的对面坐在炕沿上，小丫头们倒了茶来吃了。
+ 刘老老只听见咯当咯当的响声，很似打罗筛面的一般，不免东瞧西望的，忽见堂屋中柱子上挂着一个匣子，底下又坠着一个秤铊似的，却不住的乱晃。
+ 刘老老心中想着：“这是什么东西?
+ 有煞用处呢？”
+ 正发呆时，陡听得“当”的一声又若金钟铜磬一般，倒吓得不住的展眼儿。
+ 接着一连又是八九下，欲待问时，只见小丫头们一齐乱跑，说：“奶奶下来了。”
+ 平儿和周瑞家的忙起身说：“老老只管坐着，等是时候儿我们来请你。”
+ 说着迎出去了。
+ 刘老老只屏声侧耳默候， 只听远远有人笑声，约有一二十个妇人，衣裙窸窣，渐入堂屋，往那边屋内去了。
+ 又见三两个妇人，都捧着大红油漆盒进这边来等候。
+ 听得那边说道“摆饭”，渐渐的人才散出去，只有伺候端菜的几个人。
+ 半日鸦雀不闻。
+ 忽见两个人抬了一张炕桌来，放在这边炕上，桌上碗盘摆列，仍是满满的鱼肉，不过略动了几样。
+ 板儿一见就吵着要肉吃，刘老老打了他一巴掌。
+ 忽见周瑞家的笑嘻嘻走过来，点手儿叫他。
+ 刘老老会意，于是带着板儿下炕，至堂屋中间，周瑞家的又和他咕唧了一会子，方蹭到这边屋内。
+ 只见门外铜钩上悬着大红洒花软帘，南窗下是炕，炕上大红条毡，靠东边板壁立着一个锁子锦的靠背和一个引枕，铺着金线闪的大坐褥，傍边有银唾盒。
+ 那凤姐家常带着紫貂昭君套，围着那攒珠勒子，穿着桃红洒花袄，石青刻丝灰鼠披风，大红洋绉银鼠皮裙；粉光脂艳，端端正正坐在那里，手内拿着小铜火箸儿拨手炉内的灰。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，捧着小小的一个填漆茶盘，盘内一个小盖钟儿。
+ 凤姐也不接茶，也不抬头，只管拨那灰，慢慢的道：“怎么还不请进来？”
+ 一面说，一面抬身要茶时，只见周瑞家的已带了两个人立在面前了，这才忙欲起身、犹未起身，满面春风的问好，又嗔着周瑞家的：“怎么不早说！”
+ 刘老老已在地下拜了几拜，问姑奶奶安。
+ 凤姐忙说：“周姐姐，搀着不拜罢。
+ 我年轻，不大认得，可也不知是什么辈数儿，不敢称呼。”
+ 周瑞家的忙回道：“这就是我才回的那个老老了。”
+ 凤姐点头，刘老老已在炕沿上坐下了。
+ 板儿便躲在他背后，百般的哄他出来作揖，他死也不肯。
+ 凤姐笑道：“亲戚们不大走动，都疏远了。
+ 知道的呢，说你们弃嫌我们，不肯常来；不知道的那起小人，还只当我们眼里没人似的。”
+ 刘老老忙念佛道：“我们家道艰难，走不起。
+ 来到这里，没的给姑奶奶打嘴，就是管家爷们瞧着也不像。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“这话没的叫人恶心。
+ 不过托赖着祖父的虚名，作个穷官儿罢咧，谁家有什么?
+ 不过也是个空架子，俗语儿说的好，‘朝廷还有三门子穷亲’呢，何况你我。”
+ 说着，又问周瑞家的：“回了太太了没有？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“等奶奶的示下。”
+ 凤姐儿道：“你去瞧瞧，要是有人就罢；要得闲呢，就回了，看怎么说。”
+ 周瑞家的答应去了。
+ 这里凤姐叫人抓了些果子给板儿吃，刚问了几句闲话时，就有家下许多媳妇儿管事的来回话。
+ 平儿回了，凤姐道：“我这里陪客呢，晚上再来回。
+ 要有紧事，你就带进来现办。”
+ 平儿出去，一会进来说：“我问了，没什么要紧的。
+ 我叫他们散了。”
+ 凤姐点头。
+ 只见周瑞家的回来，向凤姐道：“太太说：‘今日不得闲儿，二奶奶陪着也是一样，多谢费心想着。
+ 要是白来逛逛呢便罢； 有什么说的，只管告诉二奶奶。’”
+ 刘老老道：“也没甚的说，不过来瞧瞧姑太太姑奶奶，也是亲戚们的情分。”
+ 周瑞家的道：“没有什么说的便罢；要有话，只管回二奶奶，和太太是一样儿的。”
+ 一面说一面递了个眼色儿。
+ 刘老老会意，未语先红了脸。
+ 待要不说，今日所为何来?
+ 只得勉强说道：“论今日初次见，原不该说的，只是大远的奔了你老这里来，少不得说了……”
+ 刚说到这里，只听二门上小厮们回说：“东府里小大爷进来了。”
+ 凤姐忙和刘老老摆手道：“不必说了。”
+ 一面便问：“你蓉大爷在那里呢？”
+ 只听一路靴子响，进来了一个十七八岁的少年，面目清秀，身段苗条，美服华冠，轻裘宝带。
+ 刘老老此时坐不是，站不是，藏没处藏，躲没处躲。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你只管坐着罢，这是我侄儿。”
+ 刘老老才扭扭捏捏的在炕沿儿上侧身坐下。
+ 那贾蓉请了安，笑回道：“我父亲打发来求婶子，上回老舅太太给婶子的那架玻璃炕屏，明儿请个要紧的客，略摆一摆就送来。”
+ 凤姐道：“你来迟了，昨儿已经给了人了。”
+ 贾蓉听说，便笑嘻嘻的在炕沿上下个半跪道：“婶子要不借，我父亲又说我不会说话了，又要挨一顿好打。
+ 好婶子，只当可怜我罢！”
+ 凤姐笑道：“也没见我们王家的东西都是好的?
+ 你们那里放着那些好东西，只别看见我的东西才罢，一见了就想拿了去。”
+ 贾蓉笑道：“只求婶娘开恩罢！”
+ 凤姐道：“碰坏一点儿，你可仔细你的皮！”
+ 因命平儿拿了楼门上钥匙，叫几个妥当人来抬去。
+ 贾蓉喜的眉开眼笑，忙说：“我亲自带人拿去，别叫他们乱碰。”
+ 说着便起身出去了。
+ 这凤姐忽然想起一件事来，便向窗外叫：“蓉儿回来！”
+ 外面几个人接声说：“请蓉大爷回来呢！”
+ 贾蓉忙回来，满脸笑容的瞅着凤姐，听何指示。
+ 那凤姐只管慢慢吃茶，出了半日神，忽然把脸一红，笑道：“罢了，你先去罢。
+ 晚饭后你来再说罢。
+ 这会子有人，我也没精神了。”
+ 贾蓉答应个是，抿着嘴儿一笑，方慢慢退去。
+ 这刘老老方安顿了，便说道：“我今日带了你侄儿，不为别的，因他爹娘连吃的没有，天气又冷，只得带了你侄儿奔了你老来。”
+ 说着，又推板儿道：“你爹在家里怎么教你的?
+ 打发咱们来作煞事的?
+ 只顾吃果子！”
+ 凤姐早已明白了，听他不会说话，因笑道：“不必说了，我知道了。”
+ 因问周瑞家的道：“这老老不知用了早饭没有呢？”
+ 刘老老忙道：“一早就往这里赶咧，那里还有吃饭的工夫咧？”
+ 凤姐便命快传饭来。
+ 一时周瑞家的传了一桌客馔，摆在东屋里，过来带了刘老老和板儿过去吃饭。
+ 凤姐这里道：“周姐姐好生让着些儿，我不能陪了。”
+ 一面又叫过周瑞家的来问道：“方才回了太太，太太怎么说了？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“太太说：‘他们原不是一家子； 当年他们的祖和太老爷在一处做官，因连了宗的。
+ 这几年不大走动。
+ 当时他们来了，却也从没空过的。
+ 如今来瞧我们，也是他的好意，别简慢了他。
+ 要有什么话，叫二奶奶裁夺着就是了。’”
+ 凤姐听了说道：“怪道既是一家子，我怎么连影儿也不知道！”
+ 说话间，刘老老已吃完了饭，拉了板儿过来，舔唇咂嘴的道谢。
+ 凤姐笑道：“且请坐下，听我告诉你：方才你的意思，我已经知道了。
+ 论起亲戚来，原该不等上门就有照应才是； 但只如今家里事情太多，太太上了年纪，一时想不到是有的。
+ 我如今接着管事，这些亲戚们又都不大知道，况且外面看着虽是烈烈轰轰，不知大有大的难处，说给人也未必信。
+ 你既大远的来了，又是头一遭儿和我张个口，怎么叫你空回去呢?
+ 可巧昨儿太太给我的丫头们作衣裳的二十两银子还没动呢，你不嫌少，先拿了去用罢。”
+ 那刘老老先听见告艰苦，只当是没想头了， 又听见给他二十两银子，喜的眉开眼笑道：“我们也知道艰难的，但只俗语说的：‘瘦死的骆驼比马还大’呢。
+ 凭他怎样，你老拔一根寒毛比我们的腰还壮哩。”
+ 周瑞家的在旁听见他说的粗鄙，只管使眼色止他。
+ 凤姐笑而不睬，叫平儿把昨儿那包银子拿来，再拿一串钱，都送至刘老老跟前。
+ 凤姐道：“这是二十两银子，暂且给这孩子们作件冬衣罢。
+ 改日没事，只管来逛逛，才是亲戚们的意思。
+ 天也晚了，不虚留你们了，到家该问好的都问个好儿罢。”
+ 一面说，一面就站起来了。
+ 刘老老只是千恩万谢的，拿了银钱，跟着周瑞家的走到外边。
+ 周瑞家的道：“我的娘!
+ 你怎么见了他倒不会说话了呢?
+ 开口就是‘你侄儿’。
+ 我说句不怕你恼的话：就是亲侄儿也要说的和软些儿。
+ 那蓉大爷才是他的侄儿呢。
+ 他怎么又跑出这么个侄儿来了呢！”
+ 刘老老笑道：“我的嫂子!
+ 我见了他，心眼儿里爱还爱不过来，那里还说的上话来？”
+ 二人说着，又到周瑞家坐了片刻。
+ 刘老老要留下一块银子给周家的孩子们买果子吃，周瑞家的那里放在眼里，执意不肯。
+ 刘老老感谢不尽，仍从后门去了。
+ 未知去后如何，且听下回分解。
+
+ ON HER SIXTEENTH birthday, my grandma was betrothed by her father to Shan Bianlang, the son of Shan Tingxiu, one of Northeast Gaomi Township's richest men.
+ As distillery owners, the Shans used cheap sorghum to produce a strong, high-quality white wine that was famous throughout the area.
+ Northeast Gaomi Township is largely swampy land that is flooded by autumn rains; but since the tall sorghum stalks resist waterlogging, it was planted everywhere and invariably produced a bumper crop.
+ By using cheap grain to make wine, the Shan family made a very good living, and marrying my grandma off to them was a real feather in Great-Granddad's cap.
+ Many local families had dreamed of marrying into the Shan family, despite rumours that Shan Bianlang had leprosy.
+ His father was a wizened little man who sported a scrawny queue on the back of his head, and even though his cupboards overflowed with gold and silver, he wore tattered, dirty clothes, often using a length of rope as a belt.
+ Grandma's marriage into the Shan family was the will of heaven, implemented on a day when she and some of her playmates, with their tiny bound feet and long pigtails, were playing beside a set of swings.
+ It was Qingming, the day set aside to attend ancestral graves; peach trees were in full red bloom, willows were green, a fine rain was falling, and the girls' faces looked like peach blossoms.
+ It was a day of freedom for them.
+ That year Grandma was five feet four inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds.
+ She was wearing a cotton print jacket over green satin trousers, with scarlet bands of silk tied around her ankles.
+ Since it was drizzling, she had put on a pair of embroidered slippers soaked a dozen times in tong oil, which made a squishing sound when she walked.
+ Her long shiny braids shone, and a heavy silver necklace hung around her neck – Great-Granddad was a silversmith.
+ Great-Grandma, the daughter of a landlord who had fallen on hard times, knew the importance of bound feet to a girl, and had begun binding her daughter's feet when she was six years old, tightening the bindings every day.
+ A yard in length, the cloth bindings were wound around all but the big toes until the bones cracked and the toes turned under.
+ The pain was excruciating.
+ My mother also had bound feet, and just seeing them saddened me so much that I felt compelled to shout: 'Down with feudalism!
+ Long live liberated feet!'
+ The results of Grandma's suffering were two three-inch golden lotuses, and by the age of sixteen she had grown into a well-developed beauty.
+ When she walked, swinging her arms freely, her body swayed like a willow in the wind.
+ Shan Tingxiu, the groom's father, was walking around Great-Granddad's village, dung basket in hand, when he spotted Grandma among the other local flowers.
+ Three months later, a bridal sedan chair would come to carry her away.
+ Grandma was lightheaded and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red curtain that gave off a pungent mildewy odour.
+ She reached out to lift it a crack – Great-Granddad had told her not to remove her red veil.
+ A heavy bracelet of twisted silver slid down to her wrist, and as she looked at the coiled-snake design her thoughts grew chaotic and disoriented.
+ A warm wind rustled the emerald-green stalks of sorghum lining the narrow dirt path.
+ Doves cooed in the fields.
+ The delicate powder of petals floated above silvery new ears of waving sorghum.
+ The curtain, embroidered on the inside with a dragon and a phoenix, had faded after years of use, and there was a large stain in the middle.
+ Summer was giving way to autumn, and the sunlight outside the sedan chair was brilliant.
+ The bouncing movements of the bearers rocked the chair slowly from side to side; the leather lining of their poles groaned and creaked, the curtain fluttered gently, letting in an occasional ray of sunlight and, from time to time, a whisper of cool air.
+ Grandma was sweating profusely and her heart was racing as she listened to the rhythmic footsteps and heavy breathing of the bearers.
+ The inside of her skull felt cold one minute, as though filled with shiny pebbles, and hot the next, as though filled with coarse peppers.
+ After Shan Tingxiu had spotted Grandma, a stream of people came to congratulate Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma.
+ Grandma pondered what it would be like to mount to the jingle of gold and dismount to the tinkle of silver, but what she truly longed for was a good husband, handsome and well educated, a man who would treat her gently.
+ As a young maiden, she had embroidered a wedding trousseau and several exquisite pictures for the man who would someday become my granddad.
+ Eager to marry, she heard innuendos from her girlfriends that the Shan boy was afflicted with leprosy, and her dreams began to evaporate.
+ Yet, when she shared her anxieties with her parents, Great-Granddad hemmed and hawed, while Great-Grandma scolded the girlfriends, accusing them of sour grapes.
+ Later on, Great-Granddad told her that the well-educated Shan boy had the fair complexion of a young scholar from staying home all the time.
+ Grandma was confused, not knowing if this was true or not.
+ After all, she thought, her own parents wouldn't lie to her.
+ Maybe her girlfriends had made it all up.
+ Once again she looked forward to her wedding day.
+ Grandma longed to lose her anxieties and loneliness in the arms of a strong and noble young man.
+ Finally, to her relief, her wedding day arrived, and as she was placed inside the sedan chair, carried by four bearers, the horns and woodwinds fore and aft struck up a melancholy tune that brought tears to her eyes.
+ Off they went, floating along as though riding the clouds or sailing through a mist.
+ Shortly after leaving the village, the lazy musicians stopped playing, while the bearers quickened their pace.
+ The aroma of sorghum burrowed into her heart.
+ Full-voiced strange and rare birds sang to her from the fields.
+ A picture of what she imagined to be the bridegroom slowly took shape from the threads of sunlight filtering into the darkness of the sedan chair.
+ Painful needle pricks jabbed her heart.
+ 'Old Man in heaven, protect me!'
+ Her silent prayer made her delicate lips tremble.
+ A light down adorned her upper lip, and her fair skin was damp.
+ Every soft word she uttered was swallowed up by the rough walls of the carriage and the heavy curtain before her.
+ She ripped the tart-smelling veil away from her face and laid it on her knees.
+ She was following local wedding customs, which dictated that a bride wear three layers of new clothes, top and bottom, no matter how hot the day.
+ The inside of the sedan chair was badly worn and terribly dirty, like a coffin; it had already embraced countless other brides, now long dead.
+ The walls were festooned with yellow silk so filthy it oozed grease, and of the five flies caught inside, three buzzed above her head while the other two rested on the curtain before her, rubbing their bright eyes with black stick-like legs.
+ Succumbing to the oppressiveness in the carriage, Grandma eased one of her bamboo-shoot toes under the curtain and lifted it a crack to sneak a look outside.
+ She could make out the shapes of the bearers' statuesque legs poking out from under loose black satin trousers and their big, fleshy feet encased in straw sandals.
+ They raised clouds of dust as they tramped along.
+ Impatiently trying to conjure up an image of their firm, muscular chests, Grandma raised the toe of her shoe and leaned forward.
+ She could see the polished purple scholar-tree poles and the bearers' broad shoulders beneath them.
+ Barriers of sorghum stalks lining the path stood erect and solid in unbroken rows, tightly packed, together sizing one another up with the yet unopened clay-green eyes of grain ears, one indistinguishable from the next, as far as she could see, like a vast river.
+ The path was so narrow in places it was barely passable, causing the wormy, sappy leaves to brush noisily against the sedan chair.
+ The men's bodies emitted the sour smell of sweat.
+ Infatuated by the masculine odour, Grandma breathed in deeply – this ancestor of mine must have been nearly bursting with passion.
+ As the bearers carried their load down the path, their feet left a series of V imprints known as 'tramples' in the dirt, for which satisfied clients usually rewarded them, and which fortified the bearers' pride of profession.
+ It was unseemly to 'trample' with an uneven cadence or to grip the poles, and the best bearers kept their hands on their hips the whole time, rocking the sedan chair in perfect rhythm with the musicians' haunting tunes, which reminded everyone within earshot of the hidden suffering in whatever pleasures lay ahead.
+ When the sedan chair reached the plains, the bearers began to get a little sloppy, both to make up time and to torment their passenger.
+ Some brides were bounced around so violently they vomited from motion sickness, soiling their clothing and slippers; the retching sounds from inside the carriage pleased the bearers as though they were giving vent to their own miseries.
+ The sacrifices these strong young men made to carry their cargo into bridal chambers must have embittered them, which was why it seemed so natural to torment the brides.
+ One of the four men bearing Grandma's sedan chair that day would eventually become my granddad – it was Commander Yu Zhan'ao.
+ At the time he was a beefy twenty-year-old, a pallbearer and sedan bearer at the peak of his trade.
+ The young men of his generation were as sturdy as Northeast Gaomi sorghum, which is more than can be said about us weaklings who succeeded them.
+ It was a custom back then for sedan bearers to tease the bride while trundling her along: like distillery workers, who drink the wine they make, since it is their due, these men torment all who ride in their sedan chairs – even the wife of the Lord of Heaven if she should be a passenger.
+ Sorghum leaves scraped the sedan chair mercilessly when, all of a sudden, the deadening monotony of the trip was broken by the plaintive sounds of weeping – remarkably like the musicians' tunes – coming from deep in the field.
+ As Grandma listened to the music, trying to picture the instruments in the musicians' hands, she raised the curtain with her foot until she could see the sweat-soaked waist of one of the bearers.
+ Her gaze was caught by her own red embroidered slippers, with their tapered slimness and cheerless beauty, ringed by halos of incoming sunlight until they looked like lotus blossoms, or, even more, like tiny goldfish that had settled to the bottom of a bowl.
+ Two teardrops as transparently pink as immature grains of sorghum wetted Grandma's eyelashes and slipped down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth.
+ As she was gripped by sadness, the image of a learned and refined husband, handsome in his high-topped hat and wide sash, like a player on the stage, blurred and finally vanished, replaced by the horrifying picture of Shan Bianlang's face, his leprous mouth covered with rotting tumours.
+ Her heart turned to ice.
+ Were these tapered golden lotuses, a face as fresh as peaches and apricots, gentility of a thousand kinds, and ten thousand varieties of elegance all reserved for the pleasure of a leper?
+ Better to die and be done with it.
+ The disconsolate weeping in the sorghum field was dotted with words, like knots in a piece of wood:
+ A blue sky yo – a sapphire sky yo – a painted sky yo – a mighty cudgel yo – dear elder brother yo – death has claimed you – you have brought down little sister's sky yo –.
+ I must tell you that the weeping of women from Northeast Gaomi Township makes beautiful music.
+ During 1912, the first year of the Republic, professional mourners known as 'wailers' came from Qufu, the home of Confucius, to study local weeping techniques.
+ Meeting up with a woman lamenting the death of her husband seemed to Grandma to be a stroke of bad luck on her wedding day, and she grew even more dejected.
+ Just then one of the bearers spoke up: 'You there, little bride in the chair, say something!
+ The long journey has bored us to tears.'
+ Grandma quickly snatched up her red veil and covered her face, gently drawing her foot back from beneath the curtain and returning the carriage to darkness.
+ 'Sing us a song while we bear you along!'
+ The musicians, as though snapping out of a trance, struck up their instruments.
+ A trumpet blared from behind the chair:
+ 'Too-tah – too-tah –'
+ 'Poo-pah – poo-pah –'
+ One of the bearers up front imitated the trumpet sound, evoking coarse, raucous laughter all around.
+ Grandma was drenched with sweat.
+ Back home, as she was being lifted into the sedan chair, Great-Grandma had exhorted her not to get drawn into any banter with the bearers.
+ Sedan bearers and musicians are low-class rowdies capable of anything, no matter how depraved.
+ They began rocking the chair so violently that poor Grandma couldn't keep her seat without holding on tight.
+ 'No answer?
+ Okay, rock!
+ If we can't shake any words loose, we can at least shake the piss out of her!'
+ The sedan chair was like a dinghy tossed about by the waves, and Grandma held on to the wooden seat for dear life.
+ The two eggs she'd eaten for breakfast churned in her stomach, the flies buzzed around her ears; her throat tightened, as the taste of eggs surged up into her mouth.
+ She bit her lip.
+ Don't throw up, don't let yourself throw up! she commanded herself.
+ You mustn't let yourself throw up, Fenglian.
+ They say throwing up in the bridal chair means a lifetime of bad luck. . . .
+ The bearers' banter turned coarse.
+ One of them reviled my great-granddad for being a money-grabber, another said something about a pretty flower stuck into a pile of cowshit, a third called Shan Bianlang a scruffy leper who oozed pus and excreted yellow fluids.
+ He said the stench of rotten flesh drifted beyond the Shan compound, which swarmed with horseflies. . . .
+ 'Little bride, if you let Shan Bianlang touch you, your skin will rot away!'
+ As the horns and woodwinds blared and tooted, the taste of eggs grew stronger, forcing Grandma to bite down hard on her lip.
+ But to no avail.
+ She opened her mouth and spewed a stream of filth, soiling the curtain, towards which the five flies dashed as though shot from a gun.
+ 'Puke-ah, puke-ah.
+ Keep rocking!' one of the bearers roared.
+ 'Keep rocking.
+ Sooner or later she'll have to say something.'
+ 'Elder brothers . . . spare me . . .'
+ Grandma pleaded desperately between agonising retches.
+ Then she burst into tears.
+ She felt humiliated; she could sense the perils of her future, knowing she'd spend the rest of her life drowning in a sea of bitterness.
+ Oh, Father, oh, Mother.
+ I have been destroyed by a miserly father and a heartless mother!
+ Grandma's piteous wails made the sorghum quake.
+ The bearers stopped rocking the chair and calmed the raging sea.
+ The musicians lowered the instruments from their rousing lips, so that only Grandma's sobs could be heard, alone with the mournful strains of a single woodwind, whose weeping sounds were more enchanting than any woman's.
+ Grandma stopped crying at the sound of the woodwind, as though commanded from on high.
+ Her face, suddenly old and desiccated, was pearled with tears.
+ She heard the sound of death in the gentle melancholy of the tune, and smelled its breath; she could see the angel of death, with lips as scarlet as sorghum and a smiling face the colour of golden corn.
+ The bearers fell silent and their footsteps grew heavy.
+ The sacrificial choking sounds from inside the chair and the woodwind accompaniment had made them restless and uneasy, had set their souls adrift.
+ No longer did it seem like a wedding procession as they negotiated the dirt road; it was more like a funeral procession.
+ My grandfather, the bearer directly in front of Grandma's foot, felt a strange premonition blazing inside him and illuminating the path his life would take.
+ The sounds of Grandma's weeping had awakened seeds of affection that had lain dormant deep in his heart.
+ It was time to rest, so the bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground.
+ Grandma, having cried herself into a daze, didn't realise that one of her tiny feet was peeking out from beneath the curtain; the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the souls out of the bearers' bodies.
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked up, leaned over, and gently – very gently – held Grandma's foot in his hand, as though it were a fledgling whose feathers weren't yet dry, then eased it back inside the carriage.
+ She was so moved by the gentleness of the deed she could barely keep from throwing back the curtain to see what sort of man this bearer was, with his large, warm, youthful hand.
+ I've always believed that marriages are made in heaven and that people fated to be together are connected by an invisible thread.
+ The act of grasping Grandma's foot triggered a powerful drive in Yu Zhan'ao to forge a new life for himself, and constituted the turning point in his life – and the turning point in hers as well.
+ The sedan chair set out again as a trumpet blast rent the air, then drifted off into obscurity.
+ The wind had risen – a northeaster – and clouds were gathering in the sky, blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness.
+ Grandma could hear the shh-shh of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance.
+ Thunder rumbled off to the northeast.
+ The bearers quickened their pace.
+ She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step.
+ At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
+ The holdup of Grandma's sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family.
+ Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense.
+ A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma's sedan chair reached that point.
+ The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily.
+ Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road.
+ Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly.
+ From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes.
+ Grandma, still seated in the carriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goosebumps on her skin.
+ She didn't know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!'
+ Grandma gasped.
+ What was she feeling?
+ Sadness?
+ Joy?
+ My God, she thought, it's a man who eats fistcakes!
+ Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones.
+ If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside.
+ Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called 'fistcakes'.
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!' the man bellowed.
+ The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo.
+ He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin.
+ His hand rested on it.
+ The thought flashed through Grandma's mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn't frighten her, nothing could.
+ She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
+ 'Hand over the toll, or I'll pop you all!'
+ He patted the red bundle.
+ The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man's feet.
+ The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
+ As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
+ 'Get behind the sedan chair, all of you.
+ I'll pop if you don't!'
+ He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
+ The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair.
+ Yu Zhan'ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared.
+ A change came over the highwayman's face, and he gripped the object at his belt tightly.
+ 'Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!'
+ With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma's foot.
+ A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
+ 'Climb down and come with me!' he ordered her.
+ Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
+ 'Climb down, I said!'
+ She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers.
+ Her gaze travelled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
+ 'Into the sorghum field!' the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
+ Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards.
+ The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt.
+ She stared at Yu Zhan'ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
+ Yu Zhan'ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
+ 'Hold it right there!' the highwayman commanded feebly.
+ 'I'll shoot if you take another step!'
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up.
+ Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face.
+ When Yu Zhan'ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran.
+ Yu Zhan'ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear.
+ He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
+ 'Spare me, gentlemen!
+ I've got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.'
+ The highwayman skilfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan'ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth.
+ The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.
+ Yu Zhan'ao reached down, took the thing from the man's belt, and shook off the red cloth covering, to reveal the gnarled knot of a tree.
+ The men all gasped in amazement.
+ The bandit crawled to his knees, knocking his head on the ground and pleading for his life.
+ 'Every highwayman says he's got an eighty-year-old mother at home,' Yu Zhan'ao said as he stepped aside and glanced at his comrades, like the leader of a pack sizing up the other dogs.
+ With a flurry of shouts, the bearers and musicians fell upon the highwayman, fists and feet flying.
+ The initial onslaught was met by screams and shrill cries, which soon died out.
+ Grandma stood beside the road listening to the dull cacophony of fists and feet on flesh; she glanced at Yu Zhan'ao, then looked up at the lightning-streaked sky, the radiant, golden, noble smile still frozen on her face.
+ One of the musicians raised his trumpet and brought it down hard on the highwayman's skull, burying the curved edge so deeply he had to strain to free it.
+ The highwayman's stomach gurgled and his body, racked by spasms, grew deathly still; he lay spread-eagled on the ground, a mixture of white and yellow liquid seeping slowly out of the fissure in his skull.
+ 'Is he dead?' asked the musician, who was examining the bent mouth of his trumpet.
+ 'He's gone, the poor bastard.
+ He didn't put up much of a fight!'
+ The gloomy faces of the bearers and musicians revealed their anxieties.
+ Yu Zhan'ao looked wordlessly first at the dead, then at the living.
+ With a handful of leaves from a sorghum stalk, he cleaned up Grandma's mess in the carriage, then held up the tree knot, wrapped it in the piece of red cloth, and tossed the bundle as far as he could; the gnarled knot broke free in flight and separated from the piece of cloth, which fluttered to the ground in the field like a big red butterfly.
+ Yu Zhan'ao lifted Grandma into the sedan chair.
+ 'It's starting to rain,' he said, 'so let's get going.'
+ Grandma ripped the curtain from the front of the carriage and stuffed it behind the seat.
+ As she breathed the free air she studied Yu Zhan'ao's broad shoulders and narrow waist.
+ He was so near she could have touched the pale, taut skin of his shaved head with her toe.
+ The winds were picking up, bending the sorghum stalks in ever deeper waves, those on the roadside stretching out to bow their respects to Grandma.
+ The bearers streaked down the road, yet the sedan chair was as steady as a skiff skimming across whitecaps.
+ Frogs and toads croaked in loud welcome to the oncoming summer rainstorm.
+ The low curtain of heaven stared darkly at the silvery faces of sorghum, over which streaks of blood-red lightning crackled, releasing ear-splitting explosions of thunder.
+ With growing excitement, Grandma stared fearlessly at the green waves raised by the black winds.
+ The first truculent raindrops made the plants shudder.
+ The rain beat a loud tattoo on the sedan chair and fell on Grandma's embroidered slippers; it fell on Yu Zhan'ao's head, then slanted in on Grandma's face.
+ The bearers ran like scared jackrabbits, but couldn't escape the prenoon deluge.
+ Sorghum crumpled under the wild rain.
+ Toads took refuge under the stalks, their white pouches popping in and out noisily; foxes hid in their darkened dens to watch tiny drops of water splashing down from the sorghum plants.
+ The rainwater washed Yu Zhan'ao's head so clean and shiny it looked to Grandma like a new moon.
+ Her clothes, too, were soaked.
+ She could have covered herself with the curtain, but she didn't; she didn't want to, for the open front of the sedan chair afforded her a glimpse of the outside world in all its turbulence and beauty.
+
+ 我奶奶刚满十六岁时，就由她的父亲做主，嫁给了高密东北乡有名的财主单廷秀的独生子单扁郎。
+ 单家开着烧酒锅，以廉价高粱为原料酿造优质白酒，方圆百里都有名。
+ 东北乡地势低洼，往往秋水泛滥，高粱高秆防涝，被广泛种植，年年丰产。
+ 单家利用廉价原料酿酒牟利，富甲一方。
+ 我奶奶能嫁给单扁郎，是我外曾祖父的荣耀。
+ 当时，多少人家都渴望着和单家攀亲，尽管风传着单扁郎早就染上了麻风病。
+ 单廷秀是个干干巴巴的小老头，脑后翘着一支枯干的小辫子。
+ 他家里金钱满柜，却穿得破衣烂袄，腰里常常扎一条草绳。
+ 奶奶嫁到单家，其实也是天意。
+ 那天，我奶奶在秋千架旁与一些尖足长辫的大闺女耍笑游戏，那天是清明节，桃红柳绿，细雨霏霏，人面桃花，女儿解放。
+ 奶奶那年身高一米六零，体重六十公斤，上穿碎花洋布褂子，下穿绿色缎裤，脚脖子上扎着深红色的绸带子。
+ 由于下小雨，奶奶穿了一双用桐油浸泡过十几遍的绣花油鞋，一走克郎克郎地响。
+ 奶奶脑后垂着一根油光光的大辫子，脖子上挂着一个沉甸甸的银锁——我外曾祖父是个打造银器的小匠人。
+ 外曾祖母是个破落地主的女儿，知道小脚对于女人的重要意义。
+ 奶奶不到六岁就开始缠脚，日日加紧。
+ 一根裹脚布，长一丈余，外曾祖母用它，勒断了奶奶的脚骨，把八个脚趾，折断在脚底，真惨！
+ 我的母亲也是小脚，我每次看到她的脚，就心中难过，就恨不得高呼：打倒封建主义！
+ 人脚自由万岁！
+ 奶奶受尽苦难，终于裹就一双三寸金莲。
+ 十六岁那年，奶奶已经出落得丰满秀丽，走起路来双臂挥舞，身腰扭动，好似风中招飐的杨柳。
+ 单廷秀那天挎着粪筐子到我外曾祖父村里转圈，从众多的花朵中，一眼看中了我奶奶。
+ 三个月后，一乘花轿就把我奶奶抬走了。
+ 奶奶坐在憋闷的花轿里，头晕眼眩。
+ 罩头的红布把她的双眼遮住，红布上散着一股强烈的霉馊味。
+ 她抬起手，掀起红布——外祖母曾千叮咛万嘱咐，不许她自己揭动罩头红布——一只沉甸甸的绞丝银镯子滑到小臂上，奶奶看着镯子上的蛇形花纹，心里纷乱如麻。
+ 温暖的熏风吹拂着狭窄的土路两侧翠绿的高粱。
+ 高粱地里传来鸽子咕咕咕咕的叫声。
+ 刚秀出来的银灰色的高粱穗子飞扬着清淡的花粉。
+ 迎着她脸面的轿帘上，刺绣着龙凤图案，轿帘上的红布因轿子经年赁出，已经黯然失色，正中间油渍了一大片。
+ 夏末秋初，阳光茂盛，轿夫们轻捷的运动使轿子颤颤悠悠，拴轿杆的生牛皮吱吱地响，轿帘轻轻掀动，把一缕缕的光明和比较清凉的风闪进轿里来。
+ 奶奶浑身流汗，心跳如鼓，听着轿夫们均匀的脚步声和粗重的喘息声，脑海里交替着出现卵石般的光滑寒冷和辣椒般的粗糙灼热。
+ 自从奶奶被单廷秀看中后，不知有多少人向外曾祖父和外曾祖母道过喜。
+ 奶奶虽然想过上马金下马银的好日子，但更盼着有一个识文解字、眉清目秀、知冷知热的好女婿。
+ 奶奶在闺中刺绣嫁衣，绣出了我未来的爷爷的一幅幅精美的图画。
+ 她曾经盼望着早日成婚，但从女伴的话语中隐隐约约听到单家公子是个麻风病患者，奶奶的心凉了，奶奶向她的父母诉说着心中的忧虑。
+ 外曾祖父遮遮掩掩不回答，外曾祖母把奶奶的女伴们痛骂一顿，其意大概是说狐狸吃不到葡萄就说葡萄是酸的之类。
+ 外曾祖父后来又说单家公子饱读诗书，足不出户，白白净净，一表人材。
+ 奶奶恍恍惚惚，不知真假，心想着天下没有狠心的爹娘，也许女伴真是瞎说。
+ 奶奶又开始盼望早日完婚。
+ 奶奶丰腴的青春年华辐射着强烈的焦虑和淡淡的孤寂，她渴望着躺在一个伟岸的男子怀抱里缓解焦虑消除孤寂。
+ 婚期终于到了，奶奶被装进了这乘四人大轿，大喇叭小唢呐在轿前轿后吹得凄凄惨惨，奶奶止不住泪流面颊。
+ 轿子起行，忽悠悠似腾云驾雾，偷懒的吹鼓手在出村不远处就停止了吹奏，轿夫们的脚下也快起来。
+ 高粱的味道深入人心。
+ 高粱地里的奇鸟珍禽高鸣低啭。
+ 在一线一线阳光射进昏暗的轿内时，奶奶心中丈夫的形象也渐渐清晰起来。
+ 她的心像被针锥扎着，疼痛深刻有力。
+ “老天爷，保佑我吧！”
+ 奶奶心中的祷语把她的芳唇冲动。
+ 奶奶的唇上有一层纤弱的茸毛。
+ 奶奶鲜嫩茂盛，水分充足。
+ 她出口的细语被厚重的轿壁和轿帘吸收得干干净净。
+ 她一把撕下那块酸溜溜的罩头布，放在膝上。
+ 奶奶按着出嫁的传统，大热的天气，也穿着三表新的棉袄棉裤。
+ 花轿里破破烂烂，肮脏污浊。
+ 它像具棺材，不知装过了多少个必定成为死尸的新娘。
+ 轿壁上衬里的黄缎子脏得流油，五只苍蝇有三只在奶奶头上嗡嗡地飞翔，有两只伏在轿帘上，用棒状的黑腿擦着明亮的眼睛。
+ 奶奶受闷不过，悄悄地伸出笋尖状的脚，把轿帘顶开一条缝。
+ 偷偷地往外看。
+ 她看到轿夫们肥大的黑色衫绸裤里依稀可辨的、优美颀长的腿，和穿着双鼻梁麻鞋的肥大的脚。
+ 轿夫的脚踏起一股股噗噗作响的尘土。
+ 奶奶猜想着轿夫粗壮的上身，忍不住把脚尖上移，身体前倾。
+ 她看到了光滑的紫槐木轿杆和轿夫宽阔的肩膀。
+ 道路两边，板块般的高粱坚固凝滞，连成一体，拥拥挤挤，彼此打量，灰绿色的高粱穗子睡眼未开，这一穗与那一穗根本无法区别，高粱永无尽头，仿佛潺潺流动的河流。
+ 道路有时十分狭窄，沾满蚜虫分泌物的高粱叶子擦得轿子两侧沙沙地响。
+ 轿夫身上散发出汗酸味，奶奶有点痴迷地呼吸着这男人的气味，她老人家心中肯定漾起一圈圈春情波澜。
+ 轿夫抬轿从街上走，迈的都是八字步，号称“踩街”，这一方面是为讨主家欢喜，多得些赏钱； 另一方面，是为了显示一种优雅的职业风度。
+ 踩街时，步履不齐的不是好汉，手扶轿杆的不是好汉，够格的轿夫都是双手卡腰，步调一致，轿子颠动的节奏要和上吹鼓手们吹出的凄美音乐，让所有的人都能体会到任何幸福后面都隐藏着等量的痛苦。
+ 轿子走到平川旷野，轿夫们便撒了野，这一是为了赶路，二是要折腾一下新娘。
+ 有的新娘，被轿子颠得大声呕吐，脏物吐满锦衣绣鞋；轿夫们在新娘的呕吐声中，获得一种发泄的快乐。
+ 这些年轻力壮的男子，为别人抬去洞房里的牺牲，心里一定不是滋味，所以他们要折腾新娘。
+ 那天抬着我奶奶的四个轿夫中，有一个成了我的爷爷——他就是余占鳌司令。
+ 那时候他二十郎当岁，是东北乡打棺抬轿这行当里的佼佼者
+ ——我爷爷辈的好汉们，都有高密东北乡人高粱般鲜明的性格，非我们这些孱弱的后辈能比——
+ 当时的规矩，轿夫们在路上开新娘子的玩笑，如同烧酒锅上的伙计们喝烧酒，是天经地义的事，天王老子的新娘他们也敢折腾。
+ 高粱叶子把轿子磨得嚓嚓响，高粱深处，突然传来一阵悠扬的哭声，打破了道路上的单调。
+ 哭声与吹鼓手们吹出的曲调十分相似。
+ 奶奶想到乐曲，就想到那些凄凉的乐器一定在吹鼓手们手里提着。
+ 奶奶用脚撑着轿帘能看到一个轿夫被汗水溻湿的腰，奶奶更多地是看到自己穿着大红绣花鞋的脚，它尖尖瘦瘦，带着凄艳的表情，从外面投进来的光明罩住了它们。
+ 它们像两枚莲花瓣，它们更像两条小金鱼埋伏在澄清的水底。
+ 两滴高粱米粒般晶莹微红的细小泪珠跳出奶奶的睫毛，流过面颊，流到嘴角。
+ 奶奶心里又悲又苦，往常描绘好的、与戏台上人物同等模样、峨冠博带、儒雅风流的丈夫形象在泪眼里先模糊后漶灭。
+ 奶奶恐怖地看到单家扁郎那张开花绽彩的麻风病人脸，奶奶透心地冰冷。
+ 奶奶想这一双娇娇金莲，这一张桃腮杏脸，千般的温存，万种的风流，难道真要由一个麻风病人去消受？
+ 如其那样，还不如一死了之。
+ 高粱地里悠长的哭声里，夹杂着疙疙瘩瘩的字眼：
+ 青天哟——蓝天哟——花花绿绿的天哟——棒槌哟亲哥哟你死了——可就塌了妹妹的天哟——
+ 我不得不告诉您，我们高密东北乡女人哭丧跟唱歌一样优美。
+ 民国元年，曲阜县孔夫子家的“哭丧户”专程前来学习过哭腔。
+ 大喜的日子里碰上女人哭亡夫，奶奶感到这是不祥之兆，已经沉重的心情更加沉重。
+ 这时，有一个轿夫开口说话：“轿上的小娘子，跟哥哥们说几句话呀！
+ 远远的路程，闷得慌。”
+ 奶奶赶紧拿起红布，蒙到头上，顶着轿帘的脚尖也悄悄收回，轿里又是一团漆黑。
+ “唱个曲儿给哥哥们听，哥哥抬着你哩！”
+ 吹鼓手如梦方醒，在轿后猛地吹响了大喇叭，大喇叭说：
+ “咚——咚——”
+ “猛捅——猛捅——”
+ 轿前有人模仿着喇叭声说，前前后后响起一阵粗野的笑声。
+ 奶奶身上汗水淋漓。
+ 临上轿前，外曾祖母反复叮咛过她，在路上，千万不要跟轿夫们磨牙斗嘴。
+ 轿夫，吹鼓手，都是下九流，奸刁古怪，什么样的坏事都干得出来。
+ 轿夫们用力把轿子抖起来，奶奶的屁股坐不安稳，双手抓住座板。
+ “不吱声？
+ 颠！
+ 颠不出她的话就颠出她的尿！”
+ 轿子已经像风浪中的小船了，奶奶死劲抓住座板，腹中翻腾着早晨吃下的两个鸡蛋，苍蝇在她耳畔嗡嗡地飞，她的喉咙紧张，蛋腥味冲到口腔，她咬住嘴唇。
+ 不能吐，不能吐！
+ 奶奶命令着自己，不能吐啊，凤莲，人家说吐在轿里是最大的不吉利，吐了轿子一辈子没好运……
+ 轿夫们的话更加粗野了，他们有的骂我外曾祖父是个见钱眼开的小人，有的说鲜花插到牛粪上，有的说单扁郎是个流白脓淌黄水的麻风病人。
+ 他们说站在单家院子外，就能闻到一股烂肉臭味，单家的院子里，飞舞着成群结队的绿头苍蝇……
+ “小娘子，你可不能让单扁郎沾身啊，沾了身，你也烂啦！”
+ 大喇叭小唢呐呜呜咽咽地吹着，那股蛋腥味更加强烈，奶奶牙齿紧咬嘴唇，咽喉里像有只拳头在打击，她忍不住了，一张嘴，一股奔突的脏物蹿出来，涂在了轿帘上，五只苍蝇像子弹一样射到呕吐物上。
+ “吐啦吐啦，颠呀！”
+ 轿夫们狂喊着，“颠呀，早晚颠得她开口说话。”
+ “大哥哥们…… 饶了我吧……”
+ 奶奶在呃嗝中，痛不欲生地说着，说完了，便放声大哭起来。
+ 奶奶觉得委屈，奶奶觉得前途险恶，终生难逃苦海。
+ 爹呀，娘呀，贪财的爹，狠心的娘，你们把我毁了。
+ 奶奶放声大哭，高粱深径震动，轿夫们不再颠狂，推波助澜、兴风作浪的吹鼓手们也停嘴不吹。
+ 只剩下奶奶的呜咽，又和进了一支悲泣的小唢呐，唢呐的哭泣声比所有的女人哭泣都优美。
+ 奶奶在唢呐声中停住哭，像聆听天籁一般，听着这似乎从天国传来的音乐。
+ 奶奶粉面凋零，珠泪点点，从悲婉的曲调里，她听到了死的声音，嗅到了死的气息，看到了死神的高粱般深红的嘴唇和玉米般金黄的笑脸。
+ 轿夫们沉默无言，步履沉重。
+ 轿里牺牲的哽咽和轿后唢呐的伴奏，使他们心中萍翻桨乱，雨打魂幡。
+ 走在高粱小径上的，已不像迎亲的队伍，倒像送葬的仪仗。
+ 在奶奶脚前的那个轿夫——我后来的爷爷余占鳌，他的心里，有一种不寻常的预感，像熊熊燃烧的火焰一样，把他未来的道路照亮了。
+ 奶奶的哭声。
+ 唤起他心底早就蕴藏着的怜爱之情。
+ 轿夫们中途小憩，花轿落地。
+ 奶奶哭得昏昏沉沉，不觉得把一只小脚露到了轿外。
+ 轿夫们看着这玲珑的、美丽无比的小脚，一时都忘魂落魄。
+ 余占鳌走过来，弯腰，轻轻地、轻轻地握住奶奶那只小脚，像握着一只羽毛未丰的鸟雏，轻轻地送回轿内。
+ 奶奶在轿内，被这温柔感动，她非常想撩开轿帘，看看这个生着一只温暖的年轻大手的轿夫是个什么样的人。
+ 我想，千里姻缘一线牵，一生的情缘，都是天凑地合，是毫无挑剔的真理。
+ 余占鳌就是因为握了一下我奶奶的脚唤醒了他心中伟大的创造新生活的灵感，从此彻底改变了他的一生，也彻底改变了我奶奶的一生。
+ 花轿又起行，喇叭吹出一个猿啼般的长音，便无声无息。
+ 起风了，东北风，天上云朵麇集，遮住了阳光，轿子里更加昏暗。
+ 奶奶听到风吹高粱，哗哗哗啦啦啦，一浪赶着一浪，响到远方。
+ 奶奶听到东北方向有隆隆雷声响起。
+ 轿夫们加快了步伐。
+ 轿子离单家还有多远，奶奶不知道，她如同一只被绑的羔羊，愈近死期，心里愈平静。
+ 奶奶胸口里，揣着一把锋利的剪刀，它可能是为单扁郎准备的，也可能是为自己准备的。
+ 奶奶的花轿行走到蛤蟆坑被劫的事，在我的家族的传说中占有一个显要的位置。
+ 蛤蟆坑是大洼子里的大洼子，土壤尤其肥沃，水分尤其充足，高粱尤其茂密。
+ 奶奶的花轿行到这里，东北天空抖着一个血红的闪电，一道残缺的杏黄色阳光，从浓云中，嘶叫着射向道路。
+ 轿夫们气喘吁吁，热汗涔涔。
+ 走进蛤蟆坑，空气沉重，路边的高粱乌黑发亮，深不见底，路上的野草杂花几乎长死了路。
+ 有那么多的矢车菊，在杂草中高扬着细长的茎，开着紫、蓝、粉、白四色花。
+ 高粱深处，蛤蟆的叫声忧伤，蝈蝈的唧唧凄凉，狐狸的哀鸣悠怅。
+ 奶奶在轿里，突然感到一阵寒冷袭来，皮肤上凸起一层细小的鸡皮疙瘩。
+ 奶奶还没明白过来是怎么一回事，就听到轿前有人高叫一声：
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 奶奶心里咯噔一声，不知忧喜，老天，碰上吃拤饼的了！
+ 高密东北乡土匪如毛，他们在高粱地里鱼儿般出没无常，结帮拉伙，拉骡绑票，坏事干尽，好事做绝。
+ 如果肚子饿了，就抓两个人，扣一个，放一个，让被放的人回村报信，送来多少张卷着鸡蛋大葱一把粗细的两拃多长的大饼。
+ 吃大饼时要用双手拤住往嘴里塞，故曰“拤饼”。
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 那个吃拤饼的人大吼着。
+ 轿夫们停住，呆呆地看着劈腿横在路当中的劫路人。
+ 那人身材不高，脸上涂着黑墨，头戴一顶高粱篾片编成的斗笠，身披一件大蓑衣，蓑衣敞着，露出密扣黑衣和拦腰扎着的宽腰带。
+ 腰里别着一件用红绸布包起的鼓鼓囊囊的东西。
+ 那人用一只手按着那布包。
+ 奶奶在一转念间，感到什么事情也不可怕了，死都不怕，还怕什么？
+ 她掀起轿帘，看着那个吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人又喊：“留下买路钱！
+ 要不我就崩了你们！”
+ 他拍了拍腰里那件红布包裹着的家伙。
+ 吹鼓手们从腰里摸出外曾祖父赏给他们的一串串铜钱，扔到那人脚前。
+ 轿夫放下轿子，也把新得的铜钱掏出，扔下。
+ 那人把钱串子用脚踢拢成堆，眼睛死死地盯着坐在花轿里的我奶奶。
+ “你们，都给我滚到轿子后边去，要不我就开枪啦！”
+ 他用手拍拍腰里别着的家伙大声喊叫。
+ 轿夫们慢慢吞吞地走到轿后。
+ 余占鳌走在最后，他猛回转身，双目直逼吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人瞬间动容变色，手紧紧捂住腰里的红布包，尖叫着：“不许回头，再回头我就毙了你！”
+ 劫路人按着腰中家伙，脚不离地蹭到轿子前伸手捏捏奶奶的脚。
+ 奶奶粲然一笑，那人的手像烫了似的紧着缩回去。
+ “下轿，跟我走！”
+ 他说。
+ 奶奶端坐不动，脸上的笑容凝固了一样。
+ “下轿！”
+ 奶奶欠起身，大大方方地跨过轿杆，站在烂漫的矢车菊里。
+ 奶奶右眼看着吃拤饼的人，左眼看着轿夫和吹鼓手。
+ “往高粱地里走！”
+ 劫路人按着腰里用红布包着的家伙说。
+ 奶奶舒适地站着，云中的闪电带着铜音嗡嗡抖动，奶奶脸上粲然的笑容被分裂成无数断断续续的碎片。
+ 劫路人催逼着奶奶往高粱地里走，他的手始终按着腰里的家伙。
+ 奶奶用亢奋的眼睛，看着余占鳌。
+ 余占鳌对着劫路人笔直地走过去，他薄薄的嘴唇绷成一条刚毅的直线，两个嘴角一个上翘，一个下垂。
+ “站住！”
+ 劫路人有气无力地喊着，“再走一步我就开枪！”
+ 他的手按在腰里用红布包裹着的家伙上。
+ 余占鳌平静地对着吃拤饼的人走，他前进一步，吃拤饼者就缩一点。
+ 吃拤饼的人眼里跳出绿火花，一行行雪白的清明汗珠从他脸上惊惶地流出来。
+ 当余占鳌离他三步远时，他惭愧地叫了一声，转身就跑。
+ 余占鳌飞身上前，对准他的屁股，轻捷地踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人的身体贴着杂草梢头，蹭着矢车菊花朵，平行着飞出去，他的手脚在低空中像天真的婴孩一样抓挠着，最后落到高粱棵子里。
+ “爷们，饶命吧！
+ 小人家中有八十岁的老母，不得已才吃这碗饭。”
+ 劫路人在余占鳌手下熟练地叫着。
+ 余占鳌抓着他的后颈皮，把他提到轿子前，用力摔在路上，对准他吵嚷不休的嘴巴踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人一声惨叫，半截吐出口外，半截咽到肚里，血从他鼻子里流出来。
+ 余占鳌弯腰，把劫路人腰里那家伙拔出来，抖掉红布，露出一个弯弯曲曲的小树疙瘩，众人嗟叹不止。
+ 那人跪在地上，连连磕头求饶。
+ 余占鳌说：“劫路的都说家里有八十岁的老母。”
+ 他退到一边，看着轿夫和吹鼓手，像狗群里的领袖看着群狗。
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们发声喊，一拥而上，围成一个圆圈，对准劫路人，花拳绣腿齐施展。
+ 起初还能听到劫路人尖利的哭叫声，一会儿就听不见了。
+ 奶奶站在路边，听着七零八落的打击肉体的沉闷声响，对着余占鳌顿眸一瞥，然后仰面看着天边的闪电，脸上凝固着的，仍然是那种粲然的、黄金一般高贵辉煌的笑容。
+ 一个吹鼓手挥动起大喇叭，在劫路者的当头心儿里猛劈了一下，喇叭的圆刃劈进颅骨里去，费了好大劲才拔出。
+ 劫路人肚子里咕噜一声响，痉挛的身体舒展开来，软软地躺在地上。
+ 一线红白相间的液体，从那道深刻的裂缝里慢慢地挤出来。
+ “死了？”
+ 吹鼓手提着打瘪了的喇叭说。
+ “打死了，这东西，这么不禁打！”
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们俱神色惨淡，显得惶惶不安。
+ 余占鳌看看死人，又看看活人，一语不发。
+ 他从高粱上撕下一把叶子，把轿子里奶奶呕吐出的脏物擦掉，又举起那块树疙瘩看看，把红布往树疙瘩上缠几下，用力摔出，飞行中树疙瘩抢先，红包布落后，像一只赤红的大蝶，落到绿高粱上。
+ 余占鳌把奶奶扶上轿说：“上来雨了，快赶！”
+ 奶奶撕下轿帘，塞到轿子角落里，她呼吸着自由的空气，看着余占鳌的宽肩细腰。
+ 他离着轿子那么近，奶奶只要一翘脚，就能踢到他青白色的结实头皮。
+ 风利飕有力，高粱前推后拥，一波一波地动，路一侧的高粱把头伸到路当中，向着我奶奶弯腰致敬。
+ 轿夫们飞马流星，轿子出奇的平稳，像浪尖上飞快滑动的小船。
+ 蛙类们兴奋地鸣叫着，迎接着即将来临的盛夏的暴雨。
+ 低垂的天幕，阴沉地注视着银灰色的高粱脸庞，一道压一道的血红闪电在高粱头上裂开，雷声强大，震动耳膜。
+ 奶奶心中亢奋，无畏地注视着黑色的风掀起的绿色的浪潮，云声像推磨一样旋转着过来，风向变幻不定，高粱四面摇摆，田野凌乱不堪。
+ 最先一批凶狠的雨点打得高粱颤抖，打得野草觳觫，打得道上的细土凝聚成团后又立即迸裂，打得轿顶啪啪响。
+ 雨点打在奶奶的绣花鞋上，打在余占鳌的头上，斜射到奶奶的脸上。
+ 余占鳌他们像兔子一样疾跑，还是未能躲过这场午前的雷阵雨。
+ 雨打倒了无数的高粱，雨在田野里狂欢，蛤蟆躲在高粱根下，哈达哈达地抖着颌下雪白的皮肤； 狐狸蹲在幽暗的洞里，看着从高粱上飞溅而下的细小水珠，道路很快就泥泞不堪，杂草伏地，矢车菊清醒地擎着湿漉漉的头。
+ 轿夫们肥大的黑裤子紧贴在肉上，人们都变得苗条流畅。
+ 余占鳌的头皮被冲刷得光洁明媚，像奶奶眼中的一颗圆月。
+ 雨水把奶奶的衣服也打湿了，她本来可以挂上轿帘遮挡雨水，她没有挂，她不想挂，奶奶通过敞亮的轿门，看到了纷乱不安的宏大世界。
+
+ The Film Studio
+ FOUR DECADES THE story spans, and it all began the day she went to the film studio.
+ The day before, Wu Peizhen had agreed to take Wang Qiyao to have a look around the studio.
+ Wu Peizhen was a rather careless girl.
+ Under normal circumstances, she would have suffered from low self-esteem because of her homeliness, but because Peizhen came from a well-to-do family and people always doted on her, she had developed unaffected into an outgoing young lady.
+ What would have been poor self-esteem was replaced by a kind of modesty—modesty ruled by a practical spirit.
+ In her modesty, she tended to exaggerate other people's strengths, place them on a pedestal, and offer them her devotion.
+ Wang Qiyao never had to worry about Wu Peizhen being jealous of her—and she certainly had no reason to be jealous of Wu Peizhen.
+ On the contrary, she even felt a bit bad for Wu Peizhen—because she was so ugly.
+ This compassion predisposed Wang Qiyao to be generous, but naturally this generosity did not extend any further than Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen's carelessness was the function of an uncalculating mind.
+ She appreciated Wang Qiyao's magnanimity and tried even harder to please her as though repaying her kindness.
+ Basking in each other's company, they became the best of friends.
+ But Wang Qiyao's decision to befriend Wu Peizhen meant, in some way, that she was pushing a heavy load onto Wu Peizhen's shoulders.
+ Her beauty highlighted Wu Peizhen's unattractive appearance; her meticulousness highlighted Wu Peizhen's lack of care; her magnanimity highlighted Wu Peizhen's indebtedness.
+ It was a good thing that Wu Peizhen could take it; after all, the weight of everyday living did not rest as heavily on her.
+ This was partly because she had plenty of psychic capital to draw on, but also because she simply did not mind.
+ Things came easy to her and she was willing to bear more than her share.
+ Thus an equilibrium of give-and-take was maintained between the two girls and they grew closer by the day.
+ Wu Peizhen had a cousin who did lighting at the film studio.
+ Occasionally he would come over to see her.
+ In that khaki uniform of his, with its copper buttons, he came across as a bit flashy.
+ Wu Peizhen really could not have cared less about him; the only reason she kept him around was for Wang Qiyao.
+ The film studio was the stuff of girls' dreams—a place where romance is created, the kind that appears on the silver screen in movies that everyone knows as well as the off-screen type that one hears about in the enchanting gossip and rumors surrounding the lives of film stars.
+ The former is fake but appears real; the latter is real but seems fake.
+ To live in the world of the film studio is to lead a dual life.
+ Girls like Wu Peizhen who had all of their needs taken care of seldom wallowed in dreams; moreover, as the only girl in a house full of boys, she grew up playing boys' games and never learned the social skills and canniness most girls picked up.
+ However, after making friends with Wang Qiyao, she became more thoughtful.
+ She came to see the film studio as a gift that she could offer to Wang Qiyao.
+ She arranged everything carefully, only informing Wang Qiyao after she had already set a date, and was surprised when Wang Qiyao greeted the news with apparent indifference, claiming a prior engagement.
+ This compelled Wu Peizhen to try to change Wang Qiyao's mind by exaggerating the glamour of the film studio, combining stories her cousin bragged about with others from her own imagination.
+ Before long, it was more like Wang Qiyao was doing her a favor by going with her.
+ By the time Wang Qiyao finally gave in and agreed to go some other time, Wu Peizhen was acting as if yet another gift that she herself had to be thankful for had been bestowed upon her, and she ecstatically scurried off to find her cousin to change the date.
+ Wang Qiyao did not, in fact, have any prior engagement, nor was she as reluctant as she appeared; this was simply the way she conducted herself—the more interested she was in something, the more she held back.
+ This was her means of protecting herself—or then again, was it part of a strategy of disarming an antagonist by pretending to set her free?
+ Whatever the reason behind her action, it was impenetrable to Wu Peizhen.
+ On her way to her cousin's place, she was consumed with gratitude for Wang Qiyao; all she could think about was how much face Wang Qiyao had given her by agreeing to the invitation.
+ The cousin was the son of Wu Peizhen's uncle on her mother's side.
+ This uncle was the black sheep of the family.
+ He had driven a silk shop in Hangzhou into the ground and Wu Peizhen's mother had dreaded his visits because all he ever wanted from her was money or grain.
+ After she gave him some heavy doses of harsh words and turned him away empty-handed several times, he gradually stopped coming around and eventually broke off all relations.
+ Then one day his son had showed up at her door wearing that khaki uniform with copper buttons and carrying two boxes of vegetarian dim sum as if they represented some kind of announcement.
+ Ever since then he would come by once every two months or so and tell them stories about the film studio.
+ Nobody in the house was interested in his stories—nobody, that is, except Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen went to the address in Qijiabing in search of her cousin.
+ All around were thatch-covered shacks surrounded by small unmarked trails that extended in different directions, making it virtually impossible to find one's way.
+ People stared at her.
+ One glance told them that she was an outsider, but just as she was getting ready to ask directions they would immediately look away.
+ She finally found her cousin's place, only to discover that he was not home.
+ The young man who shared the shack with her cousin asked her in.
+ He was wearing a pair of glasses and a set of coarse cotton clothes.
+ Wu Peizhen was a bit shy and waited outside.
+ This naturally drew more curious gazes.
+ It was not until dusk that her cousin finally staggered in with a greasy paper bag holding a pig's head or some other cheap meat he had bought over at the butcher's shop.
+ By the time Wu Peizhen got home, her family was already at the dinner table and she had to fib about where she had been.
+ But she didn't have an ounce of regret; even when later that evening she saw the blisters on the soles of her feet from all that walking, she still felt that it was all worth it.
+ That night she even had a dream about the film studio.
+ She dreamed of an elegantly dressed woman under the mercury-vapor lamps.
+ When the woman turned to her and smiled, Wu Peizhen saw that she was none other than Wang Qiyao; she was so excited that she woke up.
+ Her feelings for Wang Qiyao were a bit like the puppy love that a teenage boy feels for a girl for whom he is willing to go to the edge of the earth.
+ She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark bedroom and wondered: Just what kind of place is this film studio anyway?
+ When the day finally arrived, Wu Peizhen's excitement far surpassed that of Wang Qiyao; she could barely contain herself.
+ A classmate asked them where they were off to.
+ "Nowhere," Wu Peizhen casually responded, as she gave Wang Qiyao a knowing pinch on the arm.
+ Then she pulled Wang Qiyao aside and told her to hurry up, as though afraid that that their classmate would catch up and force them to let her in on their pleasure.
+ The whole way there Wu Peizhen couldn't stop jabbering, attracting curious glances from people on the street.
+ Wang Qiyao warned her several times to get hold of herself.
+ Finally she had to stop in her tracks and declare she wasn't going any further—they had not even set foot in the studio and Wu Peizhen had already embarrassed her enough.
+ Only then did Wu Peizhen cool down a bit.
+ To get to the studio they had to take the trolley and make a transfer.
+ Wu Peizhen's cousin was waiting for them at the entrance; he gave each of them an ID tag to clip on her chest so that they would look like employees: that way they could wander around wherever their hearts desired.
+ Once inside, they walked through an empty lot littered with wooden planks, discarded cloth scraps, and chunks of broken bricks and tiles—it looked like a cross between a dump and a construction site.
+ Everyone approaching went at a hurried pace with their heads down.
+ The cousin also moved briskly, as if he had something urgent to take care of.
+ The two girls were left straggling behind, holding hands, trying their best to keep up.
+ It was three or four o'clock, the sunlight was waning and the wind picked up, rustling their skirts.
+ Both of them felt a bit gloomy and Wu Peizhen fell silent.
+ After going a few hundred steps, their journey began to feel interminable, and the girls began to lose patience with the cousin, who slowed down to regale them with some of the rumors floating around the studio; his comments, however, seemed to be neither here nor there.
+ Before their visit all of those anecdotes seemed real, but once they had seen the place everything was now entirely unreliable.
+ Numbness had taken hold of them by the time they entered a large room the size of a warehouse, where uniformed workers scurried back and forth, up and down scaffolding, all the while calling out orders and directions.
+ But they did not see a soul who even faintly resembled a movie star.
+ Thoroughly disoriented, they simply trailed after Wu Peizhen's cousin, but had to watch their heads one second and their feet another, for there were ropes and wires overhead and littering the ground.
+ They moved in and out from illuminated areas into patches of darkness and seemed to have completely forgotten their objective and had no idea where they were—all they did was walk.
+ After what seemed an eternity, Wu Peizhen's cousin finally stopped and had them stand off to one side—he had to go to work.
+ The place where they were left standing was bustling with activity; everyone seemed to be doing something as they moved briskly around the girls.
+ Several times, rushing to get out of one person's way, they bumped into someone else.
+ But they had yet to lay eyes on anyone who looked like a movie star.
+ They were both getting anxious, feeling that the whole trip was a mistake.
+ Wu Peizhen could hardly bring herself to look Wang Qiyao in the eye.
+ All of a sudden, the lights in the room lit up like a dozen rising suns, blinding them.
+ After their eyes adjusted they made out a portion of the warehouse-like room that had been arranged to look like one half of a bedroom.
+ That three-walled bedroom seemed to be the set, but everything inside was peculiarly familiar.
+ The comforter showed signs of wear, old cigarette butts were left in the ashtray, even the handkerchief on the nightstand beside the bed had been used, crumpled up into a ball—as if someone had removed a wall in a home where real people were living to display what went on within.
+ Standing there watching they were quite excited, but at the same time irritated because they were too far away to hear what was being said on set.
+ All they could see was a woman in a sheer nightgown lying on a bed with wrinkled sheets.
+ She tried to lie in several different positions; on her side one moment, on her back the next, and for a while even in a strange position where half her body extended off the bed onto the floor.
+ All this became somewhat boring.
+ The lights turned on and off.
+ In the end, the woman in bed stopped moving and stayed still in the same position for quite some time before the lights once again dimmed.
+ When the lights came back on, everything seemed different.
+ During the previous few takes the light had been marked by an unbridled brilliance.
+ This time they seemed to be using a specialized lighting, the kind that illuminates a room during a pitch-black night.
+ The bedroom set seemed to be further away, but the scene became even more alive.
+ Wang Qiyao was taking in everything.
+ She noticed the glow emitting from the electric lamp and the rippling shadows of the lotus-shaped lampshade projecting onto the three walls of the set.
+ A powerful sense of déjà vu gripped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she had seen this scene before.
+ Only after shifting her gaze to the woman under the lamplight did she suddenly realize that the actress was pretending to be dead—but she could not tell if the woman was meant to have been murdered or to have committed suicide.
+ The strange thing was that this scene did not appear terrifying or foreboding, only annoyingly familiar.
+ She could not make out the woman's features; all she could see was her head of disheveled hair strewn out along the foot of the bed.
+ The woman's feet faced the headboard and her head lay propped against the foot of the bed, her slippers scattered on opposite sides of the room.
+ The film studio was a hubbub of activity, like a busy dockyard.
+ With all the cries of "Camera" and "OK" rising and falling amid the clamor, the woman was the only thing that did not move, as if she had fallen into an eternal slumber.
+ Wu Peizhen was the first to lose her patience; after all, she was the more brazen one.
+ She pulled Wang Qiyao away so they could go look around other parts of the studio.
+ Their next stop was a three-walled hotel lobby where a fight scene was being shot.
+ All of the actors, in suits and leather dress shoes, were standing around when suddenly a poor fellow in tattered clothes walked onto the set and slapped the hotel manager across the face.
+ The way the action was carried out looked a bit ridiculous; the actor produced the slapping sound with his left hand as he slapped the restaurant owner with his right, but his timing was impeccable and one could hardly tell it was fake.
+ Wu Peizhen liked this scene much more than the first.
+ She watched them do take after take without getting bored, the whole time exclaiming how much fun it was.
+ Wang Qiyao, however, grew impatient and said that the first one was much more interesting.
+ She said that it was a serious film, unlike this one, which was pure buffoonery, no better than a circus sideshow.
+ The two returned to the first set only to discover that everyone had gone.
+ Even the bed had been taken away, leaving only a few workers behind to straighten up the remaining items on set.
+ The girls wondered if they had gone to the wrong place and were about to go look elsewhere when Wu Peizhen's cousin suddenly called out to them.
+ As it happened, he was one of the workers breaking down the set.
+ He told them to wait a little while, and then he would take them to watch a special effects shoot that was going on at one of the other sets!
+ They had no choice but to stand off to one side and wait idly.
+ Someone asked the cousin who his guests were and he told him.
+ But when the man asked where they went to school, the cousin was stumped and Wu Peizhen had to answer for herself.
+ The man flashed them a smile, revealing a set of white teeth that shimmered in the darkness of the studio.
+ He was the director, the cousin later told them.
+ He had studied abroad and was also a screenwriter; in fact he had written and directed the scene they had earlier seen being filmed.
+ The cousin told them all this as he led them off to see the special effects shoot, where they saw smoke, fire, even ghosts.
+ Once again the technical people were doing all the work while the actors did virtually nothing.
+ Asked by Wu Peizhen if they could see some movie stars, the cousin looked embarrassed.
+ He told them that there was not a single big star on any of the sets that day, explaining that it was not every day that big movie stars had scenes.
+ The studio simply could not schedule things the way they would like—they had to work around the stars' schedules.
+ Wu Peizhen caught her cousin in a lie.
+ "Didn't you tell us that you are always running into all these big name stars at the studio every day?" she protested.
+ Wang Qiyao took pity on the cousin and tried to smooth things over.
+ "It's getting dark.
+ We had better come back some other time.
+ Our parents will be worried!"
+ As the cousin led them toward the exit they once again ran into the director.
+ Not only did he remember them, he addressed them jocularly as "the girls from So-and-so middle school"—Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen turned a bright red.
+ On the ride home, neither was in the mood to talk and they sat silently, listening to the ringing bells of the trolley.
+ The trolley was half empty; the after-work rush hour was over and Shanghai's nightlife had yet to begin.
+ The girls' experience at the film studio was not exactly as expected; it was difficult to say whether it was disappointing or whether they had had the time of their lives—the one thing for sure was that they were both exhausted.
+ Wu Peizhen had never had her sights set on the studio.
+ Her reason for going rested entirely in making Wang Qiyao happy, so naturally she had hoped it would be a wonderful trip.
+ Just what was so wonderful about the film studio, however, Wu Peizhen had not the slightest clue—she had to wait for Wang Qiyao's reaction to find out.
+ The impression the film studio left on Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, was much more complicated.
+ It was not nearly as magical a place as she had imagined, yet because it appeared so ordinary it gave her the impression that it was within her grasp—but just what was it that she could grasp?
+ She had yet to figure that out.
+ Her initial hopes may have been dampened, but the anxiety that came with anticipation had been relieved.
+ In the days following their visit to the film studio, Wang Qiyao did not utter a single word about their trip, and this left Wu Peizhen quite depressed.
+ She was afraid that Wang Qiyao had not liked the studio and the whole trip had been a complete waste.
+ Then one day she told Wang Qiyao in a confessional tone that her cousin had invited them back to the film studio but she had already declined the offer.
+ Wang Qiyao rounded on her.
+ "How could you do that?
+ He is trying to be nice to us!"
+ Wu Peizhen's eyes widened in disbelief.
+ Wang Qiyao felt a bit uncomfortable under her stare.
+ Turning her face away, she said, "What I mean is, you should show the guy some respect.
+ After all, he's your cousin!"
+ This was one occasion when even Wu Peizhen saw through Wang Qiyao.
+ But far from belittling her friend for being phony, Wu Peizhen felt a tenderness well up in her heart.
+ Although on the outside she looks like a grownup, deep down she is still a child!
+ Wu Peizhen thought to herself.
+ At that moment, her feeling for Wang Qiyao approached maternal love—a love that encompassed all.
+ From then on the film studio became a place for frequent visits.
+ They learned quite a few inside secrets about filmmaking.
+ They learned that movies are never shot in sequence, but are made one scene at a time and only edited together in the final stages.
+ The set locations may have been dilapidated and in disrepair, but the images captured by the camera were always perfectly beautiful.
+ On one or two occasions they actually saw some of those famous movie stars, who sat in front of the camera doing nothing, like a collection of idle props.
+ Films scripts were revised at random, and in the blink of an eye even the dead could come back to life.
+ The girls made their way backstage, and as they rubbed their hands against the mysterious machinery that made images come to life, their hearts seemed to undergo a kind of transformation.
+ Time spent in a film studio is never humdrum; the experience always hints at life's greater meaning.
+ This is especially true for the young, who cannot yet completely distinguish truth from fiction and the real from the make-believe, and especially during that era—when movies had already become an important part of our everyday lives.
+ Camera
+ Wang Qiyao had learned that the most critical moment in making a film came the second that the director calls, "Camera."
+ Everything up to that point boils down to preparation and foreshadowing, but what happens afterward?
+ It ends forever.
+ She came to understand the significance of the word "Camera": it announced a kind of climax.
+ Sometimes the director let them look through the camera and what they saw through its lens was always gorgeous; the camera had the power to filter out all of the chaos and disarray.
+ It had the power to make what was dark and dismal glimmer with light.
+ Inside the camera was a different world.
+ After editing and postproduction, only the pure essence would remain.
+ The director became quite close with the girls and they eventually stopped blushing in his presence.
+ A few times, when Wu Peizhen's cousin was not in the studio, they even went straight to look for the director.
+ He had given them the nicknames "Zhen Zhen" and "Yao Yao," as if they were characters in his latest movie.
+ Behind their backs he described Zhen Zhen to his colleagues as a graceless servant girl right out of Dream of the Red Chamber, a little cleaning maid who thinks she is special just because she is employed in a large, wealthy household.
+ Yao Yao he described as a proper miss who acted the part of a rich official's daughter, like the tragic lover Zhu Yingtai.
+ He treated Wu Peizhen as if she were a child; he loved to tease her and play little jokes on her.
+ He promised to put Wang Qiyao in a scene in one of his movies as soon as the opportunity arose.
+ Who knows?
+ Because her coquettish eyes resembled Ruan Lingyu's, they might even be able to capitalize on the audience's nostalgia for the dead movie star and make Wang Qiyao into a new diva of the screen.
+ Although he seemed to be kidding, this was the director's reserved and humorous way of making a promise.
+ Wang Qiyao naturally did not take him too seriously, but she did kind of like being compared to Ruan Lingyu.
+ Then one day the director telephoned Wang Qiyao at home to have her come down to the studio for a screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao's heart raced and her hands grew clammy.
+ She was unsure if this was the opportunity she had been waiting for.
+ She wondered: Could my big chance really come this easily?
+ She could not believe it, neither did she dare not to believe it.
+ Deep down her heart was in knots.
+ At first she did not want to tell Wu Peizhen about it.
+ She planned to sneak off alone and return before anyone noticed that she was gone.
+ In case nothing came of the screen test, it would be her own little secret and she could pretend that nothing had ever happened.
+ But then, just before the day of her screen test, she broke down and asked Wu Peizhen to go with her so that she would not be too nervous.
+ Wang Qiyao did not sleep well the night before; her face appeared thinner than usual and she had dark rings around her eyes.
+ Wu Peizhen naturally jumped for joy as all kinds of wild ideas went flying through her head.
+ In no time she was talking about organizing press conferences for Wang Qiyao, who regretted telling her friend about the screen test.
+ Neither of them paid attention during their classes that afternoon.
+ When school finally let out the two rushed out of the gate and hopped onto the trolley car.
+ Most of the passengers at that time of the day were housewives with cloth bags in hand, wearing wrinkled cheongsams, the seams of their stockings running crookedly up the back of their legs.
+ They either had messy, disheveled hair or, if they had just walked out of the beauty salon, hair that look like a helmet.
+ Their faces were rigid, as if nothing in the world concerned them.
+ Even the trolley seemed to be afflicted with an air of apathy as it rattled along the tracks.
+ Amid this sea of indifference, Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen were animated and alive.
+ Though neither said a word, centuries of anticipation and excitement were brewing inside them.
+ At three o'clock in the afternoon, the Shanghai boulevards were suffused with weariness, preparing to sign out and change shifts.
+ The sun hung in the western sky above the apartment buildings, glowing ripe and golden.
+ Their hearts were filled with anticipation as if they were about to begin a brand-new day.
+ The director led them into the dressing room and had a makeup artist work on Wang Qiyao.
+ Seeing herself reflected in the mirror, Wang Qiyao could not help feeling that her face was small and her features plain—she realized that a miracle would not occur—and this depressed her.
+ She became completely resigned as the makeup man worked on her.
+ She even closed her eyes for a while to avoid looking in the mirror, uncomfortable and anxious only to get everything over and done with.
+ She even got neurotic and thought that the makeup man, impatient to get finished with her, was applying the makeup hurriedly and crudely.
+ When she opened her eyes once again and looked, she saw the awkward expression of someone who had no desire to be there.
+ The harsh, unmodulated light of the dressing room made everything appear commonplace.
+ Losing all confidence in herself, Wang Qiyao decided to simply let everything ride; she focused on watching the makeup man gradually transform her into someone else—a stranger she did not recognize.
+ It was then that she began to calm down and her tensions eased.
+ By the time the makeup man finished his job, she had even started to regain her sense of humor and joked around a bit with Wu Peizhen, who remarked that Wang Qiyao looked like the Lady in the Moon descending into the secular world, whereupon Wang Qiyao quipped that if she were a Lady in the Moon, she was the kind whose image was found on boxes of mooncakes.
+ The two of them had a good laugh.
+ Once this happened, Wang Qiyao's expression relaxed, her powdered face lit up, and she came to life.
+ As she returned the gaze of the beauty in the mirror, the image she saw no longer seemed quite as distant and unrecognizable.
+ Before long the director sent someone over to escort Wang Qiyao to the set, Wu Peizhen naturally following close behind.
+ The lights were already set up and Wu Peizhen's cousin was up on the scaffolding, smiling down at them.
+ The director, on the other hand, became serious and cold, as if he did not even know them.
+ He had Wang Qiyao sit on a bed.
+ It was a Nanjing-style bed with ornate flower patterns carved into the woodwork, a mirror set into the headboard, and high bed curtains all around—all the signs of rustic elegance.
+ Wang Qiyao was to play a bride in a traditional wedding ceremony.
+ She would be wearing a crimson bridal veil over her head when the groom entered and he would pull it away, slowly revealing her face.
+ The director explained that her character had to be bashful and charming, filled with longing and uncertainty; he unloaded these adjectives on her all at once, expecting her to capture them all with a single expression.
+ Wang Qiyao nodded, but deep down she was completely lost and had no idea where to begin.
+ But having decided to let everything ride, she was actually quite calm and composed.
+ She was aware of everything going on around her, down to the shouts of "Camera" coming from the adjacent set.
+ The next thing she knew, a crimson bridal veil came down over her head.
+ Suddenly everything was swathed in darkness.
+ In that instant her heart began pounding like a drum.
+ She understood that her moment had come and fear welled up inside her as her knees began to tremble faintly.
+ The set lights came on, transforming the darkness into a thick crimson hue.
+ Suddenly she felt feverish, and the tremors worked their way from her knees up through her body.
+ Even her teeth began to chatter.
+ All the mystery and grandeur of the film studio hung suspended in the light shimmering outside her veil.
+ Someone came and straightened out her clothing and then quickly walked off set.
+ The air whisked against her as he passed by.
+ The crimson veil fluttered a bit, for a moment softening the anxieties of that afternoon.
+ She heard a series of "okay"s repeating in rhythmic succession around her, as if converging upon a common target.
+ Finally came the word, "Camera."
+ Wang Qiyao's breathing stopped.
+ She could not catch her breath.
+ She could hear the film running through the camera, a mechanical sound that seemed to override everything.
+ Her mind just went blank.
+ When a hand pulled away her wedding veil, she was so startled that she shrank back with fright.
+ "Cut," the director yelled.
+ The set lights went dim, the crimson veil went back over her head, and they took it once more from the top.
+ As they redid the scene, everything grew fuzzy.
+ Things faded off into the distance, never to reappear, as if they had been an illusion.
+ Then Wang Qiyao snapped out of her daze, her shivering ceased, and her heart rate returned to normal.
+ Her eyes adjusted to the darkness once more and through the wedding veil she could make out silhouettes of people moving around.
+ The set lights came up and this time the shouts of "OK" sounded perfunctory.
+ When the word "Camera" was called out, it too seemed little more than a formality—but this formality still carried with it an air of authority, of unwavering power.
+ She began to prepare the emotions the director wanted to see on her face; the only problem was that she had no inkling of how to act bashful or charming, or what it meant to be filled with longing and uncertainty.
+ Human emotions are not simple symbols that can be called up at will.
+ The crimson wedding veil was lifted to reveal a rigid expression; even the bit of natural charm that she normally had about her was frozen.
+ As soon as he saw her through the eye of the camera, the director sensed that he had made a mistake; Wang Qiyao's was not an artistic beauty, but quite ordinary.
+ It was the kind of beauty to be admired in by close friends and relatives in her own living room, like the shifting moods of everyday life; a retrained beauty, it was not the kind that made waves.
+ It was real, not dramatic—the kind of beauty that people noticed on the street and photo studios displayed in their front windows.
+ Through the camera's lens, it was simply too bland.
+ The director was disappointed, but his disappointment was partly for Wang Qiyao's sake.
+ Her beauty will be buried and lost to the world, he said to himself.
+ Later, in order to make things up to her, he had a photographer friend of his do a photo shoot for her—but this photo shoot turned into something quite extraordinary.
+ One of the photos even made it into the inside front cover of Shanghai Life with the caption, "A Proper Young Lady of Shanghai."
+ And so that is how the screen test ended, just another trifling incident in the life of the film studio.
+ After that, Wang Qiyao stopped going.
+ She wanted to forget the whole affair—that it had ever happened.
+ But the image of that crimson wedding veil and the dazzling studio lights were already imprinted in her mind and reappeared whenever she closed her eyes.
+ There was a strange frisson attached to that scene; it was the most dramatic moment in Wang Qiyao's quiet life.
+ The moment had come and gone in an instant, but it added a dab of melancholic color to her heart.
+ Occasionally, on her way home from school, something would unexpectedly stir up her memory of the screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao was sixteen years old at the time, but that one day's experience left her with the feeling that she had already been through a lot—she felt much older than sixteen.
+ She started to avoid Wu Peizhen, as if the latter had stolen some secret from her.
+ Whenever Wu Peizhen invited her out after school, Wang Qiyao would almost always find some excuse not to go.
+ Several times Wu Peizhen even went to Wang Qiyao's apartment to look for her, but each time Wang Qiyao had the maidservant say that she was not home.
+ Sensing that she was being avoided, Wu Peizhen felt heartbroken, but she held on to the hope that Wang Qiyao would eventually come back to her.
+ Her friendship changed into a kind of pious waiting; she did not even look for any new girlfriends, afraid that they might take Wang Qiyao's place.
+ Wu Peizhen had a faint notion that the reason Wang Qiyao was avoiding her had something to do with that failed screen test, so she too stopped going to the film studio, even breaking off contact with her cousin.
+ The screen test became a source of sorrow for both of them, leaving them with a deep sense of defeat.
+ Things gradually got to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms: running into one another at school, each would make haste to awkwardly get out of the other's way.
+ They sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but, though their eyes never met, they could always feel one another's' presence.
+ A wall of pity grew between them.
+ The incident at the film studio ended with the word "camera," and the result was what they call in the industry a "freeze frame."
+ Gone, never to return, but the memory hangs on for all eternity.
+ Their after-school lives gradually returned to normal; but things were not really the same—something had been snatched away.
+ They were hurt, but neither could say where the pain was.
+ At their girls' school, where rumors usually flew rampant, not a soul knew about Wang Qiyao's screen test; they had succeeded in keeping it completely under wraps.
+ It was implicitly understood between them that they should never broach the subject.
+ Actually, just to be chosen by a director for a screen test would already have been a great honor in the eyes of most girls—any hopes of getting a part would be a long shot in a long shot.
+ This was also what Wang Qiyao thought at first, but once she reached that stage everything changed.
+ Suddenly, a price had been exacted and loss was imminent.
+ Only because Wu Peizhen stepped out of her own shoes and empathized completely with her friend was she able to understand the grief Wang Qiyao was going through.
+
+ 6. 片厂
+ 四十年的故事都是从去片厂这一天开始的。
+ 前一天，吴佩珍就说好，这天要带王琦瑶去片厂玩。
+ 吴佩珍是那类粗心的女孩子。
+ 她本应当为自己的丑自卑的，但因为家境不错，有人疼爱，养成了豁朗单纯的个性，使这自卑变成了谦虚，这谦虚里是很有一些实事求是的精神的。
+ 由这谦虚出发，她就总无意地放大别人的优点，很忠实地崇拜，随时准备奉献她的热诚。
+ 王琦瑶无须提防她有妒忌之心，也无须对她有妒忌之心，相反，她还对她怀有一些同情，因为她的丑。
+ 这同情使王琦瑶变得慷慨了，自然这慷慨是只对吴佩珍一个人的。
+ 吴佩珍的粗心其实只是不在乎，王琦瑶的宽待她是心领的，于是加倍地要待她好，报恩似的。
+ 一来二去的，两人便成了最贴心的朋友。
+ 王琦瑶和吴佩珍做朋友，有点将做人的重头推给吴佩珍的意思。
+ 她的好看突出了吴佩珍的丑，她的精细突出了吴佩珍的粗疏，她的慷慨突出的是吴佩珍的受恩，使吴佩珍负了债。
+ 好在吴佩珍是压得起的，她的人生任务不如王琦瑶来得重，有一点吃老本，也有一点不计较，本是一身轻，也是为王琦瑶分担的意思。
+ 这么一分担，两头便达到平衡，友情逐日加深。
+ 吴佩珍有个表哥是在片厂做照明工，有时来玩，就穿着钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，有些炫耀的样子。
+ 吴佩珍本来对他是不在意的，拉拢他全是为了王琦瑶。
+ 片厂这样的地方是女学生们心向往之的地方，它生产罗曼蒂克，一种是银幕上的，人所周知的电影； 一种是银幕下的，流言蜚语似的明星轶事。
+ 前者是个假，却像真的； 后者是个真，倒像是假的。
+ 片厂里的人生啊，一世当作两世做的。
+ 像吴佩珍这样吃得下睡得着的女孩子，是不大有梦想的，她又只有兄弟，没有姐妹，从小做的是男孩的游戏，对女孩子的窍门反倒不在行了。
+ 但和王琦瑶做朋友以后，她的心却变细了。
+ 她是将片厂当作一件礼物一样献给王琦瑶的。
+ 她很有心机的，将一切都安排妥了，日子也定下了，才去告诉王琦瑶。
+ 不料王琦瑶却还有些勉强，说她这一天正好有事，只能向她表哥抱歉了。
+ 吴佩珍于是就一个劲儿地向王琦瑶介绍片厂的有趣，将表哥平日里吹嘘的那些事迹都搬过来，再加上自己的想象。
+ 事情一时上有些弄反了，去片厂倒是为了照顾吴佩珍似的。
+ 等王琦瑶最终拗不过她，答应换个日子再去的时候，吴佩珍便像又受了一次恩，欢天喜地去找表哥改日子。
+ 其实这一天王琦瑶并非有事，也并非对片厂没兴趣，这只是她做人的方式，越是有吸引力的事就越要保持矜持的态度，是自我保护的意思，还是欲擒故纵的意思？
+ 反正不会是没道理。
+ 吴佩珍要学会这些，还早着呢。
+ 去找表哥的路上，她满心里都是对王琦瑶的感激，觉得她是太给自己面子了。
+ 这表哥是她舅舅家的孩子。
+ 舅舅是个败家子，把杭州城里一爿茧行吃空卖空，就离家出走，也不知去了什么地方。
+ 她母亲平素最怕这门亲戚，上门不是要钱就是要粮，也给过几句难听话，还给过几次钉子碰，后来就渐渐不来了，断了关系。
+ 忽有一日，那表哥再上门时，便是穿着这身钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，还带了两盒素点心，好像发了个宣言似的。
+ 自此，他每过一两月会来一次，说些片厂里的趣事，可大家都淡淡的，只有吴佩珍上了心。
+ 她按了地址去到肇嘉浜找表哥，一片草棚子里，左一个岔，右一个岔，布下了迷魂阵。
+ 一看她就是个外来的，都把目光投过去，待她要问路时，目光又都缩了回去。
+ 等她终于找到表哥的门，表哥又不在，同他合住的也是一个青年，戴着眼镜，穿的却是做工的粗布衣服，让她进屋等。
+ 她有点窘，只站在门口，自然又招来好奇的目光。
+ 天将黑的时候，才见表哥七绕八拐地走来，手里提着一个油浸浸的纸包，想是猪头肉之类的。
+ 她回到家里，已经开晚饭了，她还得编个谎搪塞她父母，也是煞费了苦心。
+ 可她无怨无艾，洗脚时看见脚底走出的泡，也觉得很值得。
+ 这晚上，吴佩珍竟也做了个关于片厂的梦，梦见水银灯下有个盛装的女人，回眸一笑，竟是王琦瑶，不由感动得醒了。
+ 她对王琦瑶的感情，有点像一个少年对一个少女，那种没有欲念的爱情，为她做什么都肯的。
+ 她在黑漆漆的房间里睁着眼，心想：片厂是个什么地方呢？
+ 到了那一天，去往片厂的时候，吴佩珍的兴奋要远超过王琦瑶，几乎按捺不住的。
+ 有同学问她们去哪里，吴佩珍一边说不去哪里，一边在王琦瑶的胳膊上拧一下，再就是拖着王琦瑶快走，好像那同学要追上来，分享她们的快乐似的。
+ 她一路聒噪，引得许多路人回头侧目，王琦瑶告诫几次没告诫住，最后只得停住脚步，说不去了，片厂没到，洋相倒先出够了。
+ 吴佩珍这才收敛了一些。
+ 两人上车，换车，然后就到了片厂。
+ 表哥站在门口正等她们，给她们一人一个牌挂在胸前，表示是厂里的人，便可以随处乱走了。
+ 她们挂好牌，跟了表哥往里走。
+ 先是在空地上走，四处都扔了木板旧布，还有碎砖破瓦，像一个垃圾场，也像一个工地。
+ 迎面来的人，都匆匆的，埋着头走路。
+ 表哥的步子也迈得很快，有要紧事去做似的。
+ 她们两人被甩在后头，互相拉着手，努力地加快步子。
+ 下午三四点的太阳有点人意阑珊的，风贴着地吹，吹起她们的裙摆。
+ 两人心里都有些暗淡，吴佩珍也沉默下来。
+ 三人这样走了一阵，几百步的路感觉倒有十万八千里的样子，那两个跟着的已经没有耐心。
+ 表哥放慢了脚步与她们拉扯片厂里的琐事，却有点不着边际的。
+ 这些琐事在外面听起来是真事，到了里面反倒像是传闻，不大靠得住了，两人心里又有些恍惚。
+ 然后就走进了一座仓库似的大屋，一眼望过去，都是穿了制服的做工的人走来走去，爬上爬下，大声吆喝着。
+ 类似明星的，竟一个也见不着。
+ 她们跟着表哥一阵乱走，一会儿小心头上，一会儿小心脚底，很快就迷失了方向。
+ 头上脚下都是绳索之类的东西，灯光一片明一片暗的。
+ 她们好像忘记了目的，不知来到了什么地方，只是一心一意地走路。
+ 又好像走了十万八千里，表哥站住了脚，让她们就在这边看，他要去工作了。
+ 她们站的这块地方，是有些熙攘的，人们都忙碌着，从她们的身前身后走过。
+ 好几次她们觉得挡了别人的路，忙着让开，不料却撞到另一人的身上。
+ 而明星样的人还是一个不见。
+ 她们惴惴的，心想是来错了，吴佩珍更是愧疚有加，不敢看王琦瑶的脸色。
+ 这时，灯光亮了，好像有十几个太阳相交地升起，光芒刺眼，她们这才看见面前是半间房间的摆设。
+ 那三面墙的房间看起来是布景，可里头的东西样样都是熟透的。
+ 床上的被子是七成新的，烟灰缸里留有半截烟头的，床头柜上的手绢是用过的，揉成了一团，就像是正过着日子，却被拆去了一堵墙，揪出来示众一般。
+ 看了心里有点欢喜，还有点起腻。
+ 因她们站得远，听不见那里在说什么，只见有一个穿睡袍的女人躺在床上，躺了几种姿势，一回是侧身，一回是仰天，还有一回只躺了半个身子，另半个身子垂到地上的。
+ 她的半透明的睡袍裹着身子，床已经皱了，也是有点起腻的。
+ 灯光暗了几次，又亮了几次。
+ 最后终于躺定了，再不动了，灯光再次暗下来。
+ 再一次亮起时，似与前几次都不同了。
+ 前几次的亮是那种敞亮，大放光明，无遮无挡的。
+ 这一次，却是一种专门的亮，那种夜半时分外面漆黑里面却光明的亮。
+ 那房间的景好像退远了一些，却更生动了一些，有点熟进心里去的意思。
+ 王琦瑶注意到那盏布景里的电灯，发出着真实的光芒，莲花状的灯罩，在三面墙上投下波纹的阴影。
+ 这就像是旧景重现，却想不起是何时何地的旧景。
+ 王琦瑶再把目光移到灯下的女人，她陡地明白这女人扮的是一个死去的人，不知是自杀还是他杀。
+ 奇怪的是，这情形并非阴森可怖，反而是起腻的熟。
+ 王琦瑶看不清这女人的长相，只看见她乱蓬蓬的一头鬈发，全堆在床脚头，因她是倒过来脚顶床头，头抵床脚地躺着，拖鞋是东一只，西一只。
+ 片厂里闹哄哄的，货码头似的，“开麦拉”“OK”的叫声此起彼伏，唯有那女人是个不动弹，千年万载不醒的样子。
+ 吴佩珍先有些不耐烦，又因为有点胆大，就拉王琦瑶去别处看。
+ 下一处地方是拍打耳光的，在一个也是三面墙的饭店，全是西装革履的，却冲进一个穷汉，进来就对那做东的打耳光。
+ 做派都有点滑稽的，耳光是打在自己手上，再贴到对方的脸上，却天衣无缝的样子。
+ 吴佩珍喜欢看这个，往复了多少遍都看不厌，直说有趣。
+ 王琦瑶却有些不耐烦，说还是方才那场景有看头，是个正经的片子，不像这，全是插科打诨，猴把戏一样的。
+ 两人又回到方才那棚里，不料人都散了，那床也挪开了，剩几个人在地上收拾东西。
+ 她们疑心走错了地方，要重新去找，却听表哥叫她们，原来，收拾东西的人里头就有表哥。
+ 他让她们等一会儿，再带她们去别处逛，今日有一个棚在做特技呢！
+ 她们只得站在一旁干等。
+ 有人问表哥她们是谁，表哥说了，又问她们在哪个学校读书，表哥说不上来，吴佩珍自己说了，那人就朝她们笑，一口白牙齿在暗中亮了一下。
+ 过后，表哥告诉她俩，这人是导演，在外国留过学的，还会编剧，今天拍的这戏，就是他自编自导的。
+ 说罢，就带上她们去看拍特技，又是烟又是火，还有鬼的。
+ 也都是底下的工人在折腾，留给演员去做的事，只一眨眼。
+ 吴佩珍又要表哥带她们去看明星，表哥却面露难色，说今天哪个棚都没拍明星的戏，说这明星的戏不是哪天都有的，也不是想排哪天就排哪天的，要随着明星的意思。
+ 吴佩珍便揭底似的说：你不是讲每天都可看见谁谁谁的？
+ 王琦瑶见表哥脸上下不来，就圆场道：下回再来吧，天也黑了，家里人要等了！
+ 表哥这就带了她们往外走，路上又遇见那导演一回，竟还记得她们，叫她们某某中学的女学生，很幽默的，两人都红了脸。
+ 回去的电车上，两人就有些懒得说话，听那电车的当当声。
+ 电车上有些空，下班的人都到了家，过夜生活的人又还没有出门。
+ 那片场的经验有些出人意料，说不上是扫兴还是尽兴，总之都是疲乏了。
+ 吴佩珍本来对片厂没有多少准备，她的向往是因王琦瑶而生的向往，她自然是希望片厂越精彩越好，可究竟是什么样的精彩，心中却是没数的，所以她是要看王琦瑶的态度再决定她的意见。
+ 片厂给王琦瑶的感想却有些复杂。
+ 它是不如她想象中的那样神奇，可正因为它的平常，便给她一个唾手可得的印象。
+ 唾手可得的是什么？
+ 她还不知道。
+ 原先的期待是有些落空，但那期待里的紧张却释然了。
+ 从片厂回来几天，她都没什么表示，这使吴佩珍沮丧，以为王琦瑶其实是不喜欢片厂这地方，去片厂全是她多此一举。
+ 有一日，她用作忏悔一样的口气对王琦瑶说，表哥又请她们去片厂玩，她拒绝了。
+ 王琦瑶却转过脸，说：你怎么能这样不懂道理，人家是一片诚心。
+ 吴佩珍瞪大了眼睛，不相信地看着她，王琦瑶被她看得不自在，就转回头说：我的意思是不该不给人家面子，这是你们家的亲戚呀！
+ 这一回，连吴佩珍都看出王琦瑶想去又不说的意思了，她非但不觉得她作假，还有一种怜爱心中生起，心想她看上去是大人，其实还是个孩子呀！
+ 这时候，吴佩珍对王琦瑶的心情又有点像母亲，包容一切的。
+ 从此，片厂就变成她们常去的地方。
+ 拍电影的窍门懂得了不少，知道那拍摄完全不是按着情节的顺序来的，而是一个镜头一个镜头分别拍了，最后才连成的。
+ 拍摄的现场又是要多破烂有多破烂，可是从开麦拉里摄取的画面总是整洁美妙。
+ 炙手可热的大明星她们也真见着了一二回，到了镜头面前，也是道具一般无所作为的。
+ 那电影的脚本则是随意地改变，一转眼死人变活人的。
+ 她们钻进电影的幕后，摸着了奥秘的机关，内心都有一些变化。
+ 片厂的经验确是不寻常的经验，它带有一些人生的含义。
+ 尤其在她们那个年龄，有些虚实不分，真伪不辨； 又尤其是在那样的时代，电影已成为我们生活的一个重要部分。
+ 7. 开麦拉
+ 王琦瑶知道了，拍电影最重要最关键的一瞬，是“开麦拉”的这一瞬，之前全是准备和铺垫。
+ 之后呢？
+ 则是永远的结束。
+ 她看出这一声“开麦拉”的不同寻常的意义，几乎是接近顶点的。
+ 那导演有时让她们看镜头，镜头总是美妙，将杂乱和邋遢都滤去了。
+ 还使暗淡生辉。
+ 镜头里的世界是另一个，经过修改和制作，还有精华的意思。
+ 那导演已成为熟人，她们见他不再脸红。
+ 有几回，表哥不在片厂，她们便直接找他。
+ 他自作主张的，喊她们一个叫“珍珍”，一个叫“瑶瑶”，好像她们成了他戏里的角色似的。
+ 他背地里和片厂的人说，珍珍是个丫头相，不过是荣国府贾母身边的粗使丫头，傻大姐那样的；瑶瑶是小姐样，却是员外家的小姐，祝英台之流的。
+ 他把吴佩珍当小孩子看，喜欢逗她，开些玩笑；对王琦瑶则说有机会要让她上一回镜头，因她的眉眼有些像阮玲玉，趁着人们对阮玲玉的怀念，说不定能捧出一颗明星。
+ 也是带点玩笑的意思，却含蓄得多。
+ 王琦瑶当然也不会认真，只是有点喜欢自己和阮玲玉的相像。
+ 可是有一日，导演竟真的打电话到家里，让她去试一试镜头。
+ 王琦瑶心怦怦跳着，手心有点发凉，她不知道这是不是个机会，她想，机会难道就是这般容易得的吗？
+ 她不相信，又不敢不信，心里有些挣扎。
+ 她本是想不告诉吴佩珍，一个人悄悄地去，再悄悄地回，就算没结果，也只她自己知道，好比没发生过的一样。
+ 可临到那一天，她还是告诉了吴佩珍，要她陪自己一起去，为了壮胆子。
+ 晚上她没睡好，眼睛下有一片青晕，下巴也尖了一些。
+ 吴佩珍自然是雀跃，浮想联翩，转眼间，已经在策划为王琦瑶开记者招待会了。
+ 王琦瑶听她聒噪，便又后悔告诉了她。
+ 这一天的课，两人都没上好，心不知飞到哪里去了。
+ 终于放学，两人便踅出校门，上了电车。
+ 这时间的电车，多是些家庭主妇般的女人，手里拎着布袋，身上的旗袍是有皱痕的，腿后的丝袜也没对准缝，偏了那么一点，头发或是蓬乱，或是理发店刚出来戴了一顶盔似的，脸上表情也是木着的，万事俱不关心的样子。
+ 电车在轨道里哐哐当当地走，也是漠然的表情。
+ 她们俩却是这漠然里的一个活跃，虽然也是不做声，却是有着几百年的大事在酝酿的。
+ 下午三点钟的马路，是有疲惫感的，心里都在准备着结束和换班了。
+ 太阳是在马路西面的楼房上，黄熟的颜色。
+ 她们俩倒好像是去开始这一天的，心里有着许多等待。
+ 导演先将她俩领进化妆室，让一个化妆师来给王琦瑶化妆。
+ 王琦瑶从镜子里看见自己的形象，觉得自己的脸是那么小，五官是那么简单，不会有奇迹发生的样子，不由颓丧起来。
+ 她由化妆师摆弄，听天由命的表情，有一段时间，她闭起眼睛不去看镜子。
+ 她感到十分的难堪，恨不得这一切早点结束；她还有些神经过敏，认为那化妆师也是恨不得早点结束，手的动作难免急躁和粗暴的。
+ 她睁开眼睛再看镜子，镜子里的自己是个尴尬的自己，眼睛鼻子都是不得已的样子。
+ 化妆室的光是充足的平均分配的光，没有抑扬顿挫，看上去都有些平铺直叙的。
+ 王琦瑶对自己没有信心了，反倒是豁出去地，睁大眼睛看那化妆师的手法，看着自己一点一点变得不是自己，成了个陌生人。
+ 这时，她倒平静下来，心情也松弛了，等那化妆师结束工作走开时，她甚至还生出几分幽默感同吴佩珍开玩笑。
+ 吴佩珍说她简直像是嫦娥下凡，她就说嫦娥也是月饼盒上的嫦娥，于是两人都笑。
+ 一笑，表情舒展了，脂粉的颜色里有了活气，便生动起来。
+ 再看那镜子里的美人，也不那么生分和隔膜了。
+ 不一会儿，导演就派人来招呼她去，吴佩珍自然尾随着。
+ 棚里灯架都支好了，那吴佩珍的表哥在一个高处朝着她笑，导演却变得很严肃，六亲不认似的，指定她坐在一个床上，是那种宁式眠床，有着高大的帐篷，架上雕着花，嵌着镜子，是乡下人的华丽。
+ 导演告诉她，她现在是一个旧式婚礼中的新娘，披着红盖头，然后有新郎官来揭盖头，一点一点露出了脸庞。
+ 导演规定她是娇羞的，妩媚的，有憧憬又有担忧的，一股脑儿交给她这些形容词，全要做在一张脸上。
+ 王琦瑶虽是点头，心却茫然，还恍恍的，不知从何着手。
+ 可此时她只是一个豁出去，反倒是很镇定，竟能注意到周围，听见有邻近棚里传出来的“开麦拉”的叫声。
+ 接着，一块红盖头蒙上来了，眼前陡地暗了。
+ 这时，王琦瑶的心才擂鼓似的跳起来。
+ 她领悟这一时刻的来临，心生畏惧，膝盖微微地打颤。
+ 灯光齐明，眼前的暗变成了溶溶的红色，虽是有光，却是不明就里的光。
+ 王琦瑶发热似的，寒颤沿了膝盖升上去，牙齿都磕碰起来。
+ 片厂里的神奇在光里聚集和等候着。
+ 有人走过来，整理她的衣服，又走开了，带来一阵风，红盖头动了一下，抚着她的脸，是这一下午的紧张里的一个温柔。
+ 她听见四周围一连串的“OK”声，是递进的节奏，有几分激越的，齐心奔向一个目标的，最终是一声“开麦拉”。
+ 王琦瑶的呼吸屏住了，透不过气来，她听见开麦拉走片的机械声，这声音盖住了一切，她完全忘记了她该做什么了。
+ 当一只手揭去红盖头的时候，她陡然一惊，往后缩了一下，导演便嚷了一声停。
+ 灯光暗下，红盖头罩上，再从头来起。
+ 再一遍来起就有些人事皆非了。
+ 很多情景远去了，不复再现，本来也是幻觉一样的东西。
+ 王琦瑶清醒过来，寒颤止住了，心跳恢复正常。
+ 红盖头里的暗适应了，能辨出活动的人影。
+ 灯光亮起，是例行公事的，一连串“OK”也是例行公事，那一声“开麦拉”虽是例行公事，也是权威性的，有一点不变的震撼。
+ 她开始依着导演的交代在脸上做准备，却不知该如何娇羞，如何妩媚，如何有憧憬又有担忧。
+ 喜怒哀乐本来也没个符号，连个照搬都没地方去搬的。
+ 红盖头揭起时，她脸上只是木着，连她天生就有的那妩媚也木住了。
+ 导演在镜头里已经觉察到自己的失误，王琦瑶的美不是那种文艺性的美，她的美是有些家常的，是在客堂间里供自己人欣赏的，是过日子的情调。
+ 她不是兴风作浪的美，是拘泥不开的美。
+ 她的美里缺少点诗意，却是忠诚老实的。
+ 她的美不是戏剧性的，而是生活化，是走在马路上有人注目，照相馆橱窗里的美。
+ 从开麦拉里看起来，便过于平淡了。
+ 导演不觉失望，他的失望还有一点为王琦瑶的意思，他想，她的美是要被埋没了。
+ 后来，为了补偿，他请一个摄影的朋友，为王琦瑶拍了一些生活照，这些生活照果真情形大异，其中一张还用在了《上海生活》的封二，以“沪上淑媛”为题名。
+ 试镜头的经历就这样结束了，这是片厂里的小事一桩。
+ 王琦瑶从此不再去片厂了，她是想把这事淡忘，最好是没发生过。
+ 可是罩着红盖头，灯光齐明的情景却长在了心里，眼一闭就会出现的。
+ 那情景有一种莫测的悸动，是王琦瑶平静生活中的一个戏剧性的片刻。
+ 这一片刻的转瞬即逝，在王琦瑶心里留下一笔感伤的色彩。
+ 有时放学走在回家的路上，会有一点不期然的东西唤起去试镜头的那个下午的记忆。
+ 王琦瑶这年是十六岁，这事情使她有了沧桑感，她觉得自己已经不止十六岁这个岁数了。
+ 她还有点躲避吴佩珍，像有什么底细被她窥伺了去似的。
+ 放学吴佩珍约她去哪里，十有九次她找理由拒绝。
+ 吴佩珍有几次上她家找她玩，她也让娘姨说不在家推了。
+ 吴佩珍感觉到王琦瑶的回避，不由黯然神伤。
+ 但她却并不丧失信心，她觉得无论过多少日子，王琦瑶终究会回到她的身边。
+ 她的友情化成虔诚的等待，她甚至没有去交新的女朋友，因不愿让别人侵占王琦瑶的位置。
+ 她还隐约体会到王琦瑶回避的原委，似乎是与那次失败的试镜头有关，她也不再去片厂了，甚至与表哥断了来往。
+ 这次试镜头变成她们两人的伤心事，都怀有一些失败感的。
+ 后来，她们逐渐变得连话也不大讲了，碰面都有些尴尬地匆匆避开。
+ 当她们坐在课堂的两头，虽不对视，可彼此都感觉到对方的存在，有一种类似同情的气氛在她们之间滋生出来。
+ 去片厂的事情是以一声“开麦拉”告终的，这有一种电影里称作“定格”的效果，是一去不返，也是记忆永存。
+ 如今，课余的生活又回复到老样子，而老样子里面又是有一点新的被剥夺，心都是有点受伤的，伤在哪里，且不明白的。
+ 本来见风就是雨的女子学校，对这回王琦瑶试镜头的事，竟无一点声气，瞒得紧紧的。
+ 两人虽然没互相叮嘱，却不约而同地缄口不提。
+ 其实在一般女学生看来，能为导演看上去试一回，已是足够的光荣，成功则是奢望中的奢望。
+ 这也是王琦瑶她们原先的想法，可一旦走到了那一步，情形便不是旧时旧地，人也不是旧人，是付出过代价的，有些损失的。
+ 若非吴佩珍这样将心比心的旁观者，是体尝不到这番心境的。
+
+ Wang Miao drove along Jingmi Road until he was in Miyun County.
+ From there he headed to Heilongtan, climbed up the mountain along a winding road, and arrived at the radio astronomy observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Center.
+ He saw a line of twenty-eight parabolic antenna dishes, each with a diameter of nine meters, like a row of spectacular steel plants.
+ At the end were two tall radio telescopes with dishes fifty meters in diameter, built in 2006.
+ As he drove closer, Wang could not help but think of the background in the picture of Ye and her daughter.
+ But the work of Sha Ruishan, Ye's student, had nothing to do with these radio telescopes.
+ Dr. Sha's lab was mainly responsible for receiving the data transmitted from three satellites: the Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, launched in November of 1989 and about to be retired; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, WMAP, launched in 2003; and Planck, the space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.
+ Cosmic microwave background radiation very precisely matched the thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.7255 K and was highly isotropic—meaning nearly uniform in every direction—with only tiny temperature fluctuations at the parts per million range.
+ Sha Ruishan's job was to create a more detailed map of the cosmic microwave background using observational data.
+ The lab wasn't very big.
+ Equipment for receiving satellite data was squeezed into the main computer room, and three terminals displayed the information sent by the three satellites.
+ Sha was excited to see Wang.
+ Clearly bored with his long isolation and happy to have a visitor, he asked Wang what kind of data he wanted to see.
+ "I want to see the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background."
+ "Can you ... be more specific?"
+ "What I mean is ...
+ I want to see the isotropic fluctuation in the overall cosmic microwave background, between one and five percent," he said, quoting from Shen's email.
+ Sha grinned.
+ Starting at the turn of the century, the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory had opened itself to visitors.
+ In order to earn some extra income, Sha often played the role of tour guide or gave lectures.
+ This was the grin he reserved for tourists, as he had grown used to their astounding scientific illiteracy.
+ "Mr. Wang, I take it you're not a specialist in the field?"
+ "I work in nanotech."
+ "Ah, makes sense.
+ But you must have some basic understanding of the cosmic microwave background?"
+ "I don't know much.
+ I know that as the universe cooled after the big bang, the leftover 'embers' became the cosmic microwave background.
+ The radiation fills the entire universe and can be observed in the centimeter wavelength range.
+ I think it was back in the sixties when two Americans accidentally discovered the radiation when they were testing a supersensitive satellite reception antenna—"
+ "That's more than enough," Sha interrupted, waving his hands.
+ "Then you must know that unlike the local variations we observe in different parts of the universe, the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background is correlated with the expansion of the universe.
+ It's a very slow change measured at the scale of the age of the universe.
+ Even with the sensitivity of the Planck satellite, continuous observation for a million years might not detect any such shift.
+ But you want to see a five percent fluctuation tonight?
+ Do you realize what that would mean?
+ The universe would flicker like a fluorescent tube that's about to burn out!"
+ And it will be flickering for me, Wang thought.
+ "This must be some joke from Professor Ye," Sha said.
+ "Nothing would please me more than to discover that it was a joke," Wang said.
+ He was about to tell Sha that Ye didn't know the details of his request, but he was afraid that Sha would then refuse to help him.
+ "Well, since Professor Ye asked me to help you, let's do the observation.
+ It's not a big deal.
+ If you just need one percent precision, data from the antique COBE is sufficient."
+ As he spoke, Sha typed quickly at the terminal.
+ Soon a flat green line appeared on the screen.
+ "This curve is the real-time measurement of the overall cosmic microwave background—oh, calling it a straight line would be more accurate.
+ The temperature is 2.725±0.002K.
+ The error range is due to the Doppler effect from the motion of the Milky Way, which has already been filtered out.
+ If the kind of fluctuation you anticipate—in excess of one percent—occurs, this line would turn red and become a waveform.
+ I would bet that it's going to stay a flat green line until the end of the world, though.
+ If you want to see it show the kind of fluctuation observable by the naked eye, you might have to wait until long after the death of the sun."
+ "I'm not interfering in your work, am I?"
+ "No.
+ Since you need such low precision, we can just use some basic data from COBE.
+ Okay, it's all set.
+ From now on, if such great fluctuations occur, the data will be automatically saved to disk."
+ "I think it might happen around one o'clock A.M."
+ "Wow, so precise!
+ No problem, since I'm working the night shift, anyway.
+ Have you had dinner yet?
+ Good, then I'll take you on a tour."
+ The night was moonless.
+ They walked along the row of antenna dishes, and Sha pointed to them.
+ "Breathtaking, aren't they?
+ It's too bad that they are all like the ears of a deaf man."
+ "Why?"
+ "Ever since construction was completed, interference has been unceasing in the observational bands.
+ First, there were the paging stations during the eighties.
+ Now, it's the scramble to develop mobile communications networks and cell towers.
+ These telescopes are capable of many scientific tasks—surveying the sky, detecting variable radio sources, observing the remains of supernovae—but we can't perform most of them.
+ We've complained to the State Regulatory Radio Commission many times, never with any results.
+ How can we get more attention than China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom?
+ Without money, the secrets of the universe are worth shit.
+ At least my project only depends on satellite data and has nothing to do with these 'tourist attractions.'"
+ "In recent years, commercial operation of basic research has been fairly successful, like in high-energy physics.
+ Maybe it would be better if the observatories were built in places farther away from cities?"
+ "It all comes down to money.
+ Right now, our only choice is to find technical means to shield against interference.
+ Well, it would be much better if Professor Ye were here.
+ She accomplished a lot in this field."
+ So the topic of conversation turned to Ye Wenjie.
+ And from her student, Wang finally learned about her life.
+ He listened as Sha told of how she witnessed the death of her father during the Cultural Revolution, how she was falsely accused at the Production and Construction Corps, how she then seemed to disappear until her return to Beijing at the beginning of the nineties, when she began teaching astrophysics at Tsinghua, where her father had also taught, until her retirement.
+ "It was only recently revealed that she had spent more than twenty years at Red Coast Base."
+ Wang was stunned.
+ "You mean, those rumors—"
+ "Most turned out to be true.
+ One of the researchers who developed the deciphering system for the Red Coast Project emigrated to Europe and wrote a book last year.
+ Most of the rumors you hear came out of that book.
+ Many who participated in Red Coast are still alive."
+ "That is ... a fantastical legend."
+ "Especially for it to happen during those years—absolutely incredible."
+ They continued to speak for a while.
+ Sha asked the purpose behind Wang's strange request.
+ Wang avoided giving a straight answer, and Sha didn't press.
+ The dignity of a specialist did not allow Sha to express too much interest in a request that clearly went against his professional knowledge.
+ Then they went to an all-night bar for tourists and sat for two hours.
+ As Sha finished one beer after another, his tongue loosened even more.
+ But Wang became anxious, and his mind kept returning to that green line on the terminal in Sha's office.
+ It was only at ten to one in the morning that Sha finally gave in to Wang's repeated pleas to go back to the lab.
+ The spotlights that had lit up the row of radio antennas had been turned off, and the antennas now formed a simple two-dimensional picture against the night sky like a series of abstract symbols.
+ All of them gazed up at the sky at the same angle, as though waiting expectantly for something.
+ The scene made Wang shudder despite the warmth of the spring evening.
+ He was reminded of the giant pendulums in Three Body.
+ They arrived back at the lab at one.
+ As they looked at the terminal, the fluctuation was just getting started.
+ The flat line turned into a wave, the distance between one peak and the next inconstant.
+ The line's color became red, like a snake awakening after hibernation, wriggling as its skin refilled with blood.
+ "It must be a malfunction in COBE!"
+ Sha stared at the waveform, terrified.
+ "It's not a malfunction."
+ Wang's tone was exceedingly calm.
+ He had learned to control himself when faced with such sights.
+ "We'll know soon enough," Sha said.
+ He went to the other two terminals and typed rapidly to bring up the data gathered by the other two satellites, WMAP and Planck.
+ Now three waveforms moved in sync across the three terminals, exactly alike.
+ Sha took out a notebook computer and rushed to turn it on.
+ He plugged in a network cable and picked up the phone.
+ Wang could tell from the one-sided conversation that he was trying to get in touch with the Ürümqi radio astronomy observatory.
+ He didn't explain to Wang what he was doing, his eyes locked onto the browser window on the notebook.
+ Wang could hear his rapid breathing.
+ A few minutes later, a red waveform appeared in the browser window, moving in step with the other three.
+ The three satellites and the ground-based observatory confirmed one fact: The universe was flickering.
+ "Can you print out the waveform?" Wang asked.
+ Sha wiped away the cold sweat on his forehead and nodded.
+ He moved his mouse and clicked "Print."
+ Wang grabbed the first page as soon as it came out of the laser printer, and, with a pencil, began to match the distance between the peaks with the Morse code chart he took out of his pocket.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-long-short-short-short.
+ That's 1108:21:37, Wang thought.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-short-short-short-short—that's 1108:21:36.
+ The countdown continued at the scale of the universe.
+ Ninety-two hours had already elapsed, and only 1,108 hours remained.
+ Sha paced back and forth anxiously, pausing from time to time to look at the sequence of numbers Wang was writing down.
+ "Can't you tell me what's going on?" he shouted.
+ "I can't possibly explain this to you, Dr. Sha.
+ Trust me."
+ Wang pushed away the pile of papers filled with waveforms.
+ As he stared at the sequence of numbers, he said, "Maybe the three satellites and the observatory are all malfunctioning."
+ "You know that's impossible!"
+ "What if it's sabotage?"
+ "Also impossible!
+ To simultaneously alter the data from three satellites and an observatory on Earth?
+ You're talking about a supernatural saboteur."
+ Wang nodded.
+ Compared to the idea of the universe flickering, he would prefer a supernatural saboteur.
+ But Sha then deprived him of this last glimmer of hope.
+ "It's easy to confirm this.
+ If the cosmic microwave background is fluctuating this much, we should be able to see it with our own eyes."
+ "What are you talking about?
+ The wavelength of the cosmic microwave background is seven centimeters.
+ That's five orders of magnitude longer than the wavelength of visible light.
+ How can we possibly see it?"
+ "Using 3K glasses."
+ "Three-K glasses?"
+ "It's a sort of science toy we made for the Capital Planetarium.
+ With our current level of technology, we could take the six-meter horn antenna used by Penzias and Wilson almost half a century ago to discover the cosmic microwave background and miniaturize it to the size of a pair of glasses.
+ Then we added a converter in the glasses to compress the detected radiation by five orders of magnitude so that seven-centimeter waves are turned into visible red light.
+ This way, visitors can put on the glasses at night and observe the cosmic microwave background on their own.
+ And now, we can use it to see the universe flicker."
+ "Where can I find these glasses?"
+ "At the Capital Planetarium.
+ We made more than twenty pairs."
+ "I must get my hands on a pair before five."
+ Sha picked up the phone.
+ The other side picked up only after a long while.
+ Sha had to expend a lot of energy to convince the person awakened in the middle of the night to go to the planetarium and wait for Wang's arrival in an hour.
+ As Wang left, Sha said, "I won't go with you.
+ What I've seen is enough, and I don't need any more confirmation.
+ But I hope that you will explain the truth to me when you feel the time is right.
+ If this phenomenon should lead to some research result, I won't forget you."
+ Wang opened the car door and said, "The flickering will stop at five in the morning.
+ I'd suggest you not pursue it after this.
+ Believe me, you won't get anywhere."
+ Sha stared at Wang for a long time and then nodded.
+ "I understand.
+ Strange things have been happening to scientists lately...."
+ "Yes."
+ Wang ducked into the car.
+ He didn't want to discuss the subject any further.
+ "Is it our turn?"
+ "It's my turn, at least."
+ Wang started the engine.
+ An hour later, Wang arrived at the new planetarium and got out of the car.
+ The bright lights of the city penetrated the translucent walls of the immense glass building and dimly revealed its internal structure.
+ Wang thought that if the architect had intended to express a feeling about the universe, the design was a success:
+ The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed.
+ The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked.
+ But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.
+ The sleepy-eyed planetarium staffer was waiting by the door for Wang.
+ He handed him a small suitcase and said, "There are five pairs of 3K glasses in here, all fully charged.
+ The left button switches it on.
+ The right dial is for adjusting brightness.
+ I have a dozen more pairs upstairs.
+ You can look as much as you like, but I'm going to take a nap now in the room over there.
+ This Dr. Sha must be mental."
+ He went into the dim interior of the planetarium.
+ Wang opened the suitcase on the backseat of his car and took out a pair of 3K glasses.
+ It resembled the display inside the panoramic viewing helmet of the V-suit.
+ He put the glasses on and looked around.
+ The city looked the same as before, only dimmer.
+ Then he remembered that he had to switch them on.
+ The city turned into many hazy glowing halos.
+ Most were fixed, but a few flickered or moved.
+ He realized that these were sources of radiation in the centimeter range, all now converted to visible light.
+ At the heart of each halo was a radiation source.
+ Because the original wavelengths were so long, it was impossible to see their shapes clearly.
+ He lifted his head and saw a sky glowing with a faint red light.
+ Just like that, he was seeing the cosmic microwave background.
+ The red light had come from more than ten billion years ago.
+ It was the remnants of the big bang, the still-warm embers of Creation.
+ He could not see any stars.
+ Normally, since visible light would be compressed to invisible by the glasses, each star should appear as a black dot.
+ But the diffraction of centimeter-wave radiation overwhelmed all other shapes and details.
+ Once his eyes had grown used to the sight, Wang could see that the faint red background was indeed pulsing.
+ The entire sky flickered, as if the universe was but a quivering lamp in the wind.
+ Standing under the flashing dome of the night sky, Wang suddenly felt the universe shrink until it was so small that only he was imprisoned in it.
+ The universe was a cramped heart, and the red light that suffused everything was the translucent blood that filled the organ.
+ Suspended in the blood, he saw that the flickering of the red light was not periodic—the pulsing was irregular.
+ He felt a strange, perverse, immense presence that could never be understood by human intellect.
+ Wang took off the 3K glasses and sat down weakly on the ground, leaning against the wheel of his car.
+ The city at night gradually recovered the reality of visible light.
+ But his eyes roamed, trying to capture other sights.
+ By the entrance of the zoo across the street, there was a row of neon lights.
+ One of the lights was about to burn out and flickered irregularly.
+ Nearby, a small tree's leaves trembled in the night breeze, twinkling without pattern as they reflected streetlight.
+ In the distance, the red star atop the Beijing Exhibition Center's Russian-style spire reflected the light from the cars passing below, also twinkling randomly....
+ Wang tried to interpret the flickers as Morse code.
+ He even felt that the wrinkles in the flags flapping next to him and the ripples in the puddle on the side of the road might be sending him messages.
+ He struggled to understand all the messages, and felt the passing of the countdown, second by second.
+ He didn't know how long he stayed there.
+ The planetarium staffer finally emerged and asked him whether he was done.
+ But when he saw Wang's face, sleep disappeared from the staffer's eyes and was replaced by fear.
+ He packed up the 3K glasses, stared at Wang for a few seconds, and quickly left with the suitcase.
+ Wang took out his mobile and dialed Shen Yufei's number.
+ She picked up right away.
+ Perhaps she was also suffering from insomnia.
+ "What happens at the end of the countdown?" Wang asked.
+ "I don't know."
+ She hung up.
+ What can it be?
+ Maybe my own death, like Yang Dong's.
+ Or maybe it will be a disaster like the great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean more than a decade ago.
+ No one will connect it to my nanotech research.
+ Could it be that every previous great disaster, including the two World Wars, was also the result of reaching the end of ghostly countdowns?
+ Could it be that every time there was someone like me, who no one thought of, who bore the ultimate responsibility?
+ Or maybe it signals the end of the whole world.
+ In this perverse world, that would be a relief.
+ One thing was certain.
+ No matter what was at the end of the countdown, in the remaining one thousand or so hours, the possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons, until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.
+ Wang ducked back into the car and left the planetarium.
+ Just before dawn, the roads were relatively empty.
+ But he didn't dare to drive too fast, feeling that the faster the car moved, the faster the countdown would go.
+ When a glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky, he parked and walked around aimlessly.
+ His mind was empty of thoughts: Only the countdown pulsed against the dim red background of cosmic radiation.
+ He seemed to have turned into nothing but a simple timer, a bell that tolled for he knew not whom.
+ The sky brightened.
+ He was tired, so he sat down on a bench.
+ When he lifted his head to see where his subconscious had brought him, he shivered.
+ He sat in front of St. Joseph's Church at Wangfujing.
+ In the pale white light of dawn, the church's Romanesque vaults appeared as three giant fingers pointing out something in space for him.
+ As Wang got up to leave, he was held back by a snippet of hymnal music.
+ It wasn't Sunday, so it was likely a choir rehearsal.
+ The song was "Come, Gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove."
+ As he listened to the solemn, sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe had shrunk until it was the size of an empty church.
+ The domed ceiling was hidden by the flashing red light of the background radiation, and he was an ant crawling through the cracks in the floor.
+ He felt a giant, invisible hand caressing his trembling heart, and he was once again a helpless babe.
+ Something deep in his mind that had once held him up softened like wax and collapsed.
+ He covered his eyes and began to cry.
+ Wang's cries were interrupted by laughter.
+ "Hahaha, another one bites the dust!"
+ He turned around.
+ Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.
+
+ 汪淼驱车沿京密路到密云县，再转至黑龙潭，又走了一段盘山路，便到达中科院国家天文观测中心的射电天文观测基地。
+ 他看到二十八面直径为九米的抛物面天线在暮色中一字排开，像一排壮观的钢铁植物，2006年建成的两台高大的五十米口径射电望远镜天线矗立在这排九米天线的尽头，车驶近后，它们令汪淼不由想起了那张杨冬母女合影的背景。
+ 但叶文洁的学生从事的项目与这些射电望远镜没有什么关系，沙瑞山博士的实验室主要接收三颗卫星的观测数据：1989年11月升空、即将淘汰的微波背景探测卫星COBE，2003年发射的威尔金森微波各向异性探测卫星WMAP和2009年欧洲航天局发射的普朗克高精度宇宙微波背景探测卫星Planek。
+ 宇宙整体的微波背景辐射频谱非常精确地符合温度为2.726K的黑体辐射谱，具有高度各向同性，但在不同局部也存在大约百万分之五涨落的幅度。
+ 沙瑞山的工作就是根据卫星观测数据，重新绘制一幅更精确的全宇宙微波辐射背景图。
+ 这个实验室不大，主机房中挤满了卫星数据接收设备，有三台终端分别显示来自三颗卫星的数据。
+ 沙瑞山见到汪淼，立刻表现出了那种长期在寂寞之地工作的人见到来客的热情，问他想了解哪方面的观测数据。
+ “我想观测宇宙背景辐射的整体波动。”
+ “您能…… 说具体些吗？”
+ 沙瑞山看汪淼的眼神变得奇怪起来。
+ “就是，宇宙3K微波背景辐射整体上的各向同性的波动，振幅在百分之一至百分之五之间。”
+ 沙瑞山笑笑，早在本世纪初，密云射电天文基地就对游客开放参观，为挣些外快，沙瑞山时常做些导游或讲座的事，这种笑容就是他回答游客（他已适应了他们那骇人的科盲）问题时常常露出的。
+ “汪先生，您…… 不是搞这个专业的吧？”
+ “我搞纳米材料。”
+ “哦，那就对了。
+ 不过，对于宇宙3K背景辐射，您大概有个了解吧？”
+ “知道的不多。
+ 目前的宇宙起源理论认为，宇宙诞生于距今约一百四十亿年前的一次大爆炸。
+ 在诞生早期，宇宙温度极高，随后开始冷却，形成被称为微波背景辐射的‘余烬’。
+ 这种弥漫全宇宙的残留背景辐射，在厘米波段上是可以观测到的。
+ 好像是在一九六几年吧，两个美国人在调试一个高精度卫星接收天线时意外地发现了宇宙背景辐射……”
+ “足够了，”沙瑞山挥手打断了汪淼的话，“那你就应该知道，与我们观测的不同部分的微小不均匀不同，宇宙整体辐射背景波动是随着宇宙的膨胀，在宇宙时间尺度上缓慢变化的，以Planck卫星的精度，直到一百万年后都未必能测出这种变化，你却想在今天晚上发现它百分之五的波动？！
+ 知道这意味着什么吗？
+ 这意味着整个宇宙像一个坏了的日光灯管那样闪烁！”
+ 而且是为我闪烁，汪淼心里说。
+ “叶老师这是在开什么玩笑。”
+ 沙瑞山摇摇头说。
+ “但愿真是个玩笑。”
+ 汪淼说，本想告诉他，叶文洁并不知道详情，但又怕因此招致他的拒绝，不过这倒是他的心里话。
+ “既然是叶老师交待的，就观测吧，反正也不费劲，百分之一的精度。
+ 用老古董COBE就行了。”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在终端上忙活起来，很快屏幕上出现一条平直的绿线，“你看，这就是当前宇宙整体背景辐射的实时数值曲线，哦，应该叫直线才对，数值是2.726±0.010K，那个误差是银河系运动产生的多普勒效应，已经滤掉了。
+ 如果发生你所说的超过百分之一振幅的波动，这条线就会变红并将波动显示出来。
+ 我敢打赌直到世界末日它也是条绿直线，要看到它显现肉眼看得到的变化，可能比看太阳毁灭还要等更长的时间。”
+ “这不会影响您的正常工作吧？”
+ “当然不会，那么粗的精度，用COBE观察数据的边角料就足够了。
+ 好了，从现在开始，如果那伟大的波动出现，数值会自动存盘。”
+ “可能要等到凌晨一点。”
+ “哇，这么精确？
+ 没关系，反正我本来就是值夜班。
+ 您吃饭了吗？
+ 那好，我带您去参观一下吧。”
+ 这一夜没有月亮，他们沿着长长的天线阵列漫步。
+ 沙瑞山指着天线说：“壮观吧？
+ 可惜都是聋子的耳朵。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “自它们建成以来，在观测频段上就干扰不断，先是上世纪八十年代末的寻呼台，到现在是疯狂发展的移动通信。
+ 这些米波综合孔径射电望远镜能做的那些项目，像米波巡天、射电变源、超新星遗迹研究等等，大部分都不能正常开展。
+ 多次找过无委会（国家无线电管理委员会），没有用，我们能玩得过中国移动、联通、网通？
+ 没有钱，宇宙奥秘算个球！
+ 好在我的项目靠卫星数据，与这些‘旅游景观’无关了。”
+ “近年来很多基础研究的商业运行还是很成功的，比如高能物理。
+ 把观测基地建到离城市远些的地方应该好些吧？”
+ “那还是钱的问题。
+ 就目前而言，只能是在技术上屏蔽干扰。
+ 唉，叶老师要在就好了，她在这方面造诣很深。”
+ 于是话题转到叶文洁身上。
+ 从她的学生那里，汪淼得知了她那历经风霜的一生：
+ 他听沙瑞山讲她如何目睹父亲在“文革”中的惨死，讲她后来在建设兵团被诬陷，后来杳无音讯； 九十年代初才又回到了这座城市，在父亲曾工作过的大学中讲授天体物理学直到退休。
+ “最近才知道，她那二十多年，是在红岸基地度过的。”
+ “红岸？！”
+ 汪淼吃惊地停住了脚步，“难道那些传说……”
+ “大部分是真的。
+ 红岸自译解系统的一名研制者移民到欧洲，去年写了一本书，你所说的传说大多来自于那本书，据我了解是真的。
+ 红岸工程的参与者大都还健在。”
+ “这可真是…… 传奇啊！”
+ “尤其是发生在那个年代，更是传奇中的传奇。” ……
+ 他们又谈了一会儿，沙瑞山问起进行这次奇怪观测的目的，汪淼避而不答，他也就没有再问。
+ 显然，一个专家的尊严，不允许他对这种违反专业常识的观测表现出过多的兴趣。
+ 然后他们到一间为游客开的通宵酒吧中去坐了两个多小时，沙瑞山一杯接着一杯地灌啤酒，变得更加健谈，而汪淼却早已心神不定，脑子里不断地浮现出那条绿色直线。
+ 直到差十分钟凌晨一点时，沙瑞山才接受了汪淼的多次提议，起身返回实验室。
+ 这时，照向射电天线阵列的聚光灯已经熄灭，天线在夜空下变成了简明的黑色二维图案，仿佛是一排抽象的符号，以同一个仰角齐齐地仰望着宇宙，似乎在等待着什么。
+ 这景象令汪淼不寒而栗，他想起了《三体》中的那些巨摆。
+ 回到实验室时正好是凌晨一点，当他们将目光投向终端屏幕时，波动刚刚出现，直线变成了曲线，出现了间隔不一的尖尖的波峰，颜色也变红了，如同一条冬眠后的蛇开始充血蠕动了。
+ “肯定是COBE卫星的故障！”
+ 沙瑞山惊恐地盯着曲线讲。
+ “不是故障。”
+ 汪淼平静地说，在这样的事情面前，他已经初步学会了控制自己。
+ “我们马上就能知道！”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在另外两台终端上快速操作起来。
+ 很快，他调出了另外两颗卫星WMAP和Planck的宇宙背景辐射实时数据，并将其变化显示为曲线——
+ 三条曲线在同步波动，一模一样。
+ 沙瑞山又搬出一台笔记本电脑，手忙脚乱地启动系统，插上宽带网线，然后打电话—— 汪淼听出他在联系乌鲁木齐射电观测基地——然后等待着。
+ 他没有对汪淼解释什么，两眼死盯着屏幕上的浏览器，汪淼能听到他急促的呼吸声：
+ 几分钟后，浏览器上出现了一个坐标窗口，一条红色曲线在窗口上出现，与另外三条进行着精确同步的波动。
+ 这样，三颗卫星和一套地面观测设备同时证实了一件事：宇宙在闪烁！
+ “能将前面的曲线打印出来吗？” 汪淼问。
+ 沙瑞山抹了一把头上的冷汗，点点头，移动鼠标启动了打印程序。
+ 汪淼迫不及待地抓过激光打印机吐出的第一张纸，用一枝铅笔划过曲线，将波峰问的距离与他刚拿出来的那张莫尔斯电码表对照起来。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长长短短短，这是1108：21：37。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长短短短短，这是1108：21：36。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、短短短短短，这是1108：21：35。 ……
+ 倒计时在宇宙尺度上继续，已经过去了92小时，还剩1108小时？
+ 沙瑞山焦躁地来回踱步，不时在汪淼身后停下来看看他正在写出的那一串数字。
+ “你真的不能把实情告诉我吗？！”
+ 他耐不住大声问。
+ “沙博士，相信我，一时说不清的。”
+ 汪淼推开那一堆印着波动曲线的纸，盯着那行倒计时数字，“也许，三颗卫星和一个地面观测点都出现了故障。”
+ “你知道这不可能！”
+ “如果有人故意破坏呢？”
+ “也不可能！
+ 同时改变三颗卫星和一个地面观测站的数据？
+ 那这破坏也有些超自然了。”
+ 汪淼点点头，比起宇宙闪烁来，他宁愿接受这个超自然。
+ 但沙瑞山立刻抽走了他怀中这唯一的一根救命稻草。
+ “要想最终证实这一切，其实很简单。
+ 宇宙背景辐射这样幅度的波动，已经大到我们能用肉眼觉察的程度。”
+ “你胡说什么？
+ 现在是你在违反常识了：背景辐射的波长是7cm，比可见光大了七八个数量级，怎么能看到？”
+ “用3K眼镜。”
+ “3K眼镜？”
+ “是我们为首都天文馆做的一个科普小玩意儿。
+ 现在的技术，已经能将彭齐阿斯和威尔逊在四十多年前用于发现3K背景辐射的二十英尺的喇叭形天线做成眼镜大小，并且在这个眼镜中设置一个转换系统，将接收到的背景辐射的波长压缩七个数量级，将7cm波转换成红光。
+ 这样，观众在夜里戴上这种眼镜，就能亲眼看到宇宙的3K背景辐射，现在，也能看到宇宙闪烁。”
+ “这东西现在在哪儿？”
+ “在天文馆，有二十副呢。”
+ “我必须在五点以前拿到它。”
+ 沙瑞山拿起电话拨了个号码，对方很长时间才接起电话，沙瑞山费尽口舌才说服那个被半夜叫醒的人一小时后在天文馆等汪淼。
+ 临别时沙瑞山说：“我就不同您去了，刚才看到的已经足够，我不需要这样的证明。
+ 我还是希望您能在适当的时候把实情告诉我，如果这种现象引出什么研究成果的话，我不会忘记您的。”
+ “闪烁在凌晨五点就会停止，以后别去深究它吧，相信我，不会有什么成果的。”
+ 汪淼扶着车门说。
+ 沙瑞山对着汪淼注视良久，点点头：“明白了，现在科学界出了一些事……”
+ “是的。”
+ 汪淼说着，钻进车里，他不想把这个话题继续下去了。
+ “轮到我们了吗？”
+ “至少轮到我了。”
+ 汪淼说着发动了车子。
+ 汪淼一小时后到达市内，他在新天文馆前下了车。
+ 城市午夜的灯光透过这栋巨大玻璃建筑的透明幕墙，将内部的结构隐隐约约显现出来。
+ 汪淼现在体会到，如果新天文馆的建筑师想表达对宇宙的感觉，那他成功了——
+ 越透明的东西越神秘，宇宙本身就是透明的，只要目力能及，你想看多远就看多远，但越看越神秘。
+ 那名睡眼惺忪的天文馆工作人员已经在门口等汪淼了，他把一个手提箱递给汪淼，“这里面有五副3K眼镜，都是充好电的，左边的按钮是开关，右边是光度调节。
+ 上面还有十几副，你想怎么看就怎么看吧，我先去睡会儿，就在靠门口那个房间。
+ 这个沙博士，真是个神经病。”
+ 说完转身走进昏暗的馆内。
+ 汪淼将箱子放到车座上打开，拿出一副3K眼镜，这东西很像他刚用过的V装具中的头盔显示器。
+ 他拿起一副走到车外戴上，透过镜片看到的城市夜景没有变化，只是暗了些，这时他才想起要将开关打开，立刻，城市化作一团团朦胧的光晕，大部分亮度固定，还有一些闪烁或移动着。
+ 他知道，这都是被转化为可见光的厘米微波，每团光晕的中心就是一个发射源，由于波长的原因，不可能看清形状。
+ 他抬起头，看到了一个发着暗红色微光的天空，就这样，他看到了宇宙背景辐射，这红光来自于一百多亿年前，是大爆炸的延续，是创世纪的余温。
+ 看不到星星，本来，由于可见光波段已被推至不可见，星星应该是一个个黑点，但厘米波的衍射淹没了一切形状和细节。
+ 当汪淼的眼睛适应了这一切后，他看到了天空的红光背景在微微闪动，整个太空成一个整体在同步闪烁，仿佛整个宇宙只是一盏风中的孤灯。
+ 站在这闪烁的苍穹下，汗淼突然感到宇宙是这么小，小得仅将他一人禁锢于其中。
+ 宇宙是一个狭小的心脏或子宫，这弥漫的红光是充满于其中的半透明的血夜，他悬浮于血液中，红光的闪烁周期是不规则的，像是这心脏或子宫不规则地脉动，他从中感受到了一个以人类的智慧永远无法理解的怪异、变态的巨大存在。
+ 汪淼摘下3K眼镜，虚弱地靠着车轮坐在地上。
+ 在他的眼中，午夜的城市重新恢复了可见光波段所描绘的现实图景，但他的目光游移，在捕捉另外一些东西：
+ 对面动物园大门旁的一排霓虹灯中有一根灯管坏了，不规则地闪烁着；近处的一棵小树上的树叶在夜风中摇动，反射着街灯的光，不规则地闪烁着；远处北京展览馆俄式尖顶上的五角星也在反射着下面不同街道上车灯的光，不规则地闪烁着……
+ 汪淼按莫尔斯电码努力破译着这些闪烁。
+ 他甚至觉得，旁边几幅彩旗在微风中飘出的皱褶、路旁一洼积水表面的涟漪，都向他传递着莫尔斯电码……
+ 他努力地破译着，感受着幽灵倒计时的流逝。
+ 不知过了多久，那个天文馆的工作人员出来了，问汪淼看完了没有。
+ 当看到他时，他的样子使那人双眼中的睡意一下子消失了。
+ 收拾好了3K眼镜的箱子，那人又盯着汪淼看了几秒钟，提着箱子快步走了回去。
+ 汪淼拿出手机，拨通了申玉菲的电话，她很快就接了，也许她也度过一个不眠之夜。
+ “倒计时的尽头是什么？” 汪淼无力地问。
+ “不知道。”
+ 说了这简短的三个字后，电话挂断了。
+ 是什么？
+ 也许是自己的死亡，像杨冬那样；也许是一场像前几年印度洋海啸那样的大灾难，谁也不会将其与自己的纳米研究项目相联系（由此联想到，以前的每一次大灾难，包括两次世界大战，是否都是一次次幽灵倒计时的尽头？
+ 都有一个谁都想不到的像自己这样的人要负的最终责任）；也许是全世界的彻底毁灭，在这个变态的宇宙中，那倒对谁都是一种解脱……
+ 有一点可以肯定，不管幽灵倒计时的尽头是什么，在这剩下的千余个小时中，对尽头的猜测将像恶魔那样残酷地折磨他，最后在精神上彻底摧毁他。
+ 汪淼钻进车子，离开了天文馆，在城市里漫无目的地开着。
+ 黎明前，路上很空，但他不敢开快，仿佛车开得快，倒计时走得也快。
+ 当东方出现一线晨光时，他将车停在路边，下车走了起来，同样漫无目标的。
+ 他的意识中一片空白，只有倒计时在那暗红的背景辐射上显现着，跳动着，他自己仿佛变成了一个单纯的计时器，一口不知道为谁而呜的丧钟。
+ 天亮了起来，他走累了，在一条长椅上坐下来。
+ 当他抬头看看自己下意识走到的目的地时，不由打了个寒颤。
+ 他正坐在王府井天主教堂前。
+ 在黎明惨白的天空下，教堂的罗马式尖顶像三根黑色的巨指，似乎在为他指出冥冥太空中的什么东西。
+ 汪淼起身要走，一阵从教堂传出的圣乐留住了他。
+ 今天不是礼拜日，这可能是唱诗班为复活节进行的排练，唱的是这个节日弥撒中常唱的《圣灵光照》。
+ 在圣乐的庄严深远中，汪淼再次感到宇宙变小了，变成了一座空旷的教堂，穹顶隐没于背景辐射闪烁的红光中，他则是这宏伟教堂地板砖缝中的一只小蚂蚁。
+ 他感觉到自己那颗颤抖的心灵被一只无形的巨手抚摸着，一时间又回到了脆弱无助的孩童时代，意识深处硬撑着的某种东西像蜡一样变软了，崩溃了。
+ 他双手捂着脸哭了起来。
+ “哈哈哈，又放倒了一个！”
+ 汪淼的哭泣被身后的一阵笑声打断，他扭头一看，大史站在那里，嘴里吐出一口白烟。
+
+ I did not leave that night—Chen Qingyang caught me and asked me to stay in the name of our great friendship.
+ She admitted that she'd been wrong to slap me, and that she hadn't treated me well.
+ But she said my great friendship was phony, and the reason I had tricked her into coming was to study her anatomy.
+ I said if she thought I was a faker, why did she believe me?
+ I did want to study her anatomy, but that was with her permission, too.
+ If she didn't like the idea, she could have told me before.
+ In any case, slapping me was unfair.
+ She laughed hard for a while and said she simply couldn't bear the sight of that thing on my body.
+ It looked silly and shameless, and whenever she saw him, she just couldn't help getting angry.
+ We didn't have a stitch on while we argued.
+ My little Buddha still stuck out, glittering in the moonlight as if wrapped in plastic.
+ I was a little offended by what she said and she realized that too.
+ So to make peace, she softened her tone and said, "Anyway, he is breathtakingly ugly—don't you agree?"
+ Standing there like an angry cobra, the thing was indeed homely.
+ I said, since you don't even want to look at him, let's just forget the whole thing.
+ I began to put on my pants, but again she said, Don't!
+ So I started smoking.
+ The moment I had the cigarette finished, she embraced me and we did it on the grass.
+ Until my twenty-first birthday I was a virgin, but that night I lured Chen Qingyang up the mountain with me.
+ At first there was moonlight, then the moon set and a sky full of stars came out, as numerous as dewdrops in the morning.
+ There was no wind that night either; the mountain was very still.
+ Having made love to Chen Qingyang, I was no longer a virgin.
+ However, I wasn't feeling happy at all.
+ That was because when I was doing it, she didn't make a sound; she simply put her arms under her head and looked at me in a very thoughtful way.
+ So from beginning to end it was just my solo performance.
+ In fact, I didn't last too long.
+ I finished almost right away.
+ After that I was angry and upset.
+ Chen Qingyang said she couldn't believe it: I actually had the impudence to display my ugly male organ in front of her, without feeling the least embarrassed.
+ The thing didn't feel embarrassed either; it just forced its way straight into the hole between her thighs.
+ Because there is this hole in a woman's body, a man thinks he has to use it, which just doesn't make sense.
+ When she had a husband before, he did this to her every day.
+ All the time she kept the question to herself, waiting for the day when he felt ashamed of himself and would explain why he did this to her.
+ But he never apologized, and then he went to prison.
+ These were things I didn't want to hear.
+ So I asked her if she hadn't felt like doing it, why had she agreed?
+ She said she didn't want to be considered small-minded.
+ I said, You're a small-minded person anyway.
+ Then she said, Never mind, let's not fight about it.
+ She told me to return that evening, and we'd try it one more time.
+ Maybe she'd like it.
+ I didn't say anything.
+ In the foggy dawn, I left her and went down the mountain to herd buffalo.
+ I didn't go to see her that night, instead I went to the hospital, the reason being: when I got to the cattle pen in the morning, a bunch of people couldn't wait for me and had opened the pen and dragged the buffalo out.
+ Everyone was trying to pick out a strong one for plowing the fields.
+ A local youth called Shan Men Er was pulling out a large white one.
+ I went over to tell him that the buffalo had been bitten by a poisonous snake and couldn't work.
+ He didn't seem to hear me, so I snatched the tether from him and he slapped me without thinking.
+ I shoved him right in the chest, pushing him down on his butt.
+ Then people began to gather, forming a tight ring around us and urging us to fight.
+ With the students from Beijing on one side and the country boys on the other, everyone chose a weapon, either a wooden stick or a leather belt.
+ They argued for a while, then decided not to fight but to make Shan Men Er and I wrestle.
+ Unable to beat me at wrestling, Shan Men Er began to punch me.
+ I kicked him into a manure pit right in front of the cattle pen for a shit bath.
+ He got up, grabbed a pitchfork, and tried to stab me, but somebody stopped him.
+ That was what happened in the morning.
+ When I came back from herding buffalo in the evening, the team leader accused me of beating peasants, saying that he was going to call a meeting to denounce me.
+ I told him that he could take his chances and give me trouble, but I was no pushover.
+ I also told him that I would get some people together for a gang fight.
+ The team leader said he didn't want to give me a hard time; it was Shan Men Er's mother who was giving him a hard time.
+ The woman was a widow, a real bitch.
+ He said that's the way it goes around here.
+ Later he said he was not going to arrange a denouncing meeting but a helping meeting.
+ I could just stand in front of people and do a self-criticism.
+ If I still didn't agree, he was going to let the widow come after me.
+ The meeting was a complete mess.
+ The locals all talked at once, saying that the city students had gone too far—we not only took their chickens and stole their dogs, but also beat their people.
+ The city students said, That's bullshit!
+ Who stole your chickens and dogs?
+ Did you catch us in the act?
+ We're here to build up our country's borderland.
+ We aren't some criminals in exile.
+ Why should we put up with casual slander?
+ Standing in front of the crowd, I didn't do self-criticism but called them names.
+ I didn't expect Shan Men Er's mother to sneak up from behind, pick up a heavy stool, and slam my lower back, right on my old injury.
+ I passed out instantly.
+ By the time I came around, Luo Xiaosi had gathered a group of city students and was threatening to burn the cattle pen.
+ He also said he'd make Shan Men Er's mother pay with her life.
+ The team leader took a bunch of locals to stop them.
+ Meanwhile, the vice team leader told someone to take me to the hospital on an ox cart.
+ The nurse said they shouldn't try to move me since my back was broken, and I'd be done for.
+ I said, My back seems OK and you guys can just carry me.
+ However, since none of them was sure about whether or not my back was broken, they were all afraid to move me.
+ So I had no choice but to stay put.
+ Finally, the team leader came over and said, Go phone Chen Qingyang.
+ Let her check his back.
+ After a short while, Chen Qingyang ran over, with messy hair and puffy eyelids.
+ The first thing she said was: Don't worry.
+ If you're paralyzed, I'll take care of you for the rest of my life.
+ Then she checked my back and her diagnosis was the same as mine.
+ So they carried me to the ox cart and sent me to the hospital at the farm headquarters.
+ That night Chen Qingyang accompanied me to the hospital and waited until the x-ray of my lower back was developed.
+ She left after making sure everything was fine.
+ She said she would come back to visit me in a couple of days, but she never did.
+ I was hospitalized for a whole week, and once I could get around, I went straight back to see her.
+ When I walked into Chen Qingyang's clinic, I carried so many things on my back that my pack was overflowing.
+ In addition to a wok, bowls, a basin, and ladle, there was enough food for two of us to eat for an entire month.
+ When she saw me come into her clinic, she gave me a faint smile and said, Are you completely recovered?
+ Where are you going with all that stuff?
+ I said I was going to the Qingping thermal springs to bathe.
+ She leaned back languidly in her chair and said, That's a great idea.
+ The thermal springs might cure your old injury.
+ I said I wasn't really going to the thermal springs.
+ I just wanted to stay on the back slope of the mountain for a few days.
+ She said there is nothing on the back of the mountain.
+ Better go to the thermal springs.
+ The Qingping thermal springs were mud pools located in a valley, surrounded by nothing but wild, grassy hills.
+ The people who built huts on the hills and lived there year-round were usually patients with a variety of diseases.
+ If I went there, not only wouldn't it cure the pain in my lower back, but worse, I might get leprosy.
+ However, the lowland on the back slope of the deserted mountain was crisscrossed with gullies and ditches; and fragrant grass grew lush in the sparse woods.
+ I could build a thatched hut in some deserted spot, an empty mountain with no human trace—gurgling water with fallen petals.
+ A place like that would help cultivate morality and nourish the inner nature.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this she couldn't help smiling.
+ How do you get to that place?
+ Maybe I'll go there to visit you.
+ I gave her directions and even made a map for her, and then went into the mountains alone.
+ After I got to the desolate mountainside, Chen Qingyang didn't come to see me right away.
+ The strong wind of the dry season blew endlessly, shaking the thatched hut.
+ Sitting in a chair and listening to the sound of the wind, Chen Qingyang would look back at what happened and begin to have doubts about everything.
+ It was hard for her to believe that she had come to these backwoods in a haze, had begun to be called damaged goods for no reason, and then turned into real damaged goods.
+ The whole thing was just unbelievable.
+ Chen Qingyang said that sometimes she would step out of her room and look in the direction of the back slope of the mountain, seeing the many paths winding through the valley and leading deep into the mountains.
+ My words still echoed in her ears.
+ She knew that any of those paths would take her to me.
+ There was no doubt about it.
+ But the more certain something was, the more doubtful it became.
+ Maybe the path didn't lead anywhere; maybe Wang Er was not in the mountains; maybe Wang Er didn't exist at all.
+ A couple of days later, Luo Xiaosi brought several people to the hospital to see me.
+ No one in the hospital had ever heard of Wang Er, so nobody knew where he had gone.
+ At the time the hospital was rampant with hepatitis.
+ The uninfected patients all fled to their homes to recuperate, and the doctors went down to the production team to provide medical care.
+ Luo Xiaosi came back to the fourteenth team and found my stuff gone, so he went to ask the team leader whether he had seen me.
+ The team leader said, Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ Luo Xiaosi said, Just a few days ago you called a meeting to denounce him, and the vixen hit him with a stool and almost killed him.
+ Having been reminded that way, the team leader was even more reluctant to refresh his memory about me.
+ It just so happened that at the time a relief delegation from Beijing was coming to investigate how the city students were treated in the countryside, especially whether any had been tied up, beaten, or forced to marry the locals.
+ Because of this, the team leader was even more unwilling to remember me.
+ Luo Xiaosi then made his way to the fifteenth team, asking Chen Qingyang whether she had seen me, and hinting in a roundabout sort of way that she'd had an indecent relationship with me.
+ Chen Qingyang then told him that she knew nothing about me.
+ By the time Luo Xiaosi left, Chen Qingyang was confused.
+ It seemed many people didn't believe Wang Er so much as existed.
+ That's what confused people.
+ What everyone thinks exists must not exist, because everything before our eyes is illusion; what everyone doesn't think exists must exist, like Wang Er.
+ If he didn't exist, where did his name come from?
+ Unable to overcome her curiosity, Chen Qingyang finally dropped everything and went up the mountain to look for me.
+ After the vixen knocked me out with a stool, Chen Qingyang ran all the way down the mountain to see me.
+ She even cried in public and declared that if I didn't recover, she would take care of me all her life.
+ It turned out not only did I live, but I wasn't even paralyzed, which was a good thing for me though she wasn't crazy about it.
+ It was almost as if she'd confessed publicly that she was damaged goods.
+ If I'd died, or become paralyzed, it would have then been morally justified.
+ But I had only stayed in the hospital for a week and then run away.
+ To her, I was the precise image of someone seen from behind, hurrying down the mountain, a man in her memory.
+ She didn't want to make love to me, nor did she want to carry on a love affair with me either.
+ So, without a very important reason, her visiting me would be the act of a woman who was truly damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she decided to head up the mountain to search for me, she didn't have anything on under her white smock.
+ Dressed like this, she crossed a stretch of hills behind the fifteenth team.
+ Those hills were thick with grass, and under the grass lay red soil.
+ In the morning the wind blew down the mountain to the plateau, cold as a mountain spring, and in the afternoon the wind returned, full of heat and dust.
+ Chen Qingyang came riding on a white wind to look for me.
+ The wind got under her clothes and flowed all over her body, like caresses and lips.
+ In fact, she didn't really need me, nor did she have to find me.
+ When people said she was damaged goods and I was her lover, she came to see me every day.
+ It seemed necessary back then, though.
+ Ever since she admitted in public she was damaged goods, and I was her lover, no one said she was damaged goods anymore, let alone mentioned my name in front of her (except for Luo Xiaosi).
+ People were so afraid of this kind of damaged-goods behavior in broad daylight that they didn't even dare talk about it.
+ As for the Beijing relief delegation sent to investigate the city students' situation, everyone in the local area knew about it except for me.
+ That was because lately I had been off herding buffalo, which required going out early in the morning and coming back late at night; besides that, I had a bad reputation and no one bothered to tell me.
+ Later, when I was in the hospital, nobody came to see me either.
+ When I left the hospital, I went deep into the mountains almost right away.
+ I saw only two people before my trip, one of whom was Chen Qingyang, who hadn't mentioned it; the other one was our team leader, who also hadn't said anything other than telling me to take a good rest at the thermal springs.
+ I told him that I didn't have anything (food, utensils, etc.), so I couldn't go to the thermal springs.
+ He said he could lend me some things.
+ I told him that I might not be able to return them.
+ He said it didn't matter.
+ So I borrowed plenty of homemade smoked meat and sausages.
+ Chen Qingyang didn't give me the information because she didn't care about it—she was not one of the city students.
+ The team leader didn't tell me because he thought I knew already.
+ He also thought that since I took so much food with me I probably wouldn't come back.
+ That was why when Luo Xiaosi asked him where Wang Er had gone, he said, Wang Er?
+ Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ For those like Luo Xiaosi, it would have been a great advantage to find me—I could prove that the city students in the area were treated badly, often beaten senseless.
+ For our team leader, my nonexistence was very convenient, because then no one could prove any of the city students had been beaten senseless.
+ To me, it didn't really matter whether I existed or not.
+ If no one came to look for me, I could grow some corn around the place and never leave.
+ So I didn't really care whether I existed or not.
+ I also thought about the problem of whether I existed or not in my little thatched hut.
+ For example, others believed that Chen Qingyang had slept with me and that proved my existence.
+ In Luo Xiaosi's words, Wang Er and Chen Qingyang took off their pants and screwed.
+ Actually he didn't see any of it, but the extent of his imagination was that we took off our pants.
+ And there was Chen Qingyang, who said that I hurried down the mountain in my green fatigues.
+ It never crossed my mind that I didn't look back as I walked.
+ Since I couldn't imagine these things, they must be evidence of my existence.
+ Then there was this little Buddha of mine, stiff and straight, and that was something I couldn't invent either.
+ I always expected Chen Qingyang to come to see me, but she never came.
+ By the time she finally showed up, I had learned not to expect her.
+ I used to believe that Chen Qingyang would come to see me immediately after I went up the mountain, but I was wrong.
+ I waited for a long time and then decided to give up.
+ I sat in my little hut, listening to the leaves rustling all over the mountain, finally reaching a state where object and subject were both forgotten.
+ I listened to the mighty air currents surging over my head, and just then a wave rose from my soul, as flowers bloom in the midst of the mountains and bamboo husks fall from the shoots and the bamboo stands up straight.
+ When the wave receded, I would rest calmly, but I wanted to dance while the wave was at its peak.
+ Chen Qingyang arrived at my thatched hut precisely at that moment and caught sight of me sitting naked on the bamboo bed.
+ My penis was like a skinned rabbit, red, shiny, and a foot long, frankly erect.
+ Panicked, Chen Qingyang immediately screamed.
+ Chen Qingyang's search for me could be summed up as follows: Two weeks after I went into the mountains, she went up the mountains to look for me.
+ It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but she took off her underwear, like women who sneak out for sex at midnight, and wore only a white smock, walking barefoot in the mountains.
+ She crossed a sunlit meadow, entered a dry gully, and walked for a long time.
+ Even through the maze of gullies, she didn't make a single wrong turn.
+ Later she emerged from the gully, walked into a valley facing the sun, and saw a thatched hut that seemed newly built.
+ If there had been no Wang Er to tell her the route, she wouldn't have been able to find such a tiny hut in the vast, wild mountains.
+ But as she entered the hut and saw Wang Er sitting on the bed, his little Buddha stiff, she was frightened into screaming.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said she just couldn't believe everything she had experienced was real, because something real needs to have a cause.
+ Yet at the time she just took off her white smock, sat beside me, and stared at my little Buddha, thinking he was the color of a burn scar.
+ Just then my thatched hut began to shake in the wind, streams of sunlight leaked through the roof and spattered her body, like stars.
+ I reached out my hand and touched her nipples, until her face flushed and her nipples turned hard.
+ Suddenly she woke from her trance, her face blushing with embarrassment.
+ Then she embraced me tightly.
+ It was the second time that I made love to Chen Qingyang.
+ When we first made love, many details puzzled me.
+ Not until much later did I finally figure out how much she had really taken to heart being called damaged goods.
+ Since she couldn't prove she wasn't damaged goods, she consented to becoming damaged goods, like the women caught in the act and summoned on stage to confess the details of their adultery.
+ The confessions would reach a point when the audience, unable to restrain themselves, their faces twisted into hundreds of masks of lust, would shout, Tie her up!
+ Then someone would rush onto the stage and bind her into the loops of a five-petal knot with thin hemp twine.
+ She stood like this in front of the crowd, submitting herself to all the shame and insults.
+ That didn't bother her at all.
+ She wouldn't have been afraid of being stripped naked, strapped to a millstone, and thrown into a pond; nor would she have feared being forced to dress up, like the wives and concubines of wealthy men, their faces covered with water-soaked yellow paper, sitting upright until they smothered to death.
+ No, these things wouldn't have bothered her at all.
+ She was not the least bit worried about becoming actual damaged goods, which she much preferred to being damaged goods in name only.
+ What disgusted her was the act that made her damaged goods.
+ When I made love to Chen Qingyang, a lizard crawled out of a crack in the wall and crossed the ground in the middle of the room, moving intermittently.
+ Then suddenly startled, it fled quickly, disappearing into the sunshine outside the door.
+ Just at that moment Chen Qingyang's moans flooded out, filling the entire room.
+ I was scared and stopped, leaning over her body.
+ But she pinched my leg and said: Hurry, you idiot!
+ I sped up and waves of vibration passed through me as if from the earth's core.
+ Afterward, she said she had fallen deep into sin and karma would catch up with her sooner or later.
+ When she said that, the band of flush was fading from her chest.
+ At the time we hadn't finished our business yet.
+ So she made it sound like she would only be punished for what she had just done.
+ Suddenly a shudder traveled from the top of my head to my tailbone and I began to ejaculate wildly.
+ Since this had nothing to do with her, perhaps I would be the only one punished for it.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that Luo Xiaosi had looked for me everywhere.
+ He went to the hospital, and people there told him that I didn't exist; then he went to our team leader, who also said that I didn't exist; finally, he went to Chen Qingyang.
+ Chen Qingyang told him that since everyone said he didn't exist, maybe he didn't.
+ She had no problem with that.
+ When he heard this, Luo Xiaosi couldn't help crying.
+ I felt very strange after I heard her words.
+ I shouldn't come into existence simply because a vixen hit me, nor should I stop existing because she hit me.
+ Actually, my existence was an indisputable fact.
+ So I became obsessed.
+ To prove the indisputable fact, I went down the mountain the day the relief delegation arrived and took part in the delegation's hearing.
+ After the hearing, the team leader said, You don't look sick at all.
+ I think you'd better come back to feed the pigs.
+ He also arranged for people to trail Chen Qingyang and me, trying to catch us in the act of adultery.
+ Of course, it was not easy to catch me because I walked so fast.
+ No one could successfully track me.
+ However, this got me into a lot more trouble.
+ By then I began to realize that it was really unnecessary for me to prove my existence to others.
+ When I fed the pigs for the production team, every day I had to carry buckets of water.
+ It was really a tiring job, and impossible to slack off.
+ The pigs would squeal if they didn't get enough food.
+ I had to chop tons of vegetables and cut piles of wood.
+ Originally there had been three women to do the job, but now the team leader assigned it all to me.
+ I found that I could not manage three women's work, especially when my back hurt.
+ I really wanted to prove that I didn't exist then.
+ At night Chen Qingyang and I would make love in my small hut.
+ In those days, I was full of respect for the task, enthusiastic about every kiss and caress.
+ Whether it was the classical missionary position, or man-from-behind position, man-from-side position, or woman-on-top position, I performed them in sober earnest.
+ Chen Qingyang was very satisfied with my performance, and so was I.
+ At those moments, I felt it was unnecessary to prove my existence.
+ I drew a conclusion from these experiences: never let other people pay attention to you!
+ Beijingers say: Better a thief should steal from you than keep you in mind.
+ You should never let other people keep you in mind.
+ After a while, the city students in our team were all transferred to other positions; the men landed work at the candy factory, and the women got to teach at the agricultural middle school.
+ I was the only one left feeding those pigs.
+ According to them that was because I was not reeducated enough, but Chen Qingyang said it was because someone kept me in mind.
+ This "someone" might have been the military deputy on our farm.
+ She also said the military deputy was a jerk.
+ She used to work in the hospital, but when the military deputy tried to grope her, she gave him a big slap, and afterward, she was sent down to the fifteenth production team to work as a team doctor.
+ The fifteenth team's water was bitter, and there wasn't much to eat either.
+ She got used to it after a while.
+ But it was clear from the start the military deputy just wanted to make trouble for her.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the military deputy would definitely not go easy on me, perhaps I would be kept-in-mind half to death.
+ I said: What can he do to me?
+ If things get really bad, I can simply run the hell away.
+ What happened later all started there.
+ That morning, right at dawn, I went down the mountain to feed the pigs.
+ As I passed the village well, I saw the military deputy at the well stand brushing his teeth.
+ He took the brush out of his mouth and talked to me with a mouth full of froth.
+ I thought he was very disgusting, so I left without a word.
+ Shortly afterward, he ran to the pigpen and shouted at me: How dare you walk away from me like that?
+ I kept silent as I heard the words.
+ Even when he accused me of playing dumb, I still said nothing.
+ After a while I walked away again.
+ The military deputy came to our team to do some grassroots investigation and then stayed.
+ According to him, he wouldn't give up until he made Wang Er talk.
+ His visit could be accounted for in two ways: one was that he came down to our team for the investigation, but when he met someone like me who played dumb with him, he got pissed off and decided to stay; the other was that he came down to our team not for investigation, but to pick on me, after hearing that Chen Qingyang and I had a love affair.
+ Whatever brought him to our team, I made up my mind to stay mute.
+ He couldn't do anything about it.
+ The military deputy had a talk with me, asking me to write a confession.
+ He said that the masses were very angry about my love affair with Chen Qingyang.
+ If I didn't confess, he would mobilize the masses to deal with me.
+ He also said my behavior met the criteria for my classification as one of "the bad elements," and I should be punished by the proletarian dictatorship.
+ I could have defended myself by saying I didn't have a love affair.
+ Who could prove I did?
+ But I just stared at him, like a wild boar, like an idiot, like a male cat staring at a female one, until his anger vanished under my stare.
+ Then he let me go.
+ In the end, he still couldn't get anything out of me.
+ He wasn't even sure whether I was a mute or not.
+ People told him that I wasn't a mute.
+ He couldn't be sure since he had never heard me speak a single word.
+ To this day, whenever he thinks of me, he still can't figure out if I am mute or not.
+ It makes me very happy whenever I think about it.
+
+ 那天晚上我没走掉。
+ 陈清扬把我拽住，以伟大友谊的名义叫我留下来。
+ 她承认打我不对，也承认没有好好待我，但是她说我的伟大友谊是假的，还说，我把她骗出来就是想研究她的结构。
+ 我说，既然我是假的，你信我干吗。
+ 我是想研究一下她的结构，这也是在她的许可之下。
+ 假如不乐意可以早说，动手就打不够意思。
+ 后来她哈哈大笑了一阵说，她简直见不得我身上那个东西。
+ 那东西傻头傻脑，恬不知耻，见了它，她就不禁怒从心起。
+ 我们俩吵架时，仍然是不着一丝。
+ 我的小和尚依然直挺挺，在月光下披了一身塑料，倒是闪闪发光。
+ 我听了这话不高兴，她也发现了。
+ 于是她用和解的口气说：不管怎么说，这东西丑得要命，你承不承认？
+ 这东西好像个发怒的眼镜蛇一样立在那里，是不大好看。
+ 我说，既然你不愿意见它，那就算了。
+ 我想穿上裤子，她又说，别这样。
+ 于是我抽起烟来。
+ 等我抽完了一支烟，她抱住我。
+ 我们俩在草地上干那件事。
+ 我过二十一岁生日以前，是一个童男子。
+ 那天晚上我引诱了陈清扬和我到山上去。
+ 那一夜开头有月光，后来月亮落下去，出来一天的星星，就像早上的露水一样多。
+ 那天晚上没有风，山上静得很。
+ 我已经和陈清扬做过爱，不再是童男子了。
+ 但是我一点也不高兴。
+ 因为我干那事时，她一声也不吭，头枕双臂，若有所思地看着我，所以从始至终就是我一个人在表演。
+ 其实我也没持续多久，马上就完了。
+ 事毕我既愤怒又沮丧。
+ 陈清扬说，她简直不敢相信这件事是真的：我居然在她面前亮出了丑恶的男性生殖器，丝毫不感到惭愧。
+ 那玩意也不感到惭愧，直挺挺地从她两腿之间插了进来。
+ 因为女孩子身上有这么个口子，男人就要使用她，这简直没有道理。
+ 以前她有个丈夫，天天对她做这件事。
+ 她一直不说话，等着他有一天自己感到惭愧，自己来解释为什么干了这些。
+ 可是他什么也没说，直到进了监狱。
+ 这话我也不爱听。
+ 所以我说：既然你不乐意，为什么要答应？
+ 她说她不愿被人看成小气鬼。
+ 我说你原本就是小气鬼。
+ 后来她说算了，别为这事吵架。
+ 她叫我晚上再来这里，我们再试一遍。
+ 也许她会喜欢。
+ 我什么也没说。
+ 早上起雾以后，我和她分了手，下山去放牛。
+ 那天晚上我没去找她，倒进了医院。
+ 这事原委是这样：早上我到牛圈门前时，有一伙人等不及我，已经在开圈拉牛。
+ 大家都挑壮牛去犁田。
+ 有个本地小伙子，叫三闷儿，正在拉一条大白牛。
+ 我走过去，告诉他，这牛被毒蛇咬了，不能干活。
+ 他似乎没听见。
+ 我劈手把牛鼻绳夺了下来，他就朝我挥了一巴掌。
+ 我当胸推了他一把，推了他一个屁股蹲儿。
+ 然后很多人拥了上来，把我们拥在中间要打架。
+ 北京知青一伙，当地青年一伙，抄起了棍棒和皮带。
+ 吵了一会儿，又说不打架，让我和三闷儿摔跤，三闷儿摔不过我，就动了拳头。
+ 我一脚把三闷儿踢进了圈前的粪坑，让他沾了一身牛屎。
+ 三闷儿爬起来，抢了一把三齿要砍我，别人劝开了。
+ 早上的事情就是这样。
+ 晚上我放牛回来，队长说我殴打贫下中农，要开我的斗争会。
+ 我说你想借机整人，我也不是好惹的。
+ 我还说要聚众打群架。
+ 队长说他没想整我，是三闷儿的娘闹得他没办法。
+ 那婆娘是个寡妇，泼得厉害。
+ 他说此地的规矩就是这样。
+ 后来他说，不开斗争会，改为帮助会，让我上前面去检讨一下。
+ 要是我还不肯，就让寡妇来找我。
+ 会开得很乱。
+ 老乡们七嘴八舌，说知青太不像话，偷鸡摸狗还打人。
+ 知青们说放狗屁，谁偷东西，你们当场拿住了吗？
+ 老子们是来支援边疆建设，又不是充军的犯人，哪能容你们乱栽赃。
+ 我在前面也不检讨，只是骂。
+ 不提防三闷儿的娘从后面摸上来，抄起一条沉甸甸的拔秧凳，给了我后腰一下，正砸在我的旧伤上，登时我就背过去了。
+ 我醒过来时，罗小四领了一伙人呐喊着要放火烧牛圈，还说要三闷儿的娘抵命。
+ 队长领了一帮人去制止，副队长叫人抬我上牛车去医院。
+ 卫生员说抬不得，腰杆断了，一抬就死。
+ 我说腰杆好像没断，你们快把我抬走。
+ 可是谁也不敢肯定我的腰杆是断了还是没断，所以也不敢肯定我会不会一抬就死。
+ 我就一直躺着。
+ 后来队长过来一问，就说：快摇电话把陈清扬叫下来，让她看看腰断了没有。
+ 过了不一会儿，陈清扬披头散发眼皮红肿地跑了来，劈头第一句话就是：你别怕，要是你瘫了，我照顾你一辈子。
+ 然后一检查，诊断和我自己的相同。
+ 于是我就坐上牛车，到总场医院去看病。
+ 那天夜里陈清扬把我送到医院，一直等到腰部X光片子出来，看过认为没问题后才走。
+ 她说过一两天就来看我，可是一直没来。
+ 我住了一个星期，可以走动了，就奔回去找她。
+ 我走进陈清扬的医务室时，身上背了很多东西，装得背篓里冒了尖。
+ 除了锅碗盆瓢，还有足够两人吃一个月的东西。
+ 她见我进来，淡淡地一笑，说你好了吗，带这些东西上哪儿。
+ 我说要去清平洗温泉。
+ 她懒懒地往椅子上一仰说，这很好。
+ 温泉可以治旧伤。
+ 我说我不是真去洗温泉，而是到后面山上住几天。
+ 她说后面山上什么都没有，还是去洗温泉吧。
+ 清平的温泉是山坳里一片泥坑，周围全是荒草坡。
+ 有一些病人在山坡上搭了窝棚，成年住在那里，其中得什么病的都有。
+ 我到那里不但治不好病，还可能染上麻风。
+ 而后面荒山里的低洼处沟谷纵横，疏林之中芳草离离，我在人迹绝无的地方造了一间草房，空山无人，流水落花，住在里面可以修身养性。
+ 陈清扬听了，禁不住一笑说：那地方怎么走？
+ 也许我去看看你。
+ 我告诉她路，还画了一张示意图，自己进山去了。
+ 我走进荒山，陈清扬没有去看我。
+ 旱季里浩浩荡荡的风刮个不停，整个草房都在晃动。
+ 陈清扬坐在椅子上听着风声，回想起以往发生的事情，对一切都起了怀疑。
+ 她很难相信自己会莫名其妙地来到这极荒凉的地方，又无端地被人称做破鞋，然后就真的搞起了破鞋。
+ 这件事真叫人难以置信。
+ 陈清扬说，有时候她走出房门，往后山上看，看到山丘中有很多小路蜿蜒通到深山里去。
+ 我对她说的话言犹在耳。
+ 她知道沿着一条路走进山去，就会找到我。
+ 这是无可怀疑的事。
+ 但是越是无可怀疑的事就越值得怀疑。
+ 很可能那条路不通到任何地方，很可能王二不在山里，很可能王二根本就不存在。
+ 过了几天，罗小四带了几个人到医院去找我。
+ 医院里没人听说过王二，更没人知道他上哪儿去了。
+ 那时节医院里肝炎流行，没染上肝炎的病人都回家去疗养，大夫也纷纷下队去送医上门。
+ 罗小四等人回到队里，发现我的东西都不见了，就去问队长可见过王二。
+ 队长说，谁是王二？
+ 从来没听说过。
+ 罗小四说前几天你还开会斗争过他，尖嘴婆打了他一板凳，差点把他打死。
+ 这样提醒了以后，队长就更想不起来我是谁了。
+ 那时节有一个北京知青慰问团要来调查知青在下面的情况，尤其是有无被捆打逼婚等情况，因此队长更不乐意想起我来。
+ 罗小四又到十五队问陈清扬可曾见过我，还闪烁其词地暗示她和我有过不正当的关系。
+ 陈清扬则表示，她对此一无所知。
+ 等到罗小四离开，陈清扬就开始糊涂了。
+ 看来有很多人说，王二不存在。
+ 这件事叫人困惑的原因就在这里。
+ 大家都说存在的东西一定不存在，这是因为眼前的一切都是骗局。
+ 大家都说不存在的东西一定存在，比如王二，假如他不存在，这个名字是从哪里来的？
+ 陈清扬按捺不住好奇心，终于扔下一切，上山找我来了。
+ 我被尖嘴婆打了一板凳后晕了过去，陈清扬曾经从山上跑下来看我。
+ 当时她还忍不住哭了起来，并且当众说，如果我好不了要照顾我一辈子。
+ 结果我并没有死，连瘫都没瘫。
+ 这对我是很好的事，可是陈清扬并不喜欢。
+ 这等于当众暴露了她是破鞋。
+ 假如我死，或是瘫掉，就是应该的事，可是我在医院里只住了一个星期就跑出来。
+ 对她来说，我就是那个急匆匆从山上赶下去的背影，一个记忆中的人。
+ 她并不想和我做爱，也不想和我搞破鞋，除非有重大的原因。
+ 因此她来找我就是真正的破鞋行径。
+ 陈清扬说，她决定上山找我时，在白大褂底下什么都没穿。
+ 她就这样走过十五队后面的那片山包。
+ 那些小山上长满了草，草下是红土。
+ 上午风从山上往平坝里吹，冷得像山上的水，下午风吹回来，带着燥热和尘土。
+ 陈清扬来找我时，乘着白色的风。
+ 风从衣服下面钻进来，流过全身，好像爱抚和嘴唇。
+ 其实她不需要我，也没必要找到我。
+ 以前人家说她是破鞋，说我是她的野汉子时，她每天都来找我。
+ 那时好像有必要。
+ 自从她当众暴露了她是破鞋，我是她的野汉子后，再没人说她是破鞋，更没人在她面前提到王二（除了罗小四）。
+ 大家对这种明火执仗的破鞋行径是如此的害怕，以致连说都不敢啦。
+ 关于北京要来人视察知青的事，当地每个人都知道，只有我不知道。
+ 这是因为我前些日子在放牛，早出晚归，而且名声不好，谁也不告诉我，后来住了院，也没人来看找。
+ 等到我出院以后，就进了深山。
+ 在我进山之前，总共就见到了两个人，一个是陈清扬，她没有告诉我这件事。
+ 另一个是我们队长，他也没说起这件事，只叫我去温泉养病。
+ 我告诉他，我没有东西（食品、炊具等等），所以不能去温泉。
+ 他说他可以借给我。
+ 我说我借了不一定还，他说不要紧。
+ 我就向他借了不少家制的腊肉和香肠。
+ 陈清扬不告诉我这件事是因为她不关心，她不是知青。
+ 队长不告诉我这件事，是因为他以为我已经知道了。
+ 他还以为我拿了很多吃的东西走，就不会再回来。
+ 所以罗小四问他王二到哪儿去了时，他说：王二？
+ 谁叫王二？
+ 从没听说过。
+ 对于罗小四等人来说，找到我有很大的好处，我可以证明大家在此地受到很坏的待遇，经常被打晕。
+ 对于领导来说，我不存在有很大的便利，可以说明此地没有一个知青被打晕。
+ 对于我自己来说，存在不存在没有很大的关系。
+ 假如没有人来找我，我在附近种点玉米，可以永远不出来。
+ 就因为这个原因，我对自己存不存在的事不太关心。
+ 我在小屋里也想过自己存不存在的问题。
+ 比方说，别人说我和陈清扬搞破鞋，这就是存在的证明。
+ 用罗小四的话来说，王二和陈清扬脱了裤子干。
+ 其实他也没看见。
+ 他想象的极限就是我们脱裤子。
+ 还有陈清扬说，我从山上下来，穿着黄军装，走得飞快。
+ 我自己并不知道我走路是不回头的。
+ 因为这些事我无从想象，所以是我存在的证明。
+ 还有我的小和尚直挺挺，这件事也不是我想出来的。
+ 我始终盼着陈清扬来看我，但陈清扬始终没有来。
+ 她来的时候，我没有盼着她来。
+ 我曾经以为陈清扬在我进山后会立即来看我，但是我错了。
+ 我等了很久，后来不再等了。
+ 我坐在小屋里，听着满山树叶哗哗响，终于到了物我两忘的境界。
+ 我听见浩浩荡荡的空气大潮从我头顶涌过，正是我灵魂里潮兴之时。
+ 正如深山里花开，龙竹笋剥剥地爆去笋壳，直翘翘地向上。
+ 到潮退时我也安息，但潮兴时要乘兴而舞。
+ 正巧这时陈清扬来到草屋门口，她看见我赤条条坐在竹板床上，阳具就如剥了皮的兔子，红通通亮晶晶足有一尺长，直立在那里，登时惊慌失措，叫了起来。
+ 陈清扬到山里找我的事又可以简述如下：我进山后两个星期，她到山里找我。
+ 当时是下午两点钟，可是她像那些午夜淫奔的妇人一样，脱光了内衣，只穿一件白大褂，赤着脚走进山来。
+ 她就这样走过阳光下的草地，走进了一条干河沟，在河沟里走了很久。
+ 这些河沟很乱，可是她连一个弯都没转错。
+ 后来她又从河沟里出来，走进一个向阳的山洼，看见一间新搭的草房。
+ 假如没有一个王二告诉她这条路，她不可能在茫茫荒山里找到一间草房。
+ 可是她走进草房，看到王二就坐在床上，小和尚直挺挺，却吓得尖叫起来。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她没法相信她所见到的每件事都是真的。
+ 真的事要有理由。
+ 当时她脱了衣服，坐在我的身边，看着我的小和尚，只见它的颜色就像烧伤的疤痕。
+ 这时我的草房在风里摇晃，好多阳光从房顶上漏下来，星星点点落在她身上。
+ 我伸手去触她的乳头，直到她脸上泛起红晕，乳房坚挺。
+ 忽然她从迷梦里醒来，羞得满脸通红。
+ 于是她紧紧地抱住我。
+ 我和陈清扬是第二次做爱，第一次做爱的很多细节当时我大惑不解。
+ 后来我才明白，她对被称做破鞋一事，始终耿耿于怀。
+ 既然不能证明她不是破鞋，她就乐于成为真正的破鞋。
+ 就像那些被当场捉了奸的女人一样，被人叫上台去交待那些偷情的细节。
+ 等到那些人听到情不能持，丑态百出时，怪叫一声：把她捆起来！
+ 就有人冲上台去，用细麻绳把她五花大绑，她就这样站在人前，受尽羞辱。
+ 这些事一点也不讨厌。
+ 她也不怕被人剥得精赤条条，拴到一扇磨盘上，扔到水塘里淹死。
+ 或者像以前达官贵人家的妻妾一样，被强迫穿得整整齐齐，脸上贴上湿透的黄裱纸，端坐着活活憋死。
+ 这些事都一点也不讨厌。
+ 她丝毫也不怕成为破鞋，这比被人叫做破鞋而不是破鞋好得多。
+ 她所讨厌的是使她成为破鞋那件事本身。
+ 我和陈清扬做爱时，一只蜥蜴从墙缝里爬了进来，走走停停地经过房中间的地面。
+ 忽然它受到惊动，飞快地出去，消失在门口的阳光里。
+ 这时陈清扬的呻吟就像泛滥的洪水，在屋里蔓延。
+ 我为此所惊，伏下身不动。
+ 可是她说，快，混蛋。
+ 还拧我的腿。
+ 等我“快”了以后，阵阵震颤就像从地心传来。
+ 后来她说，她觉得自己罪孽深重，早晚要遭报应。
+ 她说自己要遭报应时，一道红晕正从她的胸口褪去。
+ 那时我们的事情还没完。
+ 但她的口气是说，她只会为在此之前的事遭报应。
+ 忽然之间我从头顶到尾骨一齐收紧，开始极其猛烈地射精。
+ 这事与她无关，大概只有我会为此遭报应。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，罗小四到处找我。
+ 他到医院找我时，医院说我不存在。
+ 他找队长问我时，队长也说我不存在。
+ 最后他来找陈清扬，陈清扬说，既然大家都说他不存在，大概他就是不存在吧，我也没有意见。
+ 罗小四听了这话，禁不住哭了起来。
+ 我听了这话，觉得很奇怪。
+ 我不应该因为尖嘴婆打了我一下而存在，也不应该因为她打了我一下而不存在。
+ 事实上，我的存在乃是不争的事实。
+ 我就为这一点钻了牛角尖。
+ 为了验证这不争的事实，慰问团来的那一天，我从山上奔了下去，来到了座谈会的会场上。
+ 散会以后，队长说，你这个样子不像有病。
+ 还是回来喂猪吧。
+ 他还组织人力，要捉我和陈清扬的奸。
+ 当然，要捉我不容易，我的腿非常快。
+ 谁也休想跟踪我。
+ 但是也给我添了很多麻烦。
+ 到了这个时候我才悟到，犯不着向人证明我存在。
+ 我在队里喂猪时，每天要挑很多水。
+ 这个活计很累，连偷懒都不可能，因为猪吃不饱会叫唤。
+ 我还要切很多猪菜，劈很多柴。
+ 喂这些猪原来要三个妇女，现在要我一个人干。
+ 我发现我不能顶三个妇女，尤其是腰疼时。
+ 这时候我真想证明我不存在。
+ 晚上我和陈清扬在小屋里做爱。
+ 那时我对此事充满了敬业精神，对每次亲吻和爱抚都贯注了极大的热情。
+ 无论是经典的传教士式，后进式，侧进式，女上位，我都能一丝不苟地完成。
+ 陈清扬对此极为满意。
+ 我也极为满意。
+ 在这种时候，我又觉得用不着去证明自己是存在的。
+ 从这些体会里我得到一个结论，就是永远别让别人注意你。
+ 北京人说，不怕贼偷，就怕贼惦记。
+ 你千万别让人惦记上。
+ 过了一些时候，我们队的知青全调走了。
+ 男的调到糖厂当工人，女的到农中去当老师。
+ 单把我留下来喂猪，据说是因为我还没有改造好。
+ 陈清扬说，我叫人惦记上了。
+ 这个人大概就是农场的军代表。
+ 她还说，军代表不是个好东西。
+ 原来她在医院工作，军代表要调戏她，被她打了个大嘴巴。
+ 然后她就被发到十五队当队医。
+ 十五队的水是苦的，也没有菜吃，待久了也觉得没有啥。
+ 但是当初调她来，分明有修理一下的意思。
+ 她还说，我准会被修到半死。
+ 我说过，他能把我怎么样？
+ 急了老子跑他娘。
+ 后来的事都是由此而起。
+ 那天早上天色微明，我从山上下来，到猪场喂猪。
+ 经过井台时，看见了军代表，他正在刷牙。
+ 他把牙刷从嘴里掏出来，满嘴白沫地和我讲话，我觉得很讨厌，就一声不吭地走掉了。
+ 过了一会，他跑到猪场里，把我大骂了一顿，说你怎么敢走了。
+ 我听了这些话，一声不吭。
+ 就是他说我装哑巴，我也一声不吭。
+ 然后我又走开了。
+ 军代表到我们队来蹲点，蹲下来就不走了。
+ 据他说，要不能从王二嘴里掏出话来，死也不甘心。
+ 这件事有两种可能的原因，一是他下来视察，遇见了我对他装聋作哑，因而大怒，不走了。
+ 二是他不是下来视察，而是听说陈清扬和我有了一腿，特地来找我的麻烦。
+ 不管他为何而来，反正我是一声也不吭，这叫他很没办法。
+ 军代表找我谈话，要我写交待材料。
+ 他还说，我搞破鞋群众很气愤，如果我不交待，就发动群众来对付我。
+ 他还说，我的行为够上了坏分子，应该受到专政。
+ 我可以辩解说，我没搞破鞋。
+ 谁能证明我搞了破鞋？
+ 但我只是看着他，像野猪一样看他，像发傻一样看他，像公猫看母猫一样看他。
+ 把他看到没了脾气，就让我走了。
+ 最后他也没从我嘴里套出话来。
+ 他甚至搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 别人说我不是哑巴，他始终不敢相信，因为他从来没听我说过一句话。
+ 他到今天想起我来，还是搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 想起这一点，我就万分的高兴。
+
+ The boots reached the door, and came on into the room.
+ Trinket peeped out from behind the table-cloth.
+ From the size of his footwear, the new arrival seemed to be a boy like himself.
+ He heaved a sigh of relief, and put the pancake in his mouth.
+ He didn't dare to take a bite out of it, but softened it with his saliva, and then swallowed it silently down.
+ Meanwhile he could hear noisy munching coming from the table above him.
+ The new boy was clearly tucking in.
+ 'Why, he's just another scavenger like me!' thought Trinket to himself.
+ 'I'll jump out and scare him off, then I can carry on eating to my heart's content.'
+ His thoughts ran on: 'What a fool I was just now!
+ I should have stuffed a whole plateful in my pocket and buggered off!
+ This isn't like home.
+ They wouldn't miss a little thing like that, or expect me to pay for it!'
+ All of a sudden there was a series of noisy thumps.
+ The new scavenger had started hitting something.
+ His curiosity aroused, Trinket poked his head out from under the table.
+ What he saw was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, in a short gown, punching at one of the bags that hung from the beam.
+ After a while, the boy moved across and started attacking one of the oxhide cut-outs.
+ He struck the figure first on the chest with one fist, then reached forward with both hands and grappled it by the waist, forcing it to the ground.
+ It was very much the same sort of technique as the one used by the Manchu wrestlers in the inn the previous day.
+ Trinket chuckled to himself and darted out from beneath the table.
+ 'Why fight a dummy!' he cried.
+ 'Why not try me?'
+ The other boy's first reaction was one of alarm, at the sight of this strange apparition with its head swathed in bandages.
+ But alarm quickly turned to delight when he realized that he had found a sparring partner.
+ 'Very well!' he replied.
+ 'On guard!'
+ Trinket sprang forward and seized the boy's arms, intending to give him a sharp twist, but the boy turned smartly, and hooked him with his right foot, sending Trinket crashing to the floor.
+ 'You're hopeless!' he jeered.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling!'
+ 'Who says I don't!' protested Trinket, leaping to his feet again and reaching for the boy's left leg.
+ The boy made a grab for his back, but this time Trinket dodged in time and the boy seized a handful of air.
+ Trinket recalled Whiskers' fight with the seven wrestlers at the inn, and shot out a quick left that caught the boy hard, fair and square, on the lower cheek.
+ The boy stood there stunned for a few seconds, and a momentary look of anger came into his eyes.
+ 'You're hopeless!' cried Trinket with a grin.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling.'
+ The boy said nothing, but feinted with his left fist.
+ Trinket fell for it and dodged, and as he did so, the boy's elbow came crashing across into his midriff and winded him completely.
+ He crumpled up and fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
+ The boy now came at Trinket from behind, slipped both hands under his arms and laced his hands together around his throat, throttling him, and pressing him harder and harder down on to the ground.
+ Trinket kicked frantically with his right foot, but then the boy loosed his hands and gave him a terrific shove which sent him rolling across the room like a puppy chasing its own tail.
+ Trinket was furious.
+ He came tumbling back, wrapped both arms round the boy's legs, and tugged at him with all his might.
+ The boy crashed down right on top of him.
+ He was quite a bit bigger than Trinket, and had soon succeeded in throttling him again and pinning him to the ground.
+ Trinket began to choke, thrashed out with his feet to extricate himself, and finally managed to wriggle on top of the boy and hold him down.
+ He was too light to maintain the upper hand for long, however, and soon the boy was back on top of him again.
+ Ever a crafty fighter, Trinket now let go of the boy's legs, got behind him, and landed him a good kick on the backside.
+ The boy quickly grabbed his right leg and tugged at it, sending Trinket crashing down on his back.
+ The boy leapt astride him, pinned his head to the floor, and cried: 'Well!
+ Surrender?'
+ Trinket had meanwhile managed to hook his left foot round the boy's waist, and started to rub it up and down the small of his back.
+ The boy, it transpired, was extremely ticklish, and he couldn't help giggling, and loosened his grasp.
+ Trinket seized his chance, leapt up, and pinned his opponent down by the throat.
+ The boy now used a standard wrestling ploy, gripping Trinket by the back of the neck and pulling him to the ground with considerable force.
+ Trinket went out like a light.
+ When he regained consciousness, he found that he was temporarily immobilized.
+ The boy burst out laughing.
+ 'Well?
+ Had enough?
+ Give in?'
+ But Trinket was not finished yet.
+ He eventually succeeded in jumping up and landing a head-butt right in the boy's midriff.
+ The boy groaned and staggered back a few steps.
+ Trinket lunged after him, the boy leant a little to one side, put out a leg, and brought him tumbling to the floor.
+ Trinket reached out frantically as he fell, clutching at the boy's legs, and the two of them went down together.
+ They struggled for a while, each one gaining the upper hand for a moment, then going under, ringing the changes more than a dozen times, until finally they were in a complete deadlock, panting and staring fixedly at each other.
+ And then suddenly, at exactly the same moment, they both burst out laughing.
+ There was something about the clinch they were in that struck them both as terribly funny.
+ Slowly they let go.
+ The boy reached out a hand and began removing the bandages from Trinket's face.
+ 'What did you want to wrap your face up for?'
+ Trinket was about to snatch the bandages back, when he reflected that the boy had already seen most of his face and that it would achieve nothing.
+ 'I didn't want anyone to recognize me taking the cake.'
+ 'I see,' said the boy, chuckling and standing up.
+ 'So you make a habit of coming here and taking food, do you?'
+ 'No, I don't,' said Trinket.
+ As he rose to his feet, he stole a closer glance at his opponent: there was something at once impressive and attractive about the boy's features, a clearness of brow, a noble look in the eyes, an expression in the face, that drew Trinket towards him.
+ 'What's your name?' asked the boy.
+ 'Laurel,' replied Trinket.
+ 'And yours?'
+ After a moment's hesitation the boy replied: 'Mine's . . .
+ People call me Misty.
+ Which of the Goong-goongs do you work for?'
+ 'I'm with Hai Goong-goong.'
+ Misty nodded, and used Trinket's bandages to mop the sweat from his brow.
+ He helped himself to a cake.
+ Trinket was not going to be outdone.
+ If this young fellow could continue calmly scavenging, so could he.
+ He popped another slice of layer cake nonchalantly into his mouth.
+ 'I can see you've never done any wrestling,' laughed Misty.
+ 'But you're a quick mover all the same!
+ You managed to get away that time.
+ A few more goes and I'd have had you, though—'
+ 'Is that right?' protested Trinket.
+ 'Come on then: let's see—'
+ 'At you!'
+ The two of them set to again.
+ Misty clearly knew a few wrestling moves, and was the older and stronger of the two.
+ But Trinket had the benefit of years of experience in the streets of Yangzhou, where he'd had to deal with all manner of bullies and thugs, big and small, and in this respect he was definitely Misty's superior.
+ But for one reason or another (partly Whiskers' lecture, partly because this was, after all, only 'play-fighting' and not in deadly earnest) he didn't avail himself of a single one of the dubious tricks at which he excelled: the finger-twist, the pigtail-pull, the throat-bite, the eye-poke, the ear-yank, the grip-o'-the-balls.
+ As a result he eventually came off the loser again, with Misty sitting on his back, and no hope of throwing him off.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'Never!'
+ Misty burst out laughing and jumped up.
+ Trinket went for him again, but this time Misty shook his head.
+ 'No more for today!
+ Tomorrow, if you like.
+ But I don't see the point: you'll never be able to beat me!'
+ Trinket was not having this.
+ He pulled a piece of silver from his pocket, about three taels' worth: 'Tomorrow we fight for money!
+ You'd better bring three taels yourself!'
+ Misty seemed somewhat taken aback by this but then concurred.
+ 'All right.
+ We fight for money.
+ I'll bring my stake.
+ See you here at noon tomorrow.'
+ 'Live or die!
+ Excellent kungfu!
+ My word is my wand!' cried Trinket, and Misty burst out laughing.
+ 'It certainly is!'
+ And with that he left the room.
+ Trinket helped himself to a big handful of cakes and stuffed them inside his jacket.
+ Then he too left the room.
+ As he went, he found himself thinking of Whiskers' heroic stand at Victory Hill: now there was a man!
+ Whiskers had pledged his word to fight, and nothing could have stood between him and the fulfilment of that pledge, not the walls of his prison cell, not even his own wounds.
+ How many times Trinket had sat listening to the storytellers' tales, and how many times he'd dreamed of one day being a hero himself—Trinket the Brave Man and True!
+ Now, he'd said he would fight, and there could be no going back!
+ He had pledged his word!
+ And if he was to be a man of his word, he would have to forget about escape—at least for the time being.
+ He would have to go back to the old eunuch that evening.
+ He therefore decided to retrace his steps to the room where they had been gambling earlier in the day — and from there he took a direction opposite to the one he had taken earlier (which had led him deeper and deeper into the mansion), followed two covered walkways, vaguely remembered one or two shrubs he had passed by in the courtyards on the way, and somehow, by hook or by crook, navigated his way back to the old eunuch's quarters.
+ As he drew near the entrance, he heard the old fellow coughing.
+ 'Goong-goong?
+ Are you feeling any better?'
+ 'Better my arse!' muttered the eunuch.
+ 'Get a move on, will you!'
+ Trinket hurried over to him.
+ Old Hai was sitting at a table (the broken one had been replaced).
+ ''How much did you win?'
+ 'I won a dozen taels,' replied Trinket.
+ 'But I—'
+ 'You what?' snapped the eunuch.
+ 'I lent them to Wu.'
+ In actual fact he'd won twenty and lent twelve to Wu: the remaining eight he wished to hang on to.
+ Old Hai scowled at him.
+ 'What do you want to go lending money to that Wu fellow for?
+ He doesn't even work in the Upper Library, dammit!
+ You could at least have lent to one of the Wen brothers!'
+ Trinket didn't follow this at all.
+ 'But they didn't ask me for a loan.'
+ 'Then you should have found a way to offer one.
+ Have you forgotten everything I ever told you?'
+ 'It's just that. . . what with killing that boy yesterday, I can't seem to think straight, it must have gone clean out of my mind.
+ I ought to have lent the money to one of the Wen brothers, that's right, I remember now, you told me.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'What's so alarming about killing?
+ I suppose you're only a child though, you've never done it before.
+ Now, about the book— I hope you haven't forgotten.'
+ 'The book?'
+ Old Hai humphed again.
+ 'Have you forgotten everything?'
+ 'Goong-goong, I... I've got this terrible headache . . . and I'm so worried about your cough ...
+ I just can't keep my mind on anything!'
+ 'Very well.
+ Come over here!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked a few steps closer.
+ 'I'm going to repeat it for you once more.
+ Forget this time, and I shall kill you.'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!' piped Trinket, thinking to himself, 'Just say it once, and I'll never forget it, not in a hundred years!'
+ 'Listen: you're to win money from the Wen brothers.
+ Then you're to lend them money, the more the better.
+ Then, after a few days you're to ask them to take you to the Upper Library.
+ They'll have to say yes, if they owe you money.
+ If they try to fob you off, you tell them that I'll report them to the Chief Librarian;
+ I'll tell him they refuse to pay their debts, and ask him to wait for His Majesty to—'
+ 'His Majesty?'
+ 'What?'
+ 'Oh . . . nothing.'
+ 'If they ask you why you want to go to the Upper Library, you say that you're longing for a glimpse of His Majesty, so you just want a chance to perform some little errand there.
+ Of course the Wen brothers won't let you see His Majesty; when they take you, His Majesty won't even be in the Upper Library.
+ That's when you find a way to steal the book . . .'
+ Something was beginning to fall into place in Trinket's mind, with all these references to 'His Majesty'.
+ 'Could this be the Palace, the Forbidden City itself!' he thought silently to himself.
+ 'Have I been wrong all this time, about it being the number one whore-house in Peking?
+ Aiyeeh! Of course!
+ That must be it!
+ These people are all eunuchs working for the Emperor. . .'
+ As a boy, Trinket had heard people talk about the Emperor, the Empress, Princes and Princesses, Palace Ladies, Palace Eunuchs, but he hadn't the faintest idea what these grand beings actually looked like.
+ All he knew was that the Emperor wore a Dragon Robe.
+ In Yangzhou he'd seen all sorts of plays, but the eunuchs on stage were never dressed anything like Old Hai, or his new gambling friend Wu.
+ And the stage eunuchs always held those long horsehair fly-whisks, and kept waving them around in the air.
+ And anyway, he had never understood a word of what they were singing.
+ So this was what real Palace Eunuchs were like!
+ 'Cripes!' he cried silently to himself.
+ That means I've become a little Palace Eunuch myself!
+ I've lost my balls!'
+ 'Did you take in what I said just now?' growled Old Hai.
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong, yes!
+ I've got to go to His Majesty's Upper Library!'
+ 'And why have you got to go?
+ To play?'
+ 'To steal a book.'
+ 'Which book?'
+ 'I... I... can't remember.'
+ 'I'll tell you once more.
+ And this time, don't forget.
+ It's a Sutra, called the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.
+ It's very old.
+ There are several copies of it.
+ Just bring them all to me.
+ Got it?
+ Now—what's it called?'
+ 'The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.'
+ Trinket sounded very pleased with himself.
+ 'What are you so happy about?' snapped the old eunuch.
+ 'I'm just happy about. . . about remembering it the minute you mentioned it again.'
+ In actual fact, when Old Hai had spoken of stealing a book, Trinket's heart had sunk.
+ The 'stealing' part was no problem; it was the 'book' part that presented what seemed at first like an insurmountable obstacle.
+ The trouble was that Trinket could barely read.
+ He couldn't decipher more than a word or two, let alone book titles.
+ Then he heard the eunuch say that the book was the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections, and his heart leapt: what the word Sutra looked like he had not the foggiest notion, but numbers were something he could read.
+ So the second part of the title was a walk-over!
+ Wasn't that sufficient reason to be pleased?
+ 'Now,' went on Old Hai, 'if you go stealing books from the Upper Library, you've got to be very smart, very careful.
+ If anyone spots you, you're as good as dead.
+ A hundred times over.'
+ 'I know,' said Trinket.
+ He suddenly thought of something, and added: 'If I did get caught, I'd never dream of dragging you into it, Goong-goong!'
+ Old Hai heaved a strangely unconcerned sigh.
+ 'Drag me in or drag me out, it's all the same to me . . .'
+ He had another coughing fit, and went on: 'You've done quite well today.
+ At least you've won something.
+ What did the others think?
+ Were they suspicious?'
+ Trinket chortled.
+ 'Oh no, why should they be?'
+ He was about to boast, but thought better of it.
+ 'Well then, don't sit around doing nothing.
+ Eat your lunch, and if you've no jobs to do, go and practise with the dice!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked across to the dining-table, where bowls and chopsticks had been laid, four dishes and a soup, all untouched.
+ 'Goong-goong, aren't you eating?
+ Let me serve you!'
+ 'I'm not hungry.
+ You go ahead.'
+ Trinket was delighted, and without bothering to fill his bowl with rice, he attacked a dish of stewed meat.
+ The food was cold, but he was hungry, and to him it was indescribably delicious.
+ 'I wonder where they get the food from?
+ Oh well, I'd better not ask too many questions, just keep my eyes open and pick things up one at a time.
+ If this really is the Forbidden City, then old Wu and the Wen brothers and little Misty must all of them be eunuchs.
+ I wonder what the actual Emperor and Empress look like?
+ I must try and get a look.
+ Then one day when I'm back at home, ha ha!
+ I can tell people who I've seen.
+ Just imagine the look on their faces!
+ 'I wonder if Whiskers got out safe?
+ They didn't say anything about someone getting caught when we were gambling . . .
+ Most probably he got away all right.'
+ When he had finished eating, he went through the motions of practising with the dice so as not to arouse the old eunuch's suspicions, throwing them noisily across the table.
+ After a while his eyelids began to feel heavy.
+ He hadn't slept all night.
+ In minutes he was sound asleep.
+ He slept till evening, when a junior eunuch brought in their supper.
+ Trinket waited on Old Hai as he ate a bowl of rice, and then helped him to bed.
+ Afterwards he went to lie down on the smaller bed, thinking to himself: 'Tomorrow, whatever else happens, I must win my fight with Misty!'
+ He lay there, trying to remember Whiskers' fight with the wrestlers in the tavern.
+ He wished he could remember the details more clearly.
+ 'If only I'd taken old Whiskers up on his offer!
+ With him as my teacher I could have learnt a thing or two on the way up here, and then I could have put Misty in his place—even though he is stronger than I am.
+ If he gets me on the ground again tomorrow, I'll die of shame!
+ Little White Dragon—forget it!
+ I'd never dare show my face among the Brothers!'
+ Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
+ 'The wrestlers were no match for Whiskers; but Whiskers was no match for Old Turtle-head—why don't I get him to teach me a few moves?'
+ He asked the old eunuch at once: 'Goong-goong, if you want me to go stealing books from the Upper Library, there's just one problem.'
+ 'What's that?'
+ 'Well, after today's game, I met this . . . little eunuch, who stood in my way and asked me to give him some of my winnings.
+ I wouldn't, so we ended up fighting.
+ That's why I was so late for lunch.'
+ 'He beat you, presumably.'
+ 'He was bigger than me, and stronger.
+ He says I've got to fight with him every day, until I can beat him.
+ Then he'll let me off.'
+ 'What was the little fellow's name?
+ Which part of the Palace was he from?'
+ 'He's called Misty.
+ I don't know where he's from.'
+ 'You must have been acting too pleased with yourself after your win—that's probably what annoyed him.'
+ 'I won't let him get away with it!
+ I'm going to fight him tomorrow!
+ But I just wonder if I can beat him.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'You want to wangle some moves out of me, don't you?
+ The answer's no, so it's no use trying.'
+ 'Clever Old Turtle-head!' thought Trinket, silently cursing to himself.
+ 'This little fellow Misty,' he began again, out loud, 'he wasn't such a good fighter really.
+ I wouldn't need to learn much to beat him.
+ I don't need you to teach me, either.
+ I had him on the ground today, it's just that he was too strong for me: he managed to buck me off.
+ Tomorrow I'll get a proper grip on him.
+ That should fix the little bugger!'
+ He had been trying so hard all day to keep his language clean.
+ 'If you want to stop him bucking you, that's easy!' said Old Hai.
+ 'I didn't think it would be hard.
+ I just get him in a good shoulder grip, then—'
+ 'That's no good!
+ Bucking comes from the lower back.
+ You have to knee him on the vital point in the small of his back.
+ Come over here and I'll show you.'
+ Trinket hopped out of bed and was at Old Hai's bedside in a trice.
+ The old eunuch felt around in the small of his back and pressed lightly.
+ Trinket felt his whole body go limp.
+ 'Can you remember that?'
+ 'Yes, I'll try it out tomorrow.
+ Let's hope it works.'
+ 'Works?
+ Of course it will work.
+ It's absolutely foolproof!'
+ Old Hai reached out his hand and pressed lightly on either side of Trinket's neck.
+ Trinket let out a gasp of pain.
+ He had a choking sensation in his chest, and could hardly breathe.
+ 'Get him on these two points,' said Hai, 'and he'll have no strength to fight with.'
+ Trinket was pleased as punch.
+ 'Well, that's it then!
+ Tomorrow, I win!'
+ Trinket went back to bed, and fell asleep dreaming of Misty surrendering to the Little White Dragon!
+ Wu came to fetch him again the following morning.
+ It was the Wen brothers' turn to be bankers.
+ Trinket had soon managed to win over twenty taels off them.
+ It was a bad day for the bank altogether.
+ In less than an hour they had to pay out fifty taels, which was all they had.
+ Trinket lent them another twenty, and by the end of the day's play that was all gone too.
+ All Trinket could think about was his appointment with Misty.
+ As soon as the gambling was over, he hurried to the 'cake room'.
+ The table was piled high again with good things to eat, and this time Trinket tucked in with a vengeance.
+ Then he heard the flip-ploy of cloth boots again.
+ He ducked under the table, just in case it turned out to be someone other than Misty.
+ 'Laurel!
+ Laurel!'
+ It was Misty's voice calling from the doorway.
+ Trinket sprang out, and with a big grin on his face, called back: 'Live or die!'
+ 'I live, you die!' laughed Misty, striding into the room.
+ Trinket noticed at once that he was wearing a completely new outfit, and couldn't help feeling jealous.
+ 'Huh!' he muttered to himself.
+ 'Just you wait!
+ You won't be so pleased when I've made a big rip in that smart gown of yours!'
+ He let out a great war cry and threw himself straight into the attack.
+ 'Excellent kungfu!' cried his opponent, grappling him with both arms, and delivering a swinging kick with his left foot.
+ Trinket lost his balance, tottered and fell, bringing Misty down with him.
+ As Trinket rolled and spun round, he managed to pin Misty face down on the floor.
+ He remembered Old Hai's little demonstration, and felt for the vital point in the small of Misty's back.
+ But he had never done this sort of thing before, and it was hard to find the point at his very first attempt.
+ Misty meanwhile had spun round, gripped Trinket's left arm, and twisted it back.
+ 'Hey!' screamed Trinket, 'that's not fair!
+ Twisting my arm like that!'
+ That's what wresding's all about!' laughed Misty.
+ 'Who says it's not fair!'
+ Trinket took advantage of the fact that Misty was busy speaking and momentarily off his guard, to launch a counter-attack.
+ He brought his head down with all his might on to Misty's back, shot his right hand under his armpit, and flung him up into the air as hard as he could.
+ Misty went flying over his head and landed widi a crash on the ground.
+ He leapt to his feet again, crying: 'So you know the Bucking Antelope too!'
+ Trinket had never even heard of the Antelope.
+ He'd just been improvising and thrashing around, and somehow or other had managed to outwit his opponent.
+ He was pretty chuffed.
+ 'The Antelope is nothing!' he cried.
+ 'I know plenty more, and they're a lot worse.
+ You haven't seen anything yet!'
+ 'Perfect!' cried Misty in delight.
+ 'Go to!'
+ Trinket engaged in a quick moment's reflection: 'Misty has obviously had lessons—that's why he keeps getting the better of me.
+ But that's no problem.
+ All I have to do is watch his moves and copy them.
+ He can throw me a few times— I'll soon get the hang of it.'
+ Misty started coming at him.
+ Trinket lunged back, but it was a feint: Misty stepped aside, let Trinket surge on, and chopped him on the back with the side of his hand.
+ Trinket was unable to rein himself in, and went crashing to the ground.
+ Misty gave a great cry of delight, leapt forwards, and planted himself astride Trinket's back.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'No!
+ Never!' protested Trinket, but when he tried to straighten himself up and get to his feet, he felt a sudden numbness in the small of his back.
+ Misty had beaten him to it!
+ He had pressed on exactly the spot Old Hai had been trying to teach him the previous evening.
+ After struggling futilely for a moment longer, he finally gave up.
+ 'All right!' he cried.
+ This time I surrender!'
+ Misty laughed and set him free.
+ As Trinket got up, he suddenly shot out one of his feet.
+ Misty toppled over, and Trinket punched him in the small of the back.
+ Misty gave a cry of pain and bent double.
+ Trinket leapt on him from behind and gripped him tightly round the throat with both his hands.
+ Misty lost consciousness for an instant, and fell flat on the ground.
+ Trinket held on and demanded triumphantly: 'Surrender?'
+ Misty gave a little grunt.
+ Then suddenly he drove his elbows hard into Trinket's ribs, and Trinket went reeling over on to the floor, screaming with pain, certain that he must have several broken bones.
+ Misty spun round and sat astride his chest, once more the victor, though this time a winded and exhausted one, panting for breath.
+ 'Do . . . you . . . give in?'
+ 'Give in my arse!' panted Trinket back.
+ The answer's no!
+ A hundred times no!
+ You were lucky just now, that's all!'
+ 'Then get up ... and fight!'
+ Trinket stretched and heaved with all his might (what little of it he had left), but his opponent was still astride his aching ribs, and his efforts were to no avail.
+ After several more minutes of futile struggle, he surrendered yet again.
+ Misty rose to his feet.
+ His arms were sore and limp with exhaustion.
+ Trinket staggered to his feet and took a few tottering steps across the room.
+ 'Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I'll take you on again . . . and I'll beat you for sure!'
+ Misty laughed.
+ 'If we fight a hundred times, you'll. . . you'll always lose!
+ If you've got the guts, come again tomorrow!'
+ 'You're probably the one who's not got the guts!
+ I'm not afraid.
+ Live or die!
+ My word is my wand!'
+ They had both been quite carried away by the fighting, and neither of them had mentioned the money, or the bet they had laid.
+ Or to be strictly accurate, Misty didn't mention it, and since he didn't, Trinket was more than happy to pretend to have forgotten.
+ If he had emerged the victor, it would have been a very different story.
+
+ 靴声响到门口，那人走了进来。
+ 韦小宝从桌底下瞧出去，见那靴子不大，来人当是个和自己差不多年纪的男孩，当即放心，将烧饼放入口中，却也不敢咀嚼，只是用唾沫去浸湿烧饼，待浸软了吞咽。
+ 只听得咀嚼之声发自桌边，那男孩在取糕点而食，韦小宝心想：“也是个偷食的，我大叫一声冲出去，这小鬼定会吓得逃走，我便可大嚼一顿了。”
+ 又想：“刚才真笨，该当把几碟点心倒在袋里便走。
+ 这里又不是丽春院，难道短了什么，就定是把帐算在我头上？”
+ 忽听得砰砰声响，那男孩在敲击什么东西，韦小宝好奇心起，探头张望，只见那男孩约莫十四五岁年纪，身穿短打，伸拳击打梁上垂下来的一只布袋。
+ 他打了一会，又去击打墙边的皮人。
+ 那男孩一拳打在皮人胸口，随即双臂伸出，抱住了皮人的腰，将之按倒在地，所用手法，便似昨日在酒馆中所见到那些摔交的满人一般。
+ 韦小宝哈哈一笑，从桌底钻了出来，说道：“皮人是死的，有什么好玩？
+ 我来跟你玩。”
+ 那男孩见他突然现身，脸上又缠了白布，微微一惊，但听他说来陪自己玩，登时脸现喜色，道：“好，你上来！”
+ 韦小宝扑将过去，便去扭男孩的双臂。
+ 那男孩一侧身，右手一勾，韦小宝站立不住，立时倒了。
+ 那男孩道：“呸，你不会摔交。 ”
+ 韦小宝道：“谁说不会？”
+ 跃起身来，去抱他左腿。
+ 那男孩伸手抓他后心，韦小宝一闪，那男孩便抓了个空。
+ 韦小宝记得茅十八在酒馆中与七名大汉相斗的手法，突然左手出拳，击向那男孩下颚，砰的一声，正好打中。
+ 那男孩一怔，眼中露出怒色。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“呸，你不会摔交！”
+ 那男孩一言不发，左手虚晃，韦小宝斜身避让，那男孩手肘斗出，正撞在他的腰里。
+ 韦小宝大叫一声，痛得蹲了下来。
+ 那男孩双手从他背后腋下穿上，十指互握，扣住了他后颈，将他上身越压越低。
+ 韦小宝右足反踢。
+ 那男孩双手猛推，将韦小宝身子送出，拍的一声，跌了个狗吃屎。
+ 韦小宝大怒，翻滚过去，用力抱住了男孩的双腿，使劲拖拉，那男孩站立不住，倒了下来，正好压在韦小宝身上。
+ 这男孩身材比韦小宝高大，立即以手肘逼住韦小宝后颈。
+ 韦小宝呼吸不畅，拼命伸足力撑，翻了几下，终于翻到了上面，反压在那男孩身上。
+ 只见他人小身轻压不住对方，又给那男孩翻了上来压住。
+ 韦小宝极是滑溜，放开男孩双腿，钻到他身后，大力一脚踢中他屁股。
+ 那男孩反手抓住他右腿使劲一扯，韦小宝仰面便倒。
+ 那男孩扑上去扠住他头颈，喝道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝左足钩转，在那男孩腰间擦了几下，那男孩怕痒，嘻的一笑，手劲便即松了。
+ 韦小宝乘机跃起，抱住他头颈。
+ 那男孩使出摔交手法，抓住了韦小宝后领，把他重重往地下一摔。
+ 韦小宝一阵晕眩，动弹不得。
+ 那男孩哈哈大笑，说道：“服了么？”
+ 韦小宝猛地跃起，一个头锤，正中对方小腹。
+ 那男孩哼了一声，倒退几步。
+ 韦小宝冲将上去，那男孩身子微斜，横脚钩扫。
+ 韦小宝摔将下来，狠命抱住了他大腿。
+ 两人同时跌倒。
+ 一时那男孩翻在上面，一时韦小宝翻在上面，翻了十七八个滚，终于两人互相扭住，呼呼喘气，突然之间，两人不约而同的哈哈大笑，都觉如此扭打十分好玩，慢慢放开了手。
+ 那男孩一伸手，扯开了韦小宝脸上的白布，笑道：“包住了头干么？”
+ 韦小宝吃了一惊，便欲伸手去夺，但想对方既已看到自己真面目，再加遮掩也是无用，笑道：“包住了脸，免得进来偷食时给人认了出来。”
+ 那男孩站起身来，笑道：“好啊，原来你时时到这里偷食。”
+ 韦小宝道：“时时倒也不见得。”
+ 说着也站了起来，见那男孩眉清目秀，神情轩昂，对他颇有好感。
+ 那男孩问道：“你叫什么名字？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我叫小桂子，你呢？”
+ 那男孩略一迟疑，道：“我叫…… 叫小玄子。
+ 你是哪个公公手下的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我跟海老公。”
+ 小玄子点了点头，就用韦小宝那块白布抹了抹额头汗水，拿起一块点心便吃。
+ 韦小宝不肯服输，心想你大胆偷食，我的胆子也不小于你，当即拿起一块千层糕，肆无忌惮的放入口中。
+ 小玄子笑了笑，道：“你没学过摔交，可是手脚挺灵活，我居然压你不住，再打几个回合，你便输了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“那也不见得，咱们再打一会试试。”
+ 小玄子道：“很好！”
+ 两人又扭打起来。
+ 小玄子似乎会一些摔交之技，年纪和力气又都大过韦小宝，不过韦小宝在扬州市井间身经百战，与大流氓、小无赖也不知打过了多少场架，扭打的经验远比小玄子丰富。
+ 总算他记得茅十八的教训，而与小玄子的扭打只是游戏，并非拼命，什么拗手指、拉辫子、咬咽喉、抓眼珠、扯耳朵、捏阴囊等等拿手的成名绝技，倒也一项没使。
+ 这么一来，那就难以取胜，扭打几回合，韦小宝终于给他骑在背上，再也翻不了身。
+ 小玄子笑道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“死也不降。”
+ 小玄子哈哈一笑，跳了起来。
+ 韦小宝扑上去又欲再打。
+ 小玄子摇手笑道：“今天不打了，明天再来。
+ 不过你不是我对手，再打也没用。”
+ 韦小宝不服气，摸出一锭银子，约有三两上下，说道：“明天再打，不过要赌钱，你也拿三两银子出来。”
+ 小玄子一怔，道：“好，咱们打个彩头。
+ 明天我带银子来，中午时分，在这里再打过。”
+ 韦小宝道：“死约会不见不散，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 这“驷马难追”的“驷”他总是记不住，只得随口含糊带过。
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，说道：“不错，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 说着出屋而去。
+ 韦小宝抓了一大把点心，放在怀里，走出屋去，想起茅十八与人订约比武，虽在狱中，也要越狱赴约，虽然身受重伤，仍是誓守信约，在得胜山下等候两位高手，这等气概，当真令人佩服。
+ 他听说书先生说英雄故事，听得多了，时时幻想自己也是个大英雄、大豪杰，既与人订下比武之约，岂可不到？
+ 心想明日要来，今晚须得回到海老公处，于是顺着原路，慢慢觅到适才赌钱之处。
+ 先前向着右首走，以致越走越远，这次折而向左，走过两道回廊，依稀记得庭园中的花木曾经见过，一路寻将过去，终于回到海老公的住所。
+ 他走到门口，便听到海老公的咳嗽之声，问道：“公公，你好些了吗？”
+ 海老公沉声道：“好你个屁！
+ 快进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进屋去，只见海老公坐在椅上，那张倒塌了的桌子已换过了一张。
+ 海老公问道：“赢了多少？”
+ 韦小宝道：“赢了十几两银子，不过…… 不过……”
+ 海老公道：“不过怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不过借给了老吴。”
+ 其实他赢了二十几两，除了借给老吴之外，还有八九两剩下，生怕海老公要他交出来，不免报帐时不尽不实。
+ 海老公脸一沉，说道：“借给老吴这小子有什么用？
+ 他又不是上书房的。
+ 怎么不借给温家哥儿俩？”
+ 韦小宝不明缘由，道：“温家哥儿没向我借。”
+ 海老公道：“没向你借，你不会想法子借给他吗？
+ 我吩咐你的话，难道都忘了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我……我昨晚杀了这小孩子，吓得什么都忘了。
+ 要借给温家哥儿，不错，不错，你老人家确是吩咐过的。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“杀个把人，有什么了不起啦？
+ 不过你年纪小，没杀过人，那也难怪。
+ 那部书，你没有忘记？”
+ 韦小宝道：“那部书…… 书…… 我…… 我……”
+ 海老公又哼了一声，道：“当真什么都忘记了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“公公，我…… 我头痛得很，怕…… 怕得厉害，你又咳得这样，我真担心，什…… 什么都胡涂了。”
+ 海老公道：“好，你过来！
+ “韦小宝道：“ 是！”
+ 走近了几步。
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你倘若再不记得，我杀了你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是。”
+ 心想：“你只要再说一遍，我便过一百年也不会忘记。”
+ 海老公道：“你去赢温家哥儿俩的银子，他们输了，便借给他们，借得越多越好。
+ 过得几日，你便要他们带你到上书房去。
+ 他们欠了你钱，不敢不依，如果推三阻四，你就说我会去跟上书房总管乌老公算帐。
+ 温家兄弟还不出钱来，自会乘皇上不在……”
+ 韦小宝道：“皇上？”
+ 海老公道：“怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“没…… 没什么。”
+ 海老公道：“他们会问你，到上书房干什么，你就说人望高处，盼望见到皇上，能够在上书房当差。
+ 温家兄弟不会让你见到皇上的，带你过去时，皇上一定不会在书房里，你就得设法偷一部书出来。”
+ 韦小宝听他接连提到皇上，心念一动：“难道这里是皇宫？
+ 不是北京城里的大妓院？
+ 啊哟喂，是了，是了，若不是皇宫，哪有这等富丽堂皇的？
+ 这些人定是服侍皇帝的太监。”
+ 韦小宝虽然听人说过皇帝、皇后、太子、公主，以及宫女、太监，但只知道皇帝必穿龙袍，余人如何模样就不知道了。
+ 他在扬州看白戏倒也看得多了，不过戏台上的那些太监，服色打扮跟海老公、老吴他们全然不同，手中老是拿着一柄拂尘挥来挥去，唱的戏文没一句好听。
+ 他和海老公相处一日，又和老吴、温氏兄弟赌了半天钱，可不知他们便是太监，此刻听海老公这么说，这才渐渐省悟，心道：“啊哟，这么一来，我岂不变成了小太监？”
+ 海老公厉声道：“你听明白了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是，明白了，要到皇…… 皇帝的书房去。”
+ 海老公道：“到皇上书房去干什么？
+ 去玩吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是去偷一部书出来。”
+ 海老公道：“偷什么书？”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个…… 这个…… 什么书…… 我…… 我记不起了。”
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你好好记住了。
+ 那是一部佛经，叫做《四十二章经》，这部经书模样挺旧的，一共有好几本，你要一起拿来给我。
+ 记住了吗？
+ 叫什么？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“叫做《四十二章经》。”
+ 海老公听出他言语中的喜悦之意，问道：“有什么开心？”
+ 韦小宝道：“你一提，我便记起了，所以高兴。”
+ 原来他听海老公说要他到上书房去“偷书”，“偷”是绝不困难，“书”却难倒了人。
+ 他西瓜大的字识不了一担，要分辨什么书，可真杀了头也办不到，待得听说书名叫做《四十二章经》， 不由得心花怒放， “章经”是什么东西不得而知，“四十二”三字却是识得的，五个字中居然识得三个，不禁大为得意。
+ 海老公又道：“在上书房中偷书，手脚可得干净利落，假如让人瞧见了，你便有一百条性命也不在了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个我理会得，偷东西给人抓住了，还有好戏唱吗？”
+ 灵机一动，说道：“不过我决不会招你公公出来。”
+ 海老公叹道：“招不招我出来，也没什么相干了。”
+ 咳了一阵，说道：“今天你干得不错，居然赢到了钱。
+ 他们没起疑心罢？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“嘿嘿，没有，那怎么会？”
+ 想要自称自赞一番，终于忍住。
+ 海老公道：“别躲懒，左右闲着没事，便多练练。”
+ 韦小宝应了，走进房中，只见桌上放着碗筷，四菜一汤，没人动过，忙道：“公公，你不吃饭？
+ 我装饭给你。”
+ 海老公道：“不饿，不吃，你自己吃好了。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，来不及装饭，夹起一块红烧肉便吃，虽然菜肴早已冷了，吞入饥肠，却是说不出的美味，心想：“这些饭菜不知是谁送来的。
+ 这种小事别多问，睁大眼睛瞧着，慢慢的自会知道。”
+ 又想：“倘若这里真是皇宫，那么老吴、温家哥儿，还有那个小玄子都是太监了。
+ 却不知皇帝老儿和皇后娘娘是怎么一副模样，总得瞧个明白才是。
+ 回到扬州，嘿嘿，老子这说起来可就神气啦。
+ 茅大哥不知能不能逃出皇宫去？
+ 赌钱时没听到他们说起拿住了人，多半是逃出去啦。”
+ 吃完饭后，只怕海老公起疑，便拿着六颗骰子，在碗里玎玲玲的掷个不休，掷了一会，只觉眼皮渐重，昨晚一夜没睡，这时实在疲倦得很了，不多时便即睡着了。
+ 这一觉直睡到傍晚时分，跟着便有一名粗工太监送饭菜来。
+ 韦小宝服侍海老公吃了一碗饭，又服侍他上床睡觉，自己睡在小床上，心想：“明日最要紧的是和小玄子比武，要打得赢他才好。”
+ 闭上眼睛，回想茅十八在酒馆中跟满洲武士打架的手法，却模模糊糊的记不明白，不禁有些懊悔：“茅大哥要教我武艺，我偏不肯学，这一路上倘若学了来，小玄子力气虽比我大，又怎能是我对手？
+ 明天要是再给他骑住了翻不过来，输了银子不打紧，这般面子大失，我这‘小白龙’韦小宝在江湖上可也不用混啦。”
+ 突然心想：“满洲武士打不过茅大哥，茅大哥又不是老乌龟的对手，何不骗得老乌龟教我些本事？”
+ 当即说道：“公公，你要我去上书房拿几本书，这中间却有一桩难处。”
+ 海老公道：“什么难处？”
+ 韦小宝道：“今儿我赌了钱回来，遇到一个小…… 小太监，拦住了路，要我分钱给他，我不肯，他就跟我比武，说道我胜得过他，才放我走。
+ 我跟他斗了半天，所以…… 所以连饭也赶不及回来吃。”
+ 海老公道：“你输了，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他又高又壮，力气可比我大得多了。
+ 他说天天要跟我比武，哪一日我赢了他，他才不来缠我。”
+ 海老公道：“这小娃娃叫什么名字？
+ 哪一房的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他叫小玄子，可不知是哪一房的。”
+ 海老公道：“定是你赢了钱，神气活现的惹人讨厌，否则别人也不会找上你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我不服气，明儿再跟他斗过，就不知能不能赢。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“你又在想求我教武功了。
+ 我说过不教，便是不教，你再绕弯儿也没用。”
+ 韦小宝心中暗惊：“老乌龟倒聪明，不上这当。”
+ 说道：“这小玄子又不会武功，我要赢他，也不用学什么武艺，谁要你教了？
+ 今儿我明明已骑在他身上，只不过他力气大， 翻了过来。
+ 明天我出力掀住他，这家伙未必就能乌龟翻身。”
+ 他这一天已然小心收敛，不说一句粗话，这时终于忍不住说了一句。
+ 海老公道：“你想他翻不过来，那也容易。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我想也没什么难处，我明天一定牢牢掀住他肩头。”
+ 海老公道：“哼，掀住肩头有什么用？
+ 能不能翻身，全仗腰间的力道，你须用膝盖抵住他后腰穴道。
+ 你过来，我指给你看。”
+ 韦小宝一骨碌从床上跃下，走到他床前，海老公摸到他后腰一处所在，轻轻一按，韦小宝便觉全身酸软无力。
+ 海老公道：“记住了吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，明儿我便去试试，也不知成不成？”
+ 海老公怒道：“什么成不成？
+ 那是百发百中，万试万灵。”
+ 又伸手在他头颈两侧轻轻一按。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声叫了出来，只觉胸口一阵窒息，气也透不过来。
+ 海老公道：“你如出力拿他这两处穴道，他就没力气和你相斗。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“成了，明儿我准能赢他。”
+ 这个“准”字，是日间赌钱时学的。
+ 回到床上睡倒，想起明天“小白龙”韦小宝打得小玄子大叫“投降”，十分得意。
+ 次日老吴又来叫他去赌钱。
+ 那温家兄弟一个叫温有道，一个叫温有方，轮到两兄弟做庄时，韦小宝使出手段，赢了他们二十几两银子。
+ 他兄弟俩手气又坏，不到半个时辰，五十两本钱已输干了。
+ 韦小宝借了二十两给他们，到停赌时，温家兄弟又将这二十两银子输了。
+ 韦小宝心中记着的只是和小玄子比武之事，赌局一散，便奔到那间屋去。
+ 只见桌上仍是放着许多碟点心，他取了几块吃了，听得靴子声响，只怕来的不是小玄子，心想先钻入桌底再说，却听得小玄子在门外叫道：“小桂子，小桂子！”
+ 韦小宝跃到门口，笑道：“死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子也笑道：“哈哈，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 走进屋子。
+ 韦小宝见他一身新衣，甚是华丽，不禁颇有妒意，寻思：“待会我扯破你的新衣，叫你神气不得！”
+ 一声大叫，便向他扑了过去。
+ 小玄子喝道：“来得好。”
+ 扭住他双臂，左足横扫过去。
+ 韦小宝站立不定，晃了几下，一交跌倒，拉着小玄子也倒了下来。
+ 韦小宝一个打滚，翻身压在小玄子背上，记得海老公所教，便伸手去拿他后腰穴道，可是他没练过打穴拿穴的功夫，这穴道岂能一拿便着？
+ 拿的部位稍偏，小玄子已然翻了过来，抓住他左臂，用力向后拗转。
+ 韦小宝叫道：“啊哟，你不要脸，拗人手臂么？”
+ 小玄子笑道：“学摔交就是学拗人手臂，什么不要脸了？”
+ 韦小宝趁他说话之时一口气浮了，全身用力向他后腰撞去，将背心撞在他头上，右手从他臂腋里穿了过来，用劲向上甩出。
+ 小玄子的身子从他头顶飞过，拍的一声，掉在地下。
+ 小玄子翻身跳起，道：“原来你也会这招‘羚羊挂角’。”
+ 韦小宝不知“羚羊挂角”是什么手法，误打误撞的胜了一招，大为得意，说道：“这‘羚羊挂角’算得什么，我还有许多厉害手法没使出来呢。”
+ 小玄子喜道：“那再好也没有了，咱们再来比划。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“原来你学过武功，怪不得打你不过。
+ 可是你使一招，我学一招，最多给你多摔几交，你的法子我总能学了来。”
+ 眼见小玄子又扑将过来，便也猛力扑去。
+ 不料小玄子这一扑却是假的，待韦小宝扑到，他早已收势，侧身让开，伸手在他背上一推。
+ 韦小宝扑了个空，本已收脚不住，再给他顺力推出，登时砰的一声，重重摔倒。
+ 小玄子大声欢呼，跳过来骑在他背上，叫道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不降！”
+ 欲待挺腰翻起，蓦地里腰间一阵酸麻，后腰两处穴道已被小玄子屈指抵住，那正是海老公昨晚所教的手法，自己虽然学会了，却给对方抢先用出。
+ 韦小宝挣了几下，始终难以挣脱，只得叫道：“好，降你一次！”
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，放了他起身。
+ 韦小宝突然伸足绊去，小玄子斜身欲跌，韦小宝顺手出拳，正中他腰间。
+ 小玄子痛哼一声，弯下腰来，韦小宝自后扑上，双手箍住他头颈两侧。
+ 小玄子一阵晕眩，伏倒在地。
+ 韦小宝大喜，双手紧箍不放，问道：“投不投降？”
+ 小玄子哼了一声，突然间双肋向后力撞。
+ 韦小宝胸口肋骨痛得便欲折断，大叫一声，仰天倒下。
+ 小玄子翻身坐在他胸口，这一回合又是胜了，只是气喘吁吁，也已累得上气不接下气，问道：“服…… 服…… 服了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“服个屁！
+ 不…… 服，一百个…… 一…… 一万个不服。
+ 你不过碰巧赢了。”
+ 小玄子道：“你不服，便…… 便起来打过。”
+ 韦小宝双手撑地，只想使劲弹起来，但胸口要害处给对手按住了，什么力气都使不出来，僵持良久，只得又投降一次。
+ 小玄子站起身来，只觉双臂酸软。
+ 韦小宝勉力站起，身子摇摇摆摆，说道：“明儿…… 明儿再来打过，非…… 非叫你投降不可。”
+ 小玄子笑道：“再打一百次，你也…… 也…… 也是个输，你有胆子，明天就再来打。”
+ 韦小宝道：“只怕你没胆子呢，我为什么没胆子？
+ 死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子道：“好，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 两人打得兴起，都不提赌银子的事。
+ 小玄子既然不提，韦小宝乐得假装忘记，倘若是他赢了，银子自然非要不可。
+
+ Qin-shi was surprised to hear Bao-yu call out her childhood name in his sleep, but did not like to pursue the matter.
+ As she stood wondering, Bao-yu, who was still bemused after his dream and not yet in full possession of his faculties, got out of bed and began to stretch himself and to adjust his clothes, assisted by Aroma.
+ As she was doing up his trousers, her hand, chancing to stray over his thigh, came into contact with something cold and sticky which caused her to draw it back in alarm and ask him if he was all right.
+ Instead of answering, he merely reddened and gave the hand a squeeze.
+ Aroma had always been an intelligent girl.
+ She was, in any case, a year or two older than Bao-yu and had recently begun to have some understanding of the facts of life.
+ Observing the condition that Bao-yu was in, she therefore had more than an inkling of what had happened.
+ Abandoning her question, she busied herself with his clothes, her cheeks suffused by a crimson blush of embarrassment.
+ When he was properly dressed, they went to rejoin Grandmother Jia and the rest.
+ There they bolted a hurried supper and then slipped back to the other house, where Aroma profited from the absence of the nurses and the other maids to take out a clean undergarment for Bao-yu to change into.
+ 'Please, Aroma,' Bao-yu shamefacedly entreated as she helped him change, 'please don't tell anyone!'
+ Equally ill at ease, Aroma giggled softly.
+ 'Why did you...?' she began to ask.
+ Then, after glancing cautiously around, began again.
+ 'Where did that stuff come from?'
+ Bao-yu blushed furiously and said nothing.
+ Aroma stared at him curiously and continued to giggle.
+ After much hesitation he proceeded to give her a detailed account of his dream.
+ But when he came to the part of it in which he made love to Two-in-one, Aroma threw herself forward with a shriek of laughter and buried her face in her hands.
+ Bao-yu had long been attracted by Aroma's somewhat coquettish charms and tugged at her purposefully, anxious to share with her the lesson he had learned from Disenchantment.
+ Aroma knew that when Grandmother Jia gave her to Bao-yu she had intended her to belong to him in the fullest possible sense, and so, having no good reason for refusing him, she allowed him, after a certain amount of coy resistance, to have his way with her.
+ From then on Bao-yu treated Aroma with even greater consideration than before, whilst Aroma for her part redoubled the devotion with which she served him.
+ But of this, for the time being, no more.
+ The inhabitants of the Rong mansion, if we include all of them from the highest to the humblest in our total, numbered more than three hundred souls, who produced between them a dozen or more incidents in a single day.
+ Faced with so exuberant an abundance of material, what principle should your chronicler adopt to guide him in his selection of incidents to record?
+ As we pondered the problem where to begin, it was suddenly solved for us by the appearance as it were out of nowhere of someone from a very humble, very insignificant household who, on the strength of a very tenuous, very remote family connection with the Jias, turned up at the Rong mansion on the very day of which we are about to write.
+ Their name was Wang and they were natives of these parts.
+ A grandfather had held some very small official post in the capital and had there become acquainted with Wang Xi-feng's grandfather, the father of Lady Wang.
+ Conceiving an admiration for the power and prestige of this greater namesake, he had sought to link his family with the latter's clan by becoming his adoptive nephew.
+ Only Lady Wang and her elder brother – Wang Xi-feng's father – who chanced at that time to be staying with their parent on his tour of duty at the capital, knew anything about this.
+ The other members of the clan were unaware that any such relationship existed.
+ The grandfather had long since died, leaving an only son called Wang Cheng who, having fallen on hard times, had moved back into the countryside somewhere outside the capital.
+ Wang Cheng in his turn had died leaving a son called Gou-er, who had married a girl from a family called Liu and now had two children, a son called Ban-er and a daughter called Qing-er.
+ The four of them depended on agriculture for their living, and since, with Gou-er himself busy most of the day on the land and his wife busy about the farm drawing water, pounding grain, and the like, there was no one to look after Qing-er and her little brother, Gou-er invited his mother-in-law, old Grannie Liu, to come and live with them.
+ This Grannie Liu was an ancient widow-woman, rich in experience of the world, who, having no son or daughter-in-law to cherish her, eked out her solitary existence by scratching a livelihood from a miserable half-acre of land.
+ She therefore embraced her son-in-law's invitation with alacrity and threw herself enthusiastically into the business of helping the young couple to make a living.
+ The season was now at the turn between autumn and winter.
+ The cold weather was beginning, but none of the preparations for winter had yet been made.
+ By drinking to allay his anxiety, Gou-er merely put himself more out of temper.
+ He returned home to vent some of his spleen on his long-suffering wife.
+ Grannie Liu could eventually stomach no more of his wife-baiting and intervened on her daughter's behalf.
+ 'Now look here, son-in-law: probably you will think me an interfering old woman; but we country folk have to be grateful for what is in the pot and cut down our appetites to the same measure.
+ When you were little your Ma and Pa could afford to indulge you; so now you're grown-up you spend all your money as soon as you've got any, without stopping to count the cost; then, when it's all gone, you start making a fuss.
+ But what sort of way is that for a grown man to behave ?
+ 'Now where we live may be out in the country, but it's still "in the Emperor's shadow", as they say.
+ Over there in the city the streets are paved with money just waiting for someone to go and pick it up.
+ What's the sense in rampaging around here at home when you could go out and help yourself?'
+ 'It's easy for you to sit on your backside and talk,' said Gou-er rudely, 'but what do you expect me to do?
+ Go out and rob?'
+ 'No one's asking you to rob,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But can't we all sit down peaceably and think of a way?
+ Because if we don't, the money isn't going to come walking in the door of its own accord.'
+ Gou-er snorted sarcastically.
+ 'If there were a way, do you suppose I should have waited till now before trying it out?
+ There are no tax-collectors in my family and no mandarins among my friends.
+ What way could there be of laying my hands on some money?
+ Even if I did have rich friends or relations, I'm not so sure they would want to be bothered with the likes of us.'
+ 'I wouldn't say that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Man proposes, God disposes.
+ It's up to us to think of something.
+ We must leave it to the good Lord to decide whether He'll help us or not.
+ Who knows, He might give us the opportunity we are looking for.
+ 'Now I can think of a chance you might try.
+ Your family used to be connected with the Wang clan of Nanking.
+ Twenty years ago the Nanking Wangs used to be very good to you folk.
+ It's only because of late years you have been too stiff-necked to approach them that they have become more distant with you.
+ 'I can remember going to their house once with my daughter.
+ The elder Miss Wang was a very straightforward young lady, very easy to get on with, and not at all high and mighty.
+ She's now the wife of the younger of the two Sir Jias in the Rong mansion.
+ They say that now she's getting on in years she's grown even more charitable and given to good works than she was as a girl.
+ Her brother has been promoted; but I shouldn't be surprised if she at least didn't still remember us.
+ Why don't you try your luck with her?
+ You never know, she might do something for you for the sake of old times.
+ She only has to feel well disposed and a hair off her arm would be thicker than a man's waist to poor folks like us!'
+ 'That's all very well, Mother,' put in Gou-er's wife, 'but just take a look at us!
+ What sort of state are we in to go calling on great folks like them?
+ I doubt the people at the door would bother to tell them we were there.
+ Who's going to all that trouble just to make a fool of themselves?'
+ Gou-er's cupidity, however, had been aroused by the words of his mother-in-law, and his reaction to them was less discouraging than his wife's.
+ 'Well, if it's as you say, Grannie, and being as you've already seen this lady, why not go there yourself and spy out the land for us?'
+ 'Bless us and save us!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'You know what they say: "A prince's door is like the deep sea."
+ What sort of creature do you take me for?
+ The servants there don't know me; it would be a journey wasted.'
+ 'That's no problem,' said Gou-er.
+ 'I'll tell you what to do.
+ You take young Ban-er with you and ask for Old Zhou that stayed in service with your lady after she married.
+ If you tell them you've come to see him, it will give you an excuse for the visit.
+ Old Zhou once entrusted a bit of business to my father.
+ He used to be very friendly with us at one time.'
+ 'I knew all about that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But it's a long time since you had anything to do with him and hard to say how he may prove after all these years.
+ Howsomever.
+ Being a man, you naturally can't go in your present pickle; and a young married woman like my daughter can't go gallivanting around the countryside showing herself to everybody.
+ But as my old face is tough enough to stand a slap or two, it's up to me to go.
+ So be it, then.
+ If any good does come of the visit, we shall all of us benefit.'
+ And so, that very evening, the matter was settled.
+ Next day Grannie Liu was up before dawn.
+ As soon as she had washed and done her hair, she set about teaching Ban-er a few words to say to the ladies at the great house – an exercise to which he submitted cheerfully enough, as would any little boy of four or five who had been promised an outing to the great city.
+ That done, she set off on her journey, and in due course made her way to Two Dukes Street.
+ There, at each side of the stone lions which flanked the gates of the Rong Mansion, she saw a cluster of horses and palanquins.
+ Not daring to go straight up, she first dusted down her clothes and rehearsed Ban-er's little repertoire of phrases before sidling up to one of the side entrances.
+ A number of important-looking gentlemen sat in the gateway sunning their bellies and discoursing with animated gestures on a wide variety of topics.
+ Grannie Liu waddled up to them and offered a respectful salutation.
+ After looking her up and down for a moment or two, they asked her her business.
+ Grannie Liu smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I've come to see Old Zhou that used to be in service with Her Ladyship before she married.
+ Could I trouble one of you gentlemen to fetch him out for me?'
+ The gentlemen ignored her request and returned to their discussion.
+ After she had waited there for some considerable time one of them said,' If you stand at that gate along there on the corner, someone from inside the house should be coming out presently.'
+ But a more elderly man among them protested that it was 'a shame to send her on a fool's errand', and turning to Grannie Liu he said, 'Old Zhou is away in the South at the moment, but his missus is still at home.
+ She lives round at the back.
+ You'll have to go from here round to the back gate in the other street and ask for her there.'
+ Grannie Liu thanked him and trotted off with little Ban-er all the way round to the rear entrance.
+ There she found a number of sweetmeat vendors and toy-sellers who had set their wares down outside the gate and were being beseiged by a crowd of some twenty or thirty noisy, yelling children.
+ She grabbed a small urchin from their midst and drew him towards her.
+ 'Tell me, sonny, is there a Mrs Zhou living here?'
+ The urchin stared back at her impudently.
+ 'Which Mrs Zhou?
+ There are several Mrs Zhous here.
+ What's her job?'
+ 'She's the Mrs Zhou that came here with Her Ladyship when she was married.'
+ 'That's easy,' said the urchin.
+ 'Follow me!'
+ He led Grannie Liu into a rear courtyard.
+ 'That's where she lives,' he said, pointing in the direction of a side wall.
+ Then, bawling over the wall, 'Mrs Zhou, there's an old woman come to see you!'
+ Zhou Rui's wife came hurrying out and asked who it was.
+ 'How are you, my dear?' said Grannie Liu, advancing with a smile.
+ Zhou Rui's wife scrutinized her questioningly for some moments before finally recognizing her.
+ 'Why, it's Grannie Liu!
+ How are you?
+ It's so many years since I saw you last, I'd forgotten all about you!
+ Come in and sit down!'
+ Grannie Liu followed her cackling.
+ 'You know what they say: "Important people have short memories."
+ I wouldn't expect you to remember the likes of us!'
+ When they were indoors, Zhou Rui's wife ordered her little hired help to pour out some tea.
+ 'And hasn't Ban-er grown a big boy!' said Zhou Rui's wife; then, after a few inquiries about the various things that had happened since they last met, she asked Grannie Liu about her visit.
+ 'Were you just passing by, or have you come specially?'
+ 'Well, of course, first and foremost we came to see you,' replied Grannie Liu mendaciously, 'but we were also hoping to pay our respects to Her Ladyship.
+ If you could take us to see her, that would be very nice; but if that's not possible, perhaps we could trouble you just to give her our regards.'
+ From the tone of this reply Zhou Rui's wife was already able to make a pretty good guess as to the real purpose of the old woman's visit; but because some years previously her husband had received a lot of help from Gou-er's father in a dispute over the purchase of some land, she could not very well reject Grannie Liu now, when she came to her as a suppliant.
+ She was, in any case, anxious to demonstrate her own importance in the Jia household; and so the answer she gave her was a gracious one.
+ 'Don't you worry, Grannie!
+ After you've made such a long pilgrimage, we won't let you go home without seeing a real Buddha!
+ By rights, of course, Callers and Visitors has nothing to do with me.
+ You see, we each have our own jobs here.
+ My man's is collecting the half-yearly rents in the spring and autumn; and when he's not doing that, he takes the young masters out when they go on visits.
+ That's all he ever does.
+ Now my job is to attend to their ladyships and the young mistresses when they go out.
+ But being as how you are a relation of Her ladyship, and since you've put your confidence in me and turned to me to help you, I don't mind breaking the rules for once and taking in a message.
+ 'There's only one thing, though.
+ I don't expect you know, but things here are very different from what they were five years ago.
+ Nowadays Her Ladyship doesn't run things here any longer.
+ It's Master Lian's wife who does all the managing –
+ You'll never guess who that is:
+ Her Ladyship's niece Wang Xi-feng.
+ You know, Her Ladyship's eldest brother's daughter, that we used to call "Feng-ge" when she was a child.'
+ 'Bless you, my dear, for being such a help!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Oh Grannie, how can you say such a thing?' said Zhou Rui's wife demurely.
+ 'You know what the old saying is, "He who helps others helps himself."
+ It's only a question of saying a few words.
+ No trouble at all.'
+ So saying, she instructed the little maid to slip quietly round to the back of old Lady Jia's quarters and ask if they were serving lunch yet.
+ The little maid departed on her errand and the two women resumed their conversation.
+ 'This Mrs Lian,' said Grannie Liu: 'she can't be more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
+ She must be a very capable young woman.
+ Fancy her being able to run a great household like this!'
+ 'Oh Grannie, you have no idea!' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Mrs Lian may be young, but when it comes to doing things, she's got an older head on her shoulders than any I've ever come across.
+ She's grown up to be a real beauty too, has Mrs Lian.
+ But sharp!
+ Well, if it ever comes to a slanging match, she can talk down ten grown men any day of the week!
+ Wait till you meet her, and you'll see what I mean.
+ There's only one thing, though.
+ She's a bit too strict with those beneath her.'
+ As she was speaking, the little maid came back, her errand completed.
+ 'They've finished serving lunch at Her Old Ladyship's.
+ Mrs Lian is still there.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to her feet and urged Grannie Liu to do likewise.
+ 'Quick!
+ After she comes out from there she'll be free for a few minutes while she has her meal.
+ We must try and catch her then.
+ If we delay a moment longer, people will start coming in with messages and we shan't have a chance to speak to her.
+ And once she goes off for her afternoon nap, we've really lost her!'
+ Grannie Liu got off the kang, adjusted her clothing, conducted Ban-er through a rapid revision of his little stock of phrases and followed Zhou Rui's wife through various twists and turns to Jia Lian's quarters.
+ Just before they reached them, Zhou Rui's wife planted them both in a covered passage-way while she went on ahead round the screen wall and into the gate of the courtyard.
+ First ascertaining that Wang Xi-feng had not yet left Lady Jia's, she sought out Xi-feng's chambermaid and principal confidante, Patience, and primed her with a full account of Grannie Liu's antecedents.
+ 'She has come all this way today to pay her respects,' she concluded.
+ 'At one time Her Ladyship used to see quite a lot of her, which is why I thought it would be in order for me to bring her in.
+ I thought I would wait for the young mistress to come back and explain it all to her.
+ I hope she won't be angry with me for pushing myself forward.'
+ Patience at once made up her mind what to do.
+ 'Let them come in here.
+ They can sit here while they are waiting.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife went off again to fetch her charges.
+ As they ascended the steps to the main reception room, a little maid lifted up the red carpet which served as a portiere for them to enter.
+ A strange, delicious fragrance seemed to reach forward and enfold them as they entered, producing in Grannie Liu the momentary sensation that she had been transported bodily to one of the celestial paradises.
+ Their eyes, too, were dazzled by the bright and glittering things that filled the room.
+ Temporarily speechless with wonder, Grannie Liu stood wagging her head, alternating clicks of admiration with pious ejaculations.
+ From the glittering reception room they passed to a room on the east side of it in which Jia Lian's baby daughter slept.
+ Patience, who was standing by the edge of the kang, made a rapid assessment of Grannie Liu and judged it sufficient to greet her with a civil 'how-do-you-do' and an invitation to be seated.
+ Grannie Liu looked at the silks and satins in which Patience was dressed, the gold and silver ornaments in her hair, her beauty of feature which in every respect corresponded with what she had been told of Wang Xi-feng, and taking the maid for the mistress, was on the point of greeting her as 'Gou-er's aunt', when Zhou Rui's wife introduced her as' Miss Patience'.
+ Then, when Patience shortly afterwards addressed Zhou Rui's wife as 'Mrs Zhou', she knew that this was no mistress but a very high-class maid.
+ So Grannie Liu and Ban-er got up on the kang at one side, while Patience and Zhou Rui's wife sat near the edge of it on the other, and a little maid came in and poured them all some tea.
+ Grannie Liu's attention was distracted by a persistent tock tock tock tock not unlike the sound made by a flour-bolting machine, and she could not forbear glancing round her from time to time to see where it came from.
+ Presently she caught sight of a sort of boxlike object fastened to one of the central pillars of the room, and a thing like the weight of a steelyard hanging down from it, which swung to and fro in ceaseless motion and appeared to be the source of the noise which had distracted her.
+ 'I wonder what that can be,' she thought to herself, 'and what it can be used for?'
+ As she studied the strange box, it suddenly gave forth a loud dong! like the sound of a bronze bell or a copper chime, which so startled the old lady that her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
+ The dong! was followed in rapid succession by eight or nine others, and Grannie Liu was on the point of asking what it meant, when all the maids in the house began scurrying about shouting, 'The mistress!
+ The mistress!
+ She'll be coming out now!' and Patience and Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to their feet.
+ 'Just stay here, Grannie,' they said.
+ 'When it is time for you to see her, we shall come in and fetch you'; and they went off with the other servants to greet their mistress.
+ As Grannie Liu sat in silence, waiting with bated breath and head cocked to one side for her summons, she heard a far-off sound of laughter, followed presently by a sound of rustling dresses as between ten and twenty women entered the reception room and passed from it into the room beyond.
+ Then two or three women bearing large red lacquer boxes took up their positions on the side nearest the room in which she sat and stood there waiting to be called.
+ A voice in the far room called out,' Serve now, please!' at which, to judge from the noises, most of the women scuttled off, leaving only the few who were waiting at table.
+ A long silence ensued in which not so much as a cheep could be heard; then two women came in bearing a small, low table which they set down on the kang.
+ It was covered with bowls and dishes containing all kinds of meat and fish, only one or two of which appeared to have been touched.
+ At the sight of it Ban-er set up a clamour for some meat and was silenced by Grannie Liu with a resounding slap.
+ Just at that moment Zhou Rui's wife appeared, her face all wreathed in smiles, and advanced towards Grannie Liu beckoning.
+ Grannie Liu slipped off the kang, lifted down Ban-er, and exchanged a few hurried whispers with her in the reception room before waddling into the room beyond.
+ A dark-red patterned curtain hung from brass hooks over the doorway.
+ Inside, under the window in the south wall, there was a kang covered with a dark-red carpet.
+ At the east end of the kang, up against the wooden partition wall, were a backrest and bolster, both covered in gold brocade, and a large flat cushion for sitting on, also glittering with gold thread.
+ Beside them stood a silver spittoon.
+ Wang Xi-feng had on a little cap of red sable, which she wore about the house for warmth, fastened on with a pearl-studded bandeau.
+ She was dressed in a sprigged peach-pink gown, with an ermine-lined skirt of dark-red foreign crepe underneath it, and a cloak of slate-blue silk with woven coloured insets and lining of grey squirrel around her shoulders.
+ Her face was exquisitely made-up.
+ She was sitting on the edge of the kang, her back straight as a ramrod, with a diminutive pair of tongs in her hand, removing the spent charcoal from a portable hand-warmer.
+ Patience stood beside her carrying a covered teacup on a tiny inlaid lacquer tray.
+ Xi-feng appeared not to have noticed her, for she neither reached out for the cup nor raised her head, but continued picking ab-sorbedly at her hand-warmer.
+ At last she spoke: 'Why not ask them in, then?'
+ As she did so, she raised her head and saw Zhou Rui's wife with her two charges already standing in front of her.
+ She made a confused movement as if to rise to her feet, welcomed the old lady with a look of unutterable benevolence, and almost in the same breath said rather crossly to Zhou Rui's wife, 'Why didn't you tell me?'
+ By this time Grannie Liu was already down on her knees and had touched her head several times to the floor in reverence to her 'Aunt Feng'.
+ 'Stop her, Zhou dear !' said Xi-feng in alarm.
+ 'She mustn't do that,
+ I am much too young!
+ In any case, I don't know her very well.
+ I don't know what sort of relations we are and what I should call her.'
+ 'This is the Grannie Liu I was just telling you about,' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ Xi-feng nodded, and Grannie Liu sat herself down on the edge of the kang.
+ Ban-er at once hid himself behind her back and neither threats nor blandishments would induce him to come out and make a bow to his 'Auntie'.
+ 'Relations don't come to see us much nowadays,' said Xi-feng affably.
+ 'We are getting to be quite strangers with everybody.
+ People who know us realize that it is because you are tired of us that you don't visit us oftener; but some spiteful people who don't know us so well think it's our fault, because we have grown too proud.'
+ Grannie Liu invoked the Lord Buddha in pious disavowal of so shocking a view.
+ 'It's hard times that keeps us away.
+ We can't afford to visit.
+ We are afraid that if we came to see you looking the way we are, you would disown us; and even the people at the gate might think we were tramps!'
+ 'Now you are really being too hard on us!
+ What if Grandfather did make a little bit of a name for himself and we do hold some miserable little appointment?
+ What does it all amount to?
+ It's all empty show, really.
+ You know what they say: "Even the Emperor has poor relations."
+ It would be strange indeed if we didn't have a few!'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Have you told Her Ladyship yet?'
+ 'No, ma'am.
+ I was waiting for your instructions.'
+ 'Go and have a look, then.
+ If she has anyone with her, you had better leave it; but if she is free, tell her about their visit and see what she says.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife departed on her errand.
+ Xi-feng told one of the servants to give Ban-er a handful of sweets, and had just begun a desultory conversation with Grannie Liu when a number of domestics and underlings of either sex arrived to report on their duties.
+ 'I am entertaining a guest,' said Xi-feng to Patience when she came in to announce their arrival.
+ 'Let them leave it until this evening.
+ But if anyone has important business, bring them in and I will deal with it now.'
+ Patience went out and returned a minute later to say that she had asked them and no one had any business of special importance, so she had sent them all away.
+ Xi-feng nodded.
+ At this point Zhou Rui's wife returned with a message for Xi-feng.
+ 'Her Ladyship says she isn't free today, but that if you will entertain them for her, it will be just the same as if she were to receive them herself.
+ She says please thank them very much for coming.
+ And she says if it's just an ordinary visit she has nothing more to add; but if they have anything particular to say, she says tell them that they can say it to you instead.'
+ 'I hadn't anything particular in mind,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Only to look in on Her Ladyship and your mistress.
+ Just a visit to relations.'
+ 'Well all right then, if you are sure you have nothing to say.
+ But if you have got anything to say, you really ought to tell the mistress.
+ It will be just the same as if you were to say it to Her Ladyship.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife darted a meaningful look at Grannie Liu as she said this.
+ Grannie Liu perfectly well understood the significance of this look, and a blush of shame overspread her face.
+ Yet if she did not speak up now, what would have been the purpose of her visit?
+ She forced herself to say something.
+ 'By rights I ought not to mention it today, seeing that this is our first meeting: but as I have come such a long way to see you, it seems silly not to speak...'
+ She had got no further when the pages from the outer gate announced the arrival of 'the young master from the Ning mansion' and Xi-feng gestured to her to stop.
+ 'It's all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.'
+ She turned to the pages.
+ 'Where is Master Rong, then?'
+ A man's footstep sounded outside and a fresh-faced, willowy youth of seventeen or eighteen in elegant and expensive-looking winter dress came into the room.
+ Grannie Liu, acutely embarrassed in this male presence, did not know whether to sit or stand, and looked round her in vain for somewhere to hide herself.
+ Xi-feng laughed at her discomfiture.
+ 'Don't mind him; just stay where you are!
+ It's only my nephew.'
+ With a good deal of girlish simpering Grannie Liu sat down again, perching herself obliquely on the extreme edge of the kang.
+ Jia Rong saluted his aunt Manchu fashion.
+ 'My father is entertaining an important visitor tomorrow and he wondered if he might borrow the little glass screen that your Uncle Wang's wife gave you, to put on our kang while he is there.
+ We can let you have it back again as soon as he has gone.'
+ 'You are too late,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I lent it yesterday to someone else.'
+ Jia Rong flashed a winning smile at her and half-knelt on the side of the kang.
+ 'If you won't lend it, my father will say that I didn't ask properly and I shall get a beating.
+ Come on, Auntie, be a sport!
+ Just for my sake!'
+ Xi-feng smiled maliciously.
+ 'I don't know what's so special about my family's things.
+ Heaven knows, you have enough stuff of your own over there; yet you have only to set eyes on anything of ours, and you want it for yourselves.'
+ Jia Rong's smile flashed again.
+ 'Please, Auntie!
+ Be merciful!'
+ 'If it's the tiniest bit chipped,' said Xi-feng, 'I'll have the hide off you!'
+ She ordered Patience to take the key of the upstairs room and get some reliable servants to carry it over.
+ Delighted with his good luck, Jia Rong hurriedly forestalled her.
+ 'I'll get some of my own people to carry it.
+ Don't put yours to a lot of trouble!' and he hurried out.
+ Xi-feng suddenly seemed to remember something, and called to him through the window, 'Rong, come back!'
+ Servants in the yard outside dutifully took up the cry, 'Master Rong, you're wanted back again!'
+ Jia Rong came hurrying back, wreathed in smiles, and looked at Xi-feng with eyebrows arched inquiringly.
+ Xi-feng, however, sipped very intently from her teacup and mused for a while, saying nothing.
+ Suddenly her face flushed and she gave a little laugh: 'It doesn't matter.
+ Come back again after supper.
+ I've got company now, and besides, I don't feel in the mood to tell you.'
+ 'Yes, Aunt,' said Jia Rong, and pursing his lips up in a complacent smile he sauntered slowly out of the room.
+ Having all this while had time to collect herself, Grannie Liu began her speech again: 'The real reason I have brought your little nephew here today is because his Pa and Ma haven't anything in the house to eat, and the weather is getting colder, and – and – I thought I'd bring him here to see you...'
+ She gave Ban-er a despairing push.
+ 'What did your Pa tell you to say when we got here?
+ What was it he sent us for?
+ Look at you!
+ All you can do is sit there eating sweets!'
+ It was abundantly clear to Xi-feng that the old lady was too embarrassed to go on, and she put her out of her misery with a gracious smile.
+ 'It's quite all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.
+ I quite understand.'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'I wonder if Grannie has eaten yet today?'
+ 'We were on our way first thing this morning,' Grannie Liu chimed in.
+ 'There was no time to think about eating.'
+ Xi-feng gave orders for a meal to be brought in, and Zhou Rui's wife went out and presently reappeared with a guest's portion of various choice dishes on a little table, which she set down in the east wing, and to which she then conducted Grannie Liu and Ban-er for their meal.
+ 'Zhou, dear,' said Xi-feng, 'will you keep them company and see that they have enough to eat?
+ I shan't be able to sit with them myself.'
+ Then calling her aside for a moment she asked, 'What did Her Ladyship say when you went to report about them just now?'
+ 'She said they don't really belong to the family but were adopted into the clan years ago when your grandfather and theirs were working in the same office.
+ She said they haven't been round much of late years, but in the old days when they used to visit us we never sent them back empty-handed.
+ She said it was nice of them to come and see us today and we should be careful to treat them considerately.
+ And she said if they appear to want anything, she would leave it to you to decide what we should do for them.'
+ 'No wonder!' exclaimed Xi-feng when she had heard this account.
+ 'I couldn't understand how they could be really related to us if I had never even heard of them.'
+ While they were talking, Grannie Liu came back from the other room having already finished eating, smacking her lips and sucking her teeth appreciatively, and voicing her thanks for the repast.
+ 'Sit down,' said Xi-feng with a smile.
+ 'I have something to say to you.
+ I quite understand what you were trying to tell me just now.
+ As we are relations, we ought by rights not to wait for you to come to our door before helping you when you are in trouble; but there are so many things to attend to in this family, and now that Her Ladyship is getting on a bit she doesn't always remember them all.
+ And since I took over the management of the household, I find there are quite a lot of relations that I don't even know about.
+ And then again, of course, though we may look thriving enough from the outside, people don't realize that being a big establishment like ours carries its own difficulties.
+ They won't believe it if you tell them, but it's true.
+ However, since you have come such a long way, and since this is the first time you have ever said a word about needing help, we obviously can't let you go back empty-handed.
+ Fortunately it so happens that I still haven't touched any of the twenty taels of silver that Her Ladyship gave me the other day to make clothes for the maids with.
+ If you don't mind it being so little, you are very welcome to take it.'
+ When Grannie Liu heard Xi-feng talk about 'difficulties' she concluded that there was no hope.
+ Her delight and the way in which her face lit up with pleasure when she heard that she was, after all, to be given twenty taels of silver can be imagined.
+ 'We knew you had your troubles,' she said, 'but as the saying goes, "A starved camel is bigger than a fat horse."
+ Say what you like, a hair plucked from your arm is thicker than a man's waist to folks like us!'
+ Horrified by the crudity of these expressions, Zhou Rui's wife, who was standing by, was meanwhile signalling frantically to the old lady to stop.
+ But Xi-feng laughed quite unconcernedly and told Patience to wrap up the silver and also to fetch a string of cash to go with it.
+ The money was set down in front of Grannie Liu.
+ 'Here is the twenty taels of silver,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Take this for the time being to make some winter clothes for the children with.
+ Some time later on, when you have nothing better to do, look in on us for a day or two for kinship's sake.
+ It's late now, so I won't try to keep you.
+ Give our regards to everybody who ought to be remembered when you get back!'
+ She rose to her feet, and Grannie Liu, with heartfelt expressions of gratitude, picked up the money and followed Zhou Rui's wife out of the room.
+ 'My dear good woman,' said the latter when they were out of earshot, 'whatever came over you?
+ First, when you met her, you couldn't get a word out; then, when you did start talking, it was all "your nephew" this and "your nephew" that!
+ I hope you won't mind my saying so, but even if the child was a real nephew you would still need to go a bit easy on the familiarities.
+ Now Master Rong, he is her real nephew.
+ That's the sort of person a lady like that calls "nephew" .
+ Where she would come by a nephew like this one, I just do not know!'
+ 'My dear,' replied Grannie Liu with a laugh, 'when I saw the pretty little darling sitting there, I took such a liking to her that my heart was too full to speak.'
+ Back in Zhou Rui's quarters the two women sat talking for a while.
+ Grannie Liu wanted to leave a piece of silver to buy something for the Zhou children with, but Zhou Rui's wife said she wouldn't hear of it and refused absolutely to accept anything.
+ And so, with many expressions of gratitude, the old lady took her leave and set out once more through the back gate of the mansion.
+ And if you want to know what happened after she had left, you will have to read the next chapter.
+
+ 却说秦氏因听见宝玉梦中唤他的乳名，心中纳闷，又不好细问。
+ 彼时宝玉迷迷惑惑，若有所失，遂起身解怀整衣。
+ 袭人过来给他系裤带时，刚伸手至大腿处，只觉冰冷粘湿的一片，吓的忙褪回手来，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 宝玉红了脸，把他的手一捻。
+ 袭人本是个聪明女子，年纪又比宝玉大两岁，近来也渐省人事。
+ 今见宝玉如此光景，心中便觉察了一半，不觉把个粉脸羞的飞红，遂不好再问。
+ 仍旧理好衣裳，随至贾母处来，胡乱吃过晚饭，过这边来，趁众奶娘丫鬟不在旁时，另取出一件中衣与宝玉换上。
+ 宝玉含羞央告道：“好姐姐，千万别告诉人。”
+ 袭人也含着羞悄悄的笑问道：“你为什么——”
+ 说到这里，把眼又往四下里瞧了瞧，才又问道：“那是那里流出来的？”
+ 宝玉只管红着脸不言语，袭人却只瞅着他笑。
+ 迟了一会，宝玉才把梦中之事细说与袭人听。
+ 说到云雨私情，羞的袭人掩面伏身而笑。
+ 宝玉亦素喜袭人柔媚姣俏，遂强拉袭人同领警幻所训之事，袭人自知贾母曾将他给了宝玉，也无可推托的，扭捏了半日，无奈何，只得和宝玉温存了一番。
+ 自此宝玉视袭人更自不同，袭人待宝玉也越发尽职了。
+ 这话暂且不提。
+ 且说荣府中合算起来，从上至下，也有三百余口人，一天也有一二十件事，竟如乱麻一般，没个头绪可作纲领。
+ 正思从那一件事那一个人写起方妙，却好忽从千里之外，芥豆之微，小小一个人家，因与荣府略有些瓜葛，这日正往荣府中来，因此便就这一家说起，倒还是个头绪。
+ 原来这小小之家，姓王，乃本地人氏，祖上也做过一个小小京官，昔年曾与凤姐之祖王夫人之父认识。
+ 因贪王家的势利，便连了宗，认作侄儿。
+ 那时只有王夫人之大兄凤姐之父与王夫人随在京的知有此一门远族，余者也皆不知。
+ 目今其祖早故，只有一个儿子，名唤王成，因家业萧条，仍搬出城外乡村中住了。
+ 王成亦相继身故，有子小名狗儿，娶妻刘氏，生子小名板儿； 又生一女，名唤青儿：
+ 一家四口，以务农为业。
+ 因狗儿白日间自作些生计，刘氏又操井臼等事，青板姊弟两个无人照管，狗儿遂将岳母刘老老接来，一处过活。
+ 这刘老老乃是个久经世代的老寡妇，膝下又无子息，只靠两亩薄田度日。
+ 如今女婿接了养活， 岂不愿意呢，遂一心一计，帮着女儿女婿过活。
+ 因这年秋尽冬初，天气冷将上来，家中冬事未办，狗儿未免心中烦躁，吃了几杯闷酒，在家里闲寻气恼，刘氏不敢顶撞。
+ 因此刘老老看不过，便劝道：“姑爷，你别嗔着我多嘴：咱们村庄人家儿，那一个不是老老实实，守着多大碗儿吃多大的饭呢!
+ 你皆因年小时候，托着老子娘的福，吃喝惯了，如今所以有了钱就顾头不顾尾，没了钱就瞎生气，成了什么男子汉大丈夫了!
+ 如今咱们虽离城住着，终是天子脚下。
+ 这‘长安’城中遍地皆是钱，只可惜没人会去拿罢了。
+ 在家跳蹋也没用！”
+ 狗儿听了道：“你老只会在炕头上坐着混说，难道叫我打劫去不成？”
+ 刘老老说道：“谁叫你去打劫呢?
+ 也到底大家想个方法儿才好。
+ 不然那银子钱会自己跑到咱们家里来不成？”
+ 狗儿冷笑道：“有法儿还等到这会子呢!
+ 我又没有收税的亲戚、做官的朋友，有什么法子可想的?
+ 就有，也只怕他们未必来理我们呢。”
+ 刘老老道：“这倒也不然。
+ ‘谋事在人，成事在天’，咱们谋到了，靠菩萨的保佑，有些机会，也未可知。
+ 我倒替你们想出一个机会来。
+ 当日你们原是和金陵王家连过宗的。
+ 二十年前，他们看承你们还好，如今是你们拉硬屎，不肯去就和他，才疏远起来。
+ 想当初我和女儿还去过一遭，他家的二小姐着实爽快会待人的，倒不拿大，如今现是荣国府贾二老爷的夫人。
+ 听见他们说，如今上了年纪，越发怜贫恤老的了，又爱斋僧布施。
+ 如今王府虽升了官儿，只怕二姑太太还认的咱们，你为什么不走动走动?
+ 或者他还念旧，有些好处也未可知。
+ 只要他发点好心，拔根寒毛，比咱们的腰还壮呢！”
+ 刘氏接口道：“你老说的好，你我这样嘴脸，怎么好到他门上去?
+ 只怕他那门上人也不肯进去告诉，没的白打嘴现世的！”
+ 谁知狗儿利名心重，听如此说，心下便有些活动； 又听他妻子这番话，便笑道：“老老既这么说，况且当日你又见过这姑太太一次，为什么不你老人家明日就去走一遭，先试试风头儿去？”
+ 刘老老道：“哎哟!
+ 可是说的了：‘侯门似海。’
+ 我是个什么东西儿!
+ 他家人又不认得我，去了也是白跑。”
+ 狗儿道：“不妨，我教给你个法儿。
+ 你竟带了小板儿先去找陪房周大爷，要见了他，就有些意思了。
+ 这周大爷先时和我父亲交过一桩事，我们本极好的。”
+ 刘老老道：“我也知道。
+ 只是许多时不走动，知道他如今是怎样?
+ 这也说不得了!
+ 你又是个男人，这么个嘴脸，自然去不得。
+ 我们姑娘年轻的媳妇儿，也难卖头卖脚的， 倒还是舍着我这副老脸去碰碰。
+ 果然有好处，大家也有益。”
+ 当晚计议已定。
+ 次日天未明时，刘老老便起来梳洗了， 又将板儿教了几句话； 五六岁的孩子，听见带了他进城逛去，喜欢的无不应承。
+ 于是刘老老带了板儿，进城至宁荣街来。
+ 到了荣府大门前石狮子旁边，只见满门口的轿马。
+ 刘老老不敢过去，掸掸衣服，又教了板儿几句话，然后溜到角门前，只见几个挺胸叠肚、指手画脚的人坐在大门上，说东谈西的。
+ 刘老老只得蹭上来问：“太爷们纳福。”
+ 众人打量了一会，便问：“是那里来的？”
+ 刘老老陪笑道：“我找太太的陪房周大爷的。
+ 烦那位太爷替我请他出来。”
+ 那些人听了，都不理他，半日，方说道：“你远远的那墙畸角儿等着，一会子他们家里就有人出来。”
+ 内中有个年老的说道：“何苦误他的事呢？”
+ 因向刘老老道：“周大爷往南边去了。
+ 他在后一带住着，他们奶奶儿倒在家呢。
+ 你打这边绕到后街门上找就是了。”
+ 刘老老谢了，遂领着板儿绕至后门上，只见门上歇着些生意担子，也有卖吃的，也有卖玩耍的，闹吵吵三二十个孩子在那里。
+ 刘老老便拉住一个道：“我问哥儿一声：有个周大娘在家么？”
+ 那孩子翻眼瞅着道：“那个周大娘?
+ 我们这里周大娘有几个呢，不知那一个行当儿上的？”
+ 刘老老道：“他是太太的陪房。”
+ 那孩子道：“这个容易，你跟了我来。”
+ 引着刘老老进了后院，到一个院子墙边，指道：“这就是他家。”
+ 又叫道：“周大妈，有个老奶奶子找你呢。”
+ 周瑞家的在内忙迎出来，问：“是那位？”
+ 刘老老迎上来笑问道：“好啊?
+ 周嫂子。”
+ 周瑞家的认了半日，方笑道：“刘老老，你好?
+ 你说么，这几年不见，我就忘了。
+ 请家里坐。”
+ 刘老老一面走，一面笑说道：“你老是‘贵人多忘事’了，那里还记得我们？”
+ 说着，来至房中，周瑞家的命雇的小丫头倒上茶来吃着。
+ 周瑞家的又问道：“板儿长了这么大了么！”
+ 又问些别后闲话， 又问刘老老：“今日还是路过，还是特来的？”
+ 刘老老便说：“原是特来瞧瞧嫂子； 二则也请请姑太太的安。
+ 若可以领我见一见更好，若不能，就借重嫂子转致意罢了。”
+ 周瑞家的听了，便已猜着几分来意。
+ 只因他丈夫昔年争买田地一事，多得狗儿他父亲之力，今见刘老老如此，心中难却其意；二则也要显弄自己的体面。
+ 便笑说：“老老你放心。
+ 大远的诚心诚意来了，岂有个不叫你见个真佛儿去的呢？
+ 论理，人来客至，却都不与我相干。
+ 我们这里都是各一样儿： 我们男的只管春秋两季地租子，闲了时带着小爷们出门就完了；我只管跟太太奶奶们出门的事。
+ 皆因你是太太的亲戚，又拿我当个人，投奔了我来，我竟破个例给你通个信儿去。
+ 但只一件，你还不知道呢：我们这里不比五年前了。
+ 如今太太不理事，都是琏二奶奶当家。
+ 你打量琏二奶奶是谁?
+ 就是太太的内侄女儿，大舅老爷的女孩儿，小名儿叫凤哥的。”
+ 刘老老道：“阿弥陀佛!
+ 这全仗嫂子方便了。”
+ 周瑞家的说：“老老说那里话。
+ 俗语说的好：‘与人方便，自己方便。 ’
+ 不过用我一句话，又费不着我什么事。”
+ 说着，便唤小丫头到倒厅儿上悄悄的打听老太太屋里摆了饭了没有。
+ 小丫头去了。
+ 这里二人又说了些闲话。
+ 刘老老因说：“这位凤姑娘，今年不过十八九岁罢了，就这等有本事，当这样的家，可是难得的！”
+ 周瑞家的听了道：“嗐!
+ 我的老老，告诉不得你了!
+ 这凤姑娘年纪儿虽小，行事儿比是人都大呢。
+ 如今出挑的美人儿似的，少说着只怕有一万心眼子；再要赌口齿，十个会说的男人也说不过他呢！
+ 回来你见了就知道了。
+ 就只一件，待下人未免太严些儿。”
+ 说着，小丫头回来说：“老太太屋里摆完了饭了，二奶奶在太太屋里呢。”
+ 周瑞家的听了连忙起身，催着刘老老：“快走，这一下来就只吃饭是个空儿，咱们先等着去。
+ 若迟了一步，回事的人多了，就难说了。
+ 再歇了中觉，越发没时候了。”
+ 说着，一齐下了炕，整顿衣服，又教了板儿几句话，跟着周瑞家的，逶迤往贾琏的住宅来。
+ 先至倒厅，周瑞家的将刘老老安插住等着，自己却先过影壁，走进了院门，知凤姐尚未出来，先找着凤姐的一个心腹通房大丫头名唤平儿的；周瑞家的先将刘老老起初来历说明，又说：“今日大远的来请安，当日太太是常会的，所以我带了他过来。
+ 等着奶奶下来，我细细儿的回明了，想来奶奶也不至嗔着我莽撞的。”
+ 平儿听了，便作了个主意：“叫他们进来，先在这里坐着就是了。”
+ 周瑞家的才出去领了他们进来。
+ 上了正房台阶，小丫头打起猩红毡帘，才入堂屋，只闻一阵香扑了脸来，竟不知是何气味，身子就像在云端里一般。
+ 满屋里的东西都是耀眼争光，使人头晕目眩，刘老老此时只有点头咂嘴念佛而已。
+ 于是走到东边这间屋里，乃是贾琏的女儿睡觉之所。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，打量了刘老老两眼，只得问个好，让了坐。
+ 刘老老见平儿遍身绫罗，插金戴银，花容月貌，便当是凤姐儿了，才要称“姑奶奶”，只见周瑞家的说：“他是平姑娘。”
+ 又见平儿赶着周瑞家的叫他“周大娘”，方知不过是个有体面的丫头。
+ 于是让刘老老和板儿上了炕，平儿和周瑞家的对面坐在炕沿上，小丫头们倒了茶来吃了。
+ 刘老老只听见咯当咯当的响声，很似打罗筛面的一般，不免东瞧西望的，忽见堂屋中柱子上挂着一个匣子，底下又坠着一个秤铊似的，却不住的乱晃。
+ 刘老老心中想着：“这是什么东西?
+ 有煞用处呢？”
+ 正发呆时，陡听得“当”的一声又若金钟铜磬一般，倒吓得不住的展眼儿。
+ 接着一连又是八九下，欲待问时，只见小丫头们一齐乱跑，说：“奶奶下来了。”
+ 平儿和周瑞家的忙起身说：“老老只管坐着，等是时候儿我们来请你。”
+ 说着迎出去了。
+ 刘老老只屏声侧耳默候， 只听远远有人笑声，约有一二十个妇人，衣裙窸窣，渐入堂屋，往那边屋内去了。
+ 又见三两个妇人，都捧着大红油漆盒进这边来等候。
+ 听得那边说道“摆饭”，渐渐的人才散出去，只有伺候端菜的几个人。
+ 半日鸦雀不闻。
+ 忽见两个人抬了一张炕桌来，放在这边炕上，桌上碗盘摆列，仍是满满的鱼肉，不过略动了几样。
+ 板儿一见就吵着要肉吃，刘老老打了他一巴掌。
+ 忽见周瑞家的笑嘻嘻走过来，点手儿叫他。
+ 刘老老会意，于是带着板儿下炕，至堂屋中间，周瑞家的又和他咕唧了一会子，方蹭到这边屋内。
+ 只见门外铜钩上悬着大红洒花软帘，南窗下是炕，炕上大红条毡，靠东边板壁立着一个锁子锦的靠背和一个引枕，铺着金线闪的大坐褥，傍边有银唾盒。
+ 那凤姐家常带着紫貂昭君套，围着那攒珠勒子，穿着桃红洒花袄，石青刻丝灰鼠披风，大红洋绉银鼠皮裙；粉光脂艳，端端正正坐在那里，手内拿着小铜火箸儿拨手炉内的灰。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，捧着小小的一个填漆茶盘，盘内一个小盖钟儿。
+ 凤姐也不接茶，也不抬头，只管拨那灰，慢慢的道：“怎么还不请进来？”
+ 一面说，一面抬身要茶时，只见周瑞家的已带了两个人立在面前了，这才忙欲起身、犹未起身，满面春风的问好，又嗔着周瑞家的：“怎么不早说！”
+ 刘老老已在地下拜了几拜，问姑奶奶安。
+ 凤姐忙说：“周姐姐，搀着不拜罢。
+ 我年轻，不大认得，可也不知是什么辈数儿，不敢称呼。”
+ 周瑞家的忙回道：“这就是我才回的那个老老了。”
+ 凤姐点头，刘老老已在炕沿上坐下了。
+ 板儿便躲在他背后，百般的哄他出来作揖，他死也不肯。
+ 凤姐笑道：“亲戚们不大走动，都疏远了。
+ 知道的呢，说你们弃嫌我们，不肯常来；不知道的那起小人，还只当我们眼里没人似的。”
+ 刘老老忙念佛道：“我们家道艰难，走不起。
+ 来到这里，没的给姑奶奶打嘴，就是管家爷们瞧着也不像。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“这话没的叫人恶心。
+ 不过托赖着祖父的虚名，作个穷官儿罢咧，谁家有什么?
+ 不过也是个空架子，俗语儿说的好，‘朝廷还有三门子穷亲’呢，何况你我。”
+ 说着，又问周瑞家的：“回了太太了没有？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“等奶奶的示下。”
+ 凤姐儿道：“你去瞧瞧，要是有人就罢；要得闲呢，就回了，看怎么说。”
+ 周瑞家的答应去了。
+ 这里凤姐叫人抓了些果子给板儿吃，刚问了几句闲话时，就有家下许多媳妇儿管事的来回话。
+ 平儿回了，凤姐道：“我这里陪客呢，晚上再来回。
+ 要有紧事，你就带进来现办。”
+ 平儿出去，一会进来说：“我问了，没什么要紧的。
+ 我叫他们散了。”
+ 凤姐点头。
+ 只见周瑞家的回来，向凤姐道：“太太说：‘今日不得闲儿，二奶奶陪着也是一样，多谢费心想着。
+ 要是白来逛逛呢便罢； 有什么说的，只管告诉二奶奶。’”
+ 刘老老道：“也没甚的说，不过来瞧瞧姑太太姑奶奶，也是亲戚们的情分。”
+ 周瑞家的道：“没有什么说的便罢；要有话，只管回二奶奶，和太太是一样儿的。”
+ 一面说一面递了个眼色儿。
+ 刘老老会意，未语先红了脸。
+ 待要不说，今日所为何来?
+ 只得勉强说道：“论今日初次见，原不该说的，只是大远的奔了你老这里来，少不得说了……”
+ 刚说到这里，只听二门上小厮们回说：“东府里小大爷进来了。”
+ 凤姐忙和刘老老摆手道：“不必说了。”
+ 一面便问：“你蓉大爷在那里呢？”
+ 只听一路靴子响，进来了一个十七八岁的少年，面目清秀，身段苗条，美服华冠，轻裘宝带。
+ 刘老老此时坐不是，站不是，藏没处藏，躲没处躲。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你只管坐着罢，这是我侄儿。”
+ 刘老老才扭扭捏捏的在炕沿儿上侧身坐下。
+ 那贾蓉请了安，笑回道：“我父亲打发来求婶子，上回老舅太太给婶子的那架玻璃炕屏，明儿请个要紧的客，略摆一摆就送来。”
+ 凤姐道：“你来迟了，昨儿已经给了人了。”
+ 贾蓉听说，便笑嘻嘻的在炕沿上下个半跪道：“婶子要不借，我父亲又说我不会说话了，又要挨一顿好打。
+ 好婶子，只当可怜我罢！”
+ 凤姐笑道：“也没见我们王家的东西都是好的?
+ 你们那里放着那些好东西，只别看见我的东西才罢，一见了就想拿了去。”
+ 贾蓉笑道：“只求婶娘开恩罢！”
+ 凤姐道：“碰坏一点儿，你可仔细你的皮！”
+ 因命平儿拿了楼门上钥匙，叫几个妥当人来抬去。
+ 贾蓉喜的眉开眼笑，忙说：“我亲自带人拿去，别叫他们乱碰。”
+ 说着便起身出去了。
+ 这凤姐忽然想起一件事来，便向窗外叫：“蓉儿回来！”
+ 外面几个人接声说：“请蓉大爷回来呢！”
+ 贾蓉忙回来，满脸笑容的瞅着凤姐，听何指示。
+ 那凤姐只管慢慢吃茶，出了半日神，忽然把脸一红，笑道：“罢了，你先去罢。
+ 晚饭后你来再说罢。
+ 这会子有人，我也没精神了。”
+ 贾蓉答应个是，抿着嘴儿一笑，方慢慢退去。
+ 这刘老老方安顿了，便说道：“我今日带了你侄儿，不为别的，因他爹娘连吃的没有，天气又冷，只得带了你侄儿奔了你老来。”
+ 说着，又推板儿道：“你爹在家里怎么教你的?
+ 打发咱们来作煞事的?
+ 只顾吃果子！”
+ 凤姐早已明白了，听他不会说话，因笑道：“不必说了，我知道了。”
+ 因问周瑞家的道：“这老老不知用了早饭没有呢？”
+ 刘老老忙道：“一早就往这里赶咧，那里还有吃饭的工夫咧？”
+ 凤姐便命快传饭来。
+ 一时周瑞家的传了一桌客馔，摆在东屋里，过来带了刘老老和板儿过去吃饭。
+ 凤姐这里道：“周姐姐好生让着些儿，我不能陪了。”
+ 一面又叫过周瑞家的来问道：“方才回了太太，太太怎么说了？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“太太说：‘他们原不是一家子； 当年他们的祖和太老爷在一处做官，因连了宗的。
+ 这几年不大走动。
+ 当时他们来了，却也从没空过的。
+ 如今来瞧我们，也是他的好意，别简慢了他。
+ 要有什么话，叫二奶奶裁夺着就是了。’”
+ 凤姐听了说道：“怪道既是一家子，我怎么连影儿也不知道！”
+ 说话间，刘老老已吃完了饭，拉了板儿过来，舔唇咂嘴的道谢。
+ 凤姐笑道：“且请坐下，听我告诉你：方才你的意思，我已经知道了。
+ 论起亲戚来，原该不等上门就有照应才是； 但只如今家里事情太多，太太上了年纪，一时想不到是有的。
+ 我如今接着管事，这些亲戚们又都不大知道，况且外面看着虽是烈烈轰轰，不知大有大的难处，说给人也未必信。
+ 你既大远的来了，又是头一遭儿和我张个口，怎么叫你空回去呢?
+ 可巧昨儿太太给我的丫头们作衣裳的二十两银子还没动呢，你不嫌少，先拿了去用罢。”
+ 那刘老老先听见告艰苦，只当是没想头了， 又听见给他二十两银子，喜的眉开眼笑道：“我们也知道艰难的，但只俗语说的：‘瘦死的骆驼比马还大’呢。
+ 凭他怎样，你老拔一根寒毛比我们的腰还壮哩。”
+ 周瑞家的在旁听见他说的粗鄙，只管使眼色止他。
+ 凤姐笑而不睬，叫平儿把昨儿那包银子拿来，再拿一串钱，都送至刘老老跟前。
+ 凤姐道：“这是二十两银子，暂且给这孩子们作件冬衣罢。
+ 改日没事，只管来逛逛，才是亲戚们的意思。
+ 天也晚了，不虚留你们了，到家该问好的都问个好儿罢。”
+ 一面说，一面就站起来了。
+ 刘老老只是千恩万谢的，拿了银钱，跟着周瑞家的走到外边。
+ 周瑞家的道：“我的娘!
+ 你怎么见了他倒不会说话了呢?
+ 开口就是‘你侄儿’。
+ 我说句不怕你恼的话：就是亲侄儿也要说的和软些儿。
+ 那蓉大爷才是他的侄儿呢。
+ 他怎么又跑出这么个侄儿来了呢！”
+ 刘老老笑道：“我的嫂子!
+ 我见了他，心眼儿里爱还爱不过来，那里还说的上话来？”
+ 二人说着，又到周瑞家坐了片刻。
+ 刘老老要留下一块银子给周家的孩子们买果子吃，周瑞家的那里放在眼里，执意不肯。
+ 刘老老感谢不尽，仍从后门去了。
+ 未知去后如何，且听下回分解。
+
+ ON HER SIXTEENTH birthday, my grandma was betrothed by her father to Shan Bianlang, the son of Shan Tingxiu, one of Northeast Gaomi Township's richest men.
+ As distillery owners, the Shans used cheap sorghum to produce a strong, high-quality white wine that was famous throughout the area.
+ Northeast Gaomi Township is largely swampy land that is flooded by autumn rains; but since the tall sorghum stalks resist waterlogging, it was planted everywhere and invariably produced a bumper crop.
+ By using cheap grain to make wine, the Shan family made a very good living, and marrying my grandma off to them was a real feather in Great-Granddad's cap.
+ Many local families had dreamed of marrying into the Shan family, despite rumours that Shan Bianlang had leprosy.
+ His father was a wizened little man who sported a scrawny queue on the back of his head, and even though his cupboards overflowed with gold and silver, he wore tattered, dirty clothes, often using a length of rope as a belt.
+ Grandma's marriage into the Shan family was the will of heaven, implemented on a day when she and some of her playmates, with their tiny bound feet and long pigtails, were playing beside a set of swings.
+ It was Qingming, the day set aside to attend ancestral graves; peach trees were in full red bloom, willows were green, a fine rain was falling, and the girls' faces looked like peach blossoms.
+ It was a day of freedom for them.
+ That year Grandma was five feet four inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds.
+ She was wearing a cotton print jacket over green satin trousers, with scarlet bands of silk tied around her ankles.
+ Since it was drizzling, she had put on a pair of embroidered slippers soaked a dozen times in tong oil, which made a squishing sound when she walked.
+ Her long shiny braids shone, and a heavy silver necklace hung around her neck – Great-Granddad was a silversmith.
+ Great-Grandma, the daughter of a landlord who had fallen on hard times, knew the importance of bound feet to a girl, and had begun binding her daughter's feet when she was six years old, tightening the bindings every day.
+ A yard in length, the cloth bindings were wound around all but the big toes until the bones cracked and the toes turned under.
+ The pain was excruciating.
+ My mother also had bound feet, and just seeing them saddened me so much that I felt compelled to shout: 'Down with feudalism!
+ Long live liberated feet!'
+ The results of Grandma's suffering were two three-inch golden lotuses, and by the age of sixteen she had grown into a well-developed beauty.
+ When she walked, swinging her arms freely, her body swayed like a willow in the wind.
+ Shan Tingxiu, the groom's father, was walking around Great-Granddad's village, dung basket in hand, when he spotted Grandma among the other local flowers.
+ Three months later, a bridal sedan chair would come to carry her away.
+ Grandma was lightheaded and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red curtain that gave off a pungent mildewy odour.
+ She reached out to lift it a crack – Great-Granddad had told her not to remove her red veil.
+ A heavy bracelet of twisted silver slid down to her wrist, and as she looked at the coiled-snake design her thoughts grew chaotic and disoriented.
+ A warm wind rustled the emerald-green stalks of sorghum lining the narrow dirt path.
+ Doves cooed in the fields.
+ The delicate powder of petals floated above silvery new ears of waving sorghum.
+ The curtain, embroidered on the inside with a dragon and a phoenix, had faded after years of use, and there was a large stain in the middle.
+ Summer was giving way to autumn, and the sunlight outside the sedan chair was brilliant.
+ The bouncing movements of the bearers rocked the chair slowly from side to side; the leather lining of their poles groaned and creaked, the curtain fluttered gently, letting in an occasional ray of sunlight and, from time to time, a whisper of cool air.
+ Grandma was sweating profusely and her heart was racing as she listened to the rhythmic footsteps and heavy breathing of the bearers.
+ The inside of her skull felt cold one minute, as though filled with shiny pebbles, and hot the next, as though filled with coarse peppers.
+ After Shan Tingxiu had spotted Grandma, a stream of people came to congratulate Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma.
+ Grandma pondered what it would be like to mount to the jingle of gold and dismount to the tinkle of silver, but what she truly longed for was a good husband, handsome and well educated, a man who would treat her gently.
+ As a young maiden, she had embroidered a wedding trousseau and several exquisite pictures for the man who would someday become my granddad.
+ Eager to marry, she heard innuendos from her girlfriends that the Shan boy was afflicted with leprosy, and her dreams began to evaporate.
+ Yet, when she shared her anxieties with her parents, Great-Granddad hemmed and hawed, while Great-Grandma scolded the girlfriends, accusing them of sour grapes.
+ Later on, Great-Granddad told her that the well-educated Shan boy had the fair complexion of a young scholar from staying home all the time.
+ Grandma was confused, not knowing if this was true or not.
+ After all, she thought, her own parents wouldn't lie to her.
+ Maybe her girlfriends had made it all up.
+ Once again she looked forward to her wedding day.
+ Grandma longed to lose her anxieties and loneliness in the arms of a strong and noble young man.
+ Finally, to her relief, her wedding day arrived, and as she was placed inside the sedan chair, carried by four bearers, the horns and woodwinds fore and aft struck up a melancholy tune that brought tears to her eyes.
+ Off they went, floating along as though riding the clouds or sailing through a mist.
+ Shortly after leaving the village, the lazy musicians stopped playing, while the bearers quickened their pace.
+ The aroma of sorghum burrowed into her heart.
+ Full-voiced strange and rare birds sang to her from the fields.
+ A picture of what she imagined to be the bridegroom slowly took shape from the threads of sunlight filtering into the darkness of the sedan chair.
+ Painful needle pricks jabbed her heart.
+ 'Old Man in heaven, protect me!'
+ Her silent prayer made her delicate lips tremble.
+ A light down adorned her upper lip, and her fair skin was damp.
+ Every soft word she uttered was swallowed up by the rough walls of the carriage and the heavy curtain before her.
+ She ripped the tart-smelling veil away from her face and laid it on her knees.
+ She was following local wedding customs, which dictated that a bride wear three layers of new clothes, top and bottom, no matter how hot the day.
+ The inside of the sedan chair was badly worn and terribly dirty, like a coffin; it had already embraced countless other brides, now long dead.
+ The walls were festooned with yellow silk so filthy it oozed grease, and of the five flies caught inside, three buzzed above her head while the other two rested on the curtain before her, rubbing their bright eyes with black stick-like legs.
+ Succumbing to the oppressiveness in the carriage, Grandma eased one of her bamboo-shoot toes under the curtain and lifted it a crack to sneak a look outside.
+ She could make out the shapes of the bearers' statuesque legs poking out from under loose black satin trousers and their big, fleshy feet encased in straw sandals.
+ They raised clouds of dust as they tramped along.
+ Impatiently trying to conjure up an image of their firm, muscular chests, Grandma raised the toe of her shoe and leaned forward.
+ She could see the polished purple scholar-tree poles and the bearers' broad shoulders beneath them.
+ Barriers of sorghum stalks lining the path stood erect and solid in unbroken rows, tightly packed, together sizing one another up with the yet unopened clay-green eyes of grain ears, one indistinguishable from the next, as far as she could see, like a vast river.
+ The path was so narrow in places it was barely passable, causing the wormy, sappy leaves to brush noisily against the sedan chair.
+ The men's bodies emitted the sour smell of sweat.
+ Infatuated by the masculine odour, Grandma breathed in deeply – this ancestor of mine must have been nearly bursting with passion.
+ As the bearers carried their load down the path, their feet left a series of V imprints known as 'tramples' in the dirt, for which satisfied clients usually rewarded them, and which fortified the bearers' pride of profession.
+ It was unseemly to 'trample' with an uneven cadence or to grip the poles, and the best bearers kept their hands on their hips the whole time, rocking the sedan chair in perfect rhythm with the musicians' haunting tunes, which reminded everyone within earshot of the hidden suffering in whatever pleasures lay ahead.
+ When the sedan chair reached the plains, the bearers began to get a little sloppy, both to make up time and to torment their passenger.
+ Some brides were bounced around so violently they vomited from motion sickness, soiling their clothing and slippers; the retching sounds from inside the carriage pleased the bearers as though they were giving vent to their own miseries.
+ The sacrifices these strong young men made to carry their cargo into bridal chambers must have embittered them, which was why it seemed so natural to torment the brides.
+ One of the four men bearing Grandma's sedan chair that day would eventually become my granddad – it was Commander Yu Zhan'ao.
+ At the time he was a beefy twenty-year-old, a pallbearer and sedan bearer at the peak of his trade.
+ The young men of his generation were as sturdy as Northeast Gaomi sorghum, which is more than can be said about us weaklings who succeeded them.
+ It was a custom back then for sedan bearers to tease the bride while trundling her along: like distillery workers, who drink the wine they make, since it is their due, these men torment all who ride in their sedan chairs – even the wife of the Lord of Heaven if she should be a passenger.
+ Sorghum leaves scraped the sedan chair mercilessly when, all of a sudden, the deadening monotony of the trip was broken by the plaintive sounds of weeping – remarkably like the musicians' tunes – coming from deep in the field.
+ As Grandma listened to the music, trying to picture the instruments in the musicians' hands, she raised the curtain with her foot until she could see the sweat-soaked waist of one of the bearers.
+ Her gaze was caught by her own red embroidered slippers, with their tapered slimness and cheerless beauty, ringed by halos of incoming sunlight until they looked like lotus blossoms, or, even more, like tiny goldfish that had settled to the bottom of a bowl.
+ Two teardrops as transparently pink as immature grains of sorghum wetted Grandma's eyelashes and slipped down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth.
+ As she was gripped by sadness, the image of a learned and refined husband, handsome in his high-topped hat and wide sash, like a player on the stage, blurred and finally vanished, replaced by the horrifying picture of Shan Bianlang's face, his leprous mouth covered with rotting tumours.
+ Her heart turned to ice.
+ Were these tapered golden lotuses, a face as fresh as peaches and apricots, gentility of a thousand kinds, and ten thousand varieties of elegance all reserved for the pleasure of a leper?
+ Better to die and be done with it.
+ The disconsolate weeping in the sorghum field was dotted with words, like knots in a piece of wood:
+ A blue sky yo – a sapphire sky yo – a painted sky yo – a mighty cudgel yo – dear elder brother yo – death has claimed you – you have brought down little sister's sky yo –.
+ I must tell you that the weeping of women from Northeast Gaomi Township makes beautiful music.
+ During 1912, the first year of the Republic, professional mourners known as 'wailers' came from Qufu, the home of Confucius, to study local weeping techniques.
+ Meeting up with a woman lamenting the death of her husband seemed to Grandma to be a stroke of bad luck on her wedding day, and she grew even more dejected.
+ Just then one of the bearers spoke up: 'You there, little bride in the chair, say something!
+ The long journey has bored us to tears.'
+ Grandma quickly snatched up her red veil and covered her face, gently drawing her foot back from beneath the curtain and returning the carriage to darkness.
+ 'Sing us a song while we bear you along!'
+ The musicians, as though snapping out of a trance, struck up their instruments.
+ A trumpet blared from behind the chair:
+ 'Too-tah – too-tah –'
+ 'Poo-pah – poo-pah –'
+ One of the bearers up front imitated the trumpet sound, evoking coarse, raucous laughter all around.
+ Grandma was drenched with sweat.
+ Back home, as she was being lifted into the sedan chair, Great-Grandma had exhorted her not to get drawn into any banter with the bearers.
+ Sedan bearers and musicians are low-class rowdies capable of anything, no matter how depraved.
+ They began rocking the chair so violently that poor Grandma couldn't keep her seat without holding on tight.
+ 'No answer?
+ Okay, rock!
+ If we can't shake any words loose, we can at least shake the piss out of her!'
+ The sedan chair was like a dinghy tossed about by the waves, and Grandma held on to the wooden seat for dear life.
+ The two eggs she'd eaten for breakfast churned in her stomach, the flies buzzed around her ears; her throat tightened, as the taste of eggs surged up into her mouth.
+ She bit her lip.
+ Don't throw up, don't let yourself throw up! she commanded herself.
+ You mustn't let yourself throw up, Fenglian.
+ They say throwing up in the bridal chair means a lifetime of bad luck. . . .
+ The bearers' banter turned coarse.
+ One of them reviled my great-granddad for being a money-grabber, another said something about a pretty flower stuck into a pile of cowshit, a third called Shan Bianlang a scruffy leper who oozed pus and excreted yellow fluids.
+ He said the stench of rotten flesh drifted beyond the Shan compound, which swarmed with horseflies. . . .
+ 'Little bride, if you let Shan Bianlang touch you, your skin will rot away!'
+ As the horns and woodwinds blared and tooted, the taste of eggs grew stronger, forcing Grandma to bite down hard on her lip.
+ But to no avail.
+ She opened her mouth and spewed a stream of filth, soiling the curtain, towards which the five flies dashed as though shot from a gun.
+ 'Puke-ah, puke-ah.
+ Keep rocking!' one of the bearers roared.
+ 'Keep rocking.
+ Sooner or later she'll have to say something.'
+ 'Elder brothers . . . spare me . . .'
+ Grandma pleaded desperately between agonising retches.
+ Then she burst into tears.
+ She felt humiliated; she could sense the perils of her future, knowing she'd spend the rest of her life drowning in a sea of bitterness.
+ Oh, Father, oh, Mother.
+ I have been destroyed by a miserly father and a heartless mother!
+ Grandma's piteous wails made the sorghum quake.
+ The bearers stopped rocking the chair and calmed the raging sea.
+ The musicians lowered the instruments from their rousing lips, so that only Grandma's sobs could be heard, alone with the mournful strains of a single woodwind, whose weeping sounds were more enchanting than any woman's.
+ Grandma stopped crying at the sound of the woodwind, as though commanded from on high.
+ Her face, suddenly old and desiccated, was pearled with tears.
+ She heard the sound of death in the gentle melancholy of the tune, and smelled its breath; she could see the angel of death, with lips as scarlet as sorghum and a smiling face the colour of golden corn.
+ The bearers fell silent and their footsteps grew heavy.
+ The sacrificial choking sounds from inside the chair and the woodwind accompaniment had made them restless and uneasy, had set their souls adrift.
+ No longer did it seem like a wedding procession as they negotiated the dirt road; it was more like a funeral procession.
+ My grandfather, the bearer directly in front of Grandma's foot, felt a strange premonition blazing inside him and illuminating the path his life would take.
+ The sounds of Grandma's weeping had awakened seeds of affection that had lain dormant deep in his heart.
+ It was time to rest, so the bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground.
+ Grandma, having cried herself into a daze, didn't realise that one of her tiny feet was peeking out from beneath the curtain; the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the souls out of the bearers' bodies.
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked up, leaned over, and gently – very gently – held Grandma's foot in his hand, as though it were a fledgling whose feathers weren't yet dry, then eased it back inside the carriage.
+ She was so moved by the gentleness of the deed she could barely keep from throwing back the curtain to see what sort of man this bearer was, with his large, warm, youthful hand.
+ I've always believed that marriages are made in heaven and that people fated to be together are connected by an invisible thread.
+ The act of grasping Grandma's foot triggered a powerful drive in Yu Zhan'ao to forge a new life for himself, and constituted the turning point in his life – and the turning point in hers as well.
+ The sedan chair set out again as a trumpet blast rent the air, then drifted off into obscurity.
+ The wind had risen – a northeaster – and clouds were gathering in the sky, blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness.
+ Grandma could hear the shh-shh of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance.
+ Thunder rumbled off to the northeast.
+ The bearers quickened their pace.
+ She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step.
+ At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
+ The holdup of Grandma's sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family.
+ Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense.
+ A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma's sedan chair reached that point.
+ The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily.
+ Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road.
+ Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly.
+ From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes.
+ Grandma, still seated in the carriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goosebumps on her skin.
+ She didn't know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!'
+ Grandma gasped.
+ What was she feeling?
+ Sadness?
+ Joy?
+ My God, she thought, it's a man who eats fistcakes!
+ Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones.
+ If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside.
+ Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called 'fistcakes'.
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!' the man bellowed.
+ The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo.
+ He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin.
+ His hand rested on it.
+ The thought flashed through Grandma's mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn't frighten her, nothing could.
+ She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
+ 'Hand over the toll, or I'll pop you all!'
+ He patted the red bundle.
+ The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man's feet.
+ The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
+ As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
+ 'Get behind the sedan chair, all of you.
+ I'll pop if you don't!'
+ He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
+ The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair.
+ Yu Zhan'ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared.
+ A change came over the highwayman's face, and he gripped the object at his belt tightly.
+ 'Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!'
+ With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma's foot.
+ A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
+ 'Climb down and come with me!' he ordered her.
+ Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
+ 'Climb down, I said!'
+ She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers.
+ Her gaze travelled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
+ 'Into the sorghum field!' the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
+ Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards.
+ The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt.
+ She stared at Yu Zhan'ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
+ Yu Zhan'ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
+ 'Hold it right there!' the highwayman commanded feebly.
+ 'I'll shoot if you take another step!'
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up.
+ Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face.
+ When Yu Zhan'ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran.
+ Yu Zhan'ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear.
+ He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
+ 'Spare me, gentlemen!
+ I've got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.'
+ The highwayman skilfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan'ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth.
+ The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.
+ Yu Zhan'ao reached down, took the thing from the man's belt, and shook off the red cloth covering, to reveal the gnarled knot of a tree.
+ The men all gasped in amazement.
+ The bandit crawled to his knees, knocking his head on the ground and pleading for his life.
+ 'Every highwayman says he's got an eighty-year-old mother at home,' Yu Zhan'ao said as he stepped aside and glanced at his comrades, like the leader of a pack sizing up the other dogs.
+ With a flurry of shouts, the bearers and musicians fell upon the highwayman, fists and feet flying.
+ The initial onslaught was met by screams and shrill cries, which soon died out.
+ Grandma stood beside the road listening to the dull cacophony of fists and feet on flesh; she glanced at Yu Zhan'ao, then looked up at the lightning-streaked sky, the radiant, golden, noble smile still frozen on her face.
+ One of the musicians raised his trumpet and brought it down hard on the highwayman's skull, burying the curved edge so deeply he had to strain to free it.
+ The highwayman's stomach gurgled and his body, racked by spasms, grew deathly still; he lay spread-eagled on the ground, a mixture of white and yellow liquid seeping slowly out of the fissure in his skull.
+ 'Is he dead?' asked the musician, who was examining the bent mouth of his trumpet.
+ 'He's gone, the poor bastard.
+ He didn't put up much of a fight!'
+ The gloomy faces of the bearers and musicians revealed their anxieties.
+ Yu Zhan'ao looked wordlessly first at the dead, then at the living.
+ With a handful of leaves from a sorghum stalk, he cleaned up Grandma's mess in the carriage, then held up the tree knot, wrapped it in the piece of red cloth, and tossed the bundle as far as he could; the gnarled knot broke free in flight and separated from the piece of cloth, which fluttered to the ground in the field like a big red butterfly.
+ Yu Zhan'ao lifted Grandma into the sedan chair.
+ 'It's starting to rain,' he said, 'so let's get going.'
+ Grandma ripped the curtain from the front of the carriage and stuffed it behind the seat.
+ As she breathed the free air she studied Yu Zhan'ao's broad shoulders and narrow waist.
+ He was so near she could have touched the pale, taut skin of his shaved head with her toe.
+ The winds were picking up, bending the sorghum stalks in ever deeper waves, those on the roadside stretching out to bow their respects to Grandma.
+ The bearers streaked down the road, yet the sedan chair was as steady as a skiff skimming across whitecaps.
+ Frogs and toads croaked in loud welcome to the oncoming summer rainstorm.
+ The low curtain of heaven stared darkly at the silvery faces of sorghum, over which streaks of blood-red lightning crackled, releasing ear-splitting explosions of thunder.
+ With growing excitement, Grandma stared fearlessly at the green waves raised by the black winds.
+ The first truculent raindrops made the plants shudder.
+ The rain beat a loud tattoo on the sedan chair and fell on Grandma's embroidered slippers; it fell on Yu Zhan'ao's head, then slanted in on Grandma's face.
+ The bearers ran like scared jackrabbits, but couldn't escape the prenoon deluge.
+ Sorghum crumpled under the wild rain.
+ Toads took refuge under the stalks, their white pouches popping in and out noisily; foxes hid in their darkened dens to watch tiny drops of water splashing down from the sorghum plants.
+ The rainwater washed Yu Zhan'ao's head so clean and shiny it looked to Grandma like a new moon.
+ Her clothes, too, were soaked.
+ She could have covered herself with the curtain, but she didn't; she didn't want to, for the open front of the sedan chair afforded her a glimpse of the outside world in all its turbulence and beauty.
+
+ 我奶奶刚满十六岁时，就由她的父亲做主，嫁给了高密东北乡有名的财主单廷秀的独生子单扁郎。
+ 单家开着烧酒锅，以廉价高粱为原料酿造优质白酒，方圆百里都有名。
+ 东北乡地势低洼，往往秋水泛滥，高粱高秆防涝，被广泛种植，年年丰产。
+ 单家利用廉价原料酿酒牟利，富甲一方。
+ 我奶奶能嫁给单扁郎，是我外曾祖父的荣耀。
+ 当时，多少人家都渴望着和单家攀亲，尽管风传着单扁郎早就染上了麻风病。
+ 单廷秀是个干干巴巴的小老头，脑后翘着一支枯干的小辫子。
+ 他家里金钱满柜，却穿得破衣烂袄，腰里常常扎一条草绳。
+ 奶奶嫁到单家，其实也是天意。
+ 那天，我奶奶在秋千架旁与一些尖足长辫的大闺女耍笑游戏，那天是清明节，桃红柳绿，细雨霏霏，人面桃花，女儿解放。
+ 奶奶那年身高一米六零，体重六十公斤，上穿碎花洋布褂子，下穿绿色缎裤，脚脖子上扎着深红色的绸带子。
+ 由于下小雨，奶奶穿了一双用桐油浸泡过十几遍的绣花油鞋，一走克郎克郎地响。
+ 奶奶脑后垂着一根油光光的大辫子，脖子上挂着一个沉甸甸的银锁——我外曾祖父是个打造银器的小匠人。
+ 外曾祖母是个破落地主的女儿，知道小脚对于女人的重要意义。
+ 奶奶不到六岁就开始缠脚，日日加紧。
+ 一根裹脚布，长一丈余，外曾祖母用它，勒断了奶奶的脚骨，把八个脚趾，折断在脚底，真惨！
+ 我的母亲也是小脚，我每次看到她的脚，就心中难过，就恨不得高呼：打倒封建主义！
+ 人脚自由万岁！
+ 奶奶受尽苦难，终于裹就一双三寸金莲。
+ 十六岁那年，奶奶已经出落得丰满秀丽，走起路来双臂挥舞，身腰扭动，好似风中招飐的杨柳。
+ 单廷秀那天挎着粪筐子到我外曾祖父村里转圈，从众多的花朵中，一眼看中了我奶奶。
+ 三个月后，一乘花轿就把我奶奶抬走了。
+ 奶奶坐在憋闷的花轿里，头晕眼眩。
+ 罩头的红布把她的双眼遮住，红布上散着一股强烈的霉馊味。
+ 她抬起手，掀起红布——外祖母曾千叮咛万嘱咐，不许她自己揭动罩头红布——一只沉甸甸的绞丝银镯子滑到小臂上，奶奶看着镯子上的蛇形花纹，心里纷乱如麻。
+ 温暖的熏风吹拂着狭窄的土路两侧翠绿的高粱。
+ 高粱地里传来鸽子咕咕咕咕的叫声。
+ 刚秀出来的银灰色的高粱穗子飞扬着清淡的花粉。
+ 迎着她脸面的轿帘上，刺绣着龙凤图案，轿帘上的红布因轿子经年赁出，已经黯然失色，正中间油渍了一大片。
+ 夏末秋初，阳光茂盛，轿夫们轻捷的运动使轿子颤颤悠悠，拴轿杆的生牛皮吱吱地响，轿帘轻轻掀动，把一缕缕的光明和比较清凉的风闪进轿里来。
+ 奶奶浑身流汗，心跳如鼓，听着轿夫们均匀的脚步声和粗重的喘息声，脑海里交替着出现卵石般的光滑寒冷和辣椒般的粗糙灼热。
+ 自从奶奶被单廷秀看中后，不知有多少人向外曾祖父和外曾祖母道过喜。
+ 奶奶虽然想过上马金下马银的好日子，但更盼着有一个识文解字、眉清目秀、知冷知热的好女婿。
+ 奶奶在闺中刺绣嫁衣，绣出了我未来的爷爷的一幅幅精美的图画。
+ 她曾经盼望着早日成婚，但从女伴的话语中隐隐约约听到单家公子是个麻风病患者，奶奶的心凉了，奶奶向她的父母诉说着心中的忧虑。
+ 外曾祖父遮遮掩掩不回答，外曾祖母把奶奶的女伴们痛骂一顿，其意大概是说狐狸吃不到葡萄就说葡萄是酸的之类。
+ 外曾祖父后来又说单家公子饱读诗书，足不出户，白白净净，一表人材。
+ 奶奶恍恍惚惚，不知真假，心想着天下没有狠心的爹娘，也许女伴真是瞎说。
+ 奶奶又开始盼望早日完婚。
+ 奶奶丰腴的青春年华辐射着强烈的焦虑和淡淡的孤寂，她渴望着躺在一个伟岸的男子怀抱里缓解焦虑消除孤寂。
+ 婚期终于到了，奶奶被装进了这乘四人大轿，大喇叭小唢呐在轿前轿后吹得凄凄惨惨，奶奶止不住泪流面颊。
+ 轿子起行，忽悠悠似腾云驾雾，偷懒的吹鼓手在出村不远处就停止了吹奏，轿夫们的脚下也快起来。
+ 高粱的味道深入人心。
+ 高粱地里的奇鸟珍禽高鸣低啭。
+ 在一线一线阳光射进昏暗的轿内时，奶奶心中丈夫的形象也渐渐清晰起来。
+ 她的心像被针锥扎着，疼痛深刻有力。
+ “老天爷，保佑我吧！”
+ 奶奶心中的祷语把她的芳唇冲动。
+ 奶奶的唇上有一层纤弱的茸毛。
+ 奶奶鲜嫩茂盛，水分充足。
+ 她出口的细语被厚重的轿壁和轿帘吸收得干干净净。
+ 她一把撕下那块酸溜溜的罩头布，放在膝上。
+ 奶奶按着出嫁的传统，大热的天气，也穿着三表新的棉袄棉裤。
+ 花轿里破破烂烂，肮脏污浊。
+ 它像具棺材，不知装过了多少个必定成为死尸的新娘。
+ 轿壁上衬里的黄缎子脏得流油，五只苍蝇有三只在奶奶头上嗡嗡地飞翔，有两只伏在轿帘上，用棒状的黑腿擦着明亮的眼睛。
+ 奶奶受闷不过，悄悄地伸出笋尖状的脚，把轿帘顶开一条缝。
+ 偷偷地往外看。
+ 她看到轿夫们肥大的黑色衫绸裤里依稀可辨的、优美颀长的腿，和穿着双鼻梁麻鞋的肥大的脚。
+ 轿夫的脚踏起一股股噗噗作响的尘土。
+ 奶奶猜想着轿夫粗壮的上身，忍不住把脚尖上移，身体前倾。
+ 她看到了光滑的紫槐木轿杆和轿夫宽阔的肩膀。
+ 道路两边，板块般的高粱坚固凝滞，连成一体，拥拥挤挤，彼此打量，灰绿色的高粱穗子睡眼未开，这一穗与那一穗根本无法区别，高粱永无尽头，仿佛潺潺流动的河流。
+ 道路有时十分狭窄，沾满蚜虫分泌物的高粱叶子擦得轿子两侧沙沙地响。
+ 轿夫身上散发出汗酸味，奶奶有点痴迷地呼吸着这男人的气味，她老人家心中肯定漾起一圈圈春情波澜。
+ 轿夫抬轿从街上走，迈的都是八字步，号称“踩街”，这一方面是为讨主家欢喜，多得些赏钱； 另一方面，是为了显示一种优雅的职业风度。
+ 踩街时，步履不齐的不是好汉，手扶轿杆的不是好汉，够格的轿夫都是双手卡腰，步调一致，轿子颠动的节奏要和上吹鼓手们吹出的凄美音乐，让所有的人都能体会到任何幸福后面都隐藏着等量的痛苦。
+ 轿子走到平川旷野，轿夫们便撒了野，这一是为了赶路，二是要折腾一下新娘。
+ 有的新娘，被轿子颠得大声呕吐，脏物吐满锦衣绣鞋；轿夫们在新娘的呕吐声中，获得一种发泄的快乐。
+ 这些年轻力壮的男子，为别人抬去洞房里的牺牲，心里一定不是滋味，所以他们要折腾新娘。
+ 那天抬着我奶奶的四个轿夫中，有一个成了我的爷爷——他就是余占鳌司令。
+ 那时候他二十郎当岁，是东北乡打棺抬轿这行当里的佼佼者
+ ——我爷爷辈的好汉们，都有高密东北乡人高粱般鲜明的性格，非我们这些孱弱的后辈能比——
+ 当时的规矩，轿夫们在路上开新娘子的玩笑，如同烧酒锅上的伙计们喝烧酒，是天经地义的事，天王老子的新娘他们也敢折腾。
+ 高粱叶子把轿子磨得嚓嚓响，高粱深处，突然传来一阵悠扬的哭声，打破了道路上的单调。
+ 哭声与吹鼓手们吹出的曲调十分相似。
+ 奶奶想到乐曲，就想到那些凄凉的乐器一定在吹鼓手们手里提着。
+ 奶奶用脚撑着轿帘能看到一个轿夫被汗水溻湿的腰，奶奶更多地是看到自己穿着大红绣花鞋的脚，它尖尖瘦瘦，带着凄艳的表情，从外面投进来的光明罩住了它们。
+ 它们像两枚莲花瓣，它们更像两条小金鱼埋伏在澄清的水底。
+ 两滴高粱米粒般晶莹微红的细小泪珠跳出奶奶的睫毛，流过面颊，流到嘴角。
+ 奶奶心里又悲又苦，往常描绘好的、与戏台上人物同等模样、峨冠博带、儒雅风流的丈夫形象在泪眼里先模糊后漶灭。
+ 奶奶恐怖地看到单家扁郎那张开花绽彩的麻风病人脸，奶奶透心地冰冷。
+ 奶奶想这一双娇娇金莲，这一张桃腮杏脸，千般的温存，万种的风流，难道真要由一个麻风病人去消受？
+ 如其那样，还不如一死了之。
+ 高粱地里悠长的哭声里，夹杂着疙疙瘩瘩的字眼：
+ 青天哟——蓝天哟——花花绿绿的天哟——棒槌哟亲哥哟你死了——可就塌了妹妹的天哟——
+ 我不得不告诉您，我们高密东北乡女人哭丧跟唱歌一样优美。
+ 民国元年，曲阜县孔夫子家的“哭丧户”专程前来学习过哭腔。
+ 大喜的日子里碰上女人哭亡夫，奶奶感到这是不祥之兆，已经沉重的心情更加沉重。
+ 这时，有一个轿夫开口说话：“轿上的小娘子，跟哥哥们说几句话呀！
+ 远远的路程，闷得慌。”
+ 奶奶赶紧拿起红布，蒙到头上，顶着轿帘的脚尖也悄悄收回，轿里又是一团漆黑。
+ “唱个曲儿给哥哥们听，哥哥抬着你哩！”
+ 吹鼓手如梦方醒，在轿后猛地吹响了大喇叭，大喇叭说：
+ “咚——咚——”
+ “猛捅——猛捅——”
+ 轿前有人模仿着喇叭声说，前前后后响起一阵粗野的笑声。
+ 奶奶身上汗水淋漓。
+ 临上轿前，外曾祖母反复叮咛过她，在路上，千万不要跟轿夫们磨牙斗嘴。
+ 轿夫，吹鼓手，都是下九流，奸刁古怪，什么样的坏事都干得出来。
+ 轿夫们用力把轿子抖起来，奶奶的屁股坐不安稳，双手抓住座板。
+ “不吱声？
+ 颠！
+ 颠不出她的话就颠出她的尿！”
+ 轿子已经像风浪中的小船了，奶奶死劲抓住座板，腹中翻腾着早晨吃下的两个鸡蛋，苍蝇在她耳畔嗡嗡地飞，她的喉咙紧张，蛋腥味冲到口腔，她咬住嘴唇。
+ 不能吐，不能吐！
+ 奶奶命令着自己，不能吐啊，凤莲，人家说吐在轿里是最大的不吉利，吐了轿子一辈子没好运……
+ 轿夫们的话更加粗野了，他们有的骂我外曾祖父是个见钱眼开的小人，有的说鲜花插到牛粪上，有的说单扁郎是个流白脓淌黄水的麻风病人。
+ 他们说站在单家院子外，就能闻到一股烂肉臭味，单家的院子里，飞舞着成群结队的绿头苍蝇……
+ “小娘子，你可不能让单扁郎沾身啊，沾了身，你也烂啦！”
+ 大喇叭小唢呐呜呜咽咽地吹着，那股蛋腥味更加强烈，奶奶牙齿紧咬嘴唇，咽喉里像有只拳头在打击，她忍不住了，一张嘴，一股奔突的脏物蹿出来，涂在了轿帘上，五只苍蝇像子弹一样射到呕吐物上。
+ “吐啦吐啦，颠呀！”
+ 轿夫们狂喊着，“颠呀，早晚颠得她开口说话。”
+ “大哥哥们…… 饶了我吧……”
+ 奶奶在呃嗝中，痛不欲生地说着，说完了，便放声大哭起来。
+ 奶奶觉得委屈，奶奶觉得前途险恶，终生难逃苦海。
+ 爹呀，娘呀，贪财的爹，狠心的娘，你们把我毁了。
+ 奶奶放声大哭，高粱深径震动，轿夫们不再颠狂，推波助澜、兴风作浪的吹鼓手们也停嘴不吹。
+ 只剩下奶奶的呜咽，又和进了一支悲泣的小唢呐，唢呐的哭泣声比所有的女人哭泣都优美。
+ 奶奶在唢呐声中停住哭，像聆听天籁一般，听着这似乎从天国传来的音乐。
+ 奶奶粉面凋零，珠泪点点，从悲婉的曲调里，她听到了死的声音，嗅到了死的气息，看到了死神的高粱般深红的嘴唇和玉米般金黄的笑脸。
+ 轿夫们沉默无言，步履沉重。
+ 轿里牺牲的哽咽和轿后唢呐的伴奏，使他们心中萍翻桨乱，雨打魂幡。
+ 走在高粱小径上的，已不像迎亲的队伍，倒像送葬的仪仗。
+ 在奶奶脚前的那个轿夫——我后来的爷爷余占鳌，他的心里，有一种不寻常的预感，像熊熊燃烧的火焰一样，把他未来的道路照亮了。
+ 奶奶的哭声。
+ 唤起他心底早就蕴藏着的怜爱之情。
+ 轿夫们中途小憩，花轿落地。
+ 奶奶哭得昏昏沉沉，不觉得把一只小脚露到了轿外。
+ 轿夫们看着这玲珑的、美丽无比的小脚，一时都忘魂落魄。
+ 余占鳌走过来，弯腰，轻轻地、轻轻地握住奶奶那只小脚，像握着一只羽毛未丰的鸟雏，轻轻地送回轿内。
+ 奶奶在轿内，被这温柔感动，她非常想撩开轿帘，看看这个生着一只温暖的年轻大手的轿夫是个什么样的人。
+ 我想，千里姻缘一线牵，一生的情缘，都是天凑地合，是毫无挑剔的真理。
+ 余占鳌就是因为握了一下我奶奶的脚唤醒了他心中伟大的创造新生活的灵感，从此彻底改变了他的一生，也彻底改变了我奶奶的一生。
+ 花轿又起行，喇叭吹出一个猿啼般的长音，便无声无息。
+ 起风了，东北风，天上云朵麇集，遮住了阳光，轿子里更加昏暗。
+ 奶奶听到风吹高粱，哗哗哗啦啦啦，一浪赶着一浪，响到远方。
+ 奶奶听到东北方向有隆隆雷声响起。
+ 轿夫们加快了步伐。
+ 轿子离单家还有多远，奶奶不知道，她如同一只被绑的羔羊，愈近死期，心里愈平静。
+ 奶奶胸口里，揣着一把锋利的剪刀，它可能是为单扁郎准备的，也可能是为自己准备的。
+ 奶奶的花轿行走到蛤蟆坑被劫的事，在我的家族的传说中占有一个显要的位置。
+ 蛤蟆坑是大洼子里的大洼子，土壤尤其肥沃，水分尤其充足，高粱尤其茂密。
+ 奶奶的花轿行到这里，东北天空抖着一个血红的闪电，一道残缺的杏黄色阳光，从浓云中，嘶叫着射向道路。
+ 轿夫们气喘吁吁，热汗涔涔。
+ 走进蛤蟆坑，空气沉重，路边的高粱乌黑发亮，深不见底，路上的野草杂花几乎长死了路。
+ 有那么多的矢车菊，在杂草中高扬着细长的茎，开着紫、蓝、粉、白四色花。
+ 高粱深处，蛤蟆的叫声忧伤，蝈蝈的唧唧凄凉，狐狸的哀鸣悠怅。
+ 奶奶在轿里，突然感到一阵寒冷袭来，皮肤上凸起一层细小的鸡皮疙瘩。
+ 奶奶还没明白过来是怎么一回事，就听到轿前有人高叫一声：
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 奶奶心里咯噔一声，不知忧喜，老天，碰上吃拤饼的了！
+ 高密东北乡土匪如毛，他们在高粱地里鱼儿般出没无常，结帮拉伙，拉骡绑票，坏事干尽，好事做绝。
+ 如果肚子饿了，就抓两个人，扣一个，放一个，让被放的人回村报信，送来多少张卷着鸡蛋大葱一把粗细的两拃多长的大饼。
+ 吃大饼时要用双手拤住往嘴里塞，故曰“拤饼”。
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 那个吃拤饼的人大吼着。
+ 轿夫们停住，呆呆地看着劈腿横在路当中的劫路人。
+ 那人身材不高，脸上涂着黑墨，头戴一顶高粱篾片编成的斗笠，身披一件大蓑衣，蓑衣敞着，露出密扣黑衣和拦腰扎着的宽腰带。
+ 腰里别着一件用红绸布包起的鼓鼓囊囊的东西。
+ 那人用一只手按着那布包。
+ 奶奶在一转念间，感到什么事情也不可怕了，死都不怕，还怕什么？
+ 她掀起轿帘，看着那个吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人又喊：“留下买路钱！
+ 要不我就崩了你们！”
+ 他拍了拍腰里那件红布包裹着的家伙。
+ 吹鼓手们从腰里摸出外曾祖父赏给他们的一串串铜钱，扔到那人脚前。
+ 轿夫放下轿子，也把新得的铜钱掏出，扔下。
+ 那人把钱串子用脚踢拢成堆，眼睛死死地盯着坐在花轿里的我奶奶。
+ “你们，都给我滚到轿子后边去，要不我就开枪啦！”
+ 他用手拍拍腰里别着的家伙大声喊叫。
+ 轿夫们慢慢吞吞地走到轿后。
+ 余占鳌走在最后，他猛回转身，双目直逼吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人瞬间动容变色，手紧紧捂住腰里的红布包，尖叫着：“不许回头，再回头我就毙了你！”
+ 劫路人按着腰中家伙，脚不离地蹭到轿子前伸手捏捏奶奶的脚。
+ 奶奶粲然一笑，那人的手像烫了似的紧着缩回去。
+ “下轿，跟我走！”
+ 他说。
+ 奶奶端坐不动，脸上的笑容凝固了一样。
+ “下轿！”
+ 奶奶欠起身，大大方方地跨过轿杆，站在烂漫的矢车菊里。
+ 奶奶右眼看着吃拤饼的人，左眼看着轿夫和吹鼓手。
+ “往高粱地里走！”
+ 劫路人按着腰里用红布包着的家伙说。
+ 奶奶舒适地站着，云中的闪电带着铜音嗡嗡抖动，奶奶脸上粲然的笑容被分裂成无数断断续续的碎片。
+ 劫路人催逼着奶奶往高粱地里走，他的手始终按着腰里的家伙。
+ 奶奶用亢奋的眼睛，看着余占鳌。
+ 余占鳌对着劫路人笔直地走过去，他薄薄的嘴唇绷成一条刚毅的直线，两个嘴角一个上翘，一个下垂。
+ “站住！”
+ 劫路人有气无力地喊着，“再走一步我就开枪！”
+ 他的手按在腰里用红布包裹着的家伙上。
+ 余占鳌平静地对着吃拤饼的人走，他前进一步，吃拤饼者就缩一点。
+ 吃拤饼的人眼里跳出绿火花，一行行雪白的清明汗珠从他脸上惊惶地流出来。
+ 当余占鳌离他三步远时，他惭愧地叫了一声，转身就跑。
+ 余占鳌飞身上前，对准他的屁股，轻捷地踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人的身体贴着杂草梢头，蹭着矢车菊花朵，平行着飞出去，他的手脚在低空中像天真的婴孩一样抓挠着，最后落到高粱棵子里。
+ “爷们，饶命吧！
+ 小人家中有八十岁的老母，不得已才吃这碗饭。”
+ 劫路人在余占鳌手下熟练地叫着。
+ 余占鳌抓着他的后颈皮，把他提到轿子前，用力摔在路上，对准他吵嚷不休的嘴巴踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人一声惨叫，半截吐出口外，半截咽到肚里，血从他鼻子里流出来。
+ 余占鳌弯腰，把劫路人腰里那家伙拔出来，抖掉红布，露出一个弯弯曲曲的小树疙瘩，众人嗟叹不止。
+ 那人跪在地上，连连磕头求饶。
+ 余占鳌说：“劫路的都说家里有八十岁的老母。”
+ 他退到一边，看着轿夫和吹鼓手，像狗群里的领袖看着群狗。
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们发声喊，一拥而上，围成一个圆圈，对准劫路人，花拳绣腿齐施展。
+ 起初还能听到劫路人尖利的哭叫声，一会儿就听不见了。
+ 奶奶站在路边，听着七零八落的打击肉体的沉闷声响，对着余占鳌顿眸一瞥，然后仰面看着天边的闪电，脸上凝固着的，仍然是那种粲然的、黄金一般高贵辉煌的笑容。
+ 一个吹鼓手挥动起大喇叭，在劫路者的当头心儿里猛劈了一下，喇叭的圆刃劈进颅骨里去，费了好大劲才拔出。
+ 劫路人肚子里咕噜一声响，痉挛的身体舒展开来，软软地躺在地上。
+ 一线红白相间的液体，从那道深刻的裂缝里慢慢地挤出来。
+ “死了？”
+ 吹鼓手提着打瘪了的喇叭说。
+ “打死了，这东西，这么不禁打！”
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们俱神色惨淡，显得惶惶不安。
+ 余占鳌看看死人，又看看活人，一语不发。
+ 他从高粱上撕下一把叶子，把轿子里奶奶呕吐出的脏物擦掉，又举起那块树疙瘩看看，把红布往树疙瘩上缠几下，用力摔出，飞行中树疙瘩抢先，红包布落后，像一只赤红的大蝶，落到绿高粱上。
+ 余占鳌把奶奶扶上轿说：“上来雨了，快赶！”
+ 奶奶撕下轿帘，塞到轿子角落里，她呼吸着自由的空气，看着余占鳌的宽肩细腰。
+ 他离着轿子那么近，奶奶只要一翘脚，就能踢到他青白色的结实头皮。
+ 风利飕有力，高粱前推后拥，一波一波地动，路一侧的高粱把头伸到路当中，向着我奶奶弯腰致敬。
+ 轿夫们飞马流星，轿子出奇的平稳，像浪尖上飞快滑动的小船。
+ 蛙类们兴奋地鸣叫着，迎接着即将来临的盛夏的暴雨。
+ 低垂的天幕，阴沉地注视着银灰色的高粱脸庞，一道压一道的血红闪电在高粱头上裂开，雷声强大，震动耳膜。
+ 奶奶心中亢奋，无畏地注视着黑色的风掀起的绿色的浪潮，云声像推磨一样旋转着过来，风向变幻不定，高粱四面摇摆，田野凌乱不堪。
+ 最先一批凶狠的雨点打得高粱颤抖，打得野草觳觫，打得道上的细土凝聚成团后又立即迸裂，打得轿顶啪啪响。
+ 雨点打在奶奶的绣花鞋上，打在余占鳌的头上，斜射到奶奶的脸上。
+ 余占鳌他们像兔子一样疾跑，还是未能躲过这场午前的雷阵雨。
+ 雨打倒了无数的高粱，雨在田野里狂欢，蛤蟆躲在高粱根下，哈达哈达地抖着颌下雪白的皮肤； 狐狸蹲在幽暗的洞里，看着从高粱上飞溅而下的细小水珠，道路很快就泥泞不堪，杂草伏地，矢车菊清醒地擎着湿漉漉的头。
+ 轿夫们肥大的黑裤子紧贴在肉上，人们都变得苗条流畅。
+ 余占鳌的头皮被冲刷得光洁明媚，像奶奶眼中的一颗圆月。
+ 雨水把奶奶的衣服也打湿了，她本来可以挂上轿帘遮挡雨水，她没有挂，她不想挂，奶奶通过敞亮的轿门，看到了纷乱不安的宏大世界。
+
+ The Film Studio
+ FOUR DECADES THE story spans, and it all began the day she went to the film studio.
+ The day before, Wu Peizhen had agreed to take Wang Qiyao to have a look around the studio.
+ Wu Peizhen was a rather careless girl.
+ Under normal circumstances, she would have suffered from low self-esteem because of her homeliness, but because Peizhen came from a well-to-do family and people always doted on her, she had developed unaffected into an outgoing young lady.
+ What would have been poor self-esteem was replaced by a kind of modesty—modesty ruled by a practical spirit.
+ In her modesty, she tended to exaggerate other people's strengths, place them on a pedestal, and offer them her devotion.
+ Wang Qiyao never had to worry about Wu Peizhen being jealous of her—and she certainly had no reason to be jealous of Wu Peizhen.
+ On the contrary, she even felt a bit bad for Wu Peizhen—because she was so ugly.
+ This compassion predisposed Wang Qiyao to be generous, but naturally this generosity did not extend any further than Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen's carelessness was the function of an uncalculating mind.
+ She appreciated Wang Qiyao's magnanimity and tried even harder to please her as though repaying her kindness.
+ Basking in each other's company, they became the best of friends.
+ But Wang Qiyao's decision to befriend Wu Peizhen meant, in some way, that she was pushing a heavy load onto Wu Peizhen's shoulders.
+ Her beauty highlighted Wu Peizhen's unattractive appearance; her meticulousness highlighted Wu Peizhen's lack of care; her magnanimity highlighted Wu Peizhen's indebtedness.
+ It was a good thing that Wu Peizhen could take it; after all, the weight of everyday living did not rest as heavily on her.
+ This was partly because she had plenty of psychic capital to draw on, but also because she simply did not mind.
+ Things came easy to her and she was willing to bear more than her share.
+ Thus an equilibrium of give-and-take was maintained between the two girls and they grew closer by the day.
+ Wu Peizhen had a cousin who did lighting at the film studio.
+ Occasionally he would come over to see her.
+ In that khaki uniform of his, with its copper buttons, he came across as a bit flashy.
+ Wu Peizhen really could not have cared less about him; the only reason she kept him around was for Wang Qiyao.
+ The film studio was the stuff of girls' dreams—a place where romance is created, the kind that appears on the silver screen in movies that everyone knows as well as the off-screen type that one hears about in the enchanting gossip and rumors surrounding the lives of film stars.
+ The former is fake but appears real; the latter is real but seems fake.
+ To live in the world of the film studio is to lead a dual life.
+ Girls like Wu Peizhen who had all of their needs taken care of seldom wallowed in dreams; moreover, as the only girl in a house full of boys, she grew up playing boys' games and never learned the social skills and canniness most girls picked up.
+ However, after making friends with Wang Qiyao, she became more thoughtful.
+ She came to see the film studio as a gift that she could offer to Wang Qiyao.
+ She arranged everything carefully, only informing Wang Qiyao after she had already set a date, and was surprised when Wang Qiyao greeted the news with apparent indifference, claiming a prior engagement.
+ This compelled Wu Peizhen to try to change Wang Qiyao's mind by exaggerating the glamour of the film studio, combining stories her cousin bragged about with others from her own imagination.
+ Before long, it was more like Wang Qiyao was doing her a favor by going with her.
+ By the time Wang Qiyao finally gave in and agreed to go some other time, Wu Peizhen was acting as if yet another gift that she herself had to be thankful for had been bestowed upon her, and she ecstatically scurried off to find her cousin to change the date.
+ Wang Qiyao did not, in fact, have any prior engagement, nor was she as reluctant as she appeared; this was simply the way she conducted herself—the more interested she was in something, the more she held back.
+ This was her means of protecting herself—or then again, was it part of a strategy of disarming an antagonist by pretending to set her free?
+ Whatever the reason behind her action, it was impenetrable to Wu Peizhen.
+ On her way to her cousin's place, she was consumed with gratitude for Wang Qiyao; all she could think about was how much face Wang Qiyao had given her by agreeing to the invitation.
+ The cousin was the son of Wu Peizhen's uncle on her mother's side.
+ This uncle was the black sheep of the family.
+ He had driven a silk shop in Hangzhou into the ground and Wu Peizhen's mother had dreaded his visits because all he ever wanted from her was money or grain.
+ After she gave him some heavy doses of harsh words and turned him away empty-handed several times, he gradually stopped coming around and eventually broke off all relations.
+ Then one day his son had showed up at her door wearing that khaki uniform with copper buttons and carrying two boxes of vegetarian dim sum as if they represented some kind of announcement.
+ Ever since then he would come by once every two months or so and tell them stories about the film studio.
+ Nobody in the house was interested in his stories—nobody, that is, except Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen went to the address in Qijiabing in search of her cousin.
+ All around were thatch-covered shacks surrounded by small unmarked trails that extended in different directions, making it virtually impossible to find one's way.
+ People stared at her.
+ One glance told them that she was an outsider, but just as she was getting ready to ask directions they would immediately look away.
+ She finally found her cousin's place, only to discover that he was not home.
+ The young man who shared the shack with her cousin asked her in.
+ He was wearing a pair of glasses and a set of coarse cotton clothes.
+ Wu Peizhen was a bit shy and waited outside.
+ This naturally drew more curious gazes.
+ It was not until dusk that her cousin finally staggered in with a greasy paper bag holding a pig's head or some other cheap meat he had bought over at the butcher's shop.
+ By the time Wu Peizhen got home, her family was already at the dinner table and she had to fib about where she had been.
+ But she didn't have an ounce of regret; even when later that evening she saw the blisters on the soles of her feet from all that walking, she still felt that it was all worth it.
+ That night she even had a dream about the film studio.
+ She dreamed of an elegantly dressed woman under the mercury-vapor lamps.
+ When the woman turned to her and smiled, Wu Peizhen saw that she was none other than Wang Qiyao; she was so excited that she woke up.
+ Her feelings for Wang Qiyao were a bit like the puppy love that a teenage boy feels for a girl for whom he is willing to go to the edge of the earth.
+ She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark bedroom and wondered: Just what kind of place is this film studio anyway?
+ When the day finally arrived, Wu Peizhen's excitement far surpassed that of Wang Qiyao; she could barely contain herself.
+ A classmate asked them where they were off to.
+ "Nowhere," Wu Peizhen casually responded, as she gave Wang Qiyao a knowing pinch on the arm.
+ Then she pulled Wang Qiyao aside and told her to hurry up, as though afraid that that their classmate would catch up and force them to let her in on their pleasure.
+ The whole way there Wu Peizhen couldn't stop jabbering, attracting curious glances from people on the street.
+ Wang Qiyao warned her several times to get hold of herself.
+ Finally she had to stop in her tracks and declare she wasn't going any further—they had not even set foot in the studio and Wu Peizhen had already embarrassed her enough.
+ Only then did Wu Peizhen cool down a bit.
+ To get to the studio they had to take the trolley and make a transfer.
+ Wu Peizhen's cousin was waiting for them at the entrance; he gave each of them an ID tag to clip on her chest so that they would look like employees: that way they could wander around wherever their hearts desired.
+ Once inside, they walked through an empty lot littered with wooden planks, discarded cloth scraps, and chunks of broken bricks and tiles—it looked like a cross between a dump and a construction site.
+ Everyone approaching went at a hurried pace with their heads down.
+ The cousin also moved briskly, as if he had something urgent to take care of.
+ The two girls were left straggling behind, holding hands, trying their best to keep up.
+ It was three or four o'clock, the sunlight was waning and the wind picked up, rustling their skirts.
+ Both of them felt a bit gloomy and Wu Peizhen fell silent.
+ After going a few hundred steps, their journey began to feel interminable, and the girls began to lose patience with the cousin, who slowed down to regale them with some of the rumors floating around the studio; his comments, however, seemed to be neither here nor there.
+ Before their visit all of those anecdotes seemed real, but once they had seen the place everything was now entirely unreliable.
+ Numbness had taken hold of them by the time they entered a large room the size of a warehouse, where uniformed workers scurried back and forth, up and down scaffolding, all the while calling out orders and directions.
+ But they did not see a soul who even faintly resembled a movie star.
+ Thoroughly disoriented, they simply trailed after Wu Peizhen's cousin, but had to watch their heads one second and their feet another, for there were ropes and wires overhead and littering the ground.
+ They moved in and out from illuminated areas into patches of darkness and seemed to have completely forgotten their objective and had no idea where they were—all they did was walk.
+ After what seemed an eternity, Wu Peizhen's cousin finally stopped and had them stand off to one side—he had to go to work.
+ The place where they were left standing was bustling with activity; everyone seemed to be doing something as they moved briskly around the girls.
+ Several times, rushing to get out of one person's way, they bumped into someone else.
+ But they had yet to lay eyes on anyone who looked like a movie star.
+ They were both getting anxious, feeling that the whole trip was a mistake.
+ Wu Peizhen could hardly bring herself to look Wang Qiyao in the eye.
+ All of a sudden, the lights in the room lit up like a dozen rising suns, blinding them.
+ After their eyes adjusted they made out a portion of the warehouse-like room that had been arranged to look like one half of a bedroom.
+ That three-walled bedroom seemed to be the set, but everything inside was peculiarly familiar.
+ The comforter showed signs of wear, old cigarette butts were left in the ashtray, even the handkerchief on the nightstand beside the bed had been used, crumpled up into a ball—as if someone had removed a wall in a home where real people were living to display what went on within.
+ Standing there watching they were quite excited, but at the same time irritated because they were too far away to hear what was being said on set.
+ All they could see was a woman in a sheer nightgown lying on a bed with wrinkled sheets.
+ She tried to lie in several different positions; on her side one moment, on her back the next, and for a while even in a strange position where half her body extended off the bed onto the floor.
+ All this became somewhat boring.
+ The lights turned on and off.
+ In the end, the woman in bed stopped moving and stayed still in the same position for quite some time before the lights once again dimmed.
+ When the lights came back on, everything seemed different.
+ During the previous few takes the light had been marked by an unbridled brilliance.
+ This time they seemed to be using a specialized lighting, the kind that illuminates a room during a pitch-black night.
+ The bedroom set seemed to be further away, but the scene became even more alive.
+ Wang Qiyao was taking in everything.
+ She noticed the glow emitting from the electric lamp and the rippling shadows of the lotus-shaped lampshade projecting onto the three walls of the set.
+ A powerful sense of déjà vu gripped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she had seen this scene before.
+ Only after shifting her gaze to the woman under the lamplight did she suddenly realize that the actress was pretending to be dead—but she could not tell if the woman was meant to have been murdered or to have committed suicide.
+ The strange thing was that this scene did not appear terrifying or foreboding, only annoyingly familiar.
+ She could not make out the woman's features; all she could see was her head of disheveled hair strewn out along the foot of the bed.
+ The woman's feet faced the headboard and her head lay propped against the foot of the bed, her slippers scattered on opposite sides of the room.
+ The film studio was a hubbub of activity, like a busy dockyard.
+ With all the cries of "Camera" and "OK" rising and falling amid the clamor, the woman was the only thing that did not move, as if she had fallen into an eternal slumber.
+ Wu Peizhen was the first to lose her patience; after all, she was the more brazen one.
+ She pulled Wang Qiyao away so they could go look around other parts of the studio.
+ Their next stop was a three-walled hotel lobby where a fight scene was being shot.
+ All of the actors, in suits and leather dress shoes, were standing around when suddenly a poor fellow in tattered clothes walked onto the set and slapped the hotel manager across the face.
+ The way the action was carried out looked a bit ridiculous; the actor produced the slapping sound with his left hand as he slapped the restaurant owner with his right, but his timing was impeccable and one could hardly tell it was fake.
+ Wu Peizhen liked this scene much more than the first.
+ She watched them do take after take without getting bored, the whole time exclaiming how much fun it was.
+ Wang Qiyao, however, grew impatient and said that the first one was much more interesting.
+ She said that it was a serious film, unlike this one, which was pure buffoonery, no better than a circus sideshow.
+ The two returned to the first set only to discover that everyone had gone.
+ Even the bed had been taken away, leaving only a few workers behind to straighten up the remaining items on set.
+ The girls wondered if they had gone to the wrong place and were about to go look elsewhere when Wu Peizhen's cousin suddenly called out to them.
+ As it happened, he was one of the workers breaking down the set.
+ He told them to wait a little while, and then he would take them to watch a special effects shoot that was going on at one of the other sets!
+ They had no choice but to stand off to one side and wait idly.
+ Someone asked the cousin who his guests were and he told him.
+ But when the man asked where they went to school, the cousin was stumped and Wu Peizhen had to answer for herself.
+ The man flashed them a smile, revealing a set of white teeth that shimmered in the darkness of the studio.
+ He was the director, the cousin later told them.
+ He had studied abroad and was also a screenwriter; in fact he had written and directed the scene they had earlier seen being filmed.
+ The cousin told them all this as he led them off to see the special effects shoot, where they saw smoke, fire, even ghosts.
+ Once again the technical people were doing all the work while the actors did virtually nothing.
+ Asked by Wu Peizhen if they could see some movie stars, the cousin looked embarrassed.
+ He told them that there was not a single big star on any of the sets that day, explaining that it was not every day that big movie stars had scenes.
+ The studio simply could not schedule things the way they would like—they had to work around the stars' schedules.
+ Wu Peizhen caught her cousin in a lie.
+ "Didn't you tell us that you are always running into all these big name stars at the studio every day?" she protested.
+ Wang Qiyao took pity on the cousin and tried to smooth things over.
+ "It's getting dark.
+ We had better come back some other time.
+ Our parents will be worried!"
+ As the cousin led them toward the exit they once again ran into the director.
+ Not only did he remember them, he addressed them jocularly as "the girls from So-and-so middle school"—Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen turned a bright red.
+ On the ride home, neither was in the mood to talk and they sat silently, listening to the ringing bells of the trolley.
+ The trolley was half empty; the after-work rush hour was over and Shanghai's nightlife had yet to begin.
+ The girls' experience at the film studio was not exactly as expected; it was difficult to say whether it was disappointing or whether they had had the time of their lives—the one thing for sure was that they were both exhausted.
+ Wu Peizhen had never had her sights set on the studio.
+ Her reason for going rested entirely in making Wang Qiyao happy, so naturally she had hoped it would be a wonderful trip.
+ Just what was so wonderful about the film studio, however, Wu Peizhen had not the slightest clue—she had to wait for Wang Qiyao's reaction to find out.
+ The impression the film studio left on Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, was much more complicated.
+ It was not nearly as magical a place as she had imagined, yet because it appeared so ordinary it gave her the impression that it was within her grasp—but just what was it that she could grasp?
+ She had yet to figure that out.
+ Her initial hopes may have been dampened, but the anxiety that came with anticipation had been relieved.
+ In the days following their visit to the film studio, Wang Qiyao did not utter a single word about their trip, and this left Wu Peizhen quite depressed.
+ She was afraid that Wang Qiyao had not liked the studio and the whole trip had been a complete waste.
+ Then one day she told Wang Qiyao in a confessional tone that her cousin had invited them back to the film studio but she had already declined the offer.
+ Wang Qiyao rounded on her.
+ "How could you do that?
+ He is trying to be nice to us!"
+ Wu Peizhen's eyes widened in disbelief.
+ Wang Qiyao felt a bit uncomfortable under her stare.
+ Turning her face away, she said, "What I mean is, you should show the guy some respect.
+ After all, he's your cousin!"
+ This was one occasion when even Wu Peizhen saw through Wang Qiyao.
+ But far from belittling her friend for being phony, Wu Peizhen felt a tenderness well up in her heart.
+ Although on the outside she looks like a grownup, deep down she is still a child!
+ Wu Peizhen thought to herself.
+ At that moment, her feeling for Wang Qiyao approached maternal love—a love that encompassed all.
+ From then on the film studio became a place for frequent visits.
+ They learned quite a few inside secrets about filmmaking.
+ They learned that movies are never shot in sequence, but are made one scene at a time and only edited together in the final stages.
+ The set locations may have been dilapidated and in disrepair, but the images captured by the camera were always perfectly beautiful.
+ On one or two occasions they actually saw some of those famous movie stars, who sat in front of the camera doing nothing, like a collection of idle props.
+ Films scripts were revised at random, and in the blink of an eye even the dead could come back to life.
+ The girls made their way backstage, and as they rubbed their hands against the mysterious machinery that made images come to life, their hearts seemed to undergo a kind of transformation.
+ Time spent in a film studio is never humdrum; the experience always hints at life's greater meaning.
+ This is especially true for the young, who cannot yet completely distinguish truth from fiction and the real from the make-believe, and especially during that era—when movies had already become an important part of our everyday lives.
+ Camera
+ Wang Qiyao had learned that the most critical moment in making a film came the second that the director calls, "Camera."
+ Everything up to that point boils down to preparation and foreshadowing, but what happens afterward?
+ It ends forever.
+ She came to understand the significance of the word "Camera": it announced a kind of climax.
+ Sometimes the director let them look through the camera and what they saw through its lens was always gorgeous; the camera had the power to filter out all of the chaos and disarray.
+ It had the power to make what was dark and dismal glimmer with light.
+ Inside the camera was a different world.
+ After editing and postproduction, only the pure essence would remain.
+ The director became quite close with the girls and they eventually stopped blushing in his presence.
+ A few times, when Wu Peizhen's cousin was not in the studio, they even went straight to look for the director.
+ He had given them the nicknames "Zhen Zhen" and "Yao Yao," as if they were characters in his latest movie.
+ Behind their backs he described Zhen Zhen to his colleagues as a graceless servant girl right out of Dream of the Red Chamber, a little cleaning maid who thinks she is special just because she is employed in a large, wealthy household.
+ Yao Yao he described as a proper miss who acted the part of a rich official's daughter, like the tragic lover Zhu Yingtai.
+ He treated Wu Peizhen as if she were a child; he loved to tease her and play little jokes on her.
+ He promised to put Wang Qiyao in a scene in one of his movies as soon as the opportunity arose.
+ Who knows?
+ Because her coquettish eyes resembled Ruan Lingyu's, they might even be able to capitalize on the audience's nostalgia for the dead movie star and make Wang Qiyao into a new diva of the screen.
+ Although he seemed to be kidding, this was the director's reserved and humorous way of making a promise.
+ Wang Qiyao naturally did not take him too seriously, but she did kind of like being compared to Ruan Lingyu.
+ Then one day the director telephoned Wang Qiyao at home to have her come down to the studio for a screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao's heart raced and her hands grew clammy.
+ She was unsure if this was the opportunity she had been waiting for.
+ She wondered: Could my big chance really come this easily?
+ She could not believe it, neither did she dare not to believe it.
+ Deep down her heart was in knots.
+ At first she did not want to tell Wu Peizhen about it.
+ She planned to sneak off alone and return before anyone noticed that she was gone.
+ In case nothing came of the screen test, it would be her own little secret and she could pretend that nothing had ever happened.
+ But then, just before the day of her screen test, she broke down and asked Wu Peizhen to go with her so that she would not be too nervous.
+ Wang Qiyao did not sleep well the night before; her face appeared thinner than usual and she had dark rings around her eyes.
+ Wu Peizhen naturally jumped for joy as all kinds of wild ideas went flying through her head.
+ In no time she was talking about organizing press conferences for Wang Qiyao, who regretted telling her friend about the screen test.
+ Neither of them paid attention during their classes that afternoon.
+ When school finally let out the two rushed out of the gate and hopped onto the trolley car.
+ Most of the passengers at that time of the day were housewives with cloth bags in hand, wearing wrinkled cheongsams, the seams of their stockings running crookedly up the back of their legs.
+ They either had messy, disheveled hair or, if they had just walked out of the beauty salon, hair that look like a helmet.
+ Their faces were rigid, as if nothing in the world concerned them.
+ Even the trolley seemed to be afflicted with an air of apathy as it rattled along the tracks.
+ Amid this sea of indifference, Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen were animated and alive.
+ Though neither said a word, centuries of anticipation and excitement were brewing inside them.
+ At three o'clock in the afternoon, the Shanghai boulevards were suffused with weariness, preparing to sign out and change shifts.
+ The sun hung in the western sky above the apartment buildings, glowing ripe and golden.
+ Their hearts were filled with anticipation as if they were about to begin a brand-new day.
+ The director led them into the dressing room and had a makeup artist work on Wang Qiyao.
+ Seeing herself reflected in the mirror, Wang Qiyao could not help feeling that her face was small and her features plain—she realized that a miracle would not occur—and this depressed her.
+ She became completely resigned as the makeup man worked on her.
+ She even closed her eyes for a while to avoid looking in the mirror, uncomfortable and anxious only to get everything over and done with.
+ She even got neurotic and thought that the makeup man, impatient to get finished with her, was applying the makeup hurriedly and crudely.
+ When she opened her eyes once again and looked, she saw the awkward expression of someone who had no desire to be there.
+ The harsh, unmodulated light of the dressing room made everything appear commonplace.
+ Losing all confidence in herself, Wang Qiyao decided to simply let everything ride; she focused on watching the makeup man gradually transform her into someone else—a stranger she did not recognize.
+ It was then that she began to calm down and her tensions eased.
+ By the time the makeup man finished his job, she had even started to regain her sense of humor and joked around a bit with Wu Peizhen, who remarked that Wang Qiyao looked like the Lady in the Moon descending into the secular world, whereupon Wang Qiyao quipped that if she were a Lady in the Moon, she was the kind whose image was found on boxes of mooncakes.
+ The two of them had a good laugh.
+ Once this happened, Wang Qiyao's expression relaxed, her powdered face lit up, and she came to life.
+ As she returned the gaze of the beauty in the mirror, the image she saw no longer seemed quite as distant and unrecognizable.
+ Before long the director sent someone over to escort Wang Qiyao to the set, Wu Peizhen naturally following close behind.
+ The lights were already set up and Wu Peizhen's cousin was up on the scaffolding, smiling down at them.
+ The director, on the other hand, became serious and cold, as if he did not even know them.
+ He had Wang Qiyao sit on a bed.
+ It was a Nanjing-style bed with ornate flower patterns carved into the woodwork, a mirror set into the headboard, and high bed curtains all around—all the signs of rustic elegance.
+ Wang Qiyao was to play a bride in a traditional wedding ceremony.
+ She would be wearing a crimson bridal veil over her head when the groom entered and he would pull it away, slowly revealing her face.
+ The director explained that her character had to be bashful and charming, filled with longing and uncertainty; he unloaded these adjectives on her all at once, expecting her to capture them all with a single expression.
+ Wang Qiyao nodded, but deep down she was completely lost and had no idea where to begin.
+ But having decided to let everything ride, she was actually quite calm and composed.
+ She was aware of everything going on around her, down to the shouts of "Camera" coming from the adjacent set.
+ The next thing she knew, a crimson bridal veil came down over her head.
+ Suddenly everything was swathed in darkness.
+ In that instant her heart began pounding like a drum.
+ She understood that her moment had come and fear welled up inside her as her knees began to tremble faintly.
+ The set lights came on, transforming the darkness into a thick crimson hue.
+ Suddenly she felt feverish, and the tremors worked their way from her knees up through her body.
+ Even her teeth began to chatter.
+ All the mystery and grandeur of the film studio hung suspended in the light shimmering outside her veil.
+ Someone came and straightened out her clothing and then quickly walked off set.
+ The air whisked against her as he passed by.
+ The crimson veil fluttered a bit, for a moment softening the anxieties of that afternoon.
+ She heard a series of "okay"s repeating in rhythmic succession around her, as if converging upon a common target.
+ Finally came the word, "Camera."
+ Wang Qiyao's breathing stopped.
+ She could not catch her breath.
+ She could hear the film running through the camera, a mechanical sound that seemed to override everything.
+ Her mind just went blank.
+ When a hand pulled away her wedding veil, she was so startled that she shrank back with fright.
+ "Cut," the director yelled.
+ The set lights went dim, the crimson veil went back over her head, and they took it once more from the top.
+ As they redid the scene, everything grew fuzzy.
+ Things faded off into the distance, never to reappear, as if they had been an illusion.
+ Then Wang Qiyao snapped out of her daze, her shivering ceased, and her heart rate returned to normal.
+ Her eyes adjusted to the darkness once more and through the wedding veil she could make out silhouettes of people moving around.
+ The set lights came up and this time the shouts of "OK" sounded perfunctory.
+ When the word "Camera" was called out, it too seemed little more than a formality—but this formality still carried with it an air of authority, of unwavering power.
+ She began to prepare the emotions the director wanted to see on her face; the only problem was that she had no inkling of how to act bashful or charming, or what it meant to be filled with longing and uncertainty.
+ Human emotions are not simple symbols that can be called up at will.
+ The crimson wedding veil was lifted to reveal a rigid expression; even the bit of natural charm that she normally had about her was frozen.
+ As soon as he saw her through the eye of the camera, the director sensed that he had made a mistake; Wang Qiyao's was not an artistic beauty, but quite ordinary.
+ It was the kind of beauty to be admired in by close friends and relatives in her own living room, like the shifting moods of everyday life; a retrained beauty, it was not the kind that made waves.
+ It was real, not dramatic—the kind of beauty that people noticed on the street and photo studios displayed in their front windows.
+ Through the camera's lens, it was simply too bland.
+ The director was disappointed, but his disappointment was partly for Wang Qiyao's sake.
+ Her beauty will be buried and lost to the world, he said to himself.
+ Later, in order to make things up to her, he had a photographer friend of his do a photo shoot for her—but this photo shoot turned into something quite extraordinary.
+ One of the photos even made it into the inside front cover of Shanghai Life with the caption, "A Proper Young Lady of Shanghai."
+ And so that is how the screen test ended, just another trifling incident in the life of the film studio.
+ After that, Wang Qiyao stopped going.
+ She wanted to forget the whole affair—that it had ever happened.
+ But the image of that crimson wedding veil and the dazzling studio lights were already imprinted in her mind and reappeared whenever she closed her eyes.
+ There was a strange frisson attached to that scene; it was the most dramatic moment in Wang Qiyao's quiet life.
+ The moment had come and gone in an instant, but it added a dab of melancholic color to her heart.
+ Occasionally, on her way home from school, something would unexpectedly stir up her memory of the screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao was sixteen years old at the time, but that one day's experience left her with the feeling that she had already been through a lot—she felt much older than sixteen.
+ She started to avoid Wu Peizhen, as if the latter had stolen some secret from her.
+ Whenever Wu Peizhen invited her out after school, Wang Qiyao would almost always find some excuse not to go.
+ Several times Wu Peizhen even went to Wang Qiyao's apartment to look for her, but each time Wang Qiyao had the maidservant say that she was not home.
+ Sensing that she was being avoided, Wu Peizhen felt heartbroken, but she held on to the hope that Wang Qiyao would eventually come back to her.
+ Her friendship changed into a kind of pious waiting; she did not even look for any new girlfriends, afraid that they might take Wang Qiyao's place.
+ Wu Peizhen had a faint notion that the reason Wang Qiyao was avoiding her had something to do with that failed screen test, so she too stopped going to the film studio, even breaking off contact with her cousin.
+ The screen test became a source of sorrow for both of them, leaving them with a deep sense of defeat.
+ Things gradually got to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms: running into one another at school, each would make haste to awkwardly get out of the other's way.
+ They sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but, though their eyes never met, they could always feel one another's' presence.
+ A wall of pity grew between them.
+ The incident at the film studio ended with the word "camera," and the result was what they call in the industry a "freeze frame."
+ Gone, never to return, but the memory hangs on for all eternity.
+ Their after-school lives gradually returned to normal; but things were not really the same—something had been snatched away.
+ They were hurt, but neither could say where the pain was.
+ At their girls' school, where rumors usually flew rampant, not a soul knew about Wang Qiyao's screen test; they had succeeded in keeping it completely under wraps.
+ It was implicitly understood between them that they should never broach the subject.
+ Actually, just to be chosen by a director for a screen test would already have been a great honor in the eyes of most girls—any hopes of getting a part would be a long shot in a long shot.
+ This was also what Wang Qiyao thought at first, but once she reached that stage everything changed.
+ Suddenly, a price had been exacted and loss was imminent.
+ Only because Wu Peizhen stepped out of her own shoes and empathized completely with her friend was she able to understand the grief Wang Qiyao was going through.
+
+ 6. 片厂
+ 四十年的故事都是从去片厂这一天开始的。
+ 前一天，吴佩珍就说好，这天要带王琦瑶去片厂玩。
+ 吴佩珍是那类粗心的女孩子。
+ 她本应当为自己的丑自卑的，但因为家境不错，有人疼爱，养成了豁朗单纯的个性，使这自卑变成了谦虚，这谦虚里是很有一些实事求是的精神的。
+ 由这谦虚出发，她就总无意地放大别人的优点，很忠实地崇拜，随时准备奉献她的热诚。
+ 王琦瑶无须提防她有妒忌之心，也无须对她有妒忌之心，相反，她还对她怀有一些同情，因为她的丑。
+ 这同情使王琦瑶变得慷慨了，自然这慷慨是只对吴佩珍一个人的。
+ 吴佩珍的粗心其实只是不在乎，王琦瑶的宽待她是心领的，于是加倍地要待她好，报恩似的。
+ 一来二去的，两人便成了最贴心的朋友。
+ 王琦瑶和吴佩珍做朋友，有点将做人的重头推给吴佩珍的意思。
+ 她的好看突出了吴佩珍的丑，她的精细突出了吴佩珍的粗疏，她的慷慨突出的是吴佩珍的受恩，使吴佩珍负了债。
+ 好在吴佩珍是压得起的，她的人生任务不如王琦瑶来得重，有一点吃老本，也有一点不计较，本是一身轻，也是为王琦瑶分担的意思。
+ 这么一分担，两头便达到平衡，友情逐日加深。
+ 吴佩珍有个表哥是在片厂做照明工，有时来玩，就穿着钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，有些炫耀的样子。
+ 吴佩珍本来对他是不在意的，拉拢他全是为了王琦瑶。
+ 片厂这样的地方是女学生们心向往之的地方，它生产罗曼蒂克，一种是银幕上的，人所周知的电影； 一种是银幕下的，流言蜚语似的明星轶事。
+ 前者是个假，却像真的； 后者是个真，倒像是假的。
+ 片厂里的人生啊，一世当作两世做的。
+ 像吴佩珍这样吃得下睡得着的女孩子，是不大有梦想的，她又只有兄弟，没有姐妹，从小做的是男孩的游戏，对女孩子的窍门反倒不在行了。
+ 但和王琦瑶做朋友以后，她的心却变细了。
+ 她是将片厂当作一件礼物一样献给王琦瑶的。
+ 她很有心机的，将一切都安排妥了，日子也定下了，才去告诉王琦瑶。
+ 不料王琦瑶却还有些勉强，说她这一天正好有事，只能向她表哥抱歉了。
+ 吴佩珍于是就一个劲儿地向王琦瑶介绍片厂的有趣，将表哥平日里吹嘘的那些事迹都搬过来，再加上自己的想象。
+ 事情一时上有些弄反了，去片厂倒是为了照顾吴佩珍似的。
+ 等王琦瑶最终拗不过她，答应换个日子再去的时候，吴佩珍便像又受了一次恩，欢天喜地去找表哥改日子。
+ 其实这一天王琦瑶并非有事，也并非对片厂没兴趣，这只是她做人的方式，越是有吸引力的事就越要保持矜持的态度，是自我保护的意思，还是欲擒故纵的意思？
+ 反正不会是没道理。
+ 吴佩珍要学会这些，还早着呢。
+ 去找表哥的路上，她满心里都是对王琦瑶的感激，觉得她是太给自己面子了。
+ 这表哥是她舅舅家的孩子。
+ 舅舅是个败家子，把杭州城里一爿茧行吃空卖空，就离家出走，也不知去了什么地方。
+ 她母亲平素最怕这门亲戚，上门不是要钱就是要粮，也给过几句难听话，还给过几次钉子碰，后来就渐渐不来了，断了关系。
+ 忽有一日，那表哥再上门时，便是穿着这身钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，还带了两盒素点心，好像发了个宣言似的。
+ 自此，他每过一两月会来一次，说些片厂里的趣事，可大家都淡淡的，只有吴佩珍上了心。
+ 她按了地址去到肇嘉浜找表哥，一片草棚子里，左一个岔，右一个岔，布下了迷魂阵。
+ 一看她就是个外来的，都把目光投过去，待她要问路时，目光又都缩了回去。
+ 等她终于找到表哥的门，表哥又不在，同他合住的也是一个青年，戴着眼镜，穿的却是做工的粗布衣服，让她进屋等。
+ 她有点窘，只站在门口，自然又招来好奇的目光。
+ 天将黑的时候，才见表哥七绕八拐地走来，手里提着一个油浸浸的纸包，想是猪头肉之类的。
+ 她回到家里，已经开晚饭了，她还得编个谎搪塞她父母，也是煞费了苦心。
+ 可她无怨无艾，洗脚时看见脚底走出的泡，也觉得很值得。
+ 这晚上，吴佩珍竟也做了个关于片厂的梦，梦见水银灯下有个盛装的女人，回眸一笑，竟是王琦瑶，不由感动得醒了。
+ 她对王琦瑶的感情，有点像一个少年对一个少女，那种没有欲念的爱情，为她做什么都肯的。
+ 她在黑漆漆的房间里睁着眼，心想：片厂是个什么地方呢？
+ 到了那一天，去往片厂的时候，吴佩珍的兴奋要远超过王琦瑶，几乎按捺不住的。
+ 有同学问她们去哪里，吴佩珍一边说不去哪里，一边在王琦瑶的胳膊上拧一下，再就是拖着王琦瑶快走，好像那同学要追上来，分享她们的快乐似的。
+ 她一路聒噪，引得许多路人回头侧目，王琦瑶告诫几次没告诫住，最后只得停住脚步，说不去了，片厂没到，洋相倒先出够了。
+ 吴佩珍这才收敛了一些。
+ 两人上车，换车，然后就到了片厂。
+ 表哥站在门口正等她们，给她们一人一个牌挂在胸前，表示是厂里的人，便可以随处乱走了。
+ 她们挂好牌，跟了表哥往里走。
+ 先是在空地上走，四处都扔了木板旧布，还有碎砖破瓦，像一个垃圾场，也像一个工地。
+ 迎面来的人，都匆匆的，埋着头走路。
+ 表哥的步子也迈得很快，有要紧事去做似的。
+ 她们两人被甩在后头，互相拉着手，努力地加快步子。
+ 下午三四点的太阳有点人意阑珊的，风贴着地吹，吹起她们的裙摆。
+ 两人心里都有些暗淡，吴佩珍也沉默下来。
+ 三人这样走了一阵，几百步的路感觉倒有十万八千里的样子，那两个跟着的已经没有耐心。
+ 表哥放慢了脚步与她们拉扯片厂里的琐事，却有点不着边际的。
+ 这些琐事在外面听起来是真事，到了里面反倒像是传闻，不大靠得住了，两人心里又有些恍惚。
+ 然后就走进了一座仓库似的大屋，一眼望过去，都是穿了制服的做工的人走来走去，爬上爬下，大声吆喝着。
+ 类似明星的，竟一个也见不着。
+ 她们跟着表哥一阵乱走，一会儿小心头上，一会儿小心脚底，很快就迷失了方向。
+ 头上脚下都是绳索之类的东西，灯光一片明一片暗的。
+ 她们好像忘记了目的，不知来到了什么地方，只是一心一意地走路。
+ 又好像走了十万八千里，表哥站住了脚，让她们就在这边看，他要去工作了。
+ 她们站的这块地方，是有些熙攘的，人们都忙碌着，从她们的身前身后走过。
+ 好几次她们觉得挡了别人的路，忙着让开，不料却撞到另一人的身上。
+ 而明星样的人还是一个不见。
+ 她们惴惴的，心想是来错了，吴佩珍更是愧疚有加，不敢看王琦瑶的脸色。
+ 这时，灯光亮了，好像有十几个太阳相交地升起，光芒刺眼，她们这才看见面前是半间房间的摆设。
+ 那三面墙的房间看起来是布景，可里头的东西样样都是熟透的。
+ 床上的被子是七成新的，烟灰缸里留有半截烟头的，床头柜上的手绢是用过的，揉成了一团，就像是正过着日子，却被拆去了一堵墙，揪出来示众一般。
+ 看了心里有点欢喜，还有点起腻。
+ 因她们站得远，听不见那里在说什么，只见有一个穿睡袍的女人躺在床上，躺了几种姿势，一回是侧身，一回是仰天，还有一回只躺了半个身子，另半个身子垂到地上的。
+ 她的半透明的睡袍裹着身子，床已经皱了，也是有点起腻的。
+ 灯光暗了几次，又亮了几次。
+ 最后终于躺定了，再不动了，灯光再次暗下来。
+ 再一次亮起时，似与前几次都不同了。
+ 前几次的亮是那种敞亮，大放光明，无遮无挡的。
+ 这一次，却是一种专门的亮，那种夜半时分外面漆黑里面却光明的亮。
+ 那房间的景好像退远了一些，却更生动了一些，有点熟进心里去的意思。
+ 王琦瑶注意到那盏布景里的电灯，发出着真实的光芒，莲花状的灯罩，在三面墙上投下波纹的阴影。
+ 这就像是旧景重现，却想不起是何时何地的旧景。
+ 王琦瑶再把目光移到灯下的女人，她陡地明白这女人扮的是一个死去的人，不知是自杀还是他杀。
+ 奇怪的是，这情形并非阴森可怖，反而是起腻的熟。
+ 王琦瑶看不清这女人的长相，只看见她乱蓬蓬的一头鬈发，全堆在床脚头，因她是倒过来脚顶床头，头抵床脚地躺着，拖鞋是东一只，西一只。
+ 片厂里闹哄哄的，货码头似的，“开麦拉”“OK”的叫声此起彼伏，唯有那女人是个不动弹，千年万载不醒的样子。
+ 吴佩珍先有些不耐烦，又因为有点胆大，就拉王琦瑶去别处看。
+ 下一处地方是拍打耳光的，在一个也是三面墙的饭店，全是西装革履的，却冲进一个穷汉，进来就对那做东的打耳光。
+ 做派都有点滑稽的，耳光是打在自己手上，再贴到对方的脸上，却天衣无缝的样子。
+ 吴佩珍喜欢看这个，往复了多少遍都看不厌，直说有趣。
+ 王琦瑶却有些不耐烦，说还是方才那场景有看头，是个正经的片子，不像这，全是插科打诨，猴把戏一样的。
+ 两人又回到方才那棚里，不料人都散了，那床也挪开了，剩几个人在地上收拾东西。
+ 她们疑心走错了地方，要重新去找，却听表哥叫她们，原来，收拾东西的人里头就有表哥。
+ 他让她们等一会儿，再带她们去别处逛，今日有一个棚在做特技呢！
+ 她们只得站在一旁干等。
+ 有人问表哥她们是谁，表哥说了，又问她们在哪个学校读书，表哥说不上来，吴佩珍自己说了，那人就朝她们笑，一口白牙齿在暗中亮了一下。
+ 过后，表哥告诉她俩，这人是导演，在外国留过学的，还会编剧，今天拍的这戏，就是他自编自导的。
+ 说罢，就带上她们去看拍特技，又是烟又是火，还有鬼的。
+ 也都是底下的工人在折腾，留给演员去做的事，只一眨眼。
+ 吴佩珍又要表哥带她们去看明星，表哥却面露难色，说今天哪个棚都没拍明星的戏，说这明星的戏不是哪天都有的，也不是想排哪天就排哪天的，要随着明星的意思。
+ 吴佩珍便揭底似的说：你不是讲每天都可看见谁谁谁的？
+ 王琦瑶见表哥脸上下不来，就圆场道：下回再来吧，天也黑了，家里人要等了！
+ 表哥这就带了她们往外走，路上又遇见那导演一回，竟还记得她们，叫她们某某中学的女学生，很幽默的，两人都红了脸。
+ 回去的电车上，两人就有些懒得说话，听那电车的当当声。
+ 电车上有些空，下班的人都到了家，过夜生活的人又还没有出门。
+ 那片场的经验有些出人意料，说不上是扫兴还是尽兴，总之都是疲乏了。
+ 吴佩珍本来对片厂没有多少准备，她的向往是因王琦瑶而生的向往，她自然是希望片厂越精彩越好，可究竟是什么样的精彩，心中却是没数的，所以她是要看王琦瑶的态度再决定她的意见。
+ 片厂给王琦瑶的感想却有些复杂。
+ 它是不如她想象中的那样神奇，可正因为它的平常，便给她一个唾手可得的印象。
+ 唾手可得的是什么？
+ 她还不知道。
+ 原先的期待是有些落空，但那期待里的紧张却释然了。
+ 从片厂回来几天，她都没什么表示，这使吴佩珍沮丧，以为王琦瑶其实是不喜欢片厂这地方，去片厂全是她多此一举。
+ 有一日，她用作忏悔一样的口气对王琦瑶说，表哥又请她们去片厂玩，她拒绝了。
+ 王琦瑶却转过脸，说：你怎么能这样不懂道理，人家是一片诚心。
+ 吴佩珍瞪大了眼睛，不相信地看着她，王琦瑶被她看得不自在，就转回头说：我的意思是不该不给人家面子，这是你们家的亲戚呀！
+ 这一回，连吴佩珍都看出王琦瑶想去又不说的意思了，她非但不觉得她作假，还有一种怜爱心中生起，心想她看上去是大人，其实还是个孩子呀！
+ 这时候，吴佩珍对王琦瑶的心情又有点像母亲，包容一切的。
+ 从此，片厂就变成她们常去的地方。
+ 拍电影的窍门懂得了不少，知道那拍摄完全不是按着情节的顺序来的，而是一个镜头一个镜头分别拍了，最后才连成的。
+ 拍摄的现场又是要多破烂有多破烂，可是从开麦拉里摄取的画面总是整洁美妙。
+ 炙手可热的大明星她们也真见着了一二回，到了镜头面前，也是道具一般无所作为的。
+ 那电影的脚本则是随意地改变，一转眼死人变活人的。
+ 她们钻进电影的幕后，摸着了奥秘的机关，内心都有一些变化。
+ 片厂的经验确是不寻常的经验，它带有一些人生的含义。
+ 尤其在她们那个年龄，有些虚实不分，真伪不辨； 又尤其是在那样的时代，电影已成为我们生活的一个重要部分。
+ 7. 开麦拉
+ 王琦瑶知道了，拍电影最重要最关键的一瞬，是“开麦拉”的这一瞬，之前全是准备和铺垫。
+ 之后呢？
+ 则是永远的结束。
+ 她看出这一声“开麦拉”的不同寻常的意义，几乎是接近顶点的。
+ 那导演有时让她们看镜头，镜头总是美妙，将杂乱和邋遢都滤去了。
+ 还使暗淡生辉。
+ 镜头里的世界是另一个，经过修改和制作，还有精华的意思。
+ 那导演已成为熟人，她们见他不再脸红。
+ 有几回，表哥不在片厂，她们便直接找他。
+ 他自作主张的，喊她们一个叫“珍珍”，一个叫“瑶瑶”，好像她们成了他戏里的角色似的。
+ 他背地里和片厂的人说，珍珍是个丫头相，不过是荣国府贾母身边的粗使丫头，傻大姐那样的；瑶瑶是小姐样，却是员外家的小姐，祝英台之流的。
+ 他把吴佩珍当小孩子看，喜欢逗她，开些玩笑；对王琦瑶则说有机会要让她上一回镜头，因她的眉眼有些像阮玲玉，趁着人们对阮玲玉的怀念，说不定能捧出一颗明星。
+ 也是带点玩笑的意思，却含蓄得多。
+ 王琦瑶当然也不会认真，只是有点喜欢自己和阮玲玉的相像。
+ 可是有一日，导演竟真的打电话到家里，让她去试一试镜头。
+ 王琦瑶心怦怦跳着，手心有点发凉，她不知道这是不是个机会，她想，机会难道就是这般容易得的吗？
+ 她不相信，又不敢不信，心里有些挣扎。
+ 她本是想不告诉吴佩珍，一个人悄悄地去，再悄悄地回，就算没结果，也只她自己知道，好比没发生过的一样。
+ 可临到那一天，她还是告诉了吴佩珍，要她陪自己一起去，为了壮胆子。
+ 晚上她没睡好，眼睛下有一片青晕，下巴也尖了一些。
+ 吴佩珍自然是雀跃，浮想联翩，转眼间，已经在策划为王琦瑶开记者招待会了。
+ 王琦瑶听她聒噪，便又后悔告诉了她。
+ 这一天的课，两人都没上好，心不知飞到哪里去了。
+ 终于放学，两人便踅出校门，上了电车。
+ 这时间的电车，多是些家庭主妇般的女人，手里拎着布袋，身上的旗袍是有皱痕的，腿后的丝袜也没对准缝，偏了那么一点，头发或是蓬乱，或是理发店刚出来戴了一顶盔似的，脸上表情也是木着的，万事俱不关心的样子。
+ 电车在轨道里哐哐当当地走，也是漠然的表情。
+ 她们俩却是这漠然里的一个活跃，虽然也是不做声，却是有着几百年的大事在酝酿的。
+ 下午三点钟的马路，是有疲惫感的，心里都在准备着结束和换班了。
+ 太阳是在马路西面的楼房上，黄熟的颜色。
+ 她们俩倒好像是去开始这一天的，心里有着许多等待。
+ 导演先将她俩领进化妆室，让一个化妆师来给王琦瑶化妆。
+ 王琦瑶从镜子里看见自己的形象，觉得自己的脸是那么小，五官是那么简单，不会有奇迹发生的样子，不由颓丧起来。
+ 她由化妆师摆弄，听天由命的表情，有一段时间，她闭起眼睛不去看镜子。
+ 她感到十分的难堪，恨不得这一切早点结束；她还有些神经过敏，认为那化妆师也是恨不得早点结束，手的动作难免急躁和粗暴的。
+ 她睁开眼睛再看镜子，镜子里的自己是个尴尬的自己，眼睛鼻子都是不得已的样子。
+ 化妆室的光是充足的平均分配的光，没有抑扬顿挫，看上去都有些平铺直叙的。
+ 王琦瑶对自己没有信心了，反倒是豁出去地，睁大眼睛看那化妆师的手法，看着自己一点一点变得不是自己，成了个陌生人。
+ 这时，她倒平静下来，心情也松弛了，等那化妆师结束工作走开时，她甚至还生出几分幽默感同吴佩珍开玩笑。
+ 吴佩珍说她简直像是嫦娥下凡，她就说嫦娥也是月饼盒上的嫦娥，于是两人都笑。
+ 一笑，表情舒展了，脂粉的颜色里有了活气，便生动起来。
+ 再看那镜子里的美人，也不那么生分和隔膜了。
+ 不一会儿，导演就派人来招呼她去，吴佩珍自然尾随着。
+ 棚里灯架都支好了，那吴佩珍的表哥在一个高处朝着她笑，导演却变得很严肃，六亲不认似的，指定她坐在一个床上，是那种宁式眠床，有着高大的帐篷，架上雕着花，嵌着镜子，是乡下人的华丽。
+ 导演告诉她，她现在是一个旧式婚礼中的新娘，披着红盖头，然后有新郎官来揭盖头，一点一点露出了脸庞。
+ 导演规定她是娇羞的，妩媚的，有憧憬又有担忧的，一股脑儿交给她这些形容词，全要做在一张脸上。
+ 王琦瑶虽是点头，心却茫然，还恍恍的，不知从何着手。
+ 可此时她只是一个豁出去，反倒是很镇定，竟能注意到周围，听见有邻近棚里传出来的“开麦拉”的叫声。
+ 接着，一块红盖头蒙上来了，眼前陡地暗了。
+ 这时，王琦瑶的心才擂鼓似的跳起来。
+ 她领悟这一时刻的来临，心生畏惧，膝盖微微地打颤。
+ 灯光齐明，眼前的暗变成了溶溶的红色，虽是有光，却是不明就里的光。
+ 王琦瑶发热似的，寒颤沿了膝盖升上去，牙齿都磕碰起来。
+ 片厂里的神奇在光里聚集和等候着。
+ 有人走过来，整理她的衣服，又走开了，带来一阵风，红盖头动了一下，抚着她的脸，是这一下午的紧张里的一个温柔。
+ 她听见四周围一连串的“OK”声，是递进的节奏，有几分激越的，齐心奔向一个目标的，最终是一声“开麦拉”。
+ 王琦瑶的呼吸屏住了，透不过气来，她听见开麦拉走片的机械声，这声音盖住了一切，她完全忘记了她该做什么了。
+ 当一只手揭去红盖头的时候，她陡然一惊，往后缩了一下，导演便嚷了一声停。
+ 灯光暗下，红盖头罩上，再从头来起。
+ 再一遍来起就有些人事皆非了。
+ 很多情景远去了，不复再现，本来也是幻觉一样的东西。
+ 王琦瑶清醒过来，寒颤止住了，心跳恢复正常。
+ 红盖头里的暗适应了，能辨出活动的人影。
+ 灯光亮起，是例行公事的，一连串“OK”也是例行公事，那一声“开麦拉”虽是例行公事，也是权威性的，有一点不变的震撼。
+ 她开始依着导演的交代在脸上做准备，却不知该如何娇羞，如何妩媚，如何有憧憬又有担忧。
+ 喜怒哀乐本来也没个符号，连个照搬都没地方去搬的。
+ 红盖头揭起时，她脸上只是木着，连她天生就有的那妩媚也木住了。
+ 导演在镜头里已经觉察到自己的失误，王琦瑶的美不是那种文艺性的美，她的美是有些家常的，是在客堂间里供自己人欣赏的，是过日子的情调。
+ 她不是兴风作浪的美，是拘泥不开的美。
+ 她的美里缺少点诗意，却是忠诚老实的。
+ 她的美不是戏剧性的，而是生活化，是走在马路上有人注目，照相馆橱窗里的美。
+ 从开麦拉里看起来，便过于平淡了。
+ 导演不觉失望，他的失望还有一点为王琦瑶的意思，他想，她的美是要被埋没了。
+ 后来，为了补偿，他请一个摄影的朋友，为王琦瑶拍了一些生活照，这些生活照果真情形大异，其中一张还用在了《上海生活》的封二，以“沪上淑媛”为题名。
+ 试镜头的经历就这样结束了，这是片厂里的小事一桩。
+ 王琦瑶从此不再去片厂了，她是想把这事淡忘，最好是没发生过。
+ 可是罩着红盖头，灯光齐明的情景却长在了心里，眼一闭就会出现的。
+ 那情景有一种莫测的悸动，是王琦瑶平静生活中的一个戏剧性的片刻。
+ 这一片刻的转瞬即逝，在王琦瑶心里留下一笔感伤的色彩。
+ 有时放学走在回家的路上，会有一点不期然的东西唤起去试镜头的那个下午的记忆。
+ 王琦瑶这年是十六岁，这事情使她有了沧桑感，她觉得自己已经不止十六岁这个岁数了。
+ 她还有点躲避吴佩珍，像有什么底细被她窥伺了去似的。
+ 放学吴佩珍约她去哪里，十有九次她找理由拒绝。
+ 吴佩珍有几次上她家找她玩，她也让娘姨说不在家推了。
+ 吴佩珍感觉到王琦瑶的回避，不由黯然神伤。
+ 但她却并不丧失信心，她觉得无论过多少日子，王琦瑶终究会回到她的身边。
+ 她的友情化成虔诚的等待，她甚至没有去交新的女朋友，因不愿让别人侵占王琦瑶的位置。
+ 她还隐约体会到王琦瑶回避的原委，似乎是与那次失败的试镜头有关，她也不再去片厂了，甚至与表哥断了来往。
+ 这次试镜头变成她们两人的伤心事，都怀有一些失败感的。
+ 后来，她们逐渐变得连话也不大讲了，碰面都有些尴尬地匆匆避开。
+ 当她们坐在课堂的两头，虽不对视，可彼此都感觉到对方的存在，有一种类似同情的气氛在她们之间滋生出来。
+ 去片厂的事情是以一声“开麦拉”告终的，这有一种电影里称作“定格”的效果，是一去不返，也是记忆永存。
+ 如今，课余的生活又回复到老样子，而老样子里面又是有一点新的被剥夺，心都是有点受伤的，伤在哪里，且不明白的。
+ 本来见风就是雨的女子学校，对这回王琦瑶试镜头的事，竟无一点声气，瞒得紧紧的。
+ 两人虽然没互相叮嘱，却不约而同地缄口不提。
+ 其实在一般女学生看来，能为导演看上去试一回，已是足够的光荣，成功则是奢望中的奢望。
+ 这也是王琦瑶她们原先的想法，可一旦走到了那一步，情形便不是旧时旧地，人也不是旧人，是付出过代价的，有些损失的。
+ 若非吴佩珍这样将心比心的旁观者，是体尝不到这番心境的。
+
+ Wang Miao drove along Jingmi Road until he was in Miyun County.
+ From there he headed to Heilongtan, climbed up the mountain along a winding road, and arrived at the radio astronomy observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Center.
+ He saw a line of twenty-eight parabolic antenna dishes, each with a diameter of nine meters, like a row of spectacular steel plants.
+ At the end were two tall radio telescopes with dishes fifty meters in diameter, built in 2006.
+ As he drove closer, Wang could not help but think of the background in the picture of Ye and her daughter.
+ But the work of Sha Ruishan, Ye's student, had nothing to do with these radio telescopes.
+ Dr. Sha's lab was mainly responsible for receiving the data transmitted from three satellites: the Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, launched in November of 1989 and about to be retired; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, WMAP, launched in 2003; and Planck, the space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.
+ Cosmic microwave background radiation very precisely matched the thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.7255 K and was highly isotropic—meaning nearly uniform in every direction—with only tiny temperature fluctuations at the parts per million range.
+ Sha Ruishan's job was to create a more detailed map of the cosmic microwave background using observational data.
+ The lab wasn't very big.
+ Equipment for receiving satellite data was squeezed into the main computer room, and three terminals displayed the information sent by the three satellites.
+ Sha was excited to see Wang.
+ Clearly bored with his long isolation and happy to have a visitor, he asked Wang what kind of data he wanted to see.
+ "I want to see the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background."
+ "Can you ... be more specific?"
+ "What I mean is ...
+ I want to see the isotropic fluctuation in the overall cosmic microwave background, between one and five percent," he said, quoting from Shen's email.
+ Sha grinned.
+ Starting at the turn of the century, the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory had opened itself to visitors.
+ In order to earn some extra income, Sha often played the role of tour guide or gave lectures.
+ This was the grin he reserved for tourists, as he had grown used to their astounding scientific illiteracy.
+ "Mr. Wang, I take it you're not a specialist in the field?"
+ "I work in nanotech."
+ "Ah, makes sense.
+ But you must have some basic understanding of the cosmic microwave background?"
+ "I don't know much.
+ I know that as the universe cooled after the big bang, the leftover 'embers' became the cosmic microwave background.
+ The radiation fills the entire universe and can be observed in the centimeter wavelength range.
+ I think it was back in the sixties when two Americans accidentally discovered the radiation when they were testing a supersensitive satellite reception antenna—"
+ "That's more than enough," Sha interrupted, waving his hands.
+ "Then you must know that unlike the local variations we observe in different parts of the universe, the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background is correlated with the expansion of the universe.
+ It's a very slow change measured at the scale of the age of the universe.
+ Even with the sensitivity of the Planck satellite, continuous observation for a million years might not detect any such shift.
+ But you want to see a five percent fluctuation tonight?
+ Do you realize what that would mean?
+ The universe would flicker like a fluorescent tube that's about to burn out!"
+ And it will be flickering for me, Wang thought.
+ "This must be some joke from Professor Ye," Sha said.
+ "Nothing would please me more than to discover that it was a joke," Wang said.
+ He was about to tell Sha that Ye didn't know the details of his request, but he was afraid that Sha would then refuse to help him.
+ "Well, since Professor Ye asked me to help you, let's do the observation.
+ It's not a big deal.
+ If you just need one percent precision, data from the antique COBE is sufficient."
+ As he spoke, Sha typed quickly at the terminal.
+ Soon a flat green line appeared on the screen.
+ "This curve is the real-time measurement of the overall cosmic microwave background—oh, calling it a straight line would be more accurate.
+ The temperature is 2.725±0.002K.
+ The error range is due to the Doppler effect from the motion of the Milky Way, which has already been filtered out.
+ If the kind of fluctuation you anticipate—in excess of one percent—occurs, this line would turn red and become a waveform.
+ I would bet that it's going to stay a flat green line until the end of the world, though.
+ If you want to see it show the kind of fluctuation observable by the naked eye, you might have to wait until long after the death of the sun."
+ "I'm not interfering in your work, am I?"
+ "No.
+ Since you need such low precision, we can just use some basic data from COBE.
+ Okay, it's all set.
+ From now on, if such great fluctuations occur, the data will be automatically saved to disk."
+ "I think it might happen around one o'clock A.M."
+ "Wow, so precise!
+ No problem, since I'm working the night shift, anyway.
+ Have you had dinner yet?
+ Good, then I'll take you on a tour."
+ The night was moonless.
+ They walked along the row of antenna dishes, and Sha pointed to them.
+ "Breathtaking, aren't they?
+ It's too bad that they are all like the ears of a deaf man."
+ "Why?"
+ "Ever since construction was completed, interference has been unceasing in the observational bands.
+ First, there were the paging stations during the eighties.
+ Now, it's the scramble to develop mobile communications networks and cell towers.
+ These telescopes are capable of many scientific tasks—surveying the sky, detecting variable radio sources, observing the remains of supernovae—but we can't perform most of them.
+ We've complained to the State Regulatory Radio Commission many times, never with any results.
+ How can we get more attention than China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom?
+ Without money, the secrets of the universe are worth shit.
+ At least my project only depends on satellite data and has nothing to do with these 'tourist attractions.'"
+ "In recent years, commercial operation of basic research has been fairly successful, like in high-energy physics.
+ Maybe it would be better if the observatories were built in places farther away from cities?"
+ "It all comes down to money.
+ Right now, our only choice is to find technical means to shield against interference.
+ Well, it would be much better if Professor Ye were here.
+ She accomplished a lot in this field."
+ So the topic of conversation turned to Ye Wenjie.
+ And from her student, Wang finally learned about her life.
+ He listened as Sha told of how she witnessed the death of her father during the Cultural Revolution, how she was falsely accused at the Production and Construction Corps, how she then seemed to disappear until her return to Beijing at the beginning of the nineties, when she began teaching astrophysics at Tsinghua, where her father had also taught, until her retirement.
+ "It was only recently revealed that she had spent more than twenty years at Red Coast Base."
+ Wang was stunned.
+ "You mean, those rumors—"
+ "Most turned out to be true.
+ One of the researchers who developed the deciphering system for the Red Coast Project emigrated to Europe and wrote a book last year.
+ Most of the rumors you hear came out of that book.
+ Many who participated in Red Coast are still alive."
+ "That is ... a fantastical legend."
+ "Especially for it to happen during those years—absolutely incredible."
+ They continued to speak for a while.
+ Sha asked the purpose behind Wang's strange request.
+ Wang avoided giving a straight answer, and Sha didn't press.
+ The dignity of a specialist did not allow Sha to express too much interest in a request that clearly went against his professional knowledge.
+ Then they went to an all-night bar for tourists and sat for two hours.
+ As Sha finished one beer after another, his tongue loosened even more.
+ But Wang became anxious, and his mind kept returning to that green line on the terminal in Sha's office.
+ It was only at ten to one in the morning that Sha finally gave in to Wang's repeated pleas to go back to the lab.
+ The spotlights that had lit up the row of radio antennas had been turned off, and the antennas now formed a simple two-dimensional picture against the night sky like a series of abstract symbols.
+ All of them gazed up at the sky at the same angle, as though waiting expectantly for something.
+ The scene made Wang shudder despite the warmth of the spring evening.
+ He was reminded of the giant pendulums in Three Body.
+ They arrived back at the lab at one.
+ As they looked at the terminal, the fluctuation was just getting started.
+ The flat line turned into a wave, the distance between one peak and the next inconstant.
+ The line's color became red, like a snake awakening after hibernation, wriggling as its skin refilled with blood.
+ "It must be a malfunction in COBE!"
+ Sha stared at the waveform, terrified.
+ "It's not a malfunction."
+ Wang's tone was exceedingly calm.
+ He had learned to control himself when faced with such sights.
+ "We'll know soon enough," Sha said.
+ He went to the other two terminals and typed rapidly to bring up the data gathered by the other two satellites, WMAP and Planck.
+ Now three waveforms moved in sync across the three terminals, exactly alike.
+ Sha took out a notebook computer and rushed to turn it on.
+ He plugged in a network cable and picked up the phone.
+ Wang could tell from the one-sided conversation that he was trying to get in touch with the Ürümqi radio astronomy observatory.
+ He didn't explain to Wang what he was doing, his eyes locked onto the browser window on the notebook.
+ Wang could hear his rapid breathing.
+ A few minutes later, a red waveform appeared in the browser window, moving in step with the other three.
+ The three satellites and the ground-based observatory confirmed one fact: The universe was flickering.
+ "Can you print out the waveform?" Wang asked.
+ Sha wiped away the cold sweat on his forehead and nodded.
+ He moved his mouse and clicked "Print."
+ Wang grabbed the first page as soon as it came out of the laser printer, and, with a pencil, began to match the distance between the peaks with the Morse code chart he took out of his pocket.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-long-short-short-short.
+ That's 1108:21:37, Wang thought.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-short-short-short-short—that's 1108:21:36.
+ The countdown continued at the scale of the universe.
+ Ninety-two hours had already elapsed, and only 1,108 hours remained.
+ Sha paced back and forth anxiously, pausing from time to time to look at the sequence of numbers Wang was writing down.
+ "Can't you tell me what's going on?" he shouted.
+ "I can't possibly explain this to you, Dr. Sha.
+ Trust me."
+ Wang pushed away the pile of papers filled with waveforms.
+ As he stared at the sequence of numbers, he said, "Maybe the three satellites and the observatory are all malfunctioning."
+ "You know that's impossible!"
+ "What if it's sabotage?"
+ "Also impossible!
+ To simultaneously alter the data from three satellites and an observatory on Earth?
+ You're talking about a supernatural saboteur."
+ Wang nodded.
+ Compared to the idea of the universe flickering, he would prefer a supernatural saboteur.
+ But Sha then deprived him of this last glimmer of hope.
+ "It's easy to confirm this.
+ If the cosmic microwave background is fluctuating this much, we should be able to see it with our own eyes."
+ "What are you talking about?
+ The wavelength of the cosmic microwave background is seven centimeters.
+ That's five orders of magnitude longer than the wavelength of visible light.
+ How can we possibly see it?"
+ "Using 3K glasses."
+ "Three-K glasses?"
+ "It's a sort of science toy we made for the Capital Planetarium.
+ With our current level of technology, we could take the six-meter horn antenna used by Penzias and Wilson almost half a century ago to discover the cosmic microwave background and miniaturize it to the size of a pair of glasses.
+ Then we added a converter in the glasses to compress the detected radiation by five orders of magnitude so that seven-centimeter waves are turned into visible red light.
+ This way, visitors can put on the glasses at night and observe the cosmic microwave background on their own.
+ And now, we can use it to see the universe flicker."
+ "Where can I find these glasses?"
+ "At the Capital Planetarium.
+ We made more than twenty pairs."
+ "I must get my hands on a pair before five."
+ Sha picked up the phone.
+ The other side picked up only after a long while.
+ Sha had to expend a lot of energy to convince the person awakened in the middle of the night to go to the planetarium and wait for Wang's arrival in an hour.
+ As Wang left, Sha said, "I won't go with you.
+ What I've seen is enough, and I don't need any more confirmation.
+ But I hope that you will explain the truth to me when you feel the time is right.
+ If this phenomenon should lead to some research result, I won't forget you."
+ Wang opened the car door and said, "The flickering will stop at five in the morning.
+ I'd suggest you not pursue it after this.
+ Believe me, you won't get anywhere."
+ Sha stared at Wang for a long time and then nodded.
+ "I understand.
+ Strange things have been happening to scientists lately...."
+ "Yes."
+ Wang ducked into the car.
+ He didn't want to discuss the subject any further.
+ "Is it our turn?"
+ "It's my turn, at least."
+ Wang started the engine.
+ An hour later, Wang arrived at the new planetarium and got out of the car.
+ The bright lights of the city penetrated the translucent walls of the immense glass building and dimly revealed its internal structure.
+ Wang thought that if the architect had intended to express a feeling about the universe, the design was a success:
+ The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed.
+ The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked.
+ But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.
+ The sleepy-eyed planetarium staffer was waiting by the door for Wang.
+ He handed him a small suitcase and said, "There are five pairs of 3K glasses in here, all fully charged.
+ The left button switches it on.
+ The right dial is for adjusting brightness.
+ I have a dozen more pairs upstairs.
+ You can look as much as you like, but I'm going to take a nap now in the room over there.
+ This Dr. Sha must be mental."
+ He went into the dim interior of the planetarium.
+ Wang opened the suitcase on the backseat of his car and took out a pair of 3K glasses.
+ It resembled the display inside the panoramic viewing helmet of the V-suit.
+ He put the glasses on and looked around.
+ The city looked the same as before, only dimmer.
+ Then he remembered that he had to switch them on.
+ The city turned into many hazy glowing halos.
+ Most were fixed, but a few flickered or moved.
+ He realized that these were sources of radiation in the centimeter range, all now converted to visible light.
+ At the heart of each halo was a radiation source.
+ Because the original wavelengths were so long, it was impossible to see their shapes clearly.
+ He lifted his head and saw a sky glowing with a faint red light.
+ Just like that, he was seeing the cosmic microwave background.
+ The red light had come from more than ten billion years ago.
+ It was the remnants of the big bang, the still-warm embers of Creation.
+ He could not see any stars.
+ Normally, since visible light would be compressed to invisible by the glasses, each star should appear as a black dot.
+ But the diffraction of centimeter-wave radiation overwhelmed all other shapes and details.
+ Once his eyes had grown used to the sight, Wang could see that the faint red background was indeed pulsing.
+ The entire sky flickered, as if the universe was but a quivering lamp in the wind.
+ Standing under the flashing dome of the night sky, Wang suddenly felt the universe shrink until it was so small that only he was imprisoned in it.
+ The universe was a cramped heart, and the red light that suffused everything was the translucent blood that filled the organ.
+ Suspended in the blood, he saw that the flickering of the red light was not periodic—the pulsing was irregular.
+ He felt a strange, perverse, immense presence that could never be understood by human intellect.
+ Wang took off the 3K glasses and sat down weakly on the ground, leaning against the wheel of his car.
+ The city at night gradually recovered the reality of visible light.
+ But his eyes roamed, trying to capture other sights.
+ By the entrance of the zoo across the street, there was a row of neon lights.
+ One of the lights was about to burn out and flickered irregularly.
+ Nearby, a small tree's leaves trembled in the night breeze, twinkling without pattern as they reflected streetlight.
+ In the distance, the red star atop the Beijing Exhibition Center's Russian-style spire reflected the light from the cars passing below, also twinkling randomly....
+ Wang tried to interpret the flickers as Morse code.
+ He even felt that the wrinkles in the flags flapping next to him and the ripples in the puddle on the side of the road might be sending him messages.
+ He struggled to understand all the messages, and felt the passing of the countdown, second by second.
+ He didn't know how long he stayed there.
+ The planetarium staffer finally emerged and asked him whether he was done.
+ But when he saw Wang's face, sleep disappeared from the staffer's eyes and was replaced by fear.
+ He packed up the 3K glasses, stared at Wang for a few seconds, and quickly left with the suitcase.
+ Wang took out his mobile and dialed Shen Yufei's number.
+ She picked up right away.
+ Perhaps she was also suffering from insomnia.
+ "What happens at the end of the countdown?" Wang asked.
+ "I don't know."
+ She hung up.
+ What can it be?
+ Maybe my own death, like Yang Dong's.
+ Or maybe it will be a disaster like the great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean more than a decade ago.
+ No one will connect it to my nanotech research.
+ Could it be that every previous great disaster, including the two World Wars, was also the result of reaching the end of ghostly countdowns?
+ Could it be that every time there was someone like me, who no one thought of, who bore the ultimate responsibility?
+ Or maybe it signals the end of the whole world.
+ In this perverse world, that would be a relief.
+ One thing was certain.
+ No matter what was at the end of the countdown, in the remaining one thousand or so hours, the possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons, until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.
+ Wang ducked back into the car and left the planetarium.
+ Just before dawn, the roads were relatively empty.
+ But he didn't dare to drive too fast, feeling that the faster the car moved, the faster the countdown would go.
+ When a glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky, he parked and walked around aimlessly.
+ His mind was empty of thoughts: Only the countdown pulsed against the dim red background of cosmic radiation.
+ He seemed to have turned into nothing but a simple timer, a bell that tolled for he knew not whom.
+ The sky brightened.
+ He was tired, so he sat down on a bench.
+ When he lifted his head to see where his subconscious had brought him, he shivered.
+ He sat in front of St. Joseph's Church at Wangfujing.
+ In the pale white light of dawn, the church's Romanesque vaults appeared as three giant fingers pointing out something in space for him.
+ As Wang got up to leave, he was held back by a snippet of hymnal music.
+ It wasn't Sunday, so it was likely a choir rehearsal.
+ The song was "Come, Gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove."
+ As he listened to the solemn, sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe had shrunk until it was the size of an empty church.
+ The domed ceiling was hidden by the flashing red light of the background radiation, and he was an ant crawling through the cracks in the floor.
+ He felt a giant, invisible hand caressing his trembling heart, and he was once again a helpless babe.
+ Something deep in his mind that had once held him up softened like wax and collapsed.
+ He covered his eyes and began to cry.
+ Wang's cries were interrupted by laughter.
+ "Hahaha, another one bites the dust!"
+ He turned around.
+ Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.
+
+ 汪淼驱车沿京密路到密云县，再转至黑龙潭，又走了一段盘山路，便到达中科院国家天文观测中心的射电天文观测基地。
+ 他看到二十八面直径为九米的抛物面天线在暮色中一字排开，像一排壮观的钢铁植物，2006年建成的两台高大的五十米口径射电望远镜天线矗立在这排九米天线的尽头，车驶近后，它们令汪淼不由想起了那张杨冬母女合影的背景。
+ 但叶文洁的学生从事的项目与这些射电望远镜没有什么关系，沙瑞山博士的实验室主要接收三颗卫星的观测数据：1989年11月升空、即将淘汰的微波背景探测卫星COBE，2003年发射的威尔金森微波各向异性探测卫星WMAP和2009年欧洲航天局发射的普朗克高精度宇宙微波背景探测卫星Planek。
+ 宇宙整体的微波背景辐射频谱非常精确地符合温度为2.726K的黑体辐射谱，具有高度各向同性，但在不同局部也存在大约百万分之五涨落的幅度。
+ 沙瑞山的工作就是根据卫星观测数据，重新绘制一幅更精确的全宇宙微波辐射背景图。
+ 这个实验室不大，主机房中挤满了卫星数据接收设备，有三台终端分别显示来自三颗卫星的数据。
+ 沙瑞山见到汪淼，立刻表现出了那种长期在寂寞之地工作的人见到来客的热情，问他想了解哪方面的观测数据。
+ “我想观测宇宙背景辐射的整体波动。”
+ “您能…… 说具体些吗？”
+ 沙瑞山看汪淼的眼神变得奇怪起来。
+ “就是，宇宙3K微波背景辐射整体上的各向同性的波动，振幅在百分之一至百分之五之间。”
+ 沙瑞山笑笑，早在本世纪初，密云射电天文基地就对游客开放参观，为挣些外快，沙瑞山时常做些导游或讲座的事，这种笑容就是他回答游客（他已适应了他们那骇人的科盲）问题时常常露出的。
+ “汪先生，您…… 不是搞这个专业的吧？”
+ “我搞纳米材料。”
+ “哦，那就对了。
+ 不过，对于宇宙3K背景辐射，您大概有个了解吧？”
+ “知道的不多。
+ 目前的宇宙起源理论认为，宇宙诞生于距今约一百四十亿年前的一次大爆炸。
+ 在诞生早期，宇宙温度极高，随后开始冷却，形成被称为微波背景辐射的‘余烬’。
+ 这种弥漫全宇宙的残留背景辐射，在厘米波段上是可以观测到的。
+ 好像是在一九六几年吧，两个美国人在调试一个高精度卫星接收天线时意外地发现了宇宙背景辐射……”
+ “足够了，”沙瑞山挥手打断了汪淼的话，“那你就应该知道，与我们观测的不同部分的微小不均匀不同，宇宙整体辐射背景波动是随着宇宙的膨胀，在宇宙时间尺度上缓慢变化的，以Planck卫星的精度，直到一百万年后都未必能测出这种变化，你却想在今天晚上发现它百分之五的波动？！
+ 知道这意味着什么吗？
+ 这意味着整个宇宙像一个坏了的日光灯管那样闪烁！”
+ 而且是为我闪烁，汪淼心里说。
+ “叶老师这是在开什么玩笑。”
+ 沙瑞山摇摇头说。
+ “但愿真是个玩笑。”
+ 汪淼说，本想告诉他，叶文洁并不知道详情，但又怕因此招致他的拒绝，不过这倒是他的心里话。
+ “既然是叶老师交待的，就观测吧，反正也不费劲，百分之一的精度。
+ 用老古董COBE就行了。”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在终端上忙活起来，很快屏幕上出现一条平直的绿线，“你看，这就是当前宇宙整体背景辐射的实时数值曲线，哦，应该叫直线才对，数值是2.726±0.010K，那个误差是银河系运动产生的多普勒效应，已经滤掉了。
+ 如果发生你所说的超过百分之一振幅的波动，这条线就会变红并将波动显示出来。
+ 我敢打赌直到世界末日它也是条绿直线，要看到它显现肉眼看得到的变化，可能比看太阳毁灭还要等更长的时间。”
+ “这不会影响您的正常工作吧？”
+ “当然不会，那么粗的精度，用COBE观察数据的边角料就足够了。
+ 好了，从现在开始，如果那伟大的波动出现，数值会自动存盘。”
+ “可能要等到凌晨一点。”
+ “哇，这么精确？
+ 没关系，反正我本来就是值夜班。
+ 您吃饭了吗？
+ 那好，我带您去参观一下吧。”
+ 这一夜没有月亮，他们沿着长长的天线阵列漫步。
+ 沙瑞山指着天线说：“壮观吧？
+ 可惜都是聋子的耳朵。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “自它们建成以来，在观测频段上就干扰不断，先是上世纪八十年代末的寻呼台，到现在是疯狂发展的移动通信。
+ 这些米波综合孔径射电望远镜能做的那些项目，像米波巡天、射电变源、超新星遗迹研究等等，大部分都不能正常开展。
+ 多次找过无委会（国家无线电管理委员会），没有用，我们能玩得过中国移动、联通、网通？
+ 没有钱，宇宙奥秘算个球！
+ 好在我的项目靠卫星数据，与这些‘旅游景观’无关了。”
+ “近年来很多基础研究的商业运行还是很成功的，比如高能物理。
+ 把观测基地建到离城市远些的地方应该好些吧？”
+ “那还是钱的问题。
+ 就目前而言，只能是在技术上屏蔽干扰。
+ 唉，叶老师要在就好了，她在这方面造诣很深。”
+ 于是话题转到叶文洁身上。
+ 从她的学生那里，汪淼得知了她那历经风霜的一生：
+ 他听沙瑞山讲她如何目睹父亲在“文革”中的惨死，讲她后来在建设兵团被诬陷，后来杳无音讯； 九十年代初才又回到了这座城市，在父亲曾工作过的大学中讲授天体物理学直到退休。
+ “最近才知道，她那二十多年，是在红岸基地度过的。”
+ “红岸？！”
+ 汪淼吃惊地停住了脚步，“难道那些传说……”
+ “大部分是真的。
+ 红岸自译解系统的一名研制者移民到欧洲，去年写了一本书，你所说的传说大多来自于那本书，据我了解是真的。
+ 红岸工程的参与者大都还健在。”
+ “这可真是…… 传奇啊！”
+ “尤其是发生在那个年代，更是传奇中的传奇。” ……
+ 他们又谈了一会儿，沙瑞山问起进行这次奇怪观测的目的，汪淼避而不答，他也就没有再问。
+ 显然，一个专家的尊严，不允许他对这种违反专业常识的观测表现出过多的兴趣。
+ 然后他们到一间为游客开的通宵酒吧中去坐了两个多小时，沙瑞山一杯接着一杯地灌啤酒，变得更加健谈，而汪淼却早已心神不定，脑子里不断地浮现出那条绿色直线。
+ 直到差十分钟凌晨一点时，沙瑞山才接受了汪淼的多次提议，起身返回实验室。
+ 这时，照向射电天线阵列的聚光灯已经熄灭，天线在夜空下变成了简明的黑色二维图案，仿佛是一排抽象的符号，以同一个仰角齐齐地仰望着宇宙，似乎在等待着什么。
+ 这景象令汪淼不寒而栗，他想起了《三体》中的那些巨摆。
+ 回到实验室时正好是凌晨一点，当他们将目光投向终端屏幕时，波动刚刚出现，直线变成了曲线，出现了间隔不一的尖尖的波峰，颜色也变红了，如同一条冬眠后的蛇开始充血蠕动了。
+ “肯定是COBE卫星的故障！”
+ 沙瑞山惊恐地盯着曲线讲。
+ “不是故障。”
+ 汪淼平静地说，在这样的事情面前，他已经初步学会了控制自己。
+ “我们马上就能知道！”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在另外两台终端上快速操作起来。
+ 很快，他调出了另外两颗卫星WMAP和Planck的宇宙背景辐射实时数据，并将其变化显示为曲线——
+ 三条曲线在同步波动，一模一样。
+ 沙瑞山又搬出一台笔记本电脑，手忙脚乱地启动系统，插上宽带网线，然后打电话—— 汪淼听出他在联系乌鲁木齐射电观测基地——然后等待着。
+ 他没有对汪淼解释什么，两眼死盯着屏幕上的浏览器，汪淼能听到他急促的呼吸声：
+ 几分钟后，浏览器上出现了一个坐标窗口，一条红色曲线在窗口上出现，与另外三条进行着精确同步的波动。
+ 这样，三颗卫星和一套地面观测设备同时证实了一件事：宇宙在闪烁！
+ “能将前面的曲线打印出来吗？” 汪淼问。
+ 沙瑞山抹了一把头上的冷汗，点点头，移动鼠标启动了打印程序。
+ 汪淼迫不及待地抓过激光打印机吐出的第一张纸，用一枝铅笔划过曲线，将波峰问的距离与他刚拿出来的那张莫尔斯电码表对照起来。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长长短短短，这是1108：21：37。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长短短短短，这是1108：21：36。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、短短短短短，这是1108：21：35。 ……
+ 倒计时在宇宙尺度上继续，已经过去了92小时，还剩1108小时？
+ 沙瑞山焦躁地来回踱步，不时在汪淼身后停下来看看他正在写出的那一串数字。
+ “你真的不能把实情告诉我吗？！”
+ 他耐不住大声问。
+ “沙博士，相信我，一时说不清的。”
+ 汪淼推开那一堆印着波动曲线的纸，盯着那行倒计时数字，“也许，三颗卫星和一个地面观测点都出现了故障。”
+ “你知道这不可能！”
+ “如果有人故意破坏呢？”
+ “也不可能！
+ 同时改变三颗卫星和一个地面观测站的数据？
+ 那这破坏也有些超自然了。”
+ 汪淼点点头，比起宇宙闪烁来，他宁愿接受这个超自然。
+ 但沙瑞山立刻抽走了他怀中这唯一的一根救命稻草。
+ “要想最终证实这一切，其实很简单。
+ 宇宙背景辐射这样幅度的波动，已经大到我们能用肉眼觉察的程度。”
+ “你胡说什么？
+ 现在是你在违反常识了：背景辐射的波长是7cm，比可见光大了七八个数量级，怎么能看到？”
+ “用3K眼镜。”
+ “3K眼镜？”
+ “是我们为首都天文馆做的一个科普小玩意儿。
+ 现在的技术，已经能将彭齐阿斯和威尔逊在四十多年前用于发现3K背景辐射的二十英尺的喇叭形天线做成眼镜大小，并且在这个眼镜中设置一个转换系统，将接收到的背景辐射的波长压缩七个数量级，将7cm波转换成红光。
+ 这样，观众在夜里戴上这种眼镜，就能亲眼看到宇宙的3K背景辐射，现在，也能看到宇宙闪烁。”
+ “这东西现在在哪儿？”
+ “在天文馆，有二十副呢。”
+ “我必须在五点以前拿到它。”
+ 沙瑞山拿起电话拨了个号码，对方很长时间才接起电话，沙瑞山费尽口舌才说服那个被半夜叫醒的人一小时后在天文馆等汪淼。
+ 临别时沙瑞山说：“我就不同您去了，刚才看到的已经足够，我不需要这样的证明。
+ 我还是希望您能在适当的时候把实情告诉我，如果这种现象引出什么研究成果的话，我不会忘记您的。”
+ “闪烁在凌晨五点就会停止，以后别去深究它吧，相信我，不会有什么成果的。”
+ 汪淼扶着车门说。
+ 沙瑞山对着汪淼注视良久，点点头：“明白了，现在科学界出了一些事……”
+ “是的。”
+ 汪淼说着，钻进车里，他不想把这个话题继续下去了。
+ “轮到我们了吗？”
+ “至少轮到我了。”
+ 汪淼说着发动了车子。
+ 汪淼一小时后到达市内，他在新天文馆前下了车。
+ 城市午夜的灯光透过这栋巨大玻璃建筑的透明幕墙，将内部的结构隐隐约约显现出来。
+ 汪淼现在体会到，如果新天文馆的建筑师想表达对宇宙的感觉，那他成功了——
+ 越透明的东西越神秘，宇宙本身就是透明的，只要目力能及，你想看多远就看多远，但越看越神秘。
+ 那名睡眼惺忪的天文馆工作人员已经在门口等汪淼了，他把一个手提箱递给汪淼，“这里面有五副3K眼镜，都是充好电的，左边的按钮是开关，右边是光度调节。
+ 上面还有十几副，你想怎么看就怎么看吧，我先去睡会儿，就在靠门口那个房间。
+ 这个沙博士，真是个神经病。”
+ 说完转身走进昏暗的馆内。
+ 汪淼将箱子放到车座上打开，拿出一副3K眼镜，这东西很像他刚用过的V装具中的头盔显示器。
+ 他拿起一副走到车外戴上，透过镜片看到的城市夜景没有变化，只是暗了些，这时他才想起要将开关打开，立刻，城市化作一团团朦胧的光晕，大部分亮度固定，还有一些闪烁或移动着。
+ 他知道，这都是被转化为可见光的厘米微波，每团光晕的中心就是一个发射源，由于波长的原因，不可能看清形状。
+ 他抬起头，看到了一个发着暗红色微光的天空，就这样，他看到了宇宙背景辐射，这红光来自于一百多亿年前，是大爆炸的延续，是创世纪的余温。
+ 看不到星星，本来，由于可见光波段已被推至不可见，星星应该是一个个黑点，但厘米波的衍射淹没了一切形状和细节。
+ 当汪淼的眼睛适应了这一切后，他看到了天空的红光背景在微微闪动，整个太空成一个整体在同步闪烁，仿佛整个宇宙只是一盏风中的孤灯。
+ 站在这闪烁的苍穹下，汗淼突然感到宇宙是这么小，小得仅将他一人禁锢于其中。
+ 宇宙是一个狭小的心脏或子宫，这弥漫的红光是充满于其中的半透明的血夜，他悬浮于血液中，红光的闪烁周期是不规则的，像是这心脏或子宫不规则地脉动，他从中感受到了一个以人类的智慧永远无法理解的怪异、变态的巨大存在。
+ 汪淼摘下3K眼镜，虚弱地靠着车轮坐在地上。
+ 在他的眼中，午夜的城市重新恢复了可见光波段所描绘的现实图景，但他的目光游移，在捕捉另外一些东西：
+ 对面动物园大门旁的一排霓虹灯中有一根灯管坏了，不规则地闪烁着；近处的一棵小树上的树叶在夜风中摇动，反射着街灯的光，不规则地闪烁着；远处北京展览馆俄式尖顶上的五角星也在反射着下面不同街道上车灯的光，不规则地闪烁着……
+ 汪淼按莫尔斯电码努力破译着这些闪烁。
+ 他甚至觉得，旁边几幅彩旗在微风中飘出的皱褶、路旁一洼积水表面的涟漪，都向他传递着莫尔斯电码……
+ 他努力地破译着，感受着幽灵倒计时的流逝。
+ 不知过了多久，那个天文馆的工作人员出来了，问汪淼看完了没有。
+ 当看到他时，他的样子使那人双眼中的睡意一下子消失了。
+ 收拾好了3K眼镜的箱子，那人又盯着汪淼看了几秒钟，提着箱子快步走了回去。
+ 汪淼拿出手机，拨通了申玉菲的电话，她很快就接了，也许她也度过一个不眠之夜。
+ “倒计时的尽头是什么？” 汪淼无力地问。
+ “不知道。”
+ 说了这简短的三个字后，电话挂断了。
+ 是什么？
+ 也许是自己的死亡，像杨冬那样；也许是一场像前几年印度洋海啸那样的大灾难，谁也不会将其与自己的纳米研究项目相联系（由此联想到，以前的每一次大灾难，包括两次世界大战，是否都是一次次幽灵倒计时的尽头？
+ 都有一个谁都想不到的像自己这样的人要负的最终责任）；也许是全世界的彻底毁灭，在这个变态的宇宙中，那倒对谁都是一种解脱……
+ 有一点可以肯定，不管幽灵倒计时的尽头是什么，在这剩下的千余个小时中，对尽头的猜测将像恶魔那样残酷地折磨他，最后在精神上彻底摧毁他。
+ 汪淼钻进车子，离开了天文馆，在城市里漫无目的地开着。
+ 黎明前，路上很空，但他不敢开快，仿佛车开得快，倒计时走得也快。
+ 当东方出现一线晨光时，他将车停在路边，下车走了起来，同样漫无目标的。
+ 他的意识中一片空白，只有倒计时在那暗红的背景辐射上显现着，跳动着，他自己仿佛变成了一个单纯的计时器，一口不知道为谁而呜的丧钟。
+ 天亮了起来，他走累了，在一条长椅上坐下来。
+ 当他抬头看看自己下意识走到的目的地时，不由打了个寒颤。
+ 他正坐在王府井天主教堂前。
+ 在黎明惨白的天空下，教堂的罗马式尖顶像三根黑色的巨指，似乎在为他指出冥冥太空中的什么东西。
+ 汪淼起身要走，一阵从教堂传出的圣乐留住了他。
+ 今天不是礼拜日，这可能是唱诗班为复活节进行的排练，唱的是这个节日弥撒中常唱的《圣灵光照》。
+ 在圣乐的庄严深远中，汪淼再次感到宇宙变小了，变成了一座空旷的教堂，穹顶隐没于背景辐射闪烁的红光中，他则是这宏伟教堂地板砖缝中的一只小蚂蚁。
+ 他感觉到自己那颗颤抖的心灵被一只无形的巨手抚摸着，一时间又回到了脆弱无助的孩童时代，意识深处硬撑着的某种东西像蜡一样变软了，崩溃了。
+ 他双手捂着脸哭了起来。
+ “哈哈哈，又放倒了一个！”
+ 汪淼的哭泣被身后的一阵笑声打断，他扭头一看，大史站在那里，嘴里吐出一口白烟。
+
+ I did not leave that night—Chen Qingyang caught me and asked me to stay in the name of our great friendship.
+ She admitted that she'd been wrong to slap me, and that she hadn't treated me well.
+ But she said my great friendship was phony, and the reason I had tricked her into coming was to study her anatomy.
+ I said if she thought I was a faker, why did she believe me?
+ I did want to study her anatomy, but that was with her permission, too.
+ If she didn't like the idea, she could have told me before.
+ In any case, slapping me was unfair.
+ She laughed hard for a while and said she simply couldn't bear the sight of that thing on my body.
+ It looked silly and shameless, and whenever she saw him, she just couldn't help getting angry.
+ We didn't have a stitch on while we argued.
+ My little Buddha still stuck out, glittering in the moonlight as if wrapped in plastic.
+ I was a little offended by what she said and she realized that too.
+ So to make peace, she softened her tone and said, "Anyway, he is breathtakingly ugly—don't you agree?"
+ Standing there like an angry cobra, the thing was indeed homely.
+ I said, since you don't even want to look at him, let's just forget the whole thing.
+ I began to put on my pants, but again she said, Don't!
+ So I started smoking.
+ The moment I had the cigarette finished, she embraced me and we did it on the grass.
+ Until my twenty-first birthday I was a virgin, but that night I lured Chen Qingyang up the mountain with me.
+ At first there was moonlight, then the moon set and a sky full of stars came out, as numerous as dewdrops in the morning.
+ There was no wind that night either; the mountain was very still.
+ Having made love to Chen Qingyang, I was no longer a virgin.
+ However, I wasn't feeling happy at all.
+ That was because when I was doing it, she didn't make a sound; she simply put her arms under her head and looked at me in a very thoughtful way.
+ So from beginning to end it was just my solo performance.
+ In fact, I didn't last too long.
+ I finished almost right away.
+ After that I was angry and upset.
+ Chen Qingyang said she couldn't believe it: I actually had the impudence to display my ugly male organ in front of her, without feeling the least embarrassed.
+ The thing didn't feel embarrassed either; it just forced its way straight into the hole between her thighs.
+ Because there is this hole in a woman's body, a man thinks he has to use it, which just doesn't make sense.
+ When she had a husband before, he did this to her every day.
+ All the time she kept the question to herself, waiting for the day when he felt ashamed of himself and would explain why he did this to her.
+ But he never apologized, and then he went to prison.
+ These were things I didn't want to hear.
+ So I asked her if she hadn't felt like doing it, why had she agreed?
+ She said she didn't want to be considered small-minded.
+ I said, You're a small-minded person anyway.
+ Then she said, Never mind, let's not fight about it.
+ She told me to return that evening, and we'd try it one more time.
+ Maybe she'd like it.
+ I didn't say anything.
+ In the foggy dawn, I left her and went down the mountain to herd buffalo.
+ I didn't go to see her that night, instead I went to the hospital, the reason being: when I got to the cattle pen in the morning, a bunch of people couldn't wait for me and had opened the pen and dragged the buffalo out.
+ Everyone was trying to pick out a strong one for plowing the fields.
+ A local youth called Shan Men Er was pulling out a large white one.
+ I went over to tell him that the buffalo had been bitten by a poisonous snake and couldn't work.
+ He didn't seem to hear me, so I snatched the tether from him and he slapped me without thinking.
+ I shoved him right in the chest, pushing him down on his butt.
+ Then people began to gather, forming a tight ring around us and urging us to fight.
+ With the students from Beijing on one side and the country boys on the other, everyone chose a weapon, either a wooden stick or a leather belt.
+ They argued for a while, then decided not to fight but to make Shan Men Er and I wrestle.
+ Unable to beat me at wrestling, Shan Men Er began to punch me.
+ I kicked him into a manure pit right in front of the cattle pen for a shit bath.
+ He got up, grabbed a pitchfork, and tried to stab me, but somebody stopped him.
+ That was what happened in the morning.
+ When I came back from herding buffalo in the evening, the team leader accused me of beating peasants, saying that he was going to call a meeting to denounce me.
+ I told him that he could take his chances and give me trouble, but I was no pushover.
+ I also told him that I would get some people together for a gang fight.
+ The team leader said he didn't want to give me a hard time; it was Shan Men Er's mother who was giving him a hard time.
+ The woman was a widow, a real bitch.
+ He said that's the way it goes around here.
+ Later he said he was not going to arrange a denouncing meeting but a helping meeting.
+ I could just stand in front of people and do a self-criticism.
+ If I still didn't agree, he was going to let the widow come after me.
+ The meeting was a complete mess.
+ The locals all talked at once, saying that the city students had gone too far—we not only took their chickens and stole their dogs, but also beat their people.
+ The city students said, That's bullshit!
+ Who stole your chickens and dogs?
+ Did you catch us in the act?
+ We're here to build up our country's borderland.
+ We aren't some criminals in exile.
+ Why should we put up with casual slander?
+ Standing in front of the crowd, I didn't do self-criticism but called them names.
+ I didn't expect Shan Men Er's mother to sneak up from behind, pick up a heavy stool, and slam my lower back, right on my old injury.
+ I passed out instantly.
+ By the time I came around, Luo Xiaosi had gathered a group of city students and was threatening to burn the cattle pen.
+ He also said he'd make Shan Men Er's mother pay with her life.
+ The team leader took a bunch of locals to stop them.
+ Meanwhile, the vice team leader told someone to take me to the hospital on an ox cart.
+ The nurse said they shouldn't try to move me since my back was broken, and I'd be done for.
+ I said, My back seems OK and you guys can just carry me.
+ However, since none of them was sure about whether or not my back was broken, they were all afraid to move me.
+ So I had no choice but to stay put.
+ Finally, the team leader came over and said, Go phone Chen Qingyang.
+ Let her check his back.
+ After a short while, Chen Qingyang ran over, with messy hair and puffy eyelids.
+ The first thing she said was: Don't worry.
+ If you're paralyzed, I'll take care of you for the rest of my life.
+ Then she checked my back and her diagnosis was the same as mine.
+ So they carried me to the ox cart and sent me to the hospital at the farm headquarters.
+ That night Chen Qingyang accompanied me to the hospital and waited until the x-ray of my lower back was developed.
+ She left after making sure everything was fine.
+ She said she would come back to visit me in a couple of days, but she never did.
+ I was hospitalized for a whole week, and once I could get around, I went straight back to see her.
+ When I walked into Chen Qingyang's clinic, I carried so many things on my back that my pack was overflowing.
+ In addition to a wok, bowls, a basin, and ladle, there was enough food for two of us to eat for an entire month.
+ When she saw me come into her clinic, she gave me a faint smile and said, Are you completely recovered?
+ Where are you going with all that stuff?
+ I said I was going to the Qingping thermal springs to bathe.
+ She leaned back languidly in her chair and said, That's a great idea.
+ The thermal springs might cure your old injury.
+ I said I wasn't really going to the thermal springs.
+ I just wanted to stay on the back slope of the mountain for a few days.
+ She said there is nothing on the back of the mountain.
+ Better go to the thermal springs.
+ The Qingping thermal springs were mud pools located in a valley, surrounded by nothing but wild, grassy hills.
+ The people who built huts on the hills and lived there year-round were usually patients with a variety of diseases.
+ If I went there, not only wouldn't it cure the pain in my lower back, but worse, I might get leprosy.
+ However, the lowland on the back slope of the deserted mountain was crisscrossed with gullies and ditches; and fragrant grass grew lush in the sparse woods.
+ I could build a thatched hut in some deserted spot, an empty mountain with no human trace—gurgling water with fallen petals.
+ A place like that would help cultivate morality and nourish the inner nature.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this she couldn't help smiling.
+ How do you get to that place?
+ Maybe I'll go there to visit you.
+ I gave her directions and even made a map for her, and then went into the mountains alone.
+ After I got to the desolate mountainside, Chen Qingyang didn't come to see me right away.
+ The strong wind of the dry season blew endlessly, shaking the thatched hut.
+ Sitting in a chair and listening to the sound of the wind, Chen Qingyang would look back at what happened and begin to have doubts about everything.
+ It was hard for her to believe that she had come to these backwoods in a haze, had begun to be called damaged goods for no reason, and then turned into real damaged goods.
+ The whole thing was just unbelievable.
+ Chen Qingyang said that sometimes she would step out of her room and look in the direction of the back slope of the mountain, seeing the many paths winding through the valley and leading deep into the mountains.
+ My words still echoed in her ears.
+ She knew that any of those paths would take her to me.
+ There was no doubt about it.
+ But the more certain something was, the more doubtful it became.
+ Maybe the path didn't lead anywhere; maybe Wang Er was not in the mountains; maybe Wang Er didn't exist at all.
+ A couple of days later, Luo Xiaosi brought several people to the hospital to see me.
+ No one in the hospital had ever heard of Wang Er, so nobody knew where he had gone.
+ At the time the hospital was rampant with hepatitis.
+ The uninfected patients all fled to their homes to recuperate, and the doctors went down to the production team to provide medical care.
+ Luo Xiaosi came back to the fourteenth team and found my stuff gone, so he went to ask the team leader whether he had seen me.
+ The team leader said, Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ Luo Xiaosi said, Just a few days ago you called a meeting to denounce him, and the vixen hit him with a stool and almost killed him.
+ Having been reminded that way, the team leader was even more reluctant to refresh his memory about me.
+ It just so happened that at the time a relief delegation from Beijing was coming to investigate how the city students were treated in the countryside, especially whether any had been tied up, beaten, or forced to marry the locals.
+ Because of this, the team leader was even more unwilling to remember me.
+ Luo Xiaosi then made his way to the fifteenth team, asking Chen Qingyang whether she had seen me, and hinting in a roundabout sort of way that she'd had an indecent relationship with me.
+ Chen Qingyang then told him that she knew nothing about me.
+ By the time Luo Xiaosi left, Chen Qingyang was confused.
+ It seemed many people didn't believe Wang Er so much as existed.
+ That's what confused people.
+ What everyone thinks exists must not exist, because everything before our eyes is illusion; what everyone doesn't think exists must exist, like Wang Er.
+ If he didn't exist, where did his name come from?
+ Unable to overcome her curiosity, Chen Qingyang finally dropped everything and went up the mountain to look for me.
+ After the vixen knocked me out with a stool, Chen Qingyang ran all the way down the mountain to see me.
+ She even cried in public and declared that if I didn't recover, she would take care of me all her life.
+ It turned out not only did I live, but I wasn't even paralyzed, which was a good thing for me though she wasn't crazy about it.
+ It was almost as if she'd confessed publicly that she was damaged goods.
+ If I'd died, or become paralyzed, it would have then been morally justified.
+ But I had only stayed in the hospital for a week and then run away.
+ To her, I was the precise image of someone seen from behind, hurrying down the mountain, a man in her memory.
+ She didn't want to make love to me, nor did she want to carry on a love affair with me either.
+ So, without a very important reason, her visiting me would be the act of a woman who was truly damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she decided to head up the mountain to search for me, she didn't have anything on under her white smock.
+ Dressed like this, she crossed a stretch of hills behind the fifteenth team.
+ Those hills were thick with grass, and under the grass lay red soil.
+ In the morning the wind blew down the mountain to the plateau, cold as a mountain spring, and in the afternoon the wind returned, full of heat and dust.
+ Chen Qingyang came riding on a white wind to look for me.
+ The wind got under her clothes and flowed all over her body, like caresses and lips.
+ In fact, she didn't really need me, nor did she have to find me.
+ When people said she was damaged goods and I was her lover, she came to see me every day.
+ It seemed necessary back then, though.
+ Ever since she admitted in public she was damaged goods, and I was her lover, no one said she was damaged goods anymore, let alone mentioned my name in front of her (except for Luo Xiaosi).
+ People were so afraid of this kind of damaged-goods behavior in broad daylight that they didn't even dare talk about it.
+ As for the Beijing relief delegation sent to investigate the city students' situation, everyone in the local area knew about it except for me.
+ That was because lately I had been off herding buffalo, which required going out early in the morning and coming back late at night; besides that, I had a bad reputation and no one bothered to tell me.
+ Later, when I was in the hospital, nobody came to see me either.
+ When I left the hospital, I went deep into the mountains almost right away.
+ I saw only two people before my trip, one of whom was Chen Qingyang, who hadn't mentioned it; the other one was our team leader, who also hadn't said anything other than telling me to take a good rest at the thermal springs.
+ I told him that I didn't have anything (food, utensils, etc.), so I couldn't go to the thermal springs.
+ He said he could lend me some things.
+ I told him that I might not be able to return them.
+ He said it didn't matter.
+ So I borrowed plenty of homemade smoked meat and sausages.
+ Chen Qingyang didn't give me the information because she didn't care about it—she was not one of the city students.
+ The team leader didn't tell me because he thought I knew already.
+ He also thought that since I took so much food with me I probably wouldn't come back.
+ That was why when Luo Xiaosi asked him where Wang Er had gone, he said, Wang Er?
+ Who's Wang Er?
+ Never heard of him.
+ For those like Luo Xiaosi, it would have been a great advantage to find me—I could prove that the city students in the area were treated badly, often beaten senseless.
+ For our team leader, my nonexistence was very convenient, because then no one could prove any of the city students had been beaten senseless.
+ To me, it didn't really matter whether I existed or not.
+ If no one came to look for me, I could grow some corn around the place and never leave.
+ So I didn't really care whether I existed or not.
+ I also thought about the problem of whether I existed or not in my little thatched hut.
+ For example, others believed that Chen Qingyang had slept with me and that proved my existence.
+ In Luo Xiaosi's words, Wang Er and Chen Qingyang took off their pants and screwed.
+ Actually he didn't see any of it, but the extent of his imagination was that we took off our pants.
+ And there was Chen Qingyang, who said that I hurried down the mountain in my green fatigues.
+ It never crossed my mind that I didn't look back as I walked.
+ Since I couldn't imagine these things, they must be evidence of my existence.
+ Then there was this little Buddha of mine, stiff and straight, and that was something I couldn't invent either.
+ I always expected Chen Qingyang to come to see me, but she never came.
+ By the time she finally showed up, I had learned not to expect her.
+ I used to believe that Chen Qingyang would come to see me immediately after I went up the mountain, but I was wrong.
+ I waited for a long time and then decided to give up.
+ I sat in my little hut, listening to the leaves rustling all over the mountain, finally reaching a state where object and subject were both forgotten.
+ I listened to the mighty air currents surging over my head, and just then a wave rose from my soul, as flowers bloom in the midst of the mountains and bamboo husks fall from the shoots and the bamboo stands up straight.
+ When the wave receded, I would rest calmly, but I wanted to dance while the wave was at its peak.
+ Chen Qingyang arrived at my thatched hut precisely at that moment and caught sight of me sitting naked on the bamboo bed.
+ My penis was like a skinned rabbit, red, shiny, and a foot long, frankly erect.
+ Panicked, Chen Qingyang immediately screamed.
+ Chen Qingyang's search for me could be summed up as follows: Two weeks after I went into the mountains, she went up the mountains to look for me.
+ It was only two o'clock in the afternoon, but she took off her underwear, like women who sneak out for sex at midnight, and wore only a white smock, walking barefoot in the mountains.
+ She crossed a sunlit meadow, entered a dry gully, and walked for a long time.
+ Even through the maze of gullies, she didn't make a single wrong turn.
+ Later she emerged from the gully, walked into a valley facing the sun, and saw a thatched hut that seemed newly built.
+ If there had been no Wang Er to tell her the route, she wouldn't have been able to find such a tiny hut in the vast, wild mountains.
+ But as she entered the hut and saw Wang Er sitting on the bed, his little Buddha stiff, she was frightened into screaming.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said she just couldn't believe everything she had experienced was real, because something real needs to have a cause.
+ Yet at the time she just took off her white smock, sat beside me, and stared at my little Buddha, thinking he was the color of a burn scar.
+ Just then my thatched hut began to shake in the wind, streams of sunlight leaked through the roof and spattered her body, like stars.
+ I reached out my hand and touched her nipples, until her face flushed and her nipples turned hard.
+ Suddenly she woke from her trance, her face blushing with embarrassment.
+ Then she embraced me tightly.
+ It was the second time that I made love to Chen Qingyang.
+ When we first made love, many details puzzled me.
+ Not until much later did I finally figure out how much she had really taken to heart being called damaged goods.
+ Since she couldn't prove she wasn't damaged goods, she consented to becoming damaged goods, like the women caught in the act and summoned on stage to confess the details of their adultery.
+ The confessions would reach a point when the audience, unable to restrain themselves, their faces twisted into hundreds of masks of lust, would shout, Tie her up!
+ Then someone would rush onto the stage and bind her into the loops of a five-petal knot with thin hemp twine.
+ She stood like this in front of the crowd, submitting herself to all the shame and insults.
+ That didn't bother her at all.
+ She wouldn't have been afraid of being stripped naked, strapped to a millstone, and thrown into a pond; nor would she have feared being forced to dress up, like the wives and concubines of wealthy men, their faces covered with water-soaked yellow paper, sitting upright until they smothered to death.
+ No, these things wouldn't have bothered her at all.
+ She was not the least bit worried about becoming actual damaged goods, which she much preferred to being damaged goods in name only.
+ What disgusted her was the act that made her damaged goods.
+ When I made love to Chen Qingyang, a lizard crawled out of a crack in the wall and crossed the ground in the middle of the room, moving intermittently.
+ Then suddenly startled, it fled quickly, disappearing into the sunshine outside the door.
+ Just at that moment Chen Qingyang's moans flooded out, filling the entire room.
+ I was scared and stopped, leaning over her body.
+ But she pinched my leg and said: Hurry, you idiot!
+ I sped up and waves of vibration passed through me as if from the earth's core.
+ Afterward, she said she had fallen deep into sin and karma would catch up with her sooner or later.
+ When she said that, the band of flush was fading from her chest.
+ At the time we hadn't finished our business yet.
+ So she made it sound like she would only be punished for what she had just done.
+ Suddenly a shudder traveled from the top of my head to my tailbone and I began to ejaculate wildly.
+ Since this had nothing to do with her, perhaps I would be the only one punished for it.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that Luo Xiaosi had looked for me everywhere.
+ He went to the hospital, and people there told him that I didn't exist; then he went to our team leader, who also said that I didn't exist; finally, he went to Chen Qingyang.
+ Chen Qingyang told him that since everyone said he didn't exist, maybe he didn't.
+ She had no problem with that.
+ When he heard this, Luo Xiaosi couldn't help crying.
+ I felt very strange after I heard her words.
+ I shouldn't come into existence simply because a vixen hit me, nor should I stop existing because she hit me.
+ Actually, my existence was an indisputable fact.
+ So I became obsessed.
+ To prove the indisputable fact, I went down the mountain the day the relief delegation arrived and took part in the delegation's hearing.
+ After the hearing, the team leader said, You don't look sick at all.
+ I think you'd better come back to feed the pigs.
+ He also arranged for people to trail Chen Qingyang and me, trying to catch us in the act of adultery.
+ Of course, it was not easy to catch me because I walked so fast.
+ No one could successfully track me.
+ However, this got me into a lot more trouble.
+ By then I began to realize that it was really unnecessary for me to prove my existence to others.
+ When I fed the pigs for the production team, every day I had to carry buckets of water.
+ It was really a tiring job, and impossible to slack off.
+ The pigs would squeal if they didn't get enough food.
+ I had to chop tons of vegetables and cut piles of wood.
+ Originally there had been three women to do the job, but now the team leader assigned it all to me.
+ I found that I could not manage three women's work, especially when my back hurt.
+ I really wanted to prove that I didn't exist then.
+ At night Chen Qingyang and I would make love in my small hut.
+ In those days, I was full of respect for the task, enthusiastic about every kiss and caress.
+ Whether it was the classical missionary position, or man-from-behind position, man-from-side position, or woman-on-top position, I performed them in sober earnest.
+ Chen Qingyang was very satisfied with my performance, and so was I.
+ At those moments, I felt it was unnecessary to prove my existence.
+ I drew a conclusion from these experiences: never let other people pay attention to you!
+ Beijingers say: Better a thief should steal from you than keep you in mind.
+ You should never let other people keep you in mind.
+ After a while, the city students in our team were all transferred to other positions; the men landed work at the candy factory, and the women got to teach at the agricultural middle school.
+ I was the only one left feeding those pigs.
+ According to them that was because I was not reeducated enough, but Chen Qingyang said it was because someone kept me in mind.
+ This "someone" might have been the military deputy on our farm.
+ She also said the military deputy was a jerk.
+ She used to work in the hospital, but when the military deputy tried to grope her, she gave him a big slap, and afterward, she was sent down to the fifteenth production team to work as a team doctor.
+ The fifteenth team's water was bitter, and there wasn't much to eat either.
+ She got used to it after a while.
+ But it was clear from the start the military deputy just wanted to make trouble for her.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the military deputy would definitely not go easy on me, perhaps I would be kept-in-mind half to death.
+ I said: What can he do to me?
+ If things get really bad, I can simply run the hell away.
+ What happened later all started there.
+ That morning, right at dawn, I went down the mountain to feed the pigs.
+ As I passed the village well, I saw the military deputy at the well stand brushing his teeth.
+ He took the brush out of his mouth and talked to me with a mouth full of froth.
+ I thought he was very disgusting, so I left without a word.
+ Shortly afterward, he ran to the pigpen and shouted at me: How dare you walk away from me like that?
+ I kept silent as I heard the words.
+ Even when he accused me of playing dumb, I still said nothing.
+ After a while I walked away again.
+ The military deputy came to our team to do some grassroots investigation and then stayed.
+ According to him, he wouldn't give up until he made Wang Er talk.
+ His visit could be accounted for in two ways: one was that he came down to our team for the investigation, but when he met someone like me who played dumb with him, he got pissed off and decided to stay; the other was that he came down to our team not for investigation, but to pick on me, after hearing that Chen Qingyang and I had a love affair.
+ Whatever brought him to our team, I made up my mind to stay mute.
+ He couldn't do anything about it.
+ The military deputy had a talk with me, asking me to write a confession.
+ He said that the masses were very angry about my love affair with Chen Qingyang.
+ If I didn't confess, he would mobilize the masses to deal with me.
+ He also said my behavior met the criteria for my classification as one of "the bad elements," and I should be punished by the proletarian dictatorship.
+ I could have defended myself by saying I didn't have a love affair.
+ Who could prove I did?
+ But I just stared at him, like a wild boar, like an idiot, like a male cat staring at a female one, until his anger vanished under my stare.
+ Then he let me go.
+ In the end, he still couldn't get anything out of me.
+ He wasn't even sure whether I was a mute or not.
+ People told him that I wasn't a mute.
+ He couldn't be sure since he had never heard me speak a single word.
+ To this day, whenever he thinks of me, he still can't figure out if I am mute or not.
+ It makes me very happy whenever I think about it.
+
+ 那天晚上我没走掉。
+ 陈清扬把我拽住，以伟大友谊的名义叫我留下来。
+ 她承认打我不对，也承认没有好好待我，但是她说我的伟大友谊是假的，还说，我把她骗出来就是想研究她的结构。
+ 我说，既然我是假的，你信我干吗。
+ 我是想研究一下她的结构，这也是在她的许可之下。
+ 假如不乐意可以早说，动手就打不够意思。
+ 后来她哈哈大笑了一阵说，她简直见不得我身上那个东西。
+ 那东西傻头傻脑，恬不知耻，见了它，她就不禁怒从心起。
+ 我们俩吵架时，仍然是不着一丝。
+ 我的小和尚依然直挺挺，在月光下披了一身塑料，倒是闪闪发光。
+ 我听了这话不高兴，她也发现了。
+ 于是她用和解的口气说：不管怎么说，这东西丑得要命，你承不承认？
+ 这东西好像个发怒的眼镜蛇一样立在那里，是不大好看。
+ 我说，既然你不愿意见它，那就算了。
+ 我想穿上裤子，她又说，别这样。
+ 于是我抽起烟来。
+ 等我抽完了一支烟，她抱住我。
+ 我们俩在草地上干那件事。
+ 我过二十一岁生日以前，是一个童男子。
+ 那天晚上我引诱了陈清扬和我到山上去。
+ 那一夜开头有月光，后来月亮落下去，出来一天的星星，就像早上的露水一样多。
+ 那天晚上没有风，山上静得很。
+ 我已经和陈清扬做过爱，不再是童男子了。
+ 但是我一点也不高兴。
+ 因为我干那事时，她一声也不吭，头枕双臂，若有所思地看着我，所以从始至终就是我一个人在表演。
+ 其实我也没持续多久，马上就完了。
+ 事毕我既愤怒又沮丧。
+ 陈清扬说，她简直不敢相信这件事是真的：我居然在她面前亮出了丑恶的男性生殖器，丝毫不感到惭愧。
+ 那玩意也不感到惭愧，直挺挺地从她两腿之间插了进来。
+ 因为女孩子身上有这么个口子，男人就要使用她，这简直没有道理。
+ 以前她有个丈夫，天天对她做这件事。
+ 她一直不说话，等着他有一天自己感到惭愧，自己来解释为什么干了这些。
+ 可是他什么也没说，直到进了监狱。
+ 这话我也不爱听。
+ 所以我说：既然你不乐意，为什么要答应？
+ 她说她不愿被人看成小气鬼。
+ 我说你原本就是小气鬼。
+ 后来她说算了，别为这事吵架。
+ 她叫我晚上再来这里，我们再试一遍。
+ 也许她会喜欢。
+ 我什么也没说。
+ 早上起雾以后，我和她分了手，下山去放牛。
+ 那天晚上我没去找她，倒进了医院。
+ 这事原委是这样：早上我到牛圈门前时，有一伙人等不及我，已经在开圈拉牛。
+ 大家都挑壮牛去犁田。
+ 有个本地小伙子，叫三闷儿，正在拉一条大白牛。
+ 我走过去，告诉他，这牛被毒蛇咬了，不能干活。
+ 他似乎没听见。
+ 我劈手把牛鼻绳夺了下来，他就朝我挥了一巴掌。
+ 我当胸推了他一把，推了他一个屁股蹲儿。
+ 然后很多人拥了上来，把我们拥在中间要打架。
+ 北京知青一伙，当地青年一伙，抄起了棍棒和皮带。
+ 吵了一会儿，又说不打架，让我和三闷儿摔跤，三闷儿摔不过我，就动了拳头。
+ 我一脚把三闷儿踢进了圈前的粪坑，让他沾了一身牛屎。
+ 三闷儿爬起来，抢了一把三齿要砍我，别人劝开了。
+ 早上的事情就是这样。
+ 晚上我放牛回来，队长说我殴打贫下中农，要开我的斗争会。
+ 我说你想借机整人，我也不是好惹的。
+ 我还说要聚众打群架。
+ 队长说他没想整我，是三闷儿的娘闹得他没办法。
+ 那婆娘是个寡妇，泼得厉害。
+ 他说此地的规矩就是这样。
+ 后来他说，不开斗争会，改为帮助会，让我上前面去检讨一下。
+ 要是我还不肯，就让寡妇来找我。
+ 会开得很乱。
+ 老乡们七嘴八舌，说知青太不像话，偷鸡摸狗还打人。
+ 知青们说放狗屁，谁偷东西，你们当场拿住了吗？
+ 老子们是来支援边疆建设，又不是充军的犯人，哪能容你们乱栽赃。
+ 我在前面也不检讨，只是骂。
+ 不提防三闷儿的娘从后面摸上来，抄起一条沉甸甸的拔秧凳，给了我后腰一下，正砸在我的旧伤上，登时我就背过去了。
+ 我醒过来时，罗小四领了一伙人呐喊着要放火烧牛圈，还说要三闷儿的娘抵命。
+ 队长领了一帮人去制止，副队长叫人抬我上牛车去医院。
+ 卫生员说抬不得，腰杆断了，一抬就死。
+ 我说腰杆好像没断，你们快把我抬走。
+ 可是谁也不敢肯定我的腰杆是断了还是没断，所以也不敢肯定我会不会一抬就死。
+ 我就一直躺着。
+ 后来队长过来一问，就说：快摇电话把陈清扬叫下来，让她看看腰断了没有。
+ 过了不一会儿，陈清扬披头散发眼皮红肿地跑了来，劈头第一句话就是：你别怕，要是你瘫了，我照顾你一辈子。
+ 然后一检查，诊断和我自己的相同。
+ 于是我就坐上牛车，到总场医院去看病。
+ 那天夜里陈清扬把我送到医院，一直等到腰部X光片子出来，看过认为没问题后才走。
+ 她说过一两天就来看我，可是一直没来。
+ 我住了一个星期，可以走动了，就奔回去找她。
+ 我走进陈清扬的医务室时，身上背了很多东西，装得背篓里冒了尖。
+ 除了锅碗盆瓢，还有足够两人吃一个月的东西。
+ 她见我进来，淡淡地一笑，说你好了吗，带这些东西上哪儿。
+ 我说要去清平洗温泉。
+ 她懒懒地往椅子上一仰说，这很好。
+ 温泉可以治旧伤。
+ 我说我不是真去洗温泉，而是到后面山上住几天。
+ 她说后面山上什么都没有，还是去洗温泉吧。
+ 清平的温泉是山坳里一片泥坑，周围全是荒草坡。
+ 有一些病人在山坡上搭了窝棚，成年住在那里，其中得什么病的都有。
+ 我到那里不但治不好病，还可能染上麻风。
+ 而后面荒山里的低洼处沟谷纵横，疏林之中芳草离离，我在人迹绝无的地方造了一间草房，空山无人，流水落花，住在里面可以修身养性。
+ 陈清扬听了，禁不住一笑说：那地方怎么走？
+ 也许我去看看你。
+ 我告诉她路，还画了一张示意图，自己进山去了。
+ 我走进荒山，陈清扬没有去看我。
+ 旱季里浩浩荡荡的风刮个不停，整个草房都在晃动。
+ 陈清扬坐在椅子上听着风声，回想起以往发生的事情，对一切都起了怀疑。
+ 她很难相信自己会莫名其妙地来到这极荒凉的地方，又无端地被人称做破鞋，然后就真的搞起了破鞋。
+ 这件事真叫人难以置信。
+ 陈清扬说，有时候她走出房门，往后山上看，看到山丘中有很多小路蜿蜒通到深山里去。
+ 我对她说的话言犹在耳。
+ 她知道沿着一条路走进山去，就会找到我。
+ 这是无可怀疑的事。
+ 但是越是无可怀疑的事就越值得怀疑。
+ 很可能那条路不通到任何地方，很可能王二不在山里，很可能王二根本就不存在。
+ 过了几天，罗小四带了几个人到医院去找我。
+ 医院里没人听说过王二，更没人知道他上哪儿去了。
+ 那时节医院里肝炎流行，没染上肝炎的病人都回家去疗养，大夫也纷纷下队去送医上门。
+ 罗小四等人回到队里，发现我的东西都不见了，就去问队长可见过王二。
+ 队长说，谁是王二？
+ 从来没听说过。
+ 罗小四说前几天你还开会斗争过他，尖嘴婆打了他一板凳，差点把他打死。
+ 这样提醒了以后，队长就更想不起来我是谁了。
+ 那时节有一个北京知青慰问团要来调查知青在下面的情况，尤其是有无被捆打逼婚等情况，因此队长更不乐意想起我来。
+ 罗小四又到十五队问陈清扬可曾见过我，还闪烁其词地暗示她和我有过不正当的关系。
+ 陈清扬则表示，她对此一无所知。
+ 等到罗小四离开，陈清扬就开始糊涂了。
+ 看来有很多人说，王二不存在。
+ 这件事叫人困惑的原因就在这里。
+ 大家都说存在的东西一定不存在，这是因为眼前的一切都是骗局。
+ 大家都说不存在的东西一定存在，比如王二，假如他不存在，这个名字是从哪里来的？
+ 陈清扬按捺不住好奇心，终于扔下一切，上山找我来了。
+ 我被尖嘴婆打了一板凳后晕了过去，陈清扬曾经从山上跑下来看我。
+ 当时她还忍不住哭了起来，并且当众说，如果我好不了要照顾我一辈子。
+ 结果我并没有死，连瘫都没瘫。
+ 这对我是很好的事，可是陈清扬并不喜欢。
+ 这等于当众暴露了她是破鞋。
+ 假如我死，或是瘫掉，就是应该的事，可是我在医院里只住了一个星期就跑出来。
+ 对她来说，我就是那个急匆匆从山上赶下去的背影，一个记忆中的人。
+ 她并不想和我做爱，也不想和我搞破鞋，除非有重大的原因。
+ 因此她来找我就是真正的破鞋行径。
+ 陈清扬说，她决定上山找我时，在白大褂底下什么都没穿。
+ 她就这样走过十五队后面的那片山包。
+ 那些小山上长满了草，草下是红土。
+ 上午风从山上往平坝里吹，冷得像山上的水，下午风吹回来，带着燥热和尘土。
+ 陈清扬来找我时，乘着白色的风。
+ 风从衣服下面钻进来，流过全身，好像爱抚和嘴唇。
+ 其实她不需要我，也没必要找到我。
+ 以前人家说她是破鞋，说我是她的野汉子时，她每天都来找我。
+ 那时好像有必要。
+ 自从她当众暴露了她是破鞋，我是她的野汉子后，再没人说她是破鞋，更没人在她面前提到王二（除了罗小四）。
+ 大家对这种明火执仗的破鞋行径是如此的害怕，以致连说都不敢啦。
+ 关于北京要来人视察知青的事，当地每个人都知道，只有我不知道。
+ 这是因为我前些日子在放牛，早出晚归，而且名声不好，谁也不告诉我，后来住了院，也没人来看找。
+ 等到我出院以后，就进了深山。
+ 在我进山之前，总共就见到了两个人，一个是陈清扬，她没有告诉我这件事。
+ 另一个是我们队长，他也没说起这件事，只叫我去温泉养病。
+ 我告诉他，我没有东西（食品、炊具等等），所以不能去温泉。
+ 他说他可以借给我。
+ 我说我借了不一定还，他说不要紧。
+ 我就向他借了不少家制的腊肉和香肠。
+ 陈清扬不告诉我这件事是因为她不关心，她不是知青。
+ 队长不告诉我这件事，是因为他以为我已经知道了。
+ 他还以为我拿了很多吃的东西走，就不会再回来。
+ 所以罗小四问他王二到哪儿去了时，他说：王二？
+ 谁叫王二？
+ 从没听说过。
+ 对于罗小四等人来说，找到我有很大的好处，我可以证明大家在此地受到很坏的待遇，经常被打晕。
+ 对于领导来说，我不存在有很大的便利，可以说明此地没有一个知青被打晕。
+ 对于我自己来说，存在不存在没有很大的关系。
+ 假如没有人来找我，我在附近种点玉米，可以永远不出来。
+ 就因为这个原因，我对自己存不存在的事不太关心。
+ 我在小屋里也想过自己存不存在的问题。
+ 比方说，别人说我和陈清扬搞破鞋，这就是存在的证明。
+ 用罗小四的话来说，王二和陈清扬脱了裤子干。
+ 其实他也没看见。
+ 他想象的极限就是我们脱裤子。
+ 还有陈清扬说，我从山上下来，穿着黄军装，走得飞快。
+ 我自己并不知道我走路是不回头的。
+ 因为这些事我无从想象，所以是我存在的证明。
+ 还有我的小和尚直挺挺，这件事也不是我想出来的。
+ 我始终盼着陈清扬来看我，但陈清扬始终没有来。
+ 她来的时候，我没有盼着她来。
+ 我曾经以为陈清扬在我进山后会立即来看我，但是我错了。
+ 我等了很久，后来不再等了。
+ 我坐在小屋里，听着满山树叶哗哗响，终于到了物我两忘的境界。
+ 我听见浩浩荡荡的空气大潮从我头顶涌过，正是我灵魂里潮兴之时。
+ 正如深山里花开，龙竹笋剥剥地爆去笋壳，直翘翘地向上。
+ 到潮退时我也安息，但潮兴时要乘兴而舞。
+ 正巧这时陈清扬来到草屋门口，她看见我赤条条坐在竹板床上，阳具就如剥了皮的兔子，红通通亮晶晶足有一尺长，直立在那里，登时惊慌失措，叫了起来。
+ 陈清扬到山里找我的事又可以简述如下：我进山后两个星期，她到山里找我。
+ 当时是下午两点钟，可是她像那些午夜淫奔的妇人一样，脱光了内衣，只穿一件白大褂，赤着脚走进山来。
+ 她就这样走过阳光下的草地，走进了一条干河沟，在河沟里走了很久。
+ 这些河沟很乱，可是她连一个弯都没转错。
+ 后来她又从河沟里出来，走进一个向阳的山洼，看见一间新搭的草房。
+ 假如没有一个王二告诉她这条路，她不可能在茫茫荒山里找到一间草房。
+ 可是她走进草房，看到王二就坐在床上，小和尚直挺挺，却吓得尖叫起来。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她没法相信她所见到的每件事都是真的。
+ 真的事要有理由。
+ 当时她脱了衣服，坐在我的身边，看着我的小和尚，只见它的颜色就像烧伤的疤痕。
+ 这时我的草房在风里摇晃，好多阳光从房顶上漏下来，星星点点落在她身上。
+ 我伸手去触她的乳头，直到她脸上泛起红晕，乳房坚挺。
+ 忽然她从迷梦里醒来，羞得满脸通红。
+ 于是她紧紧地抱住我。
+ 我和陈清扬是第二次做爱，第一次做爱的很多细节当时我大惑不解。
+ 后来我才明白，她对被称做破鞋一事，始终耿耿于怀。
+ 既然不能证明她不是破鞋，她就乐于成为真正的破鞋。
+ 就像那些被当场捉了奸的女人一样，被人叫上台去交待那些偷情的细节。
+ 等到那些人听到情不能持，丑态百出时，怪叫一声：把她捆起来！
+ 就有人冲上台去，用细麻绳把她五花大绑，她就这样站在人前，受尽羞辱。
+ 这些事一点也不讨厌。
+ 她也不怕被人剥得精赤条条，拴到一扇磨盘上，扔到水塘里淹死。
+ 或者像以前达官贵人家的妻妾一样，被强迫穿得整整齐齐，脸上贴上湿透的黄裱纸，端坐着活活憋死。
+ 这些事都一点也不讨厌。
+ 她丝毫也不怕成为破鞋，这比被人叫做破鞋而不是破鞋好得多。
+ 她所讨厌的是使她成为破鞋那件事本身。
+ 我和陈清扬做爱时，一只蜥蜴从墙缝里爬了进来，走走停停地经过房中间的地面。
+ 忽然它受到惊动，飞快地出去，消失在门口的阳光里。
+ 这时陈清扬的呻吟就像泛滥的洪水，在屋里蔓延。
+ 我为此所惊，伏下身不动。
+ 可是她说，快，混蛋。
+ 还拧我的腿。
+ 等我“快”了以后，阵阵震颤就像从地心传来。
+ 后来她说，她觉得自己罪孽深重，早晚要遭报应。
+ 她说自己要遭报应时，一道红晕正从她的胸口褪去。
+ 那时我们的事情还没完。
+ 但她的口气是说，她只会为在此之前的事遭报应。
+ 忽然之间我从头顶到尾骨一齐收紧，开始极其猛烈地射精。
+ 这事与她无关，大概只有我会为此遭报应。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，罗小四到处找我。
+ 他到医院找我时，医院说我不存在。
+ 他找队长问我时，队长也说我不存在。
+ 最后他来找陈清扬，陈清扬说，既然大家都说他不存在，大概他就是不存在吧，我也没有意见。
+ 罗小四听了这话，禁不住哭了起来。
+ 我听了这话，觉得很奇怪。
+ 我不应该因为尖嘴婆打了我一下而存在，也不应该因为她打了我一下而不存在。
+ 事实上，我的存在乃是不争的事实。
+ 我就为这一点钻了牛角尖。
+ 为了验证这不争的事实，慰问团来的那一天，我从山上奔了下去，来到了座谈会的会场上。
+ 散会以后，队长说，你这个样子不像有病。
+ 还是回来喂猪吧。
+ 他还组织人力，要捉我和陈清扬的奸。
+ 当然，要捉我不容易，我的腿非常快。
+ 谁也休想跟踪我。
+ 但是也给我添了很多麻烦。
+ 到了这个时候我才悟到，犯不着向人证明我存在。
+ 我在队里喂猪时，每天要挑很多水。
+ 这个活计很累，连偷懒都不可能，因为猪吃不饱会叫唤。
+ 我还要切很多猪菜，劈很多柴。
+ 喂这些猪原来要三个妇女，现在要我一个人干。
+ 我发现我不能顶三个妇女，尤其是腰疼时。
+ 这时候我真想证明我不存在。
+ 晚上我和陈清扬在小屋里做爱。
+ 那时我对此事充满了敬业精神，对每次亲吻和爱抚都贯注了极大的热情。
+ 无论是经典的传教士式，后进式，侧进式，女上位，我都能一丝不苟地完成。
+ 陈清扬对此极为满意。
+ 我也极为满意。
+ 在这种时候，我又觉得用不着去证明自己是存在的。
+ 从这些体会里我得到一个结论，就是永远别让别人注意你。
+ 北京人说，不怕贼偷，就怕贼惦记。
+ 你千万别让人惦记上。
+ 过了一些时候，我们队的知青全调走了。
+ 男的调到糖厂当工人，女的到农中去当老师。
+ 单把我留下来喂猪，据说是因为我还没有改造好。
+ 陈清扬说，我叫人惦记上了。
+ 这个人大概就是农场的军代表。
+ 她还说，军代表不是个好东西。
+ 原来她在医院工作，军代表要调戏她，被她打了个大嘴巴。
+ 然后她就被发到十五队当队医。
+ 十五队的水是苦的，也没有菜吃，待久了也觉得没有啥。
+ 但是当初调她来，分明有修理一下的意思。
+ 她还说，我准会被修到半死。
+ 我说过，他能把我怎么样？
+ 急了老子跑他娘。
+ 后来的事都是由此而起。
+ 那天早上天色微明，我从山上下来，到猪场喂猪。
+ 经过井台时，看见了军代表，他正在刷牙。
+ 他把牙刷从嘴里掏出来，满嘴白沫地和我讲话，我觉得很讨厌，就一声不吭地走掉了。
+ 过了一会，他跑到猪场里，把我大骂了一顿，说你怎么敢走了。
+ 我听了这些话，一声不吭。
+ 就是他说我装哑巴，我也一声不吭。
+ 然后我又走开了。
+ 军代表到我们队来蹲点，蹲下来就不走了。
+ 据他说，要不能从王二嘴里掏出话来，死也不甘心。
+ 这件事有两种可能的原因，一是他下来视察，遇见了我对他装聋作哑，因而大怒，不走了。
+ 二是他不是下来视察，而是听说陈清扬和我有了一腿，特地来找我的麻烦。
+ 不管他为何而来，反正我是一声也不吭，这叫他很没办法。
+ 军代表找我谈话，要我写交待材料。
+ 他还说，我搞破鞋群众很气愤，如果我不交待，就发动群众来对付我。
+ 他还说，我的行为够上了坏分子，应该受到专政。
+ 我可以辩解说，我没搞破鞋。
+ 谁能证明我搞了破鞋？
+ 但我只是看着他，像野猪一样看他，像发傻一样看他，像公猫看母猫一样看他。
+ 把他看到没了脾气，就让我走了。
+ 最后他也没从我嘴里套出话来。
+ 他甚至搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 别人说我不是哑巴，他始终不敢相信，因为他从来没听我说过一句话。
+ 他到今天想起我来，还是搞不清我是不是哑巴。
+ 想起这一点，我就万分的高兴。
+
+ The boots reached the door, and came on into the room.
+ Trinket peeped out from behind the table-cloth.
+ From the size of his footwear, the new arrival seemed to be a boy like himself.
+ He heaved a sigh of relief, and put the pancake in his mouth.
+ He didn't dare to take a bite out of it, but softened it with his saliva, and then swallowed it silently down.
+ Meanwhile he could hear noisy munching coming from the table above him.
+ The new boy was clearly tucking in.
+ 'Why, he's just another scavenger like me!' thought Trinket to himself.
+ 'I'll jump out and scare him off, then I can carry on eating to my heart's content.'
+ His thoughts ran on: 'What a fool I was just now!
+ I should have stuffed a whole plateful in my pocket and buggered off!
+ This isn't like home.
+ They wouldn't miss a little thing like that, or expect me to pay for it!'
+ All of a sudden there was a series of noisy thumps.
+ The new scavenger had started hitting something.
+ His curiosity aroused, Trinket poked his head out from under the table.
+ What he saw was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, in a short gown, punching at one of the bags that hung from the beam.
+ After a while, the boy moved across and started attacking one of the oxhide cut-outs.
+ He struck the figure first on the chest with one fist, then reached forward with both hands and grappled it by the waist, forcing it to the ground.
+ It was very much the same sort of technique as the one used by the Manchu wrestlers in the inn the previous day.
+ Trinket chuckled to himself and darted out from beneath the table.
+ 'Why fight a dummy!' he cried.
+ 'Why not try me?'
+ The other boy's first reaction was one of alarm, at the sight of this strange apparition with its head swathed in bandages.
+ But alarm quickly turned to delight when he realized that he had found a sparring partner.
+ 'Very well!' he replied.
+ 'On guard!'
+ Trinket sprang forward and seized the boy's arms, intending to give him a sharp twist, but the boy turned smartly, and hooked him with his right foot, sending Trinket crashing to the floor.
+ 'You're hopeless!' he jeered.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling!'
+ 'Who says I don't!' protested Trinket, leaping to his feet again and reaching for the boy's left leg.
+ The boy made a grab for his back, but this time Trinket dodged in time and the boy seized a handful of air.
+ Trinket recalled Whiskers' fight with the seven wrestlers at the inn, and shot out a quick left that caught the boy hard, fair and square, on the lower cheek.
+ The boy stood there stunned for a few seconds, and a momentary look of anger came into his eyes.
+ 'You're hopeless!' cried Trinket with a grin.
+ 'You obviously don't know the first thing about wrestling.'
+ The boy said nothing, but feinted with his left fist.
+ Trinket fell for it and dodged, and as he did so, the boy's elbow came crashing across into his midriff and winded him completely.
+ He crumpled up and fell to the ground in excruciating pain.
+ The boy now came at Trinket from behind, slipped both hands under his arms and laced his hands together around his throat, throttling him, and pressing him harder and harder down on to the ground.
+ Trinket kicked frantically with his right foot, but then the boy loosed his hands and gave him a terrific shove which sent him rolling across the room like a puppy chasing its own tail.
+ Trinket was furious.
+ He came tumbling back, wrapped both arms round the boy's legs, and tugged at him with all his might.
+ The boy crashed down right on top of him.
+ He was quite a bit bigger than Trinket, and had soon succeeded in throttling him again and pinning him to the ground.
+ Trinket began to choke, thrashed out with his feet to extricate himself, and finally managed to wriggle on top of the boy and hold him down.
+ He was too light to maintain the upper hand for long, however, and soon the boy was back on top of him again.
+ Ever a crafty fighter, Trinket now let go of the boy's legs, got behind him, and landed him a good kick on the backside.
+ The boy quickly grabbed his right leg and tugged at it, sending Trinket crashing down on his back.
+ The boy leapt astride him, pinned his head to the floor, and cried: 'Well!
+ Surrender?'
+ Trinket had meanwhile managed to hook his left foot round the boy's waist, and started to rub it up and down the small of his back.
+ The boy, it transpired, was extremely ticklish, and he couldn't help giggling, and loosened his grasp.
+ Trinket seized his chance, leapt up, and pinned his opponent down by the throat.
+ The boy now used a standard wrestling ploy, gripping Trinket by the back of the neck and pulling him to the ground with considerable force.
+ Trinket went out like a light.
+ When he regained consciousness, he found that he was temporarily immobilized.
+ The boy burst out laughing.
+ 'Well?
+ Had enough?
+ Give in?'
+ But Trinket was not finished yet.
+ He eventually succeeded in jumping up and landing a head-butt right in the boy's midriff.
+ The boy groaned and staggered back a few steps.
+ Trinket lunged after him, the boy leant a little to one side, put out a leg, and brought him tumbling to the floor.
+ Trinket reached out frantically as he fell, clutching at the boy's legs, and the two of them went down together.
+ They struggled for a while, each one gaining the upper hand for a moment, then going under, ringing the changes more than a dozen times, until finally they were in a complete deadlock, panting and staring fixedly at each other.
+ And then suddenly, at exactly the same moment, they both burst out laughing.
+ There was something about the clinch they were in that struck them both as terribly funny.
+ Slowly they let go.
+ The boy reached out a hand and began removing the bandages from Trinket's face.
+ 'What did you want to wrap your face up for?'
+ Trinket was about to snatch the bandages back, when he reflected that the boy had already seen most of his face and that it would achieve nothing.
+ 'I didn't want anyone to recognize me taking the cake.'
+ 'I see,' said the boy, chuckling and standing up.
+ 'So you make a habit of coming here and taking food, do you?'
+ 'No, I don't,' said Trinket.
+ As he rose to his feet, he stole a closer glance at his opponent: there was something at once impressive and attractive about the boy's features, a clearness of brow, a noble look in the eyes, an expression in the face, that drew Trinket towards him.
+ 'What's your name?' asked the boy.
+ 'Laurel,' replied Trinket.
+ 'And yours?'
+ After a moment's hesitation the boy replied: 'Mine's . . .
+ People call me Misty.
+ Which of the Goong-goongs do you work for?'
+ 'I'm with Hai Goong-goong.'
+ Misty nodded, and used Trinket's bandages to mop the sweat from his brow.
+ He helped himself to a cake.
+ Trinket was not going to be outdone.
+ If this young fellow could continue calmly scavenging, so could he.
+ He popped another slice of layer cake nonchalantly into his mouth.
+ 'I can see you've never done any wrestling,' laughed Misty.
+ 'But you're a quick mover all the same!
+ You managed to get away that time.
+ A few more goes and I'd have had you, though—'
+ 'Is that right?' protested Trinket.
+ 'Come on then: let's see—'
+ 'At you!'
+ The two of them set to again.
+ Misty clearly knew a few wrestling moves, and was the older and stronger of the two.
+ But Trinket had the benefit of years of experience in the streets of Yangzhou, where he'd had to deal with all manner of bullies and thugs, big and small, and in this respect he was definitely Misty's superior.
+ But for one reason or another (partly Whiskers' lecture, partly because this was, after all, only 'play-fighting' and not in deadly earnest) he didn't avail himself of a single one of the dubious tricks at which he excelled: the finger-twist, the pigtail-pull, the throat-bite, the eye-poke, the ear-yank, the grip-o'-the-balls.
+ As a result he eventually came off the loser again, with Misty sitting on his back, and no hope of throwing him off.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'Never!'
+ Misty burst out laughing and jumped up.
+ Trinket went for him again, but this time Misty shook his head.
+ 'No more for today!
+ Tomorrow, if you like.
+ But I don't see the point: you'll never be able to beat me!'
+ Trinket was not having this.
+ He pulled a piece of silver from his pocket, about three taels' worth: 'Tomorrow we fight for money!
+ You'd better bring three taels yourself!'
+ Misty seemed somewhat taken aback by this but then concurred.
+ 'All right.
+ We fight for money.
+ I'll bring my stake.
+ See you here at noon tomorrow.'
+ 'Live or die!
+ Excellent kungfu!
+ My word is my wand!' cried Trinket, and Misty burst out laughing.
+ 'It certainly is!'
+ And with that he left the room.
+ Trinket helped himself to a big handful of cakes and stuffed them inside his jacket.
+ Then he too left the room.
+ As he went, he found himself thinking of Whiskers' heroic stand at Victory Hill: now there was a man!
+ Whiskers had pledged his word to fight, and nothing could have stood between him and the fulfilment of that pledge, not the walls of his prison cell, not even his own wounds.
+ How many times Trinket had sat listening to the storytellers' tales, and how many times he'd dreamed of one day being a hero himself—Trinket the Brave Man and True!
+ Now, he'd said he would fight, and there could be no going back!
+ He had pledged his word!
+ And if he was to be a man of his word, he would have to forget about escape—at least for the time being.
+ He would have to go back to the old eunuch that evening.
+ He therefore decided to retrace his steps to the room where they had been gambling earlier in the day — and from there he took a direction opposite to the one he had taken earlier (which had led him deeper and deeper into the mansion), followed two covered walkways, vaguely remembered one or two shrubs he had passed by in the courtyards on the way, and somehow, by hook or by crook, navigated his way back to the old eunuch's quarters.
+ As he drew near the entrance, he heard the old fellow coughing.
+ 'Goong-goong?
+ Are you feeling any better?'
+ 'Better my arse!' muttered the eunuch.
+ 'Get a move on, will you!'
+ Trinket hurried over to him.
+ Old Hai was sitting at a table (the broken one had been replaced).
+ ''How much did you win?'
+ 'I won a dozen taels,' replied Trinket.
+ 'But I—'
+ 'You what?' snapped the eunuch.
+ 'I lent them to Wu.'
+ In actual fact he'd won twenty and lent twelve to Wu: the remaining eight he wished to hang on to.
+ Old Hai scowled at him.
+ 'What do you want to go lending money to that Wu fellow for?
+ He doesn't even work in the Upper Library, dammit!
+ You could at least have lent to one of the Wen brothers!'
+ Trinket didn't follow this at all.
+ 'But they didn't ask me for a loan.'
+ 'Then you should have found a way to offer one.
+ Have you forgotten everything I ever told you?'
+ 'It's just that. . . what with killing that boy yesterday, I can't seem to think straight, it must have gone clean out of my mind.
+ I ought to have lent the money to one of the Wen brothers, that's right, I remember now, you told me.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'What's so alarming about killing?
+ I suppose you're only a child though, you've never done it before.
+ Now, about the book— I hope you haven't forgotten.'
+ 'The book?'
+ Old Hai humphed again.
+ 'Have you forgotten everything?'
+ 'Goong-goong, I... I've got this terrible headache . . . and I'm so worried about your cough ...
+ I just can't keep my mind on anything!'
+ 'Very well.
+ Come over here!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked a few steps closer.
+ 'I'm going to repeat it for you once more.
+ Forget this time, and I shall kill you.'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!' piped Trinket, thinking to himself, 'Just say it once, and I'll never forget it, not in a hundred years!'
+ 'Listen: you're to win money from the Wen brothers.
+ Then you're to lend them money, the more the better.
+ Then, after a few days you're to ask them to take you to the Upper Library.
+ They'll have to say yes, if they owe you money.
+ If they try to fob you off, you tell them that I'll report them to the Chief Librarian;
+ I'll tell him they refuse to pay their debts, and ask him to wait for His Majesty to—'
+ 'His Majesty?'
+ 'What?'
+ 'Oh . . . nothing.'
+ 'If they ask you why you want to go to the Upper Library, you say that you're longing for a glimpse of His Majesty, so you just want a chance to perform some little errand there.
+ Of course the Wen brothers won't let you see His Majesty; when they take you, His Majesty won't even be in the Upper Library.
+ That's when you find a way to steal the book . . .'
+ Something was beginning to fall into place in Trinket's mind, with all these references to 'His Majesty'.
+ 'Could this be the Palace, the Forbidden City itself!' he thought silently to himself.
+ 'Have I been wrong all this time, about it being the number one whore-house in Peking?
+ Aiyeeh! Of course!
+ That must be it!
+ These people are all eunuchs working for the Emperor. . .'
+ As a boy, Trinket had heard people talk about the Emperor, the Empress, Princes and Princesses, Palace Ladies, Palace Eunuchs, but he hadn't the faintest idea what these grand beings actually looked like.
+ All he knew was that the Emperor wore a Dragon Robe.
+ In Yangzhou he'd seen all sorts of plays, but the eunuchs on stage were never dressed anything like Old Hai, or his new gambling friend Wu.
+ And the stage eunuchs always held those long horsehair fly-whisks, and kept waving them around in the air.
+ And anyway, he had never understood a word of what they were singing.
+ So this was what real Palace Eunuchs were like!
+ 'Cripes!' he cried silently to himself.
+ That means I've become a little Palace Eunuch myself!
+ I've lost my balls!'
+ 'Did you take in what I said just now?' growled Old Hai.
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong, yes!
+ I've got to go to His Majesty's Upper Library!'
+ 'And why have you got to go?
+ To play?'
+ 'To steal a book.'
+ 'Which book?'
+ 'I... I... can't remember.'
+ 'I'll tell you once more.
+ And this time, don't forget.
+ It's a Sutra, called the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.
+ It's very old.
+ There are several copies of it.
+ Just bring them all to me.
+ Got it?
+ Now—what's it called?'
+ 'The Sutra in Forty-Two Sections.'
+ Trinket sounded very pleased with himself.
+ 'What are you so happy about?' snapped the old eunuch.
+ 'I'm just happy about. . . about remembering it the minute you mentioned it again.'
+ In actual fact, when Old Hai had spoken of stealing a book, Trinket's heart had sunk.
+ The 'stealing' part was no problem; it was the 'book' part that presented what seemed at first like an insurmountable obstacle.
+ The trouble was that Trinket could barely read.
+ He couldn't decipher more than a word or two, let alone book titles.
+ Then he heard the eunuch say that the book was the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections, and his heart leapt: what the word Sutra looked like he had not the foggiest notion, but numbers were something he could read.
+ So the second part of the title was a walk-over!
+ Wasn't that sufficient reason to be pleased?
+ 'Now,' went on Old Hai, 'if you go stealing books from the Upper Library, you've got to be very smart, very careful.
+ If anyone spots you, you're as good as dead.
+ A hundred times over.'
+ 'I know,' said Trinket.
+ He suddenly thought of something, and added: 'If I did get caught, I'd never dream of dragging you into it, Goong-goong!'
+ Old Hai heaved a strangely unconcerned sigh.
+ 'Drag me in or drag me out, it's all the same to me . . .'
+ He had another coughing fit, and went on: 'You've done quite well today.
+ At least you've won something.
+ What did the others think?
+ Were they suspicious?'
+ Trinket chortled.
+ 'Oh no, why should they be?'
+ He was about to boast, but thought better of it.
+ 'Well then, don't sit around doing nothing.
+ Eat your lunch, and if you've no jobs to do, go and practise with the dice!'
+ 'Yes, Goong-goong!'
+ Trinket walked across to the dining-table, where bowls and chopsticks had been laid, four dishes and a soup, all untouched.
+ 'Goong-goong, aren't you eating?
+ Let me serve you!'
+ 'I'm not hungry.
+ You go ahead.'
+ Trinket was delighted, and without bothering to fill his bowl with rice, he attacked a dish of stewed meat.
+ The food was cold, but he was hungry, and to him it was indescribably delicious.
+ 'I wonder where they get the food from?
+ Oh well, I'd better not ask too many questions, just keep my eyes open and pick things up one at a time.
+ If this really is the Forbidden City, then old Wu and the Wen brothers and little Misty must all of them be eunuchs.
+ I wonder what the actual Emperor and Empress look like?
+ I must try and get a look.
+ Then one day when I'm back at home, ha ha!
+ I can tell people who I've seen.
+ Just imagine the look on their faces!
+ 'I wonder if Whiskers got out safe?
+ They didn't say anything about someone getting caught when we were gambling . . .
+ Most probably he got away all right.'
+ When he had finished eating, he went through the motions of practising with the dice so as not to arouse the old eunuch's suspicions, throwing them noisily across the table.
+ After a while his eyelids began to feel heavy.
+ He hadn't slept all night.
+ In minutes he was sound asleep.
+ He slept till evening, when a junior eunuch brought in their supper.
+ Trinket waited on Old Hai as he ate a bowl of rice, and then helped him to bed.
+ Afterwards he went to lie down on the smaller bed, thinking to himself: 'Tomorrow, whatever else happens, I must win my fight with Misty!'
+ He lay there, trying to remember Whiskers' fight with the wrestlers in the tavern.
+ He wished he could remember the details more clearly.
+ 'If only I'd taken old Whiskers up on his offer!
+ With him as my teacher I could have learnt a thing or two on the way up here, and then I could have put Misty in his place—even though he is stronger than I am.
+ If he gets me on the ground again tomorrow, I'll die of shame!
+ Little White Dragon—forget it!
+ I'd never dare show my face among the Brothers!'
+ Suddenly a thought occurred to him.
+ 'The wrestlers were no match for Whiskers; but Whiskers was no match for Old Turtle-head—why don't I get him to teach me a few moves?'
+ He asked the old eunuch at once: 'Goong-goong, if you want me to go stealing books from the Upper Library, there's just one problem.'
+ 'What's that?'
+ 'Well, after today's game, I met this . . . little eunuch, who stood in my way and asked me to give him some of my winnings.
+ I wouldn't, so we ended up fighting.
+ That's why I was so late for lunch.'
+ 'He beat you, presumably.'
+ 'He was bigger than me, and stronger.
+ He says I've got to fight with him every day, until I can beat him.
+ Then he'll let me off.'
+ 'What was the little fellow's name?
+ Which part of the Palace was he from?'
+ 'He's called Misty.
+ I don't know where he's from.'
+ 'You must have been acting too pleased with yourself after your win—that's probably what annoyed him.'
+ 'I won't let him get away with it!
+ I'm going to fight him tomorrow!
+ But I just wonder if I can beat him.'
+ Old Hai humphed.
+ 'You want to wangle some moves out of me, don't you?
+ The answer's no, so it's no use trying.'
+ 'Clever Old Turtle-head!' thought Trinket, silently cursing to himself.
+ 'This little fellow Misty,' he began again, out loud, 'he wasn't such a good fighter really.
+ I wouldn't need to learn much to beat him.
+ I don't need you to teach me, either.
+ I had him on the ground today, it's just that he was too strong for me: he managed to buck me off.
+ Tomorrow I'll get a proper grip on him.
+ That should fix the little bugger!'
+ He had been trying so hard all day to keep his language clean.
+ 'If you want to stop him bucking you, that's easy!' said Old Hai.
+ 'I didn't think it would be hard.
+ I just get him in a good shoulder grip, then—'
+ 'That's no good!
+ Bucking comes from the lower back.
+ You have to knee him on the vital point in the small of his back.
+ Come over here and I'll show you.'
+ Trinket hopped out of bed and was at Old Hai's bedside in a trice.
+ The old eunuch felt around in the small of his back and pressed lightly.
+ Trinket felt his whole body go limp.
+ 'Can you remember that?'
+ 'Yes, I'll try it out tomorrow.
+ Let's hope it works.'
+ 'Works?
+ Of course it will work.
+ It's absolutely foolproof!'
+ Old Hai reached out his hand and pressed lightly on either side of Trinket's neck.
+ Trinket let out a gasp of pain.
+ He had a choking sensation in his chest, and could hardly breathe.
+ 'Get him on these two points,' said Hai, 'and he'll have no strength to fight with.'
+ Trinket was pleased as punch.
+ 'Well, that's it then!
+ Tomorrow, I win!'
+ Trinket went back to bed, and fell asleep dreaming of Misty surrendering to the Little White Dragon!
+ Wu came to fetch him again the following morning.
+ It was the Wen brothers' turn to be bankers.
+ Trinket had soon managed to win over twenty taels off them.
+ It was a bad day for the bank altogether.
+ In less than an hour they had to pay out fifty taels, which was all they had.
+ Trinket lent them another twenty, and by the end of the day's play that was all gone too.
+ All Trinket could think about was his appointment with Misty.
+ As soon as the gambling was over, he hurried to the 'cake room'.
+ The table was piled high again with good things to eat, and this time Trinket tucked in with a vengeance.
+ Then he heard the flip-ploy of cloth boots again.
+ He ducked under the table, just in case it turned out to be someone other than Misty.
+ 'Laurel!
+ Laurel!'
+ It was Misty's voice calling from the doorway.
+ Trinket sprang out, and with a big grin on his face, called back: 'Live or die!'
+ 'I live, you die!' laughed Misty, striding into the room.
+ Trinket noticed at once that he was wearing a completely new outfit, and couldn't help feeling jealous.
+ 'Huh!' he muttered to himself.
+ 'Just you wait!
+ You won't be so pleased when I've made a big rip in that smart gown of yours!'
+ He let out a great war cry and threw himself straight into the attack.
+ 'Excellent kungfu!' cried his opponent, grappling him with both arms, and delivering a swinging kick with his left foot.
+ Trinket lost his balance, tottered and fell, bringing Misty down with him.
+ As Trinket rolled and spun round, he managed to pin Misty face down on the floor.
+ He remembered Old Hai's little demonstration, and felt for the vital point in the small of Misty's back.
+ But he had never done this sort of thing before, and it was hard to find the point at his very first attempt.
+ Misty meanwhile had spun round, gripped Trinket's left arm, and twisted it back.
+ 'Hey!' screamed Trinket, 'that's not fair!
+ Twisting my arm like that!'
+ That's what wresding's all about!' laughed Misty.
+ 'Who says it's not fair!'
+ Trinket took advantage of the fact that Misty was busy speaking and momentarily off his guard, to launch a counter-attack.
+ He brought his head down with all his might on to Misty's back, shot his right hand under his armpit, and flung him up into the air as hard as he could.
+ Misty went flying over his head and landed widi a crash on the ground.
+ He leapt to his feet again, crying: 'So you know the Bucking Antelope too!'
+ Trinket had never even heard of the Antelope.
+ He'd just been improvising and thrashing around, and somehow or other had managed to outwit his opponent.
+ He was pretty chuffed.
+ 'The Antelope is nothing!' he cried.
+ 'I know plenty more, and they're a lot worse.
+ You haven't seen anything yet!'
+ 'Perfect!' cried Misty in delight.
+ 'Go to!'
+ Trinket engaged in a quick moment's reflection: 'Misty has obviously had lessons—that's why he keeps getting the better of me.
+ But that's no problem.
+ All I have to do is watch his moves and copy them.
+ He can throw me a few times— I'll soon get the hang of it.'
+ Misty started coming at him.
+ Trinket lunged back, but it was a feint: Misty stepped aside, let Trinket surge on, and chopped him on the back with the side of his hand.
+ Trinket was unable to rein himself in, and went crashing to the ground.
+ Misty gave a great cry of delight, leapt forwards, and planted himself astride Trinket's back.
+ 'Surrender?'
+ 'No!
+ Never!' protested Trinket, but when he tried to straighten himself up and get to his feet, he felt a sudden numbness in the small of his back.
+ Misty had beaten him to it!
+ He had pressed on exactly the spot Old Hai had been trying to teach him the previous evening.
+ After struggling futilely for a moment longer, he finally gave up.
+ 'All right!' he cried.
+ This time I surrender!'
+ Misty laughed and set him free.
+ As Trinket got up, he suddenly shot out one of his feet.
+ Misty toppled over, and Trinket punched him in the small of the back.
+ Misty gave a cry of pain and bent double.
+ Trinket leapt on him from behind and gripped him tightly round the throat with both his hands.
+ Misty lost consciousness for an instant, and fell flat on the ground.
+ Trinket held on and demanded triumphantly: 'Surrender?'
+ Misty gave a little grunt.
+ Then suddenly he drove his elbows hard into Trinket's ribs, and Trinket went reeling over on to the floor, screaming with pain, certain that he must have several broken bones.
+ Misty spun round and sat astride his chest, once more the victor, though this time a winded and exhausted one, panting for breath.
+ 'Do . . . you . . . give in?'
+ 'Give in my arse!' panted Trinket back.
+ The answer's no!
+ A hundred times no!
+ You were lucky just now, that's all!'
+ 'Then get up ... and fight!'
+ Trinket stretched and heaved with all his might (what little of it he had left), but his opponent was still astride his aching ribs, and his efforts were to no avail.
+ After several more minutes of futile struggle, he surrendered yet again.
+ Misty rose to his feet.
+ His arms were sore and limp with exhaustion.
+ Trinket staggered to his feet and took a few tottering steps across the room.
+ 'Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I'll take you on again . . . and I'll beat you for sure!'
+ Misty laughed.
+ 'If we fight a hundred times, you'll. . . you'll always lose!
+ If you've got the guts, come again tomorrow!'
+ 'You're probably the one who's not got the guts!
+ I'm not afraid.
+ Live or die!
+ My word is my wand!'
+ They had both been quite carried away by the fighting, and neither of them had mentioned the money, or the bet they had laid.
+ Or to be strictly accurate, Misty didn't mention it, and since he didn't, Trinket was more than happy to pretend to have forgotten.
+ If he had emerged the victor, it would have been a very different story.
+
+ 靴声响到门口，那人走了进来。
+ 韦小宝从桌底下瞧出去，见那靴子不大，来人当是个和自己差不多年纪的男孩，当即放心，将烧饼放入口中，却也不敢咀嚼，只是用唾沫去浸湿烧饼，待浸软了吞咽。
+ 只听得咀嚼之声发自桌边，那男孩在取糕点而食，韦小宝心想：“也是个偷食的，我大叫一声冲出去，这小鬼定会吓得逃走，我便可大嚼一顿了。”
+ 又想：“刚才真笨，该当把几碟点心倒在袋里便走。
+ 这里又不是丽春院，难道短了什么，就定是把帐算在我头上？”
+ 忽听得砰砰声响，那男孩在敲击什么东西，韦小宝好奇心起，探头张望，只见那男孩约莫十四五岁年纪，身穿短打，伸拳击打梁上垂下来的一只布袋。
+ 他打了一会，又去击打墙边的皮人。
+ 那男孩一拳打在皮人胸口，随即双臂伸出，抱住了皮人的腰，将之按倒在地，所用手法，便似昨日在酒馆中所见到那些摔交的满人一般。
+ 韦小宝哈哈一笑，从桌底钻了出来，说道：“皮人是死的，有什么好玩？
+ 我来跟你玩。”
+ 那男孩见他突然现身，脸上又缠了白布，微微一惊，但听他说来陪自己玩，登时脸现喜色，道：“好，你上来！”
+ 韦小宝扑将过去，便去扭男孩的双臂。
+ 那男孩一侧身，右手一勾，韦小宝站立不住，立时倒了。
+ 那男孩道：“呸，你不会摔交。 ”
+ 韦小宝道：“谁说不会？”
+ 跃起身来，去抱他左腿。
+ 那男孩伸手抓他后心，韦小宝一闪，那男孩便抓了个空。
+ 韦小宝记得茅十八在酒馆中与七名大汉相斗的手法，突然左手出拳，击向那男孩下颚，砰的一声，正好打中。
+ 那男孩一怔，眼中露出怒色。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“呸，你不会摔交！”
+ 那男孩一言不发，左手虚晃，韦小宝斜身避让，那男孩手肘斗出，正撞在他的腰里。
+ 韦小宝大叫一声，痛得蹲了下来。
+ 那男孩双手从他背后腋下穿上，十指互握，扣住了他后颈，将他上身越压越低。
+ 韦小宝右足反踢。
+ 那男孩双手猛推，将韦小宝身子送出，拍的一声，跌了个狗吃屎。
+ 韦小宝大怒，翻滚过去，用力抱住了男孩的双腿，使劲拖拉，那男孩站立不住，倒了下来，正好压在韦小宝身上。
+ 这男孩身材比韦小宝高大，立即以手肘逼住韦小宝后颈。
+ 韦小宝呼吸不畅，拼命伸足力撑，翻了几下，终于翻到了上面，反压在那男孩身上。
+ 只见他人小身轻压不住对方，又给那男孩翻了上来压住。
+ 韦小宝极是滑溜，放开男孩双腿，钻到他身后，大力一脚踢中他屁股。
+ 那男孩反手抓住他右腿使劲一扯，韦小宝仰面便倒。
+ 那男孩扑上去扠住他头颈，喝道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝左足钩转，在那男孩腰间擦了几下，那男孩怕痒，嘻的一笑，手劲便即松了。
+ 韦小宝乘机跃起，抱住他头颈。
+ 那男孩使出摔交手法，抓住了韦小宝后领，把他重重往地下一摔。
+ 韦小宝一阵晕眩，动弹不得。
+ 那男孩哈哈大笑，说道：“服了么？”
+ 韦小宝猛地跃起，一个头锤，正中对方小腹。
+ 那男孩哼了一声，倒退几步。
+ 韦小宝冲将上去，那男孩身子微斜，横脚钩扫。
+ 韦小宝摔将下来，狠命抱住了他大腿。
+ 两人同时跌倒。
+ 一时那男孩翻在上面，一时韦小宝翻在上面，翻了十七八个滚，终于两人互相扭住，呼呼喘气，突然之间，两人不约而同的哈哈大笑，都觉如此扭打十分好玩，慢慢放开了手。
+ 那男孩一伸手，扯开了韦小宝脸上的白布，笑道：“包住了头干么？”
+ 韦小宝吃了一惊，便欲伸手去夺，但想对方既已看到自己真面目，再加遮掩也是无用，笑道：“包住了脸，免得进来偷食时给人认了出来。”
+ 那男孩站起身来，笑道：“好啊，原来你时时到这里偷食。”
+ 韦小宝道：“时时倒也不见得。”
+ 说着也站了起来，见那男孩眉清目秀，神情轩昂，对他颇有好感。
+ 那男孩问道：“你叫什么名字？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我叫小桂子，你呢？”
+ 那男孩略一迟疑，道：“我叫…… 叫小玄子。
+ 你是哪个公公手下的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我跟海老公。”
+ 小玄子点了点头，就用韦小宝那块白布抹了抹额头汗水，拿起一块点心便吃。
+ 韦小宝不肯服输，心想你大胆偷食，我的胆子也不小于你，当即拿起一块千层糕，肆无忌惮的放入口中。
+ 小玄子笑了笑，道：“你没学过摔交，可是手脚挺灵活，我居然压你不住，再打几个回合，你便输了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“那也不见得，咱们再打一会试试。”
+ 小玄子道：“很好！”
+ 两人又扭打起来。
+ 小玄子似乎会一些摔交之技，年纪和力气又都大过韦小宝，不过韦小宝在扬州市井间身经百战，与大流氓、小无赖也不知打过了多少场架，扭打的经验远比小玄子丰富。
+ 总算他记得茅十八的教训，而与小玄子的扭打只是游戏，并非拼命，什么拗手指、拉辫子、咬咽喉、抓眼珠、扯耳朵、捏阴囊等等拿手的成名绝技，倒也一项没使。
+ 这么一来，那就难以取胜，扭打几回合，韦小宝终于给他骑在背上，再也翻不了身。
+ 小玄子笑道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“死也不降。”
+ 小玄子哈哈一笑，跳了起来。
+ 韦小宝扑上去又欲再打。
+ 小玄子摇手笑道：“今天不打了，明天再来。
+ 不过你不是我对手，再打也没用。”
+ 韦小宝不服气，摸出一锭银子，约有三两上下，说道：“明天再打，不过要赌钱，你也拿三两银子出来。”
+ 小玄子一怔，道：“好，咱们打个彩头。
+ 明天我带银子来，中午时分，在这里再打过。”
+ 韦小宝道：“死约会不见不散，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 这“驷马难追”的“驷”他总是记不住，只得随口含糊带过。
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，说道：“不错，大丈夫一言既出，…… 马难追。”
+ 说着出屋而去。
+ 韦小宝抓了一大把点心，放在怀里，走出屋去，想起茅十八与人订约比武，虽在狱中，也要越狱赴约，虽然身受重伤，仍是誓守信约，在得胜山下等候两位高手，这等气概，当真令人佩服。
+ 他听说书先生说英雄故事，听得多了，时时幻想自己也是个大英雄、大豪杰，既与人订下比武之约，岂可不到？
+ 心想明日要来，今晚须得回到海老公处，于是顺着原路，慢慢觅到适才赌钱之处。
+ 先前向着右首走，以致越走越远，这次折而向左，走过两道回廊，依稀记得庭园中的花木曾经见过，一路寻将过去，终于回到海老公的住所。
+ 他走到门口，便听到海老公的咳嗽之声，问道：“公公，你好些了吗？”
+ 海老公沉声道：“好你个屁！
+ 快进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进屋去，只见海老公坐在椅上，那张倒塌了的桌子已换过了一张。
+ 海老公问道：“赢了多少？”
+ 韦小宝道：“赢了十几两银子，不过…… 不过……”
+ 海老公道：“不过怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不过借给了老吴。”
+ 其实他赢了二十几两，除了借给老吴之外，还有八九两剩下，生怕海老公要他交出来，不免报帐时不尽不实。
+ 海老公脸一沉，说道：“借给老吴这小子有什么用？
+ 他又不是上书房的。
+ 怎么不借给温家哥儿俩？”
+ 韦小宝不明缘由，道：“温家哥儿没向我借。”
+ 海老公道：“没向你借，你不会想法子借给他吗？
+ 我吩咐你的话，难道都忘了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我……我昨晚杀了这小孩子，吓得什么都忘了。
+ 要借给温家哥儿，不错，不错，你老人家确是吩咐过的。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“杀个把人，有什么了不起啦？
+ 不过你年纪小，没杀过人，那也难怪。
+ 那部书，你没有忘记？”
+ 韦小宝道：“那部书…… 书…… 我…… 我……”
+ 海老公又哼了一声，道：“当真什么都忘记了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“公公，我…… 我头痛得很，怕…… 怕得厉害，你又咳得这样，我真担心，什…… 什么都胡涂了。”
+ 海老公道：“好，你过来！
+ “韦小宝道：“ 是！”
+ 走近了几步。
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你倘若再不记得，我杀了你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是。”
+ 心想：“你只要再说一遍，我便过一百年也不会忘记。”
+ 海老公道：“你去赢温家哥儿俩的银子，他们输了，便借给他们，借得越多越好。
+ 过得几日，你便要他们带你到上书房去。
+ 他们欠了你钱，不敢不依，如果推三阻四，你就说我会去跟上书房总管乌老公算帐。
+ 温家兄弟还不出钱来，自会乘皇上不在……”
+ 韦小宝道：“皇上？”
+ 海老公道：“怎么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“没…… 没什么。”
+ 海老公道：“他们会问你，到上书房干什么，你就说人望高处，盼望见到皇上，能够在上书房当差。
+ 温家兄弟不会让你见到皇上的，带你过去时，皇上一定不会在书房里，你就得设法偷一部书出来。”
+ 韦小宝听他接连提到皇上，心念一动：“难道这里是皇宫？
+ 不是北京城里的大妓院？
+ 啊哟喂，是了，是了，若不是皇宫，哪有这等富丽堂皇的？
+ 这些人定是服侍皇帝的太监。”
+ 韦小宝虽然听人说过皇帝、皇后、太子、公主，以及宫女、太监，但只知道皇帝必穿龙袍，余人如何模样就不知道了。
+ 他在扬州看白戏倒也看得多了，不过戏台上的那些太监，服色打扮跟海老公、老吴他们全然不同，手中老是拿着一柄拂尘挥来挥去，唱的戏文没一句好听。
+ 他和海老公相处一日，又和老吴、温氏兄弟赌了半天钱，可不知他们便是太监，此刻听海老公这么说，这才渐渐省悟，心道：“啊哟，这么一来，我岂不变成了小太监？”
+ 海老公厉声道：“你听明白了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，是，明白了，要到皇…… 皇帝的书房去。”
+ 海老公道：“到皇上书房去干什么？
+ 去玩吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是去偷一部书出来。”
+ 海老公道：“偷什么书？”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个…… 这个…… 什么书…… 我…… 我记不起了。”
+ 海老公道：“我再说一遍，你好好记住了。
+ 那是一部佛经，叫做《四十二章经》，这部经书模样挺旧的，一共有好几本，你要一起拿来给我。
+ 记住了吗？
+ 叫什么？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“叫做《四十二章经》。”
+ 海老公听出他言语中的喜悦之意，问道：“有什么开心？”
+ 韦小宝道：“你一提，我便记起了，所以高兴。”
+ 原来他听海老公说要他到上书房去“偷书”，“偷”是绝不困难，“书”却难倒了人。
+ 他西瓜大的字识不了一担，要分辨什么书，可真杀了头也办不到，待得听说书名叫做《四十二章经》， 不由得心花怒放， “章经”是什么东西不得而知，“四十二”三字却是识得的，五个字中居然识得三个，不禁大为得意。
+ 海老公又道：“在上书房中偷书，手脚可得干净利落，假如让人瞧见了，你便有一百条性命也不在了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“这个我理会得，偷东西给人抓住了，还有好戏唱吗？”
+ 灵机一动，说道：“不过我决不会招你公公出来。”
+ 海老公叹道：“招不招我出来，也没什么相干了。”
+ 咳了一阵，说道：“今天你干得不错，居然赢到了钱。
+ 他们没起疑心罢？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“嘿嘿，没有，那怎么会？”
+ 想要自称自赞一番，终于忍住。
+ 海老公道：“别躲懒，左右闲着没事，便多练练。”
+ 韦小宝应了，走进房中，只见桌上放着碗筷，四菜一汤，没人动过，忙道：“公公，你不吃饭？
+ 我装饭给你。”
+ 海老公道：“不饿，不吃，你自己吃好了。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，来不及装饭，夹起一块红烧肉便吃，虽然菜肴早已冷了，吞入饥肠，却是说不出的美味，心想：“这些饭菜不知是谁送来的。
+ 这种小事别多问，睁大眼睛瞧着，慢慢的自会知道。”
+ 又想：“倘若这里真是皇宫，那么老吴、温家哥儿，还有那个小玄子都是太监了。
+ 却不知皇帝老儿和皇后娘娘是怎么一副模样，总得瞧个明白才是。
+ 回到扬州，嘿嘿，老子这说起来可就神气啦。
+ 茅大哥不知能不能逃出皇宫去？
+ 赌钱时没听到他们说起拿住了人，多半是逃出去啦。”
+ 吃完饭后，只怕海老公起疑，便拿着六颗骰子，在碗里玎玲玲的掷个不休，掷了一会，只觉眼皮渐重，昨晚一夜没睡，这时实在疲倦得很了，不多时便即睡着了。
+ 这一觉直睡到傍晚时分，跟着便有一名粗工太监送饭菜来。
+ 韦小宝服侍海老公吃了一碗饭，又服侍他上床睡觉，自己睡在小床上，心想：“明日最要紧的是和小玄子比武，要打得赢他才好。”
+ 闭上眼睛，回想茅十八在酒馆中跟满洲武士打架的手法，却模模糊糊的记不明白，不禁有些懊悔：“茅大哥要教我武艺，我偏不肯学，这一路上倘若学了来，小玄子力气虽比我大，又怎能是我对手？
+ 明天要是再给他骑住了翻不过来，输了银子不打紧，这般面子大失，我这‘小白龙’韦小宝在江湖上可也不用混啦。”
+ 突然心想：“满洲武士打不过茅大哥，茅大哥又不是老乌龟的对手，何不骗得老乌龟教我些本事？”
+ 当即说道：“公公，你要我去上书房拿几本书，这中间却有一桩难处。”
+ 海老公道：“什么难处？”
+ 韦小宝道：“今儿我赌了钱回来，遇到一个小…… 小太监，拦住了路，要我分钱给他，我不肯，他就跟我比武，说道我胜得过他，才放我走。
+ 我跟他斗了半天，所以…… 所以连饭也赶不及回来吃。”
+ 海老公道：“你输了，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他又高又壮，力气可比我大得多了。
+ 他说天天要跟我比武，哪一日我赢了他，他才不来缠我。”
+ 海老公道：“这小娃娃叫什么名字？
+ 哪一房的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“他叫小玄子，可不知是哪一房的。”
+ 海老公道：“定是你赢了钱，神气活现的惹人讨厌，否则别人也不会找上你。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我不服气，明儿再跟他斗过，就不知能不能赢。”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“你又在想求我教武功了。
+ 我说过不教，便是不教，你再绕弯儿也没用。”
+ 韦小宝心中暗惊：“老乌龟倒聪明，不上这当。”
+ 说道：“这小玄子又不会武功，我要赢他，也不用学什么武艺，谁要你教了？
+ 今儿我明明已骑在他身上，只不过他力气大， 翻了过来。
+ 明天我出力掀住他，这家伙未必就能乌龟翻身。”
+ 他这一天已然小心收敛，不说一句粗话，这时终于忍不住说了一句。
+ 海老公道：“你想他翻不过来，那也容易。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我想也没什么难处，我明天一定牢牢掀住他肩头。”
+ 海老公道：“哼，掀住肩头有什么用？
+ 能不能翻身，全仗腰间的力道，你须用膝盖抵住他后腰穴道。
+ 你过来，我指给你看。”
+ 韦小宝一骨碌从床上跃下，走到他床前，海老公摸到他后腰一处所在，轻轻一按，韦小宝便觉全身酸软无力。
+ 海老公道：“记住了吗？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是，明儿我便去试试，也不知成不成？”
+ 海老公怒道：“什么成不成？
+ 那是百发百中，万试万灵。”
+ 又伸手在他头颈两侧轻轻一按。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声叫了出来，只觉胸口一阵窒息，气也透不过来。
+ 海老公道：“你如出力拿他这两处穴道，他就没力气和你相斗。”
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“成了，明儿我准能赢他。”
+ 这个“准”字，是日间赌钱时学的。
+ 回到床上睡倒，想起明天“小白龙”韦小宝打得小玄子大叫“投降”，十分得意。
+ 次日老吴又来叫他去赌钱。
+ 那温家兄弟一个叫温有道，一个叫温有方，轮到两兄弟做庄时，韦小宝使出手段，赢了他们二十几两银子。
+ 他兄弟俩手气又坏，不到半个时辰，五十两本钱已输干了。
+ 韦小宝借了二十两给他们，到停赌时，温家兄弟又将这二十两银子输了。
+ 韦小宝心中记着的只是和小玄子比武之事，赌局一散，便奔到那间屋去。
+ 只见桌上仍是放着许多碟点心，他取了几块吃了，听得靴子声响，只怕来的不是小玄子，心想先钻入桌底再说，却听得小玄子在门外叫道：“小桂子，小桂子！”
+ 韦小宝跃到门口，笑道：“死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子也笑道：“哈哈，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 走进屋子。
+ 韦小宝见他一身新衣，甚是华丽，不禁颇有妒意，寻思：“待会我扯破你的新衣，叫你神气不得！”
+ 一声大叫，便向他扑了过去。
+ 小玄子喝道：“来得好。”
+ 扭住他双臂，左足横扫过去。
+ 韦小宝站立不定，晃了几下，一交跌倒，拉着小玄子也倒了下来。
+ 韦小宝一个打滚，翻身压在小玄子背上，记得海老公所教，便伸手去拿他后腰穴道，可是他没练过打穴拿穴的功夫，这穴道岂能一拿便着？
+ 拿的部位稍偏，小玄子已然翻了过来，抓住他左臂，用力向后拗转。
+ 韦小宝叫道：“啊哟，你不要脸，拗人手臂么？”
+ 小玄子笑道：“学摔交就是学拗人手臂，什么不要脸了？”
+ 韦小宝趁他说话之时一口气浮了，全身用力向他后腰撞去，将背心撞在他头上，右手从他臂腋里穿了过来，用劲向上甩出。
+ 小玄子的身子从他头顶飞过，拍的一声，掉在地下。
+ 小玄子翻身跳起，道：“原来你也会这招‘羚羊挂角’。”
+ 韦小宝不知“羚羊挂角”是什么手法，误打误撞的胜了一招，大为得意，说道：“这‘羚羊挂角’算得什么，我还有许多厉害手法没使出来呢。”
+ 小玄子喜道：“那再好也没有了，咱们再来比划。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“原来你学过武功，怪不得打你不过。
+ 可是你使一招，我学一招，最多给你多摔几交，你的法子我总能学了来。”
+ 眼见小玄子又扑将过来，便也猛力扑去。
+ 不料小玄子这一扑却是假的，待韦小宝扑到，他早已收势，侧身让开，伸手在他背上一推。
+ 韦小宝扑了个空，本已收脚不住，再给他顺力推出，登时砰的一声，重重摔倒。
+ 小玄子大声欢呼，跳过来骑在他背上，叫道：“投不投降？”
+ 韦小宝道：“不降！”
+ 欲待挺腰翻起，蓦地里腰间一阵酸麻，后腰两处穴道已被小玄子屈指抵住，那正是海老公昨晚所教的手法，自己虽然学会了，却给对方抢先用出。
+ 韦小宝挣了几下，始终难以挣脱，只得叫道：“好，降你一次！”
+ 小玄子哈哈大笑，放了他起身。
+ 韦小宝突然伸足绊去，小玄子斜身欲跌，韦小宝顺手出拳，正中他腰间。
+ 小玄子痛哼一声，弯下腰来，韦小宝自后扑上，双手箍住他头颈两侧。
+ 小玄子一阵晕眩，伏倒在地。
+ 韦小宝大喜，双手紧箍不放，问道：“投不投降？”
+ 小玄子哼了一声，突然间双肋向后力撞。
+ 韦小宝胸口肋骨痛得便欲折断，大叫一声，仰天倒下。
+ 小玄子翻身坐在他胸口，这一回合又是胜了，只是气喘吁吁，也已累得上气不接下气，问道：“服…… 服…… 服了没有？”
+ 韦小宝道：“服个屁！
+ 不…… 服，一百个…… 一…… 一万个不服。
+ 你不过碰巧赢了。”
+ 小玄子道：“你不服，便…… 便起来打过。”
+ 韦小宝双手撑地，只想使劲弹起来，但胸口要害处给对手按住了，什么力气都使不出来，僵持良久，只得又投降一次。
+ 小玄子站起身来，只觉双臂酸软。
+ 韦小宝勉力站起，身子摇摇摆摆，说道：“明儿…… 明儿再来打过，非…… 非叫你投降不可。”
+ 小玄子笑道：“再打一百次，你也…… 也…… 也是个输，你有胆子，明天就再来打。”
+ 韦小宝道：“只怕你没胆子呢，我为什么没胆子？
+ 死约会，不见不散。”
+ 小玄子道：“好，死约会，不见不散。”
+ 两人打得兴起，都不提赌银子的事。
+ 小玄子既然不提，韦小宝乐得假装忘记，倘若是他赢了，银子自然非要不可。
+
+ Qin-shi was surprised to hear Bao-yu call out her childhood name in his sleep, but did not like to pursue the matter.
+ As she stood wondering, Bao-yu, who was still bemused after his dream and not yet in full possession of his faculties, got out of bed and began to stretch himself and to adjust his clothes, assisted by Aroma.
+ As she was doing up his trousers, her hand, chancing to stray over his thigh, came into contact with something cold and sticky which caused her to draw it back in alarm and ask him if he was all right.
+ Instead of answering, he merely reddened and gave the hand a squeeze.
+ Aroma had always been an intelligent girl.
+ She was, in any case, a year or two older than Bao-yu and had recently begun to have some understanding of the facts of life.
+ Observing the condition that Bao-yu was in, she therefore had more than an inkling of what had happened.
+ Abandoning her question, she busied herself with his clothes, her cheeks suffused by a crimson blush of embarrassment.
+ When he was properly dressed, they went to rejoin Grandmother Jia and the rest.
+ There they bolted a hurried supper and then slipped back to the other house, where Aroma profited from the absence of the nurses and the other maids to take out a clean undergarment for Bao-yu to change into.
+ 'Please, Aroma,' Bao-yu shamefacedly entreated as she helped him change, 'please don't tell anyone!'
+ Equally ill at ease, Aroma giggled softly.
+ 'Why did you...?' she began to ask.
+ Then, after glancing cautiously around, began again.
+ 'Where did that stuff come from?'
+ Bao-yu blushed furiously and said nothing.
+ Aroma stared at him curiously and continued to giggle.
+ After much hesitation he proceeded to give her a detailed account of his dream.
+ But when he came to the part of it in which he made love to Two-in-one, Aroma threw herself forward with a shriek of laughter and buried her face in her hands.
+ Bao-yu had long been attracted by Aroma's somewhat coquettish charms and tugged at her purposefully, anxious to share with her the lesson he had learned from Disenchantment.
+ Aroma knew that when Grandmother Jia gave her to Bao-yu she had intended her to belong to him in the fullest possible sense, and so, having no good reason for refusing him, she allowed him, after a certain amount of coy resistance, to have his way with her.
+ From then on Bao-yu treated Aroma with even greater consideration than before, whilst Aroma for her part redoubled the devotion with which she served him.
+ But of this, for the time being, no more.
+ The inhabitants of the Rong mansion, if we include all of them from the highest to the humblest in our total, numbered more than three hundred souls, who produced between them a dozen or more incidents in a single day.
+ Faced with so exuberant an abundance of material, what principle should your chronicler adopt to guide him in his selection of incidents to record?
+ As we pondered the problem where to begin, it was suddenly solved for us by the appearance as it were out of nowhere of someone from a very humble, very insignificant household who, on the strength of a very tenuous, very remote family connection with the Jias, turned up at the Rong mansion on the very day of which we are about to write.
+ Their name was Wang and they were natives of these parts.
+ A grandfather had held some very small official post in the capital and had there become acquainted with Wang Xi-feng's grandfather, the father of Lady Wang.
+ Conceiving an admiration for the power and prestige of this greater namesake, he had sought to link his family with the latter's clan by becoming his adoptive nephew.
+ Only Lady Wang and her elder brother – Wang Xi-feng's father – who chanced at that time to be staying with their parent on his tour of duty at the capital, knew anything about this.
+ The other members of the clan were unaware that any such relationship existed.
+ The grandfather had long since died, leaving an only son called Wang Cheng who, having fallen on hard times, had moved back into the countryside somewhere outside the capital.
+ Wang Cheng in his turn had died leaving a son called Gou-er, who had married a girl from a family called Liu and now had two children, a son called Ban-er and a daughter called Qing-er.
+ The four of them depended on agriculture for their living, and since, with Gou-er himself busy most of the day on the land and his wife busy about the farm drawing water, pounding grain, and the like, there was no one to look after Qing-er and her little brother, Gou-er invited his mother-in-law, old Grannie Liu, to come and live with them.
+ This Grannie Liu was an ancient widow-woman, rich in experience of the world, who, having no son or daughter-in-law to cherish her, eked out her solitary existence by scratching a livelihood from a miserable half-acre of land.
+ She therefore embraced her son-in-law's invitation with alacrity and threw herself enthusiastically into the business of helping the young couple to make a living.
+ The season was now at the turn between autumn and winter.
+ The cold weather was beginning, but none of the preparations for winter had yet been made.
+ By drinking to allay his anxiety, Gou-er merely put himself more out of temper.
+ He returned home to vent some of his spleen on his long-suffering wife.
+ Grannie Liu could eventually stomach no more of his wife-baiting and intervened on her daughter's behalf.
+ 'Now look here, son-in-law: probably you will think me an interfering old woman; but we country folk have to be grateful for what is in the pot and cut down our appetites to the same measure.
+ When you were little your Ma and Pa could afford to indulge you; so now you're grown-up you spend all your money as soon as you've got any, without stopping to count the cost; then, when it's all gone, you start making a fuss.
+ But what sort of way is that for a grown man to behave ?
+ 'Now where we live may be out in the country, but it's still "in the Emperor's shadow", as they say.
+ Over there in the city the streets are paved with money just waiting for someone to go and pick it up.
+ What's the sense in rampaging around here at home when you could go out and help yourself?'
+ 'It's easy for you to sit on your backside and talk,' said Gou-er rudely, 'but what do you expect me to do?
+ Go out and rob?'
+ 'No one's asking you to rob,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But can't we all sit down peaceably and think of a way?
+ Because if we don't, the money isn't going to come walking in the door of its own accord.'
+ Gou-er snorted sarcastically.
+ 'If there were a way, do you suppose I should have waited till now before trying it out?
+ There are no tax-collectors in my family and no mandarins among my friends.
+ What way could there be of laying my hands on some money?
+ Even if I did have rich friends or relations, I'm not so sure they would want to be bothered with the likes of us.'
+ 'I wouldn't say that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Man proposes, God disposes.
+ It's up to us to think of something.
+ We must leave it to the good Lord to decide whether He'll help us or not.
+ Who knows, He might give us the opportunity we are looking for.
+ 'Now I can think of a chance you might try.
+ Your family used to be connected with the Wang clan of Nanking.
+ Twenty years ago the Nanking Wangs used to be very good to you folk.
+ It's only because of late years you have been too stiff-necked to approach them that they have become more distant with you.
+ 'I can remember going to their house once with my daughter.
+ The elder Miss Wang was a very straightforward young lady, very easy to get on with, and not at all high and mighty.
+ She's now the wife of the younger of the two Sir Jias in the Rong mansion.
+ They say that now she's getting on in years she's grown even more charitable and given to good works than she was as a girl.
+ Her brother has been promoted; but I shouldn't be surprised if she at least didn't still remember us.
+ Why don't you try your luck with her?
+ You never know, she might do something for you for the sake of old times.
+ She only has to feel well disposed and a hair off her arm would be thicker than a man's waist to poor folks like us!'
+ 'That's all very well, Mother,' put in Gou-er's wife, 'but just take a look at us!
+ What sort of state are we in to go calling on great folks like them?
+ I doubt the people at the door would bother to tell them we were there.
+ Who's going to all that trouble just to make a fool of themselves?'
+ Gou-er's cupidity, however, had been aroused by the words of his mother-in-law, and his reaction to them was less discouraging than his wife's.
+ 'Well, if it's as you say, Grannie, and being as you've already seen this lady, why not go there yourself and spy out the land for us?'
+ 'Bless us and save us!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'You know what they say: "A prince's door is like the deep sea."
+ What sort of creature do you take me for?
+ The servants there don't know me; it would be a journey wasted.'
+ 'That's no problem,' said Gou-er.
+ 'I'll tell you what to do.
+ You take young Ban-er with you and ask for Old Zhou that stayed in service with your lady after she married.
+ If you tell them you've come to see him, it will give you an excuse for the visit.
+ Old Zhou once entrusted a bit of business to my father.
+ He used to be very friendly with us at one time.'
+ 'I knew all about that,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'But it's a long time since you had anything to do with him and hard to say how he may prove after all these years.
+ Howsomever.
+ Being a man, you naturally can't go in your present pickle; and a young married woman like my daughter can't go gallivanting around the countryside showing herself to everybody.
+ But as my old face is tough enough to stand a slap or two, it's up to me to go.
+ So be it, then.
+ If any good does come of the visit, we shall all of us benefit.'
+ And so, that very evening, the matter was settled.
+ Next day Grannie Liu was up before dawn.
+ As soon as she had washed and done her hair, she set about teaching Ban-er a few words to say to the ladies at the great house – an exercise to which he submitted cheerfully enough, as would any little boy of four or five who had been promised an outing to the great city.
+ That done, she set off on her journey, and in due course made her way to Two Dukes Street.
+ There, at each side of the stone lions which flanked the gates of the Rong Mansion, she saw a cluster of horses and palanquins.
+ Not daring to go straight up, she first dusted down her clothes and rehearsed Ban-er's little repertoire of phrases before sidling up to one of the side entrances.
+ A number of important-looking gentlemen sat in the gateway sunning their bellies and discoursing with animated gestures on a wide variety of topics.
+ Grannie Liu waddled up to them and offered a respectful salutation.
+ After looking her up and down for a moment or two, they asked her her business.
+ Grannie Liu smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I've come to see Old Zhou that used to be in service with Her Ladyship before she married.
+ Could I trouble one of you gentlemen to fetch him out for me?'
+ The gentlemen ignored her request and returned to their discussion.
+ After she had waited there for some considerable time one of them said,' If you stand at that gate along there on the corner, someone from inside the house should be coming out presently.'
+ But a more elderly man among them protested that it was 'a shame to send her on a fool's errand', and turning to Grannie Liu he said, 'Old Zhou is away in the South at the moment, but his missus is still at home.
+ She lives round at the back.
+ You'll have to go from here round to the back gate in the other street and ask for her there.'
+ Grannie Liu thanked him and trotted off with little Ban-er all the way round to the rear entrance.
+ There she found a number of sweetmeat vendors and toy-sellers who had set their wares down outside the gate and were being beseiged by a crowd of some twenty or thirty noisy, yelling children.
+ She grabbed a small urchin from their midst and drew him towards her.
+ 'Tell me, sonny, is there a Mrs Zhou living here?'
+ The urchin stared back at her impudently.
+ 'Which Mrs Zhou?
+ There are several Mrs Zhous here.
+ What's her job?'
+ 'She's the Mrs Zhou that came here with Her Ladyship when she was married.'
+ 'That's easy,' said the urchin.
+ 'Follow me!'
+ He led Grannie Liu into a rear courtyard.
+ 'That's where she lives,' he said, pointing in the direction of a side wall.
+ Then, bawling over the wall, 'Mrs Zhou, there's an old woman come to see you!'
+ Zhou Rui's wife came hurrying out and asked who it was.
+ 'How are you, my dear?' said Grannie Liu, advancing with a smile.
+ Zhou Rui's wife scrutinized her questioningly for some moments before finally recognizing her.
+ 'Why, it's Grannie Liu!
+ How are you?
+ It's so many years since I saw you last, I'd forgotten all about you!
+ Come in and sit down!'
+ Grannie Liu followed her cackling.
+ 'You know what they say: "Important people have short memories."
+ I wouldn't expect you to remember the likes of us!'
+ When they were indoors, Zhou Rui's wife ordered her little hired help to pour out some tea.
+ 'And hasn't Ban-er grown a big boy!' said Zhou Rui's wife; then, after a few inquiries about the various things that had happened since they last met, she asked Grannie Liu about her visit.
+ 'Were you just passing by, or have you come specially?'
+ 'Well, of course, first and foremost we came to see you,' replied Grannie Liu mendaciously, 'but we were also hoping to pay our respects to Her Ladyship.
+ If you could take us to see her, that would be very nice; but if that's not possible, perhaps we could trouble you just to give her our regards.'
+ From the tone of this reply Zhou Rui's wife was already able to make a pretty good guess as to the real purpose of the old woman's visit; but because some years previously her husband had received a lot of help from Gou-er's father in a dispute over the purchase of some land, she could not very well reject Grannie Liu now, when she came to her as a suppliant.
+ She was, in any case, anxious to demonstrate her own importance in the Jia household; and so the answer she gave her was a gracious one.
+ 'Don't you worry, Grannie!
+ After you've made such a long pilgrimage, we won't let you go home without seeing a real Buddha!
+ By rights, of course, Callers and Visitors has nothing to do with me.
+ You see, we each have our own jobs here.
+ My man's is collecting the half-yearly rents in the spring and autumn; and when he's not doing that, he takes the young masters out when they go on visits.
+ That's all he ever does.
+ Now my job is to attend to their ladyships and the young mistresses when they go out.
+ But being as how you are a relation of Her ladyship, and since you've put your confidence in me and turned to me to help you, I don't mind breaking the rules for once and taking in a message.
+ 'There's only one thing, though.
+ I don't expect you know, but things here are very different from what they were five years ago.
+ Nowadays Her Ladyship doesn't run things here any longer.
+ It's Master Lian's wife who does all the managing –
+ You'll never guess who that is:
+ Her Ladyship's niece Wang Xi-feng.
+ You know, Her Ladyship's eldest brother's daughter, that we used to call "Feng-ge" when she was a child.'
+ 'Bless you, my dear, for being such a help!' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Oh Grannie, how can you say such a thing?' said Zhou Rui's wife demurely.
+ 'You know what the old saying is, "He who helps others helps himself."
+ It's only a question of saying a few words.
+ No trouble at all.'
+ So saying, she instructed the little maid to slip quietly round to the back of old Lady Jia's quarters and ask if they were serving lunch yet.
+ The little maid departed on her errand and the two women resumed their conversation.
+ 'This Mrs Lian,' said Grannie Liu: 'she can't be more than eighteen or nineteen years old.
+ She must be a very capable young woman.
+ Fancy her being able to run a great household like this!'
+ 'Oh Grannie, you have no idea!' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Mrs Lian may be young, but when it comes to doing things, she's got an older head on her shoulders than any I've ever come across.
+ She's grown up to be a real beauty too, has Mrs Lian.
+ But sharp!
+ Well, if it ever comes to a slanging match, she can talk down ten grown men any day of the week!
+ Wait till you meet her, and you'll see what I mean.
+ There's only one thing, though.
+ She's a bit too strict with those beneath her.'
+ As she was speaking, the little maid came back, her errand completed.
+ 'They've finished serving lunch at Her Old Ladyship's.
+ Mrs Lian is still there.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to her feet and urged Grannie Liu to do likewise.
+ 'Quick!
+ After she comes out from there she'll be free for a few minutes while she has her meal.
+ We must try and catch her then.
+ If we delay a moment longer, people will start coming in with messages and we shan't have a chance to speak to her.
+ And once she goes off for her afternoon nap, we've really lost her!'
+ Grannie Liu got off the kang, adjusted her clothing, conducted Ban-er through a rapid revision of his little stock of phrases and followed Zhou Rui's wife through various twists and turns to Jia Lian's quarters.
+ Just before they reached them, Zhou Rui's wife planted them both in a covered passage-way while she went on ahead round the screen wall and into the gate of the courtyard.
+ First ascertaining that Wang Xi-feng had not yet left Lady Jia's, she sought out Xi-feng's chambermaid and principal confidante, Patience, and primed her with a full account of Grannie Liu's antecedents.
+ 'She has come all this way today to pay her respects,' she concluded.
+ 'At one time Her Ladyship used to see quite a lot of her, which is why I thought it would be in order for me to bring her in.
+ I thought I would wait for the young mistress to come back and explain it all to her.
+ I hope she won't be angry with me for pushing myself forward.'
+ Patience at once made up her mind what to do.
+ 'Let them come in here.
+ They can sit here while they are waiting.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife went off again to fetch her charges.
+ As they ascended the steps to the main reception room, a little maid lifted up the red carpet which served as a portiere for them to enter.
+ A strange, delicious fragrance seemed to reach forward and enfold them as they entered, producing in Grannie Liu the momentary sensation that she had been transported bodily to one of the celestial paradises.
+ Their eyes, too, were dazzled by the bright and glittering things that filled the room.
+ Temporarily speechless with wonder, Grannie Liu stood wagging her head, alternating clicks of admiration with pious ejaculations.
+ From the glittering reception room they passed to a room on the east side of it in which Jia Lian's baby daughter slept.
+ Patience, who was standing by the edge of the kang, made a rapid assessment of Grannie Liu and judged it sufficient to greet her with a civil 'how-do-you-do' and an invitation to be seated.
+ Grannie Liu looked at the silks and satins in which Patience was dressed, the gold and silver ornaments in her hair, her beauty of feature which in every respect corresponded with what she had been told of Wang Xi-feng, and taking the maid for the mistress, was on the point of greeting her as 'Gou-er's aunt', when Zhou Rui's wife introduced her as' Miss Patience'.
+ Then, when Patience shortly afterwards addressed Zhou Rui's wife as 'Mrs Zhou', she knew that this was no mistress but a very high-class maid.
+ So Grannie Liu and Ban-er got up on the kang at one side, while Patience and Zhou Rui's wife sat near the edge of it on the other, and a little maid came in and poured them all some tea.
+ Grannie Liu's attention was distracted by a persistent tock tock tock tock not unlike the sound made by a flour-bolting machine, and she could not forbear glancing round her from time to time to see where it came from.
+ Presently she caught sight of a sort of boxlike object fastened to one of the central pillars of the room, and a thing like the weight of a steelyard hanging down from it, which swung to and fro in ceaseless motion and appeared to be the source of the noise which had distracted her.
+ 'I wonder what that can be,' she thought to herself, 'and what it can be used for?'
+ As she studied the strange box, it suddenly gave forth a loud dong! like the sound of a bronze bell or a copper chime, which so startled the old lady that her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
+ The dong! was followed in rapid succession by eight or nine others, and Grannie Liu was on the point of asking what it meant, when all the maids in the house began scurrying about shouting, 'The mistress!
+ The mistress!
+ She'll be coming out now!' and Patience and Zhou Rui's wife hurriedly rose to their feet.
+ 'Just stay here, Grannie,' they said.
+ 'When it is time for you to see her, we shall come in and fetch you'; and they went off with the other servants to greet their mistress.
+ As Grannie Liu sat in silence, waiting with bated breath and head cocked to one side for her summons, she heard a far-off sound of laughter, followed presently by a sound of rustling dresses as between ten and twenty women entered the reception room and passed from it into the room beyond.
+ Then two or three women bearing large red lacquer boxes took up their positions on the side nearest the room in which she sat and stood there waiting to be called.
+ A voice in the far room called out,' Serve now, please!' at which, to judge from the noises, most of the women scuttled off, leaving only the few who were waiting at table.
+ A long silence ensued in which not so much as a cheep could be heard; then two women came in bearing a small, low table which they set down on the kang.
+ It was covered with bowls and dishes containing all kinds of meat and fish, only one or two of which appeared to have been touched.
+ At the sight of it Ban-er set up a clamour for some meat and was silenced by Grannie Liu with a resounding slap.
+ Just at that moment Zhou Rui's wife appeared, her face all wreathed in smiles, and advanced towards Grannie Liu beckoning.
+ Grannie Liu slipped off the kang, lifted down Ban-er, and exchanged a few hurried whispers with her in the reception room before waddling into the room beyond.
+ A dark-red patterned curtain hung from brass hooks over the doorway.
+ Inside, under the window in the south wall, there was a kang covered with a dark-red carpet.
+ At the east end of the kang, up against the wooden partition wall, were a backrest and bolster, both covered in gold brocade, and a large flat cushion for sitting on, also glittering with gold thread.
+ Beside them stood a silver spittoon.
+ Wang Xi-feng had on a little cap of red sable, which she wore about the house for warmth, fastened on with a pearl-studded bandeau.
+ She was dressed in a sprigged peach-pink gown, with an ermine-lined skirt of dark-red foreign crepe underneath it, and a cloak of slate-blue silk with woven coloured insets and lining of grey squirrel around her shoulders.
+ Her face was exquisitely made-up.
+ She was sitting on the edge of the kang, her back straight as a ramrod, with a diminutive pair of tongs in her hand, removing the spent charcoal from a portable hand-warmer.
+ Patience stood beside her carrying a covered teacup on a tiny inlaid lacquer tray.
+ Xi-feng appeared not to have noticed her, for she neither reached out for the cup nor raised her head, but continued picking ab-sorbedly at her hand-warmer.
+ At last she spoke: 'Why not ask them in, then?'
+ As she did so, she raised her head and saw Zhou Rui's wife with her two charges already standing in front of her.
+ She made a confused movement as if to rise to her feet, welcomed the old lady with a look of unutterable benevolence, and almost in the same breath said rather crossly to Zhou Rui's wife, 'Why didn't you tell me?'
+ By this time Grannie Liu was already down on her knees and had touched her head several times to the floor in reverence to her 'Aunt Feng'.
+ 'Stop her, Zhou dear !' said Xi-feng in alarm.
+ 'She mustn't do that,
+ I am much too young!
+ In any case, I don't know her very well.
+ I don't know what sort of relations we are and what I should call her.'
+ 'This is the Grannie Liu I was just telling you about,' said Zhou Rui's wife.
+ Xi-feng nodded, and Grannie Liu sat herself down on the edge of the kang.
+ Ban-er at once hid himself behind her back and neither threats nor blandishments would induce him to come out and make a bow to his 'Auntie'.
+ 'Relations don't come to see us much nowadays,' said Xi-feng affably.
+ 'We are getting to be quite strangers with everybody.
+ People who know us realize that it is because you are tired of us that you don't visit us oftener; but some spiteful people who don't know us so well think it's our fault, because we have grown too proud.'
+ Grannie Liu invoked the Lord Buddha in pious disavowal of so shocking a view.
+ 'It's hard times that keeps us away.
+ We can't afford to visit.
+ We are afraid that if we came to see you looking the way we are, you would disown us; and even the people at the gate might think we were tramps!'
+ 'Now you are really being too hard on us!
+ What if Grandfather did make a little bit of a name for himself and we do hold some miserable little appointment?
+ What does it all amount to?
+ It's all empty show, really.
+ You know what they say: "Even the Emperor has poor relations."
+ It would be strange indeed if we didn't have a few!'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'Have you told Her Ladyship yet?'
+ 'No, ma'am.
+ I was waiting for your instructions.'
+ 'Go and have a look, then.
+ If she has anyone with her, you had better leave it; but if she is free, tell her about their visit and see what she says.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife departed on her errand.
+ Xi-feng told one of the servants to give Ban-er a handful of sweets, and had just begun a desultory conversation with Grannie Liu when a number of domestics and underlings of either sex arrived to report on their duties.
+ 'I am entertaining a guest,' said Xi-feng to Patience when she came in to announce their arrival.
+ 'Let them leave it until this evening.
+ But if anyone has important business, bring them in and I will deal with it now.'
+ Patience went out and returned a minute later to say that she had asked them and no one had any business of special importance, so she had sent them all away.
+ Xi-feng nodded.
+ At this point Zhou Rui's wife returned with a message for Xi-feng.
+ 'Her Ladyship says she isn't free today, but that if you will entertain them for her, it will be just the same as if she were to receive them herself.
+ She says please thank them very much for coming.
+ And she says if it's just an ordinary visit she has nothing more to add; but if they have anything particular to say, she says tell them that they can say it to you instead.'
+ 'I hadn't anything particular in mind,' said Grannie Liu.
+ 'Only to look in on Her Ladyship and your mistress.
+ Just a visit to relations.'
+ 'Well all right then, if you are sure you have nothing to say.
+ But if you have got anything to say, you really ought to tell the mistress.
+ It will be just the same as if you were to say it to Her Ladyship.'
+ Zhou Rui's wife darted a meaningful look at Grannie Liu as she said this.
+ Grannie Liu perfectly well understood the significance of this look, and a blush of shame overspread her face.
+ Yet if she did not speak up now, what would have been the purpose of her visit?
+ She forced herself to say something.
+ 'By rights I ought not to mention it today, seeing that this is our first meeting: but as I have come such a long way to see you, it seems silly not to speak...'
+ She had got no further when the pages from the outer gate announced the arrival of 'the young master from the Ning mansion' and Xi-feng gestured to her to stop.
+ 'It's all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.'
+ She turned to the pages.
+ 'Where is Master Rong, then?'
+ A man's footstep sounded outside and a fresh-faced, willowy youth of seventeen or eighteen in elegant and expensive-looking winter dress came into the room.
+ Grannie Liu, acutely embarrassed in this male presence, did not know whether to sit or stand, and looked round her in vain for somewhere to hide herself.
+ Xi-feng laughed at her discomfiture.
+ 'Don't mind him; just stay where you are!
+ It's only my nephew.'
+ With a good deal of girlish simpering Grannie Liu sat down again, perching herself obliquely on the extreme edge of the kang.
+ Jia Rong saluted his aunt Manchu fashion.
+ 'My father is entertaining an important visitor tomorrow and he wondered if he might borrow the little glass screen that your Uncle Wang's wife gave you, to put on our kang while he is there.
+ We can let you have it back again as soon as he has gone.'
+ 'You are too late,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I lent it yesterday to someone else.'
+ Jia Rong flashed a winning smile at her and half-knelt on the side of the kang.
+ 'If you won't lend it, my father will say that I didn't ask properly and I shall get a beating.
+ Come on, Auntie, be a sport!
+ Just for my sake!'
+ Xi-feng smiled maliciously.
+ 'I don't know what's so special about my family's things.
+ Heaven knows, you have enough stuff of your own over there; yet you have only to set eyes on anything of ours, and you want it for yourselves.'
+ Jia Rong's smile flashed again.
+ 'Please, Auntie!
+ Be merciful!'
+ 'If it's the tiniest bit chipped,' said Xi-feng, 'I'll have the hide off you!'
+ She ordered Patience to take the key of the upstairs room and get some reliable servants to carry it over.
+ Delighted with his good luck, Jia Rong hurriedly forestalled her.
+ 'I'll get some of my own people to carry it.
+ Don't put yours to a lot of trouble!' and he hurried out.
+ Xi-feng suddenly seemed to remember something, and called to him through the window, 'Rong, come back!'
+ Servants in the yard outside dutifully took up the cry, 'Master Rong, you're wanted back again!'
+ Jia Rong came hurrying back, wreathed in smiles, and looked at Xi-feng with eyebrows arched inquiringly.
+ Xi-feng, however, sipped very intently from her teacup and mused for a while, saying nothing.
+ Suddenly her face flushed and she gave a little laugh: 'It doesn't matter.
+ Come back again after supper.
+ I've got company now, and besides, I don't feel in the mood to tell you.'
+ 'Yes, Aunt,' said Jia Rong, and pursing his lips up in a complacent smile he sauntered slowly out of the room.
+ Having all this while had time to collect herself, Grannie Liu began her speech again: 'The real reason I have brought your little nephew here today is because his Pa and Ma haven't anything in the house to eat, and the weather is getting colder, and – and – I thought I'd bring him here to see you...'
+ She gave Ban-er a despairing push.
+ 'What did your Pa tell you to say when we got here?
+ What was it he sent us for?
+ Look at you!
+ All you can do is sit there eating sweets!'
+ It was abundantly clear to Xi-feng that the old lady was too embarrassed to go on, and she put her out of her misery with a gracious smile.
+ 'It's quite all right.
+ There is no need to tell me.
+ I quite understand.'
+ She turned to Zhou Rui's wife.
+ 'I wonder if Grannie has eaten yet today?'
+ 'We were on our way first thing this morning,' Grannie Liu chimed in.
+ 'There was no time to think about eating.'
+ Xi-feng gave orders for a meal to be brought in, and Zhou Rui's wife went out and presently reappeared with a guest's portion of various choice dishes on a little table, which she set down in the east wing, and to which she then conducted Grannie Liu and Ban-er for their meal.
+ 'Zhou, dear,' said Xi-feng, 'will you keep them company and see that they have enough to eat?
+ I shan't be able to sit with them myself.'
+ Then calling her aside for a moment she asked, 'What did Her Ladyship say when you went to report about them just now?'
+ 'She said they don't really belong to the family but were adopted into the clan years ago when your grandfather and theirs were working in the same office.
+ She said they haven't been round much of late years, but in the old days when they used to visit us we never sent them back empty-handed.
+ She said it was nice of them to come and see us today and we should be careful to treat them considerately.
+ And she said if they appear to want anything, she would leave it to you to decide what we should do for them.'
+ 'No wonder!' exclaimed Xi-feng when she had heard this account.
+ 'I couldn't understand how they could be really related to us if I had never even heard of them.'
+ While they were talking, Grannie Liu came back from the other room having already finished eating, smacking her lips and sucking her teeth appreciatively, and voicing her thanks for the repast.
+ 'Sit down,' said Xi-feng with a smile.
+ 'I have something to say to you.
+ I quite understand what you were trying to tell me just now.
+ As we are relations, we ought by rights not to wait for you to come to our door before helping you when you are in trouble; but there are so many things to attend to in this family, and now that Her Ladyship is getting on a bit she doesn't always remember them all.
+ And since I took over the management of the household, I find there are quite a lot of relations that I don't even know about.
+ And then again, of course, though we may look thriving enough from the outside, people don't realize that being a big establishment like ours carries its own difficulties.
+ They won't believe it if you tell them, but it's true.
+ However, since you have come such a long way, and since this is the first time you have ever said a word about needing help, we obviously can't let you go back empty-handed.
+ Fortunately it so happens that I still haven't touched any of the twenty taels of silver that Her Ladyship gave me the other day to make clothes for the maids with.
+ If you don't mind it being so little, you are very welcome to take it.'
+ When Grannie Liu heard Xi-feng talk about 'difficulties' she concluded that there was no hope.
+ Her delight and the way in which her face lit up with pleasure when she heard that she was, after all, to be given twenty taels of silver can be imagined.
+ 'We knew you had your troubles,' she said, 'but as the saying goes, "A starved camel is bigger than a fat horse."
+ Say what you like, a hair plucked from your arm is thicker than a man's waist to folks like us!'
+ Horrified by the crudity of these expressions, Zhou Rui's wife, who was standing by, was meanwhile signalling frantically to the old lady to stop.
+ But Xi-feng laughed quite unconcernedly and told Patience to wrap up the silver and also to fetch a string of cash to go with it.
+ The money was set down in front of Grannie Liu.
+ 'Here is the twenty taels of silver,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Take this for the time being to make some winter clothes for the children with.
+ Some time later on, when you have nothing better to do, look in on us for a day or two for kinship's sake.
+ It's late now, so I won't try to keep you.
+ Give our regards to everybody who ought to be remembered when you get back!'
+ She rose to her feet, and Grannie Liu, with heartfelt expressions of gratitude, picked up the money and followed Zhou Rui's wife out of the room.
+ 'My dear good woman,' said the latter when they were out of earshot, 'whatever came over you?
+ First, when you met her, you couldn't get a word out; then, when you did start talking, it was all "your nephew" this and "your nephew" that!
+ I hope you won't mind my saying so, but even if the child was a real nephew you would still need to go a bit easy on the familiarities.
+ Now Master Rong, he is her real nephew.
+ That's the sort of person a lady like that calls "nephew" .
+ Where she would come by a nephew like this one, I just do not know!'
+ 'My dear,' replied Grannie Liu with a laugh, 'when I saw the pretty little darling sitting there, I took such a liking to her that my heart was too full to speak.'
+ Back in Zhou Rui's quarters the two women sat talking for a while.
+ Grannie Liu wanted to leave a piece of silver to buy something for the Zhou children with, but Zhou Rui's wife said she wouldn't hear of it and refused absolutely to accept anything.
+ And so, with many expressions of gratitude, the old lady took her leave and set out once more through the back gate of the mansion.
+ And if you want to know what happened after she had left, you will have to read the next chapter.
+
+ 却说秦氏因听见宝玉梦中唤他的乳名，心中纳闷，又不好细问。
+ 彼时宝玉迷迷惑惑，若有所失，遂起身解怀整衣。
+ 袭人过来给他系裤带时，刚伸手至大腿处，只觉冰冷粘湿的一片，吓的忙褪回手来，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 宝玉红了脸，把他的手一捻。
+ 袭人本是个聪明女子，年纪又比宝玉大两岁，近来也渐省人事。
+ 今见宝玉如此光景，心中便觉察了一半，不觉把个粉脸羞的飞红，遂不好再问。
+ 仍旧理好衣裳，随至贾母处来，胡乱吃过晚饭，过这边来，趁众奶娘丫鬟不在旁时，另取出一件中衣与宝玉换上。
+ 宝玉含羞央告道：“好姐姐，千万别告诉人。”
+ 袭人也含着羞悄悄的笑问道：“你为什么——”
+ 说到这里，把眼又往四下里瞧了瞧，才又问道：“那是那里流出来的？”
+ 宝玉只管红着脸不言语，袭人却只瞅着他笑。
+ 迟了一会，宝玉才把梦中之事细说与袭人听。
+ 说到云雨私情，羞的袭人掩面伏身而笑。
+ 宝玉亦素喜袭人柔媚姣俏，遂强拉袭人同领警幻所训之事，袭人自知贾母曾将他给了宝玉，也无可推托的，扭捏了半日，无奈何，只得和宝玉温存了一番。
+ 自此宝玉视袭人更自不同，袭人待宝玉也越发尽职了。
+ 这话暂且不提。
+ 且说荣府中合算起来，从上至下，也有三百余口人，一天也有一二十件事，竟如乱麻一般，没个头绪可作纲领。
+ 正思从那一件事那一个人写起方妙，却好忽从千里之外，芥豆之微，小小一个人家，因与荣府略有些瓜葛，这日正往荣府中来，因此便就这一家说起，倒还是个头绪。
+ 原来这小小之家，姓王，乃本地人氏，祖上也做过一个小小京官，昔年曾与凤姐之祖王夫人之父认识。
+ 因贪王家的势利，便连了宗，认作侄儿。
+ 那时只有王夫人之大兄凤姐之父与王夫人随在京的知有此一门远族，余者也皆不知。
+ 目今其祖早故，只有一个儿子，名唤王成，因家业萧条，仍搬出城外乡村中住了。
+ 王成亦相继身故，有子小名狗儿，娶妻刘氏，生子小名板儿； 又生一女，名唤青儿：
+ 一家四口，以务农为业。
+ 因狗儿白日间自作些生计，刘氏又操井臼等事，青板姊弟两个无人照管，狗儿遂将岳母刘老老接来，一处过活。
+ 这刘老老乃是个久经世代的老寡妇，膝下又无子息，只靠两亩薄田度日。
+ 如今女婿接了养活， 岂不愿意呢，遂一心一计，帮着女儿女婿过活。
+ 因这年秋尽冬初，天气冷将上来，家中冬事未办，狗儿未免心中烦躁，吃了几杯闷酒，在家里闲寻气恼，刘氏不敢顶撞。
+ 因此刘老老看不过，便劝道：“姑爷，你别嗔着我多嘴：咱们村庄人家儿，那一个不是老老实实，守着多大碗儿吃多大的饭呢!
+ 你皆因年小时候，托着老子娘的福，吃喝惯了，如今所以有了钱就顾头不顾尾，没了钱就瞎生气，成了什么男子汉大丈夫了!
+ 如今咱们虽离城住着，终是天子脚下。
+ 这‘长安’城中遍地皆是钱，只可惜没人会去拿罢了。
+ 在家跳蹋也没用！”
+ 狗儿听了道：“你老只会在炕头上坐着混说，难道叫我打劫去不成？”
+ 刘老老说道：“谁叫你去打劫呢?
+ 也到底大家想个方法儿才好。
+ 不然那银子钱会自己跑到咱们家里来不成？”
+ 狗儿冷笑道：“有法儿还等到这会子呢!
+ 我又没有收税的亲戚、做官的朋友，有什么法子可想的?
+ 就有，也只怕他们未必来理我们呢。”
+ 刘老老道：“这倒也不然。
+ ‘谋事在人，成事在天’，咱们谋到了，靠菩萨的保佑，有些机会，也未可知。
+ 我倒替你们想出一个机会来。
+ 当日你们原是和金陵王家连过宗的。
+ 二十年前，他们看承你们还好，如今是你们拉硬屎，不肯去就和他，才疏远起来。
+ 想当初我和女儿还去过一遭，他家的二小姐着实爽快会待人的，倒不拿大，如今现是荣国府贾二老爷的夫人。
+ 听见他们说，如今上了年纪，越发怜贫恤老的了，又爱斋僧布施。
+ 如今王府虽升了官儿，只怕二姑太太还认的咱们，你为什么不走动走动?
+ 或者他还念旧，有些好处也未可知。
+ 只要他发点好心，拔根寒毛，比咱们的腰还壮呢！”
+ 刘氏接口道：“你老说的好，你我这样嘴脸，怎么好到他门上去?
+ 只怕他那门上人也不肯进去告诉，没的白打嘴现世的！”
+ 谁知狗儿利名心重，听如此说，心下便有些活动； 又听他妻子这番话，便笑道：“老老既这么说，况且当日你又见过这姑太太一次，为什么不你老人家明日就去走一遭，先试试风头儿去？”
+ 刘老老道：“哎哟!
+ 可是说的了：‘侯门似海。’
+ 我是个什么东西儿!
+ 他家人又不认得我，去了也是白跑。”
+ 狗儿道：“不妨，我教给你个法儿。
+ 你竟带了小板儿先去找陪房周大爷，要见了他，就有些意思了。
+ 这周大爷先时和我父亲交过一桩事，我们本极好的。”
+ 刘老老道：“我也知道。
+ 只是许多时不走动，知道他如今是怎样?
+ 这也说不得了!
+ 你又是个男人，这么个嘴脸，自然去不得。
+ 我们姑娘年轻的媳妇儿，也难卖头卖脚的， 倒还是舍着我这副老脸去碰碰。
+ 果然有好处，大家也有益。”
+ 当晚计议已定。
+ 次日天未明时，刘老老便起来梳洗了， 又将板儿教了几句话； 五六岁的孩子，听见带了他进城逛去，喜欢的无不应承。
+ 于是刘老老带了板儿，进城至宁荣街来。
+ 到了荣府大门前石狮子旁边，只见满门口的轿马。
+ 刘老老不敢过去，掸掸衣服，又教了板儿几句话，然后溜到角门前，只见几个挺胸叠肚、指手画脚的人坐在大门上，说东谈西的。
+ 刘老老只得蹭上来问：“太爷们纳福。”
+ 众人打量了一会，便问：“是那里来的？”
+ 刘老老陪笑道：“我找太太的陪房周大爷的。
+ 烦那位太爷替我请他出来。”
+ 那些人听了，都不理他，半日，方说道：“你远远的那墙畸角儿等着，一会子他们家里就有人出来。”
+ 内中有个年老的说道：“何苦误他的事呢？”
+ 因向刘老老道：“周大爷往南边去了。
+ 他在后一带住着，他们奶奶儿倒在家呢。
+ 你打这边绕到后街门上找就是了。”
+ 刘老老谢了，遂领着板儿绕至后门上，只见门上歇着些生意担子，也有卖吃的，也有卖玩耍的，闹吵吵三二十个孩子在那里。
+ 刘老老便拉住一个道：“我问哥儿一声：有个周大娘在家么？”
+ 那孩子翻眼瞅着道：“那个周大娘?
+ 我们这里周大娘有几个呢，不知那一个行当儿上的？”
+ 刘老老道：“他是太太的陪房。”
+ 那孩子道：“这个容易，你跟了我来。”
+ 引着刘老老进了后院，到一个院子墙边，指道：“这就是他家。”
+ 又叫道：“周大妈，有个老奶奶子找你呢。”
+ 周瑞家的在内忙迎出来，问：“是那位？”
+ 刘老老迎上来笑问道：“好啊?
+ 周嫂子。”
+ 周瑞家的认了半日，方笑道：“刘老老，你好?
+ 你说么，这几年不见，我就忘了。
+ 请家里坐。”
+ 刘老老一面走，一面笑说道：“你老是‘贵人多忘事’了，那里还记得我们？”
+ 说着，来至房中，周瑞家的命雇的小丫头倒上茶来吃着。
+ 周瑞家的又问道：“板儿长了这么大了么！”
+ 又问些别后闲话， 又问刘老老：“今日还是路过，还是特来的？”
+ 刘老老便说：“原是特来瞧瞧嫂子； 二则也请请姑太太的安。
+ 若可以领我见一见更好，若不能，就借重嫂子转致意罢了。”
+ 周瑞家的听了，便已猜着几分来意。
+ 只因他丈夫昔年争买田地一事，多得狗儿他父亲之力，今见刘老老如此，心中难却其意；二则也要显弄自己的体面。
+ 便笑说：“老老你放心。
+ 大远的诚心诚意来了，岂有个不叫你见个真佛儿去的呢？
+ 论理，人来客至，却都不与我相干。
+ 我们这里都是各一样儿： 我们男的只管春秋两季地租子，闲了时带着小爷们出门就完了；我只管跟太太奶奶们出门的事。
+ 皆因你是太太的亲戚，又拿我当个人，投奔了我来，我竟破个例给你通个信儿去。
+ 但只一件，你还不知道呢：我们这里不比五年前了。
+ 如今太太不理事，都是琏二奶奶当家。
+ 你打量琏二奶奶是谁?
+ 就是太太的内侄女儿，大舅老爷的女孩儿，小名儿叫凤哥的。”
+ 刘老老道：“阿弥陀佛!
+ 这全仗嫂子方便了。”
+ 周瑞家的说：“老老说那里话。
+ 俗语说的好：‘与人方便，自己方便。 ’
+ 不过用我一句话，又费不着我什么事。”
+ 说着，便唤小丫头到倒厅儿上悄悄的打听老太太屋里摆了饭了没有。
+ 小丫头去了。
+ 这里二人又说了些闲话。
+ 刘老老因说：“这位凤姑娘，今年不过十八九岁罢了，就这等有本事，当这样的家，可是难得的！”
+ 周瑞家的听了道：“嗐!
+ 我的老老，告诉不得你了!
+ 这凤姑娘年纪儿虽小，行事儿比是人都大呢。
+ 如今出挑的美人儿似的，少说着只怕有一万心眼子；再要赌口齿，十个会说的男人也说不过他呢！
+ 回来你见了就知道了。
+ 就只一件，待下人未免太严些儿。”
+ 说着，小丫头回来说：“老太太屋里摆完了饭了，二奶奶在太太屋里呢。”
+ 周瑞家的听了连忙起身，催着刘老老：“快走，这一下来就只吃饭是个空儿，咱们先等着去。
+ 若迟了一步，回事的人多了，就难说了。
+ 再歇了中觉，越发没时候了。”
+ 说着，一齐下了炕，整顿衣服，又教了板儿几句话，跟着周瑞家的，逶迤往贾琏的住宅来。
+ 先至倒厅，周瑞家的将刘老老安插住等着，自己却先过影壁，走进了院门，知凤姐尚未出来，先找着凤姐的一个心腹通房大丫头名唤平儿的；周瑞家的先将刘老老起初来历说明，又说：“今日大远的来请安，当日太太是常会的，所以我带了他过来。
+ 等着奶奶下来，我细细儿的回明了，想来奶奶也不至嗔着我莽撞的。”
+ 平儿听了，便作了个主意：“叫他们进来，先在这里坐着就是了。”
+ 周瑞家的才出去领了他们进来。
+ 上了正房台阶，小丫头打起猩红毡帘，才入堂屋，只闻一阵香扑了脸来，竟不知是何气味，身子就像在云端里一般。
+ 满屋里的东西都是耀眼争光，使人头晕目眩，刘老老此时只有点头咂嘴念佛而已。
+ 于是走到东边这间屋里，乃是贾琏的女儿睡觉之所。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，打量了刘老老两眼，只得问个好，让了坐。
+ 刘老老见平儿遍身绫罗，插金戴银，花容月貌，便当是凤姐儿了，才要称“姑奶奶”，只见周瑞家的说：“他是平姑娘。”
+ 又见平儿赶着周瑞家的叫他“周大娘”，方知不过是个有体面的丫头。
+ 于是让刘老老和板儿上了炕，平儿和周瑞家的对面坐在炕沿上，小丫头们倒了茶来吃了。
+ 刘老老只听见咯当咯当的响声，很似打罗筛面的一般，不免东瞧西望的，忽见堂屋中柱子上挂着一个匣子，底下又坠着一个秤铊似的，却不住的乱晃。
+ 刘老老心中想着：“这是什么东西?
+ 有煞用处呢？”
+ 正发呆时，陡听得“当”的一声又若金钟铜磬一般，倒吓得不住的展眼儿。
+ 接着一连又是八九下，欲待问时，只见小丫头们一齐乱跑，说：“奶奶下来了。”
+ 平儿和周瑞家的忙起身说：“老老只管坐着，等是时候儿我们来请你。”
+ 说着迎出去了。
+ 刘老老只屏声侧耳默候， 只听远远有人笑声，约有一二十个妇人，衣裙窸窣，渐入堂屋，往那边屋内去了。
+ 又见三两个妇人，都捧着大红油漆盒进这边来等候。
+ 听得那边说道“摆饭”，渐渐的人才散出去，只有伺候端菜的几个人。
+ 半日鸦雀不闻。
+ 忽见两个人抬了一张炕桌来，放在这边炕上，桌上碗盘摆列，仍是满满的鱼肉，不过略动了几样。
+ 板儿一见就吵着要肉吃，刘老老打了他一巴掌。
+ 忽见周瑞家的笑嘻嘻走过来，点手儿叫他。
+ 刘老老会意，于是带着板儿下炕，至堂屋中间，周瑞家的又和他咕唧了一会子，方蹭到这边屋内。
+ 只见门外铜钩上悬着大红洒花软帘，南窗下是炕，炕上大红条毡，靠东边板壁立着一个锁子锦的靠背和一个引枕，铺着金线闪的大坐褥，傍边有银唾盒。
+ 那凤姐家常带着紫貂昭君套，围着那攒珠勒子，穿着桃红洒花袄，石青刻丝灰鼠披风，大红洋绉银鼠皮裙；粉光脂艳，端端正正坐在那里，手内拿着小铜火箸儿拨手炉内的灰。
+ 平儿站在炕沿边，捧着小小的一个填漆茶盘，盘内一个小盖钟儿。
+ 凤姐也不接茶，也不抬头，只管拨那灰，慢慢的道：“怎么还不请进来？”
+ 一面说，一面抬身要茶时，只见周瑞家的已带了两个人立在面前了，这才忙欲起身、犹未起身，满面春风的问好，又嗔着周瑞家的：“怎么不早说！”
+ 刘老老已在地下拜了几拜，问姑奶奶安。
+ 凤姐忙说：“周姐姐，搀着不拜罢。
+ 我年轻，不大认得，可也不知是什么辈数儿，不敢称呼。”
+ 周瑞家的忙回道：“这就是我才回的那个老老了。”
+ 凤姐点头，刘老老已在炕沿上坐下了。
+ 板儿便躲在他背后，百般的哄他出来作揖，他死也不肯。
+ 凤姐笑道：“亲戚们不大走动，都疏远了。
+ 知道的呢，说你们弃嫌我们，不肯常来；不知道的那起小人，还只当我们眼里没人似的。”
+ 刘老老忙念佛道：“我们家道艰难，走不起。
+ 来到这里，没的给姑奶奶打嘴，就是管家爷们瞧着也不像。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“这话没的叫人恶心。
+ 不过托赖着祖父的虚名，作个穷官儿罢咧，谁家有什么?
+ 不过也是个空架子，俗语儿说的好，‘朝廷还有三门子穷亲’呢，何况你我。”
+ 说着，又问周瑞家的：“回了太太了没有？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“等奶奶的示下。”
+ 凤姐儿道：“你去瞧瞧，要是有人就罢；要得闲呢，就回了，看怎么说。”
+ 周瑞家的答应去了。
+ 这里凤姐叫人抓了些果子给板儿吃，刚问了几句闲话时，就有家下许多媳妇儿管事的来回话。
+ 平儿回了，凤姐道：“我这里陪客呢，晚上再来回。
+ 要有紧事，你就带进来现办。”
+ 平儿出去，一会进来说：“我问了，没什么要紧的。
+ 我叫他们散了。”
+ 凤姐点头。
+ 只见周瑞家的回来，向凤姐道：“太太说：‘今日不得闲儿，二奶奶陪着也是一样，多谢费心想着。
+ 要是白来逛逛呢便罢； 有什么说的，只管告诉二奶奶。’”
+ 刘老老道：“也没甚的说，不过来瞧瞧姑太太姑奶奶，也是亲戚们的情分。”
+ 周瑞家的道：“没有什么说的便罢；要有话，只管回二奶奶，和太太是一样儿的。”
+ 一面说一面递了个眼色儿。
+ 刘老老会意，未语先红了脸。
+ 待要不说，今日所为何来?
+ 只得勉强说道：“论今日初次见，原不该说的，只是大远的奔了你老这里来，少不得说了……”
+ 刚说到这里，只听二门上小厮们回说：“东府里小大爷进来了。”
+ 凤姐忙和刘老老摆手道：“不必说了。”
+ 一面便问：“你蓉大爷在那里呢？”
+ 只听一路靴子响，进来了一个十七八岁的少年，面目清秀，身段苗条，美服华冠，轻裘宝带。
+ 刘老老此时坐不是，站不是，藏没处藏，躲没处躲。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你只管坐着罢，这是我侄儿。”
+ 刘老老才扭扭捏捏的在炕沿儿上侧身坐下。
+ 那贾蓉请了安，笑回道：“我父亲打发来求婶子，上回老舅太太给婶子的那架玻璃炕屏，明儿请个要紧的客，略摆一摆就送来。”
+ 凤姐道：“你来迟了，昨儿已经给了人了。”
+ 贾蓉听说，便笑嘻嘻的在炕沿上下个半跪道：“婶子要不借，我父亲又说我不会说话了，又要挨一顿好打。
+ 好婶子，只当可怜我罢！”
+ 凤姐笑道：“也没见我们王家的东西都是好的?
+ 你们那里放着那些好东西，只别看见我的东西才罢，一见了就想拿了去。”
+ 贾蓉笑道：“只求婶娘开恩罢！”
+ 凤姐道：“碰坏一点儿，你可仔细你的皮！”
+ 因命平儿拿了楼门上钥匙，叫几个妥当人来抬去。
+ 贾蓉喜的眉开眼笑，忙说：“我亲自带人拿去，别叫他们乱碰。”
+ 说着便起身出去了。
+ 这凤姐忽然想起一件事来，便向窗外叫：“蓉儿回来！”
+ 外面几个人接声说：“请蓉大爷回来呢！”
+ 贾蓉忙回来，满脸笑容的瞅着凤姐，听何指示。
+ 那凤姐只管慢慢吃茶，出了半日神，忽然把脸一红，笑道：“罢了，你先去罢。
+ 晚饭后你来再说罢。
+ 这会子有人，我也没精神了。”
+ 贾蓉答应个是，抿着嘴儿一笑，方慢慢退去。
+ 这刘老老方安顿了，便说道：“我今日带了你侄儿，不为别的，因他爹娘连吃的没有，天气又冷，只得带了你侄儿奔了你老来。”
+ 说着，又推板儿道：“你爹在家里怎么教你的?
+ 打发咱们来作煞事的?
+ 只顾吃果子！”
+ 凤姐早已明白了，听他不会说话，因笑道：“不必说了，我知道了。”
+ 因问周瑞家的道：“这老老不知用了早饭没有呢？”
+ 刘老老忙道：“一早就往这里赶咧，那里还有吃饭的工夫咧？”
+ 凤姐便命快传饭来。
+ 一时周瑞家的传了一桌客馔，摆在东屋里，过来带了刘老老和板儿过去吃饭。
+ 凤姐这里道：“周姐姐好生让着些儿，我不能陪了。”
+ 一面又叫过周瑞家的来问道：“方才回了太太，太太怎么说了？”
+ 周瑞家的道：“太太说：‘他们原不是一家子； 当年他们的祖和太老爷在一处做官，因连了宗的。
+ 这几年不大走动。
+ 当时他们来了，却也从没空过的。
+ 如今来瞧我们，也是他的好意，别简慢了他。
+ 要有什么话，叫二奶奶裁夺着就是了。’”
+ 凤姐听了说道：“怪道既是一家子，我怎么连影儿也不知道！”
+ 说话间，刘老老已吃完了饭，拉了板儿过来，舔唇咂嘴的道谢。
+ 凤姐笑道：“且请坐下，听我告诉你：方才你的意思，我已经知道了。
+ 论起亲戚来，原该不等上门就有照应才是； 但只如今家里事情太多，太太上了年纪，一时想不到是有的。
+ 我如今接着管事，这些亲戚们又都不大知道，况且外面看着虽是烈烈轰轰，不知大有大的难处，说给人也未必信。
+ 你既大远的来了，又是头一遭儿和我张个口，怎么叫你空回去呢?
+ 可巧昨儿太太给我的丫头们作衣裳的二十两银子还没动呢，你不嫌少，先拿了去用罢。”
+ 那刘老老先听见告艰苦，只当是没想头了， 又听见给他二十两银子，喜的眉开眼笑道：“我们也知道艰难的，但只俗语说的：‘瘦死的骆驼比马还大’呢。
+ 凭他怎样，你老拔一根寒毛比我们的腰还壮哩。”
+ 周瑞家的在旁听见他说的粗鄙，只管使眼色止他。
+ 凤姐笑而不睬，叫平儿把昨儿那包银子拿来，再拿一串钱，都送至刘老老跟前。
+ 凤姐道：“这是二十两银子，暂且给这孩子们作件冬衣罢。
+ 改日没事，只管来逛逛，才是亲戚们的意思。
+ 天也晚了，不虚留你们了，到家该问好的都问个好儿罢。”
+ 一面说，一面就站起来了。
+ 刘老老只是千恩万谢的，拿了银钱，跟着周瑞家的走到外边。
+ 周瑞家的道：“我的娘!
+ 你怎么见了他倒不会说话了呢?
+ 开口就是‘你侄儿’。
+ 我说句不怕你恼的话：就是亲侄儿也要说的和软些儿。
+ 那蓉大爷才是他的侄儿呢。
+ 他怎么又跑出这么个侄儿来了呢！”
+ 刘老老笑道：“我的嫂子!
+ 我见了他，心眼儿里爱还爱不过来，那里还说的上话来？”
+ 二人说着，又到周瑞家坐了片刻。
+ 刘老老要留下一块银子给周家的孩子们买果子吃，周瑞家的那里放在眼里，执意不肯。
+ 刘老老感谢不尽，仍从后门去了。
+ 未知去后如何，且听下回分解。
+
+ ON HER SIXTEENTH birthday, my grandma was betrothed by her father to Shan Bianlang, the son of Shan Tingxiu, one of Northeast Gaomi Township's richest men.
+ As distillery owners, the Shans used cheap sorghum to produce a strong, high-quality white wine that was famous throughout the area.
+ Northeast Gaomi Township is largely swampy land that is flooded by autumn rains; but since the tall sorghum stalks resist waterlogging, it was planted everywhere and invariably produced a bumper crop.
+ By using cheap grain to make wine, the Shan family made a very good living, and marrying my grandma off to them was a real feather in Great-Granddad's cap.
+ Many local families had dreamed of marrying into the Shan family, despite rumours that Shan Bianlang had leprosy.
+ His father was a wizened little man who sported a scrawny queue on the back of his head, and even though his cupboards overflowed with gold and silver, he wore tattered, dirty clothes, often using a length of rope as a belt.
+ Grandma's marriage into the Shan family was the will of heaven, implemented on a day when she and some of her playmates, with their tiny bound feet and long pigtails, were playing beside a set of swings.
+ It was Qingming, the day set aside to attend ancestral graves; peach trees were in full red bloom, willows were green, a fine rain was falling, and the girls' faces looked like peach blossoms.
+ It was a day of freedom for them.
+ That year Grandma was five feet four inches tall and weighed about 130 pounds.
+ She was wearing a cotton print jacket over green satin trousers, with scarlet bands of silk tied around her ankles.
+ Since it was drizzling, she had put on a pair of embroidered slippers soaked a dozen times in tong oil, which made a squishing sound when she walked.
+ Her long shiny braids shone, and a heavy silver necklace hung around her neck – Great-Granddad was a silversmith.
+ Great-Grandma, the daughter of a landlord who had fallen on hard times, knew the importance of bound feet to a girl, and had begun binding her daughter's feet when she was six years old, tightening the bindings every day.
+ A yard in length, the cloth bindings were wound around all but the big toes until the bones cracked and the toes turned under.
+ The pain was excruciating.
+ My mother also had bound feet, and just seeing them saddened me so much that I felt compelled to shout: 'Down with feudalism!
+ Long live liberated feet!'
+ The results of Grandma's suffering were two three-inch golden lotuses, and by the age of sixteen she had grown into a well-developed beauty.
+ When she walked, swinging her arms freely, her body swayed like a willow in the wind.
+ Shan Tingxiu, the groom's father, was walking around Great-Granddad's village, dung basket in hand, when he spotted Grandma among the other local flowers.
+ Three months later, a bridal sedan chair would come to carry her away.
+ Grandma was lightheaded and dizzy inside the stuffy sedan chair, her view blocked by a red curtain that gave off a pungent mildewy odour.
+ She reached out to lift it a crack – Great-Granddad had told her not to remove her red veil.
+ A heavy bracelet of twisted silver slid down to her wrist, and as she looked at the coiled-snake design her thoughts grew chaotic and disoriented.
+ A warm wind rustled the emerald-green stalks of sorghum lining the narrow dirt path.
+ Doves cooed in the fields.
+ The delicate powder of petals floated above silvery new ears of waving sorghum.
+ The curtain, embroidered on the inside with a dragon and a phoenix, had faded after years of use, and there was a large stain in the middle.
+ Summer was giving way to autumn, and the sunlight outside the sedan chair was brilliant.
+ The bouncing movements of the bearers rocked the chair slowly from side to side; the leather lining of their poles groaned and creaked, the curtain fluttered gently, letting in an occasional ray of sunlight and, from time to time, a whisper of cool air.
+ Grandma was sweating profusely and her heart was racing as she listened to the rhythmic footsteps and heavy breathing of the bearers.
+ The inside of her skull felt cold one minute, as though filled with shiny pebbles, and hot the next, as though filled with coarse peppers.
+ After Shan Tingxiu had spotted Grandma, a stream of people came to congratulate Great-Granddad and Great-Grandma.
+ Grandma pondered what it would be like to mount to the jingle of gold and dismount to the tinkle of silver, but what she truly longed for was a good husband, handsome and well educated, a man who would treat her gently.
+ As a young maiden, she had embroidered a wedding trousseau and several exquisite pictures for the man who would someday become my granddad.
+ Eager to marry, she heard innuendos from her girlfriends that the Shan boy was afflicted with leprosy, and her dreams began to evaporate.
+ Yet, when she shared her anxieties with her parents, Great-Granddad hemmed and hawed, while Great-Grandma scolded the girlfriends, accusing them of sour grapes.
+ Later on, Great-Granddad told her that the well-educated Shan boy had the fair complexion of a young scholar from staying home all the time.
+ Grandma was confused, not knowing if this was true or not.
+ After all, she thought, her own parents wouldn't lie to her.
+ Maybe her girlfriends had made it all up.
+ Once again she looked forward to her wedding day.
+ Grandma longed to lose her anxieties and loneliness in the arms of a strong and noble young man.
+ Finally, to her relief, her wedding day arrived, and as she was placed inside the sedan chair, carried by four bearers, the horns and woodwinds fore and aft struck up a melancholy tune that brought tears to her eyes.
+ Off they went, floating along as though riding the clouds or sailing through a mist.
+ Shortly after leaving the village, the lazy musicians stopped playing, while the bearers quickened their pace.
+ The aroma of sorghum burrowed into her heart.
+ Full-voiced strange and rare birds sang to her from the fields.
+ A picture of what she imagined to be the bridegroom slowly took shape from the threads of sunlight filtering into the darkness of the sedan chair.
+ Painful needle pricks jabbed her heart.
+ 'Old Man in heaven, protect me!'
+ Her silent prayer made her delicate lips tremble.
+ A light down adorned her upper lip, and her fair skin was damp.
+ Every soft word she uttered was swallowed up by the rough walls of the carriage and the heavy curtain before her.
+ She ripped the tart-smelling veil away from her face and laid it on her knees.
+ She was following local wedding customs, which dictated that a bride wear three layers of new clothes, top and bottom, no matter how hot the day.
+ The inside of the sedan chair was badly worn and terribly dirty, like a coffin; it had already embraced countless other brides, now long dead.
+ The walls were festooned with yellow silk so filthy it oozed grease, and of the five flies caught inside, three buzzed above her head while the other two rested on the curtain before her, rubbing their bright eyes with black stick-like legs.
+ Succumbing to the oppressiveness in the carriage, Grandma eased one of her bamboo-shoot toes under the curtain and lifted it a crack to sneak a look outside.
+ She could make out the shapes of the bearers' statuesque legs poking out from under loose black satin trousers and their big, fleshy feet encased in straw sandals.
+ They raised clouds of dust as they tramped along.
+ Impatiently trying to conjure up an image of their firm, muscular chests, Grandma raised the toe of her shoe and leaned forward.
+ She could see the polished purple scholar-tree poles and the bearers' broad shoulders beneath them.
+ Barriers of sorghum stalks lining the path stood erect and solid in unbroken rows, tightly packed, together sizing one another up with the yet unopened clay-green eyes of grain ears, one indistinguishable from the next, as far as she could see, like a vast river.
+ The path was so narrow in places it was barely passable, causing the wormy, sappy leaves to brush noisily against the sedan chair.
+ The men's bodies emitted the sour smell of sweat.
+ Infatuated by the masculine odour, Grandma breathed in deeply – this ancestor of mine must have been nearly bursting with passion.
+ As the bearers carried their load down the path, their feet left a series of V imprints known as 'tramples' in the dirt, for which satisfied clients usually rewarded them, and which fortified the bearers' pride of profession.
+ It was unseemly to 'trample' with an uneven cadence or to grip the poles, and the best bearers kept their hands on their hips the whole time, rocking the sedan chair in perfect rhythm with the musicians' haunting tunes, which reminded everyone within earshot of the hidden suffering in whatever pleasures lay ahead.
+ When the sedan chair reached the plains, the bearers began to get a little sloppy, both to make up time and to torment their passenger.
+ Some brides were bounced around so violently they vomited from motion sickness, soiling their clothing and slippers; the retching sounds from inside the carriage pleased the bearers as though they were giving vent to their own miseries.
+ The sacrifices these strong young men made to carry their cargo into bridal chambers must have embittered them, which was why it seemed so natural to torment the brides.
+ One of the four men bearing Grandma's sedan chair that day would eventually become my granddad – it was Commander Yu Zhan'ao.
+ At the time he was a beefy twenty-year-old, a pallbearer and sedan bearer at the peak of his trade.
+ The young men of his generation were as sturdy as Northeast Gaomi sorghum, which is more than can be said about us weaklings who succeeded them.
+ It was a custom back then for sedan bearers to tease the bride while trundling her along: like distillery workers, who drink the wine they make, since it is their due, these men torment all who ride in their sedan chairs – even the wife of the Lord of Heaven if she should be a passenger.
+ Sorghum leaves scraped the sedan chair mercilessly when, all of a sudden, the deadening monotony of the trip was broken by the plaintive sounds of weeping – remarkably like the musicians' tunes – coming from deep in the field.
+ As Grandma listened to the music, trying to picture the instruments in the musicians' hands, she raised the curtain with her foot until she could see the sweat-soaked waist of one of the bearers.
+ Her gaze was caught by her own red embroidered slippers, with their tapered slimness and cheerless beauty, ringed by halos of incoming sunlight until they looked like lotus blossoms, or, even more, like tiny goldfish that had settled to the bottom of a bowl.
+ Two teardrops as transparently pink as immature grains of sorghum wetted Grandma's eyelashes and slipped down her cheeks to the corners of her mouth.
+ As she was gripped by sadness, the image of a learned and refined husband, handsome in his high-topped hat and wide sash, like a player on the stage, blurred and finally vanished, replaced by the horrifying picture of Shan Bianlang's face, his leprous mouth covered with rotting tumours.
+ Her heart turned to ice.
+ Were these tapered golden lotuses, a face as fresh as peaches and apricots, gentility of a thousand kinds, and ten thousand varieties of elegance all reserved for the pleasure of a leper?
+ Better to die and be done with it.
+ The disconsolate weeping in the sorghum field was dotted with words, like knots in a piece of wood:
+ A blue sky yo – a sapphire sky yo – a painted sky yo – a mighty cudgel yo – dear elder brother yo – death has claimed you – you have brought down little sister's sky yo –.
+ I must tell you that the weeping of women from Northeast Gaomi Township makes beautiful music.
+ During 1912, the first year of the Republic, professional mourners known as 'wailers' came from Qufu, the home of Confucius, to study local weeping techniques.
+ Meeting up with a woman lamenting the death of her husband seemed to Grandma to be a stroke of bad luck on her wedding day, and she grew even more dejected.
+ Just then one of the bearers spoke up: 'You there, little bride in the chair, say something!
+ The long journey has bored us to tears.'
+ Grandma quickly snatched up her red veil and covered her face, gently drawing her foot back from beneath the curtain and returning the carriage to darkness.
+ 'Sing us a song while we bear you along!'
+ The musicians, as though snapping out of a trance, struck up their instruments.
+ A trumpet blared from behind the chair:
+ 'Too-tah – too-tah –'
+ 'Poo-pah – poo-pah –'
+ One of the bearers up front imitated the trumpet sound, evoking coarse, raucous laughter all around.
+ Grandma was drenched with sweat.
+ Back home, as she was being lifted into the sedan chair, Great-Grandma had exhorted her not to get drawn into any banter with the bearers.
+ Sedan bearers and musicians are low-class rowdies capable of anything, no matter how depraved.
+ They began rocking the chair so violently that poor Grandma couldn't keep her seat without holding on tight.
+ 'No answer?
+ Okay, rock!
+ If we can't shake any words loose, we can at least shake the piss out of her!'
+ The sedan chair was like a dinghy tossed about by the waves, and Grandma held on to the wooden seat for dear life.
+ The two eggs she'd eaten for breakfast churned in her stomach, the flies buzzed around her ears; her throat tightened, as the taste of eggs surged up into her mouth.
+ She bit her lip.
+ Don't throw up, don't let yourself throw up! she commanded herself.
+ You mustn't let yourself throw up, Fenglian.
+ They say throwing up in the bridal chair means a lifetime of bad luck. . . .
+ The bearers' banter turned coarse.
+ One of them reviled my great-granddad for being a money-grabber, another said something about a pretty flower stuck into a pile of cowshit, a third called Shan Bianlang a scruffy leper who oozed pus and excreted yellow fluids.
+ He said the stench of rotten flesh drifted beyond the Shan compound, which swarmed with horseflies. . . .
+ 'Little bride, if you let Shan Bianlang touch you, your skin will rot away!'
+ As the horns and woodwinds blared and tooted, the taste of eggs grew stronger, forcing Grandma to bite down hard on her lip.
+ But to no avail.
+ She opened her mouth and spewed a stream of filth, soiling the curtain, towards which the five flies dashed as though shot from a gun.
+ 'Puke-ah, puke-ah.
+ Keep rocking!' one of the bearers roared.
+ 'Keep rocking.
+ Sooner or later she'll have to say something.'
+ 'Elder brothers . . . spare me . . .'
+ Grandma pleaded desperately between agonising retches.
+ Then she burst into tears.
+ She felt humiliated; she could sense the perils of her future, knowing she'd spend the rest of her life drowning in a sea of bitterness.
+ Oh, Father, oh, Mother.
+ I have been destroyed by a miserly father and a heartless mother!
+ Grandma's piteous wails made the sorghum quake.
+ The bearers stopped rocking the chair and calmed the raging sea.
+ The musicians lowered the instruments from their rousing lips, so that only Grandma's sobs could be heard, alone with the mournful strains of a single woodwind, whose weeping sounds were more enchanting than any woman's.
+ Grandma stopped crying at the sound of the woodwind, as though commanded from on high.
+ Her face, suddenly old and desiccated, was pearled with tears.
+ She heard the sound of death in the gentle melancholy of the tune, and smelled its breath; she could see the angel of death, with lips as scarlet as sorghum and a smiling face the colour of golden corn.
+ The bearers fell silent and their footsteps grew heavy.
+ The sacrificial choking sounds from inside the chair and the woodwind accompaniment had made them restless and uneasy, had set their souls adrift.
+ No longer did it seem like a wedding procession as they negotiated the dirt road; it was more like a funeral procession.
+ My grandfather, the bearer directly in front of Grandma's foot, felt a strange premonition blazing inside him and illuminating the path his life would take.
+ The sounds of Grandma's weeping had awakened seeds of affection that had lain dormant deep in his heart.
+ It was time to rest, so the bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground.
+ Grandma, having cried herself into a daze, didn't realise that one of her tiny feet was peeking out from beneath the curtain; the sight of that incomparably delicate, lovely thing nearly drove the souls out of the bearers' bodies.
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked up, leaned over, and gently – very gently – held Grandma's foot in his hand, as though it were a fledgling whose feathers weren't yet dry, then eased it back inside the carriage.
+ She was so moved by the gentleness of the deed she could barely keep from throwing back the curtain to see what sort of man this bearer was, with his large, warm, youthful hand.
+ I've always believed that marriages are made in heaven and that people fated to be together are connected by an invisible thread.
+ The act of grasping Grandma's foot triggered a powerful drive in Yu Zhan'ao to forge a new life for himself, and constituted the turning point in his life – and the turning point in hers as well.
+ The sedan chair set out again as a trumpet blast rent the air, then drifted off into obscurity.
+ The wind had risen – a northeaster – and clouds were gathering in the sky, blotting out the sun and throwing the carriage into darkness.
+ Grandma could hear the shh-shh of rustling sorghum, one wave close upon another, carrying the sound off into the distance.
+ Thunder rumbled off to the northeast.
+ The bearers quickened their pace.
+ She wondered how much farther it was to the Shan household; like a trussed lamb being led to slaughter, she grew calmer with each step.
+ At home she had hidden a pair of scissors in her bodice, perhaps to use on Shan Bianlang, perhaps to use on herself.
+ The holdup of Grandma's sedan chair by a highwayman at Toad Hollow occupies an important place in the saga of my family.
+ Toad Hollow is a large marshy stretch in the vast flatland where the soil is especially fertile, the water especially plentiful, and the sorghum especially dense.
+ A blood-red bolt of lightning streaked across the northeastern sky, and screaming fragments of apricot-yellow sunlight tore through the dense clouds above the dirt road, when Grandma's sedan chair reached that point.
+ The panting bearers were drenched with sweat as they entered Toad Hollow, over which the air hung heavily.
+ Sorghum plants lining the road shone like ebony, dense and impenetrable; weeds and wildflowers grew in such profusion they seemed to block the road.
+ Everywhere you looked, narrow stems of cornflowers were bosomed by clumps of rank weeds, their purple, blue, pink, and white flowers waving proudly.
+ From deep in the sorghum came the melancholy croaks of toads, the dreary chirps of grasshoppers, and the plaintive howls of foxes.
+ Grandma, still seated in the carriage, felt a sudden breath of cold air that raised tiny goosebumps on her skin.
+ She didn't know what was happening, even when she heard the shout up ahead:
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!'
+ Grandma gasped.
+ What was she feeling?
+ Sadness?
+ Joy?
+ My God, she thought, it's a man who eats fistcakes!
+ Northeast Gaomi Township was aswarm with bandits who operated in the sorghum fields like fish in water, forming gangs to rob, pillage, and kidnap, yet balancing their evil deeds with charitable ones.
+ If they were hungry, they snatched two people, keeping one and sending the other into the village to demand flatbreads with eggs and green onions rolled inside.
+ Since they stuffed the rolled flatbreads into their mouths with both fists, they were called 'fistcakes'.
+ 'Nobody passes without paying a toll!' the man bellowed.
+ The bearers stopped in their tracks and stared dumbstruck at the highwayman of medium height who stood in the road, his legs akimbo.
+ He had smeared his face black and was wearing a conical rain hat woven of sorghum stalks and a broad-shouldered rain cape open in front to reveal a black buttoned jacket and a wide leather belt, in which a protruding object was tucked, bundled in red satin.
+ His hand rested on it.
+ The thought flashed through Grandma's mind that there was nothing to be afraid of: if death couldn't frighten her, nothing could.
+ She raised the curtain to get a glimpse of the man who ate fistcakes.
+ 'Hand over the toll, or I'll pop you all!'
+ He patted the red bundle.
+ The musicians reached into their belts, took out the strings of copper coins Great-Granddad had given them, and tossed these at the man's feet.
+ The bearers lowered the sedan chair to the ground, took out their copper coins, and did the same.
+ As he dragged the strings of coins into a pile with his foot, his eyes were fixed on Grandma.
+ 'Get behind the sedan chair, all of you.
+ I'll pop if you don't!'
+ He thumped the object tucked into his belt.
+ The bearers moved slowly behind the sedan chair.
+ Yu Zhan'ao, bringing up the rear, spun around and glared.
+ A change came over the highwayman's face, and he gripped the object at his belt tightly.
+ 'Eyes straight ahead if you want to keep breathing!'
+ With his hand resting on his belt, he shuffled up to the sedan chair, reached out, and pinched Grandma's foot.
+ A smile creased her face, and the man pulled his hand away as though it had been scalded.
+ 'Climb down and come with me!' he ordered her.
+ Grandma sat without moving, the smile frozen on her face.
+ 'Climb down, I said!'
+ She rose from the seat, stepped grandly onto the pole, and alit in a tuft of cornflowers.
+ Her gaze travelled from the man to the bearers and musicians.
+ 'Into the sorghum field!' the highwayman said, his hand still resting on the red-bundled object at his belt.
+ Grandma stood confidently; lightning crackled in the clouds overhead and shattered her radiant smile into a million shifting shards.
+ The highwayman began pushing her into the sorghum field, his hand never leaving the object at his belt.
+ She stared at Yu Zhan'ao with a feverish look in her eyes.
+ Yu Zhan'ao approached the highwayman, his thin lips curled resolutely, up at one end and down at the other.
+ 'Hold it right there!' the highwayman commanded feebly.
+ 'I'll shoot if you take another step!'
+ Yu Zhan'ao walked calmly up to the man, who began backing up.
+ Green flames seemed to shoot from his eyes, and crystalline beads of sweat scurried down his terrified face.
+ When Yu Zhan'ao had drawn to within three paces of him, a shameful sound burst from his mouth, and he turned and ran.
+ Yu Zhan'ao was on his tail in a flash, kicking him expertly in the rear.
+ He sailed through the air over the cornflowers, thrashing his arms and legs like an innocent babe, until he landed in the sorghum field.
+ 'Spare me, gentlemen!
+ I've got an eighty-year-old mother at home, and this is the only way I can make a living.'
+ The highwayman skilfully pleaded his case to Yu Zhan'ao, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, dragged him back to the sedan chair, threw him roughly to the ground, and kicked him in his noisy mouth.
+ The man shrieked in pain; blood trickled from his nose.
+ Yu Zhan'ao reached down, took the thing from the man's belt, and shook off the red cloth covering, to reveal the gnarled knot of a tree.
+ The men all gasped in amazement.
+ The bandit crawled to his knees, knocking his head on the ground and pleading for his life.
+ 'Every highwayman says he's got an eighty-year-old mother at home,' Yu Zhan'ao said as he stepped aside and glanced at his comrades, like the leader of a pack sizing up the other dogs.
+ With a flurry of shouts, the bearers and musicians fell upon the highwayman, fists and feet flying.
+ The initial onslaught was met by screams and shrill cries, which soon died out.
+ Grandma stood beside the road listening to the dull cacophony of fists and feet on flesh; she glanced at Yu Zhan'ao, then looked up at the lightning-streaked sky, the radiant, golden, noble smile still frozen on her face.
+ One of the musicians raised his trumpet and brought it down hard on the highwayman's skull, burying the curved edge so deeply he had to strain to free it.
+ The highwayman's stomach gurgled and his body, racked by spasms, grew deathly still; he lay spread-eagled on the ground, a mixture of white and yellow liquid seeping slowly out of the fissure in his skull.
+ 'Is he dead?' asked the musician, who was examining the bent mouth of his trumpet.
+ 'He's gone, the poor bastard.
+ He didn't put up much of a fight!'
+ The gloomy faces of the bearers and musicians revealed their anxieties.
+ Yu Zhan'ao looked wordlessly first at the dead, then at the living.
+ With a handful of leaves from a sorghum stalk, he cleaned up Grandma's mess in the carriage, then held up the tree knot, wrapped it in the piece of red cloth, and tossed the bundle as far as he could; the gnarled knot broke free in flight and separated from the piece of cloth, which fluttered to the ground in the field like a big red butterfly.
+ Yu Zhan'ao lifted Grandma into the sedan chair.
+ 'It's starting to rain,' he said, 'so let's get going.'
+ Grandma ripped the curtain from the front of the carriage and stuffed it behind the seat.
+ As she breathed the free air she studied Yu Zhan'ao's broad shoulders and narrow waist.
+ He was so near she could have touched the pale, taut skin of his shaved head with her toe.
+ The winds were picking up, bending the sorghum stalks in ever deeper waves, those on the roadside stretching out to bow their respects to Grandma.
+ The bearers streaked down the road, yet the sedan chair was as steady as a skiff skimming across whitecaps.
+ Frogs and toads croaked in loud welcome to the oncoming summer rainstorm.
+ The low curtain of heaven stared darkly at the silvery faces of sorghum, over which streaks of blood-red lightning crackled, releasing ear-splitting explosions of thunder.
+ With growing excitement, Grandma stared fearlessly at the green waves raised by the black winds.
+ The first truculent raindrops made the plants shudder.
+ The rain beat a loud tattoo on the sedan chair and fell on Grandma's embroidered slippers; it fell on Yu Zhan'ao's head, then slanted in on Grandma's face.
+ The bearers ran like scared jackrabbits, but couldn't escape the prenoon deluge.
+ Sorghum crumpled under the wild rain.
+ Toads took refuge under the stalks, their white pouches popping in and out noisily; foxes hid in their darkened dens to watch tiny drops of water splashing down from the sorghum plants.
+ The rainwater washed Yu Zhan'ao's head so clean and shiny it looked to Grandma like a new moon.
+ Her clothes, too, were soaked.
+ She could have covered herself with the curtain, but she didn't; she didn't want to, for the open front of the sedan chair afforded her a glimpse of the outside world in all its turbulence and beauty.
+
+ 我奶奶刚满十六岁时，就由她的父亲做主，嫁给了高密东北乡有名的财主单廷秀的独生子单扁郎。
+ 单家开着烧酒锅，以廉价高粱为原料酿造优质白酒，方圆百里都有名。
+ 东北乡地势低洼，往往秋水泛滥，高粱高秆防涝，被广泛种植，年年丰产。
+ 单家利用廉价原料酿酒牟利，富甲一方。
+ 我奶奶能嫁给单扁郎，是我外曾祖父的荣耀。
+ 当时，多少人家都渴望着和单家攀亲，尽管风传着单扁郎早就染上了麻风病。
+ 单廷秀是个干干巴巴的小老头，脑后翘着一支枯干的小辫子。
+ 他家里金钱满柜，却穿得破衣烂袄，腰里常常扎一条草绳。
+ 奶奶嫁到单家，其实也是天意。
+ 那天，我奶奶在秋千架旁与一些尖足长辫的大闺女耍笑游戏，那天是清明节，桃红柳绿，细雨霏霏，人面桃花，女儿解放。
+ 奶奶那年身高一米六零，体重六十公斤，上穿碎花洋布褂子，下穿绿色缎裤，脚脖子上扎着深红色的绸带子。
+ 由于下小雨，奶奶穿了一双用桐油浸泡过十几遍的绣花油鞋，一走克郎克郎地响。
+ 奶奶脑后垂着一根油光光的大辫子，脖子上挂着一个沉甸甸的银锁——我外曾祖父是个打造银器的小匠人。
+ 外曾祖母是个破落地主的女儿，知道小脚对于女人的重要意义。
+ 奶奶不到六岁就开始缠脚，日日加紧。
+ 一根裹脚布，长一丈余，外曾祖母用它，勒断了奶奶的脚骨，把八个脚趾，折断在脚底，真惨！
+ 我的母亲也是小脚，我每次看到她的脚，就心中难过，就恨不得高呼：打倒封建主义！
+ 人脚自由万岁！
+ 奶奶受尽苦难，终于裹就一双三寸金莲。
+ 十六岁那年，奶奶已经出落得丰满秀丽，走起路来双臂挥舞，身腰扭动，好似风中招飐的杨柳。
+ 单廷秀那天挎着粪筐子到我外曾祖父村里转圈，从众多的花朵中，一眼看中了我奶奶。
+ 三个月后，一乘花轿就把我奶奶抬走了。
+ 奶奶坐在憋闷的花轿里，头晕眼眩。
+ 罩头的红布把她的双眼遮住，红布上散着一股强烈的霉馊味。
+ 她抬起手，掀起红布——外祖母曾千叮咛万嘱咐，不许她自己揭动罩头红布——一只沉甸甸的绞丝银镯子滑到小臂上，奶奶看着镯子上的蛇形花纹，心里纷乱如麻。
+ 温暖的熏风吹拂着狭窄的土路两侧翠绿的高粱。
+ 高粱地里传来鸽子咕咕咕咕的叫声。
+ 刚秀出来的银灰色的高粱穗子飞扬着清淡的花粉。
+ 迎着她脸面的轿帘上，刺绣着龙凤图案，轿帘上的红布因轿子经年赁出，已经黯然失色，正中间油渍了一大片。
+ 夏末秋初，阳光茂盛，轿夫们轻捷的运动使轿子颤颤悠悠，拴轿杆的生牛皮吱吱地响，轿帘轻轻掀动，把一缕缕的光明和比较清凉的风闪进轿里来。
+ 奶奶浑身流汗，心跳如鼓，听着轿夫们均匀的脚步声和粗重的喘息声，脑海里交替着出现卵石般的光滑寒冷和辣椒般的粗糙灼热。
+ 自从奶奶被单廷秀看中后，不知有多少人向外曾祖父和外曾祖母道过喜。
+ 奶奶虽然想过上马金下马银的好日子，但更盼着有一个识文解字、眉清目秀、知冷知热的好女婿。
+ 奶奶在闺中刺绣嫁衣，绣出了我未来的爷爷的一幅幅精美的图画。
+ 她曾经盼望着早日成婚，但从女伴的话语中隐隐约约听到单家公子是个麻风病患者，奶奶的心凉了，奶奶向她的父母诉说着心中的忧虑。
+ 外曾祖父遮遮掩掩不回答，外曾祖母把奶奶的女伴们痛骂一顿，其意大概是说狐狸吃不到葡萄就说葡萄是酸的之类。
+ 外曾祖父后来又说单家公子饱读诗书，足不出户，白白净净，一表人材。
+ 奶奶恍恍惚惚，不知真假，心想着天下没有狠心的爹娘，也许女伴真是瞎说。
+ 奶奶又开始盼望早日完婚。
+ 奶奶丰腴的青春年华辐射着强烈的焦虑和淡淡的孤寂，她渴望着躺在一个伟岸的男子怀抱里缓解焦虑消除孤寂。
+ 婚期终于到了，奶奶被装进了这乘四人大轿，大喇叭小唢呐在轿前轿后吹得凄凄惨惨，奶奶止不住泪流面颊。
+ 轿子起行，忽悠悠似腾云驾雾，偷懒的吹鼓手在出村不远处就停止了吹奏，轿夫们的脚下也快起来。
+ 高粱的味道深入人心。
+ 高粱地里的奇鸟珍禽高鸣低啭。
+ 在一线一线阳光射进昏暗的轿内时，奶奶心中丈夫的形象也渐渐清晰起来。
+ 她的心像被针锥扎着，疼痛深刻有力。
+ “老天爷，保佑我吧！”
+ 奶奶心中的祷语把她的芳唇冲动。
+ 奶奶的唇上有一层纤弱的茸毛。
+ 奶奶鲜嫩茂盛，水分充足。
+ 她出口的细语被厚重的轿壁和轿帘吸收得干干净净。
+ 她一把撕下那块酸溜溜的罩头布，放在膝上。
+ 奶奶按着出嫁的传统，大热的天气，也穿着三表新的棉袄棉裤。
+ 花轿里破破烂烂，肮脏污浊。
+ 它像具棺材，不知装过了多少个必定成为死尸的新娘。
+ 轿壁上衬里的黄缎子脏得流油，五只苍蝇有三只在奶奶头上嗡嗡地飞翔，有两只伏在轿帘上，用棒状的黑腿擦着明亮的眼睛。
+ 奶奶受闷不过，悄悄地伸出笋尖状的脚，把轿帘顶开一条缝。
+ 偷偷地往外看。
+ 她看到轿夫们肥大的黑色衫绸裤里依稀可辨的、优美颀长的腿，和穿着双鼻梁麻鞋的肥大的脚。
+ 轿夫的脚踏起一股股噗噗作响的尘土。
+ 奶奶猜想着轿夫粗壮的上身，忍不住把脚尖上移，身体前倾。
+ 她看到了光滑的紫槐木轿杆和轿夫宽阔的肩膀。
+ 道路两边，板块般的高粱坚固凝滞，连成一体，拥拥挤挤，彼此打量，灰绿色的高粱穗子睡眼未开，这一穗与那一穗根本无法区别，高粱永无尽头，仿佛潺潺流动的河流。
+ 道路有时十分狭窄，沾满蚜虫分泌物的高粱叶子擦得轿子两侧沙沙地响。
+ 轿夫身上散发出汗酸味，奶奶有点痴迷地呼吸着这男人的气味，她老人家心中肯定漾起一圈圈春情波澜。
+ 轿夫抬轿从街上走，迈的都是八字步，号称“踩街”，这一方面是为讨主家欢喜，多得些赏钱； 另一方面，是为了显示一种优雅的职业风度。
+ 踩街时，步履不齐的不是好汉，手扶轿杆的不是好汉，够格的轿夫都是双手卡腰，步调一致，轿子颠动的节奏要和上吹鼓手们吹出的凄美音乐，让所有的人都能体会到任何幸福后面都隐藏着等量的痛苦。
+ 轿子走到平川旷野，轿夫们便撒了野，这一是为了赶路，二是要折腾一下新娘。
+ 有的新娘，被轿子颠得大声呕吐，脏物吐满锦衣绣鞋；轿夫们在新娘的呕吐声中，获得一种发泄的快乐。
+ 这些年轻力壮的男子，为别人抬去洞房里的牺牲，心里一定不是滋味，所以他们要折腾新娘。
+ 那天抬着我奶奶的四个轿夫中，有一个成了我的爷爷——他就是余占鳌司令。
+ 那时候他二十郎当岁，是东北乡打棺抬轿这行当里的佼佼者
+ ——我爷爷辈的好汉们，都有高密东北乡人高粱般鲜明的性格，非我们这些孱弱的后辈能比——
+ 当时的规矩，轿夫们在路上开新娘子的玩笑，如同烧酒锅上的伙计们喝烧酒，是天经地义的事，天王老子的新娘他们也敢折腾。
+ 高粱叶子把轿子磨得嚓嚓响，高粱深处，突然传来一阵悠扬的哭声，打破了道路上的单调。
+ 哭声与吹鼓手们吹出的曲调十分相似。
+ 奶奶想到乐曲，就想到那些凄凉的乐器一定在吹鼓手们手里提着。
+ 奶奶用脚撑着轿帘能看到一个轿夫被汗水溻湿的腰，奶奶更多地是看到自己穿着大红绣花鞋的脚，它尖尖瘦瘦，带着凄艳的表情，从外面投进来的光明罩住了它们。
+ 它们像两枚莲花瓣，它们更像两条小金鱼埋伏在澄清的水底。
+ 两滴高粱米粒般晶莹微红的细小泪珠跳出奶奶的睫毛，流过面颊，流到嘴角。
+ 奶奶心里又悲又苦，往常描绘好的、与戏台上人物同等模样、峨冠博带、儒雅风流的丈夫形象在泪眼里先模糊后漶灭。
+ 奶奶恐怖地看到单家扁郎那张开花绽彩的麻风病人脸，奶奶透心地冰冷。
+ 奶奶想这一双娇娇金莲，这一张桃腮杏脸，千般的温存，万种的风流，难道真要由一个麻风病人去消受？
+ 如其那样，还不如一死了之。
+ 高粱地里悠长的哭声里，夹杂着疙疙瘩瘩的字眼：
+ 青天哟——蓝天哟——花花绿绿的天哟——棒槌哟亲哥哟你死了——可就塌了妹妹的天哟——
+ 我不得不告诉您，我们高密东北乡女人哭丧跟唱歌一样优美。
+ 民国元年，曲阜县孔夫子家的“哭丧户”专程前来学习过哭腔。
+ 大喜的日子里碰上女人哭亡夫，奶奶感到这是不祥之兆，已经沉重的心情更加沉重。
+ 这时，有一个轿夫开口说话：“轿上的小娘子，跟哥哥们说几句话呀！
+ 远远的路程，闷得慌。”
+ 奶奶赶紧拿起红布，蒙到头上，顶着轿帘的脚尖也悄悄收回，轿里又是一团漆黑。
+ “唱个曲儿给哥哥们听，哥哥抬着你哩！”
+ 吹鼓手如梦方醒，在轿后猛地吹响了大喇叭，大喇叭说：
+ “咚——咚——”
+ “猛捅——猛捅——”
+ 轿前有人模仿着喇叭声说，前前后后响起一阵粗野的笑声。
+ 奶奶身上汗水淋漓。
+ 临上轿前，外曾祖母反复叮咛过她，在路上，千万不要跟轿夫们磨牙斗嘴。
+ 轿夫，吹鼓手，都是下九流，奸刁古怪，什么样的坏事都干得出来。
+ 轿夫们用力把轿子抖起来，奶奶的屁股坐不安稳，双手抓住座板。
+ “不吱声？
+ 颠！
+ 颠不出她的话就颠出她的尿！”
+ 轿子已经像风浪中的小船了，奶奶死劲抓住座板，腹中翻腾着早晨吃下的两个鸡蛋，苍蝇在她耳畔嗡嗡地飞，她的喉咙紧张，蛋腥味冲到口腔，她咬住嘴唇。
+ 不能吐，不能吐！
+ 奶奶命令着自己，不能吐啊，凤莲，人家说吐在轿里是最大的不吉利，吐了轿子一辈子没好运……
+ 轿夫们的话更加粗野了，他们有的骂我外曾祖父是个见钱眼开的小人，有的说鲜花插到牛粪上，有的说单扁郎是个流白脓淌黄水的麻风病人。
+ 他们说站在单家院子外，就能闻到一股烂肉臭味，单家的院子里，飞舞着成群结队的绿头苍蝇……
+ “小娘子，你可不能让单扁郎沾身啊，沾了身，你也烂啦！”
+ 大喇叭小唢呐呜呜咽咽地吹着，那股蛋腥味更加强烈，奶奶牙齿紧咬嘴唇，咽喉里像有只拳头在打击，她忍不住了，一张嘴，一股奔突的脏物蹿出来，涂在了轿帘上，五只苍蝇像子弹一样射到呕吐物上。
+ “吐啦吐啦，颠呀！”
+ 轿夫们狂喊着，“颠呀，早晚颠得她开口说话。”
+ “大哥哥们…… 饶了我吧……”
+ 奶奶在呃嗝中，痛不欲生地说着，说完了，便放声大哭起来。
+ 奶奶觉得委屈，奶奶觉得前途险恶，终生难逃苦海。
+ 爹呀，娘呀，贪财的爹，狠心的娘，你们把我毁了。
+ 奶奶放声大哭，高粱深径震动，轿夫们不再颠狂，推波助澜、兴风作浪的吹鼓手们也停嘴不吹。
+ 只剩下奶奶的呜咽，又和进了一支悲泣的小唢呐，唢呐的哭泣声比所有的女人哭泣都优美。
+ 奶奶在唢呐声中停住哭，像聆听天籁一般，听着这似乎从天国传来的音乐。
+ 奶奶粉面凋零，珠泪点点，从悲婉的曲调里，她听到了死的声音，嗅到了死的气息，看到了死神的高粱般深红的嘴唇和玉米般金黄的笑脸。
+ 轿夫们沉默无言，步履沉重。
+ 轿里牺牲的哽咽和轿后唢呐的伴奏，使他们心中萍翻桨乱，雨打魂幡。
+ 走在高粱小径上的，已不像迎亲的队伍，倒像送葬的仪仗。
+ 在奶奶脚前的那个轿夫——我后来的爷爷余占鳌，他的心里，有一种不寻常的预感，像熊熊燃烧的火焰一样，把他未来的道路照亮了。
+ 奶奶的哭声。
+ 唤起他心底早就蕴藏着的怜爱之情。
+ 轿夫们中途小憩，花轿落地。
+ 奶奶哭得昏昏沉沉，不觉得把一只小脚露到了轿外。
+ 轿夫们看着这玲珑的、美丽无比的小脚，一时都忘魂落魄。
+ 余占鳌走过来，弯腰，轻轻地、轻轻地握住奶奶那只小脚，像握着一只羽毛未丰的鸟雏，轻轻地送回轿内。
+ 奶奶在轿内，被这温柔感动，她非常想撩开轿帘，看看这个生着一只温暖的年轻大手的轿夫是个什么样的人。
+ 我想，千里姻缘一线牵，一生的情缘，都是天凑地合，是毫无挑剔的真理。
+ 余占鳌就是因为握了一下我奶奶的脚唤醒了他心中伟大的创造新生活的灵感，从此彻底改变了他的一生，也彻底改变了我奶奶的一生。
+ 花轿又起行，喇叭吹出一个猿啼般的长音，便无声无息。
+ 起风了，东北风，天上云朵麇集，遮住了阳光，轿子里更加昏暗。
+ 奶奶听到风吹高粱，哗哗哗啦啦啦，一浪赶着一浪，响到远方。
+ 奶奶听到东北方向有隆隆雷声响起。
+ 轿夫们加快了步伐。
+ 轿子离单家还有多远，奶奶不知道，她如同一只被绑的羔羊，愈近死期，心里愈平静。
+ 奶奶胸口里，揣着一把锋利的剪刀，它可能是为单扁郎准备的，也可能是为自己准备的。
+ 奶奶的花轿行走到蛤蟆坑被劫的事，在我的家族的传说中占有一个显要的位置。
+ 蛤蟆坑是大洼子里的大洼子，土壤尤其肥沃，水分尤其充足，高粱尤其茂密。
+ 奶奶的花轿行到这里，东北天空抖着一个血红的闪电，一道残缺的杏黄色阳光，从浓云中，嘶叫着射向道路。
+ 轿夫们气喘吁吁，热汗涔涔。
+ 走进蛤蟆坑，空气沉重，路边的高粱乌黑发亮，深不见底，路上的野草杂花几乎长死了路。
+ 有那么多的矢车菊，在杂草中高扬着细长的茎，开着紫、蓝、粉、白四色花。
+ 高粱深处，蛤蟆的叫声忧伤，蝈蝈的唧唧凄凉，狐狸的哀鸣悠怅。
+ 奶奶在轿里，突然感到一阵寒冷袭来，皮肤上凸起一层细小的鸡皮疙瘩。
+ 奶奶还没明白过来是怎么一回事，就听到轿前有人高叫一声：
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 奶奶心里咯噔一声，不知忧喜，老天，碰上吃拤饼的了！
+ 高密东北乡土匪如毛，他们在高粱地里鱼儿般出没无常，结帮拉伙，拉骡绑票，坏事干尽，好事做绝。
+ 如果肚子饿了，就抓两个人，扣一个，放一个，让被放的人回村报信，送来多少张卷着鸡蛋大葱一把粗细的两拃多长的大饼。
+ 吃大饼时要用双手拤住往嘴里塞，故曰“拤饼”。
+ “留下买路钱！”
+ 那个吃拤饼的人大吼着。
+ 轿夫们停住，呆呆地看着劈腿横在路当中的劫路人。
+ 那人身材不高，脸上涂着黑墨，头戴一顶高粱篾片编成的斗笠，身披一件大蓑衣，蓑衣敞着，露出密扣黑衣和拦腰扎着的宽腰带。
+ 腰里别着一件用红绸布包起的鼓鼓囊囊的东西。
+ 那人用一只手按着那布包。
+ 奶奶在一转念间，感到什么事情也不可怕了，死都不怕，还怕什么？
+ 她掀起轿帘，看着那个吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人又喊：“留下买路钱！
+ 要不我就崩了你们！”
+ 他拍了拍腰里那件红布包裹着的家伙。
+ 吹鼓手们从腰里摸出外曾祖父赏给他们的一串串铜钱，扔到那人脚前。
+ 轿夫放下轿子，也把新得的铜钱掏出，扔下。
+ 那人把钱串子用脚踢拢成堆，眼睛死死地盯着坐在花轿里的我奶奶。
+ “你们，都给我滚到轿子后边去，要不我就开枪啦！”
+ 他用手拍拍腰里别着的家伙大声喊叫。
+ 轿夫们慢慢吞吞地走到轿后。
+ 余占鳌走在最后，他猛回转身，双目直逼吃拤饼的人。
+ 那人瞬间动容变色，手紧紧捂住腰里的红布包，尖叫着：“不许回头，再回头我就毙了你！”
+ 劫路人按着腰中家伙，脚不离地蹭到轿子前伸手捏捏奶奶的脚。
+ 奶奶粲然一笑，那人的手像烫了似的紧着缩回去。
+ “下轿，跟我走！”
+ 他说。
+ 奶奶端坐不动，脸上的笑容凝固了一样。
+ “下轿！”
+ 奶奶欠起身，大大方方地跨过轿杆，站在烂漫的矢车菊里。
+ 奶奶右眼看着吃拤饼的人，左眼看着轿夫和吹鼓手。
+ “往高粱地里走！”
+ 劫路人按着腰里用红布包着的家伙说。
+ 奶奶舒适地站着，云中的闪电带着铜音嗡嗡抖动，奶奶脸上粲然的笑容被分裂成无数断断续续的碎片。
+ 劫路人催逼着奶奶往高粱地里走，他的手始终按着腰里的家伙。
+ 奶奶用亢奋的眼睛，看着余占鳌。
+ 余占鳌对着劫路人笔直地走过去，他薄薄的嘴唇绷成一条刚毅的直线，两个嘴角一个上翘，一个下垂。
+ “站住！”
+ 劫路人有气无力地喊着，“再走一步我就开枪！”
+ 他的手按在腰里用红布包裹着的家伙上。
+ 余占鳌平静地对着吃拤饼的人走，他前进一步，吃拤饼者就缩一点。
+ 吃拤饼的人眼里跳出绿火花，一行行雪白的清明汗珠从他脸上惊惶地流出来。
+ 当余占鳌离他三步远时，他惭愧地叫了一声，转身就跑。
+ 余占鳌飞身上前，对准他的屁股，轻捷地踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人的身体贴着杂草梢头，蹭着矢车菊花朵，平行着飞出去，他的手脚在低空中像天真的婴孩一样抓挠着，最后落到高粱棵子里。
+ “爷们，饶命吧！
+ 小人家中有八十岁的老母，不得已才吃这碗饭。”
+ 劫路人在余占鳌手下熟练地叫着。
+ 余占鳌抓着他的后颈皮，把他提到轿子前，用力摔在路上，对准他吵嚷不休的嘴巴踢了一脚。
+ 劫路人一声惨叫，半截吐出口外，半截咽到肚里，血从他鼻子里流出来。
+ 余占鳌弯腰，把劫路人腰里那家伙拔出来，抖掉红布，露出一个弯弯曲曲的小树疙瘩，众人嗟叹不止。
+ 那人跪在地上，连连磕头求饶。
+ 余占鳌说：“劫路的都说家里有八十岁的老母。”
+ 他退到一边，看着轿夫和吹鼓手，像狗群里的领袖看着群狗。
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们发声喊，一拥而上，围成一个圆圈，对准劫路人，花拳绣腿齐施展。
+ 起初还能听到劫路人尖利的哭叫声，一会儿就听不见了。
+ 奶奶站在路边，听着七零八落的打击肉体的沉闷声响，对着余占鳌顿眸一瞥，然后仰面看着天边的闪电，脸上凝固着的，仍然是那种粲然的、黄金一般高贵辉煌的笑容。
+ 一个吹鼓手挥动起大喇叭，在劫路者的当头心儿里猛劈了一下，喇叭的圆刃劈进颅骨里去，费了好大劲才拔出。
+ 劫路人肚子里咕噜一声响，痉挛的身体舒展开来，软软地躺在地上。
+ 一线红白相间的液体，从那道深刻的裂缝里慢慢地挤出来。
+ “死了？”
+ 吹鼓手提着打瘪了的喇叭说。
+ “打死了，这东西，这么不禁打！”
+ 轿夫吹鼓手们俱神色惨淡，显得惶惶不安。
+ 余占鳌看看死人，又看看活人，一语不发。
+ 他从高粱上撕下一把叶子，把轿子里奶奶呕吐出的脏物擦掉，又举起那块树疙瘩看看，把红布往树疙瘩上缠几下，用力摔出，飞行中树疙瘩抢先，红包布落后，像一只赤红的大蝶，落到绿高粱上。
+ 余占鳌把奶奶扶上轿说：“上来雨了，快赶！”
+ 奶奶撕下轿帘，塞到轿子角落里，她呼吸着自由的空气，看着余占鳌的宽肩细腰。
+ 他离着轿子那么近，奶奶只要一翘脚，就能踢到他青白色的结实头皮。
+ 风利飕有力，高粱前推后拥，一波一波地动，路一侧的高粱把头伸到路当中，向着我奶奶弯腰致敬。
+ 轿夫们飞马流星，轿子出奇的平稳，像浪尖上飞快滑动的小船。
+ 蛙类们兴奋地鸣叫着，迎接着即将来临的盛夏的暴雨。
+ 低垂的天幕，阴沉地注视着银灰色的高粱脸庞，一道压一道的血红闪电在高粱头上裂开，雷声强大，震动耳膜。
+ 奶奶心中亢奋，无畏地注视着黑色的风掀起的绿色的浪潮，云声像推磨一样旋转着过来，风向变幻不定，高粱四面摇摆，田野凌乱不堪。
+ 最先一批凶狠的雨点打得高粱颤抖，打得野草觳觫，打得道上的细土凝聚成团后又立即迸裂，打得轿顶啪啪响。
+ 雨点打在奶奶的绣花鞋上，打在余占鳌的头上，斜射到奶奶的脸上。
+ 余占鳌他们像兔子一样疾跑，还是未能躲过这场午前的雷阵雨。
+ 雨打倒了无数的高粱，雨在田野里狂欢，蛤蟆躲在高粱根下，哈达哈达地抖着颌下雪白的皮肤； 狐狸蹲在幽暗的洞里，看着从高粱上飞溅而下的细小水珠，道路很快就泥泞不堪，杂草伏地，矢车菊清醒地擎着湿漉漉的头。
+ 轿夫们肥大的黑裤子紧贴在肉上，人们都变得苗条流畅。
+ 余占鳌的头皮被冲刷得光洁明媚，像奶奶眼中的一颗圆月。
+ 雨水把奶奶的衣服也打湿了，她本来可以挂上轿帘遮挡雨水，她没有挂，她不想挂，奶奶通过敞亮的轿门，看到了纷乱不安的宏大世界。
+
+ The Film Studio
+ FOUR DECADES THE story spans, and it all began the day she went to the film studio.
+ The day before, Wu Peizhen had agreed to take Wang Qiyao to have a look around the studio.
+ Wu Peizhen was a rather careless girl.
+ Under normal circumstances, she would have suffered from low self-esteem because of her homeliness, but because Peizhen came from a well-to-do family and people always doted on her, she had developed unaffected into an outgoing young lady.
+ What would have been poor self-esteem was replaced by a kind of modesty—modesty ruled by a practical spirit.
+ In her modesty, she tended to exaggerate other people's strengths, place them on a pedestal, and offer them her devotion.
+ Wang Qiyao never had to worry about Wu Peizhen being jealous of her—and she certainly had no reason to be jealous of Wu Peizhen.
+ On the contrary, she even felt a bit bad for Wu Peizhen—because she was so ugly.
+ This compassion predisposed Wang Qiyao to be generous, but naturally this generosity did not extend any further than Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen's carelessness was the function of an uncalculating mind.
+ She appreciated Wang Qiyao's magnanimity and tried even harder to please her as though repaying her kindness.
+ Basking in each other's company, they became the best of friends.
+ But Wang Qiyao's decision to befriend Wu Peizhen meant, in some way, that she was pushing a heavy load onto Wu Peizhen's shoulders.
+ Her beauty highlighted Wu Peizhen's unattractive appearance; her meticulousness highlighted Wu Peizhen's lack of care; her magnanimity highlighted Wu Peizhen's indebtedness.
+ It was a good thing that Wu Peizhen could take it; after all, the weight of everyday living did not rest as heavily on her.
+ This was partly because she had plenty of psychic capital to draw on, but also because she simply did not mind.
+ Things came easy to her and she was willing to bear more than her share.
+ Thus an equilibrium of give-and-take was maintained between the two girls and they grew closer by the day.
+ Wu Peizhen had a cousin who did lighting at the film studio.
+ Occasionally he would come over to see her.
+ In that khaki uniform of his, with its copper buttons, he came across as a bit flashy.
+ Wu Peizhen really could not have cared less about him; the only reason she kept him around was for Wang Qiyao.
+ The film studio was the stuff of girls' dreams—a place where romance is created, the kind that appears on the silver screen in movies that everyone knows as well as the off-screen type that one hears about in the enchanting gossip and rumors surrounding the lives of film stars.
+ The former is fake but appears real; the latter is real but seems fake.
+ To live in the world of the film studio is to lead a dual life.
+ Girls like Wu Peizhen who had all of their needs taken care of seldom wallowed in dreams; moreover, as the only girl in a house full of boys, she grew up playing boys' games and never learned the social skills and canniness most girls picked up.
+ However, after making friends with Wang Qiyao, she became more thoughtful.
+ She came to see the film studio as a gift that she could offer to Wang Qiyao.
+ She arranged everything carefully, only informing Wang Qiyao after she had already set a date, and was surprised when Wang Qiyao greeted the news with apparent indifference, claiming a prior engagement.
+ This compelled Wu Peizhen to try to change Wang Qiyao's mind by exaggerating the glamour of the film studio, combining stories her cousin bragged about with others from her own imagination.
+ Before long, it was more like Wang Qiyao was doing her a favor by going with her.
+ By the time Wang Qiyao finally gave in and agreed to go some other time, Wu Peizhen was acting as if yet another gift that she herself had to be thankful for had been bestowed upon her, and she ecstatically scurried off to find her cousin to change the date.
+ Wang Qiyao did not, in fact, have any prior engagement, nor was she as reluctant as she appeared; this was simply the way she conducted herself—the more interested she was in something, the more she held back.
+ This was her means of protecting herself—or then again, was it part of a strategy of disarming an antagonist by pretending to set her free?
+ Whatever the reason behind her action, it was impenetrable to Wu Peizhen.
+ On her way to her cousin's place, she was consumed with gratitude for Wang Qiyao; all she could think about was how much face Wang Qiyao had given her by agreeing to the invitation.
+ The cousin was the son of Wu Peizhen's uncle on her mother's side.
+ This uncle was the black sheep of the family.
+ He had driven a silk shop in Hangzhou into the ground and Wu Peizhen's mother had dreaded his visits because all he ever wanted from her was money or grain.
+ After she gave him some heavy doses of harsh words and turned him away empty-handed several times, he gradually stopped coming around and eventually broke off all relations.
+ Then one day his son had showed up at her door wearing that khaki uniform with copper buttons and carrying two boxes of vegetarian dim sum as if they represented some kind of announcement.
+ Ever since then he would come by once every two months or so and tell them stories about the film studio.
+ Nobody in the house was interested in his stories—nobody, that is, except Wu Peizhen.
+ Wu Peizhen went to the address in Qijiabing in search of her cousin.
+ All around were thatch-covered shacks surrounded by small unmarked trails that extended in different directions, making it virtually impossible to find one's way.
+ People stared at her.
+ One glance told them that she was an outsider, but just as she was getting ready to ask directions they would immediately look away.
+ She finally found her cousin's place, only to discover that he was not home.
+ The young man who shared the shack with her cousin asked her in.
+ He was wearing a pair of glasses and a set of coarse cotton clothes.
+ Wu Peizhen was a bit shy and waited outside.
+ This naturally drew more curious gazes.
+ It was not until dusk that her cousin finally staggered in with a greasy paper bag holding a pig's head or some other cheap meat he had bought over at the butcher's shop.
+ By the time Wu Peizhen got home, her family was already at the dinner table and she had to fib about where she had been.
+ But she didn't have an ounce of regret; even when later that evening she saw the blisters on the soles of her feet from all that walking, she still felt that it was all worth it.
+ That night she even had a dream about the film studio.
+ She dreamed of an elegantly dressed woman under the mercury-vapor lamps.
+ When the woman turned to her and smiled, Wu Peizhen saw that she was none other than Wang Qiyao; she was so excited that she woke up.
+ Her feelings for Wang Qiyao were a bit like the puppy love that a teenage boy feels for a girl for whom he is willing to go to the edge of the earth.
+ She opened her eyes in the pitch-dark bedroom and wondered: Just what kind of place is this film studio anyway?
+ When the day finally arrived, Wu Peizhen's excitement far surpassed that of Wang Qiyao; she could barely contain herself.
+ A classmate asked them where they were off to.
+ "Nowhere," Wu Peizhen casually responded, as she gave Wang Qiyao a knowing pinch on the arm.
+ Then she pulled Wang Qiyao aside and told her to hurry up, as though afraid that that their classmate would catch up and force them to let her in on their pleasure.
+ The whole way there Wu Peizhen couldn't stop jabbering, attracting curious glances from people on the street.
+ Wang Qiyao warned her several times to get hold of herself.
+ Finally she had to stop in her tracks and declare she wasn't going any further—they had not even set foot in the studio and Wu Peizhen had already embarrassed her enough.
+ Only then did Wu Peizhen cool down a bit.
+ To get to the studio they had to take the trolley and make a transfer.
+ Wu Peizhen's cousin was waiting for them at the entrance; he gave each of them an ID tag to clip on her chest so that they would look like employees: that way they could wander around wherever their hearts desired.
+ Once inside, they walked through an empty lot littered with wooden planks, discarded cloth scraps, and chunks of broken bricks and tiles—it looked like a cross between a dump and a construction site.
+ Everyone approaching went at a hurried pace with their heads down.
+ The cousin also moved briskly, as if he had something urgent to take care of.
+ The two girls were left straggling behind, holding hands, trying their best to keep up.
+ It was three or four o'clock, the sunlight was waning and the wind picked up, rustling their skirts.
+ Both of them felt a bit gloomy and Wu Peizhen fell silent.
+ After going a few hundred steps, their journey began to feel interminable, and the girls began to lose patience with the cousin, who slowed down to regale them with some of the rumors floating around the studio; his comments, however, seemed to be neither here nor there.
+ Before their visit all of those anecdotes seemed real, but once they had seen the place everything was now entirely unreliable.
+ Numbness had taken hold of them by the time they entered a large room the size of a warehouse, where uniformed workers scurried back and forth, up and down scaffolding, all the while calling out orders and directions.
+ But they did not see a soul who even faintly resembled a movie star.
+ Thoroughly disoriented, they simply trailed after Wu Peizhen's cousin, but had to watch their heads one second and their feet another, for there were ropes and wires overhead and littering the ground.
+ They moved in and out from illuminated areas into patches of darkness and seemed to have completely forgotten their objective and had no idea where they were—all they did was walk.
+ After what seemed an eternity, Wu Peizhen's cousin finally stopped and had them stand off to one side—he had to go to work.
+ The place where they were left standing was bustling with activity; everyone seemed to be doing something as they moved briskly around the girls.
+ Several times, rushing to get out of one person's way, they bumped into someone else.
+ But they had yet to lay eyes on anyone who looked like a movie star.
+ They were both getting anxious, feeling that the whole trip was a mistake.
+ Wu Peizhen could hardly bring herself to look Wang Qiyao in the eye.
+ All of a sudden, the lights in the room lit up like a dozen rising suns, blinding them.
+ After their eyes adjusted they made out a portion of the warehouse-like room that had been arranged to look like one half of a bedroom.
+ That three-walled bedroom seemed to be the set, but everything inside was peculiarly familiar.
+ The comforter showed signs of wear, old cigarette butts were left in the ashtray, even the handkerchief on the nightstand beside the bed had been used, crumpled up into a ball—as if someone had removed a wall in a home where real people were living to display what went on within.
+ Standing there watching they were quite excited, but at the same time irritated because they were too far away to hear what was being said on set.
+ All they could see was a woman in a sheer nightgown lying on a bed with wrinkled sheets.
+ She tried to lie in several different positions; on her side one moment, on her back the next, and for a while even in a strange position where half her body extended off the bed onto the floor.
+ All this became somewhat boring.
+ The lights turned on and off.
+ In the end, the woman in bed stopped moving and stayed still in the same position for quite some time before the lights once again dimmed.
+ When the lights came back on, everything seemed different.
+ During the previous few takes the light had been marked by an unbridled brilliance.
+ This time they seemed to be using a specialized lighting, the kind that illuminates a room during a pitch-black night.
+ The bedroom set seemed to be further away, but the scene became even more alive.
+ Wang Qiyao was taking in everything.
+ She noticed the glow emitting from the electric lamp and the rippling shadows of the lotus-shaped lampshade projecting onto the three walls of the set.
+ A powerful sense of déjà vu gripped her, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not remember where she had seen this scene before.
+ Only after shifting her gaze to the woman under the lamplight did she suddenly realize that the actress was pretending to be dead—but she could not tell if the woman was meant to have been murdered or to have committed suicide.
+ The strange thing was that this scene did not appear terrifying or foreboding, only annoyingly familiar.
+ She could not make out the woman's features; all she could see was her head of disheveled hair strewn out along the foot of the bed.
+ The woman's feet faced the headboard and her head lay propped against the foot of the bed, her slippers scattered on opposite sides of the room.
+ The film studio was a hubbub of activity, like a busy dockyard.
+ With all the cries of "Camera" and "OK" rising and falling amid the clamor, the woman was the only thing that did not move, as if she had fallen into an eternal slumber.
+ Wu Peizhen was the first to lose her patience; after all, she was the more brazen one.
+ She pulled Wang Qiyao away so they could go look around other parts of the studio.
+ Their next stop was a three-walled hotel lobby where a fight scene was being shot.
+ All of the actors, in suits and leather dress shoes, were standing around when suddenly a poor fellow in tattered clothes walked onto the set and slapped the hotel manager across the face.
+ The way the action was carried out looked a bit ridiculous; the actor produced the slapping sound with his left hand as he slapped the restaurant owner with his right, but his timing was impeccable and one could hardly tell it was fake.
+ Wu Peizhen liked this scene much more than the first.
+ She watched them do take after take without getting bored, the whole time exclaiming how much fun it was.
+ Wang Qiyao, however, grew impatient and said that the first one was much more interesting.
+ She said that it was a serious film, unlike this one, which was pure buffoonery, no better than a circus sideshow.
+ The two returned to the first set only to discover that everyone had gone.
+ Even the bed had been taken away, leaving only a few workers behind to straighten up the remaining items on set.
+ The girls wondered if they had gone to the wrong place and were about to go look elsewhere when Wu Peizhen's cousin suddenly called out to them.
+ As it happened, he was one of the workers breaking down the set.
+ He told them to wait a little while, and then he would take them to watch a special effects shoot that was going on at one of the other sets!
+ They had no choice but to stand off to one side and wait idly.
+ Someone asked the cousin who his guests were and he told him.
+ But when the man asked where they went to school, the cousin was stumped and Wu Peizhen had to answer for herself.
+ The man flashed them a smile, revealing a set of white teeth that shimmered in the darkness of the studio.
+ He was the director, the cousin later told them.
+ He had studied abroad and was also a screenwriter; in fact he had written and directed the scene they had earlier seen being filmed.
+ The cousin told them all this as he led them off to see the special effects shoot, where they saw smoke, fire, even ghosts.
+ Once again the technical people were doing all the work while the actors did virtually nothing.
+ Asked by Wu Peizhen if they could see some movie stars, the cousin looked embarrassed.
+ He told them that there was not a single big star on any of the sets that day, explaining that it was not every day that big movie stars had scenes.
+ The studio simply could not schedule things the way they would like—they had to work around the stars' schedules.
+ Wu Peizhen caught her cousin in a lie.
+ "Didn't you tell us that you are always running into all these big name stars at the studio every day?" she protested.
+ Wang Qiyao took pity on the cousin and tried to smooth things over.
+ "It's getting dark.
+ We had better come back some other time.
+ Our parents will be worried!"
+ As the cousin led them toward the exit they once again ran into the director.
+ Not only did he remember them, he addressed them jocularly as "the girls from So-and-so middle school"—Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen turned a bright red.
+ On the ride home, neither was in the mood to talk and they sat silently, listening to the ringing bells of the trolley.
+ The trolley was half empty; the after-work rush hour was over and Shanghai's nightlife had yet to begin.
+ The girls' experience at the film studio was not exactly as expected; it was difficult to say whether it was disappointing or whether they had had the time of their lives—the one thing for sure was that they were both exhausted.
+ Wu Peizhen had never had her sights set on the studio.
+ Her reason for going rested entirely in making Wang Qiyao happy, so naturally she had hoped it would be a wonderful trip.
+ Just what was so wonderful about the film studio, however, Wu Peizhen had not the slightest clue—she had to wait for Wang Qiyao's reaction to find out.
+ The impression the film studio left on Wang Qiyao, on the other hand, was much more complicated.
+ It was not nearly as magical a place as she had imagined, yet because it appeared so ordinary it gave her the impression that it was within her grasp—but just what was it that she could grasp?
+ She had yet to figure that out.
+ Her initial hopes may have been dampened, but the anxiety that came with anticipation had been relieved.
+ In the days following their visit to the film studio, Wang Qiyao did not utter a single word about their trip, and this left Wu Peizhen quite depressed.
+ She was afraid that Wang Qiyao had not liked the studio and the whole trip had been a complete waste.
+ Then one day she told Wang Qiyao in a confessional tone that her cousin had invited them back to the film studio but she had already declined the offer.
+ Wang Qiyao rounded on her.
+ "How could you do that?
+ He is trying to be nice to us!"
+ Wu Peizhen's eyes widened in disbelief.
+ Wang Qiyao felt a bit uncomfortable under her stare.
+ Turning her face away, she said, "What I mean is, you should show the guy some respect.
+ After all, he's your cousin!"
+ This was one occasion when even Wu Peizhen saw through Wang Qiyao.
+ But far from belittling her friend for being phony, Wu Peizhen felt a tenderness well up in her heart.
+ Although on the outside she looks like a grownup, deep down she is still a child!
+ Wu Peizhen thought to herself.
+ At that moment, her feeling for Wang Qiyao approached maternal love—a love that encompassed all.
+ From then on the film studio became a place for frequent visits.
+ They learned quite a few inside secrets about filmmaking.
+ They learned that movies are never shot in sequence, but are made one scene at a time and only edited together in the final stages.
+ The set locations may have been dilapidated and in disrepair, but the images captured by the camera were always perfectly beautiful.
+ On one or two occasions they actually saw some of those famous movie stars, who sat in front of the camera doing nothing, like a collection of idle props.
+ Films scripts were revised at random, and in the blink of an eye even the dead could come back to life.
+ The girls made their way backstage, and as they rubbed their hands against the mysterious machinery that made images come to life, their hearts seemed to undergo a kind of transformation.
+ Time spent in a film studio is never humdrum; the experience always hints at life's greater meaning.
+ This is especially true for the young, who cannot yet completely distinguish truth from fiction and the real from the make-believe, and especially during that era—when movies had already become an important part of our everyday lives.
+ Camera
+ Wang Qiyao had learned that the most critical moment in making a film came the second that the director calls, "Camera."
+ Everything up to that point boils down to preparation and foreshadowing, but what happens afterward?
+ It ends forever.
+ She came to understand the significance of the word "Camera": it announced a kind of climax.
+ Sometimes the director let them look through the camera and what they saw through its lens was always gorgeous; the camera had the power to filter out all of the chaos and disarray.
+ It had the power to make what was dark and dismal glimmer with light.
+ Inside the camera was a different world.
+ After editing and postproduction, only the pure essence would remain.
+ The director became quite close with the girls and they eventually stopped blushing in his presence.
+ A few times, when Wu Peizhen's cousin was not in the studio, they even went straight to look for the director.
+ He had given them the nicknames "Zhen Zhen" and "Yao Yao," as if they were characters in his latest movie.
+ Behind their backs he described Zhen Zhen to his colleagues as a graceless servant girl right out of Dream of the Red Chamber, a little cleaning maid who thinks she is special just because she is employed in a large, wealthy household.
+ Yao Yao he described as a proper miss who acted the part of a rich official's daughter, like the tragic lover Zhu Yingtai.
+ He treated Wu Peizhen as if she were a child; he loved to tease her and play little jokes on her.
+ He promised to put Wang Qiyao in a scene in one of his movies as soon as the opportunity arose.
+ Who knows?
+ Because her coquettish eyes resembled Ruan Lingyu's, they might even be able to capitalize on the audience's nostalgia for the dead movie star and make Wang Qiyao into a new diva of the screen.
+ Although he seemed to be kidding, this was the director's reserved and humorous way of making a promise.
+ Wang Qiyao naturally did not take him too seriously, but she did kind of like being compared to Ruan Lingyu.
+ Then one day the director telephoned Wang Qiyao at home to have her come down to the studio for a screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao's heart raced and her hands grew clammy.
+ She was unsure if this was the opportunity she had been waiting for.
+ She wondered: Could my big chance really come this easily?
+ She could not believe it, neither did she dare not to believe it.
+ Deep down her heart was in knots.
+ At first she did not want to tell Wu Peizhen about it.
+ She planned to sneak off alone and return before anyone noticed that she was gone.
+ In case nothing came of the screen test, it would be her own little secret and she could pretend that nothing had ever happened.
+ But then, just before the day of her screen test, she broke down and asked Wu Peizhen to go with her so that she would not be too nervous.
+ Wang Qiyao did not sleep well the night before; her face appeared thinner than usual and she had dark rings around her eyes.
+ Wu Peizhen naturally jumped for joy as all kinds of wild ideas went flying through her head.
+ In no time she was talking about organizing press conferences for Wang Qiyao, who regretted telling her friend about the screen test.
+ Neither of them paid attention during their classes that afternoon.
+ When school finally let out the two rushed out of the gate and hopped onto the trolley car.
+ Most of the passengers at that time of the day were housewives with cloth bags in hand, wearing wrinkled cheongsams, the seams of their stockings running crookedly up the back of their legs.
+ They either had messy, disheveled hair or, if they had just walked out of the beauty salon, hair that look like a helmet.
+ Their faces were rigid, as if nothing in the world concerned them.
+ Even the trolley seemed to be afflicted with an air of apathy as it rattled along the tracks.
+ Amid this sea of indifference, Wang Qiyao and Wu Peizhen were animated and alive.
+ Though neither said a word, centuries of anticipation and excitement were brewing inside them.
+ At three o'clock in the afternoon, the Shanghai boulevards were suffused with weariness, preparing to sign out and change shifts.
+ The sun hung in the western sky above the apartment buildings, glowing ripe and golden.
+ Their hearts were filled with anticipation as if they were about to begin a brand-new day.
+ The director led them into the dressing room and had a makeup artist work on Wang Qiyao.
+ Seeing herself reflected in the mirror, Wang Qiyao could not help feeling that her face was small and her features plain—she realized that a miracle would not occur—and this depressed her.
+ She became completely resigned as the makeup man worked on her.
+ She even closed her eyes for a while to avoid looking in the mirror, uncomfortable and anxious only to get everything over and done with.
+ She even got neurotic and thought that the makeup man, impatient to get finished with her, was applying the makeup hurriedly and crudely.
+ When she opened her eyes once again and looked, she saw the awkward expression of someone who had no desire to be there.
+ The harsh, unmodulated light of the dressing room made everything appear commonplace.
+ Losing all confidence in herself, Wang Qiyao decided to simply let everything ride; she focused on watching the makeup man gradually transform her into someone else—a stranger she did not recognize.
+ It was then that she began to calm down and her tensions eased.
+ By the time the makeup man finished his job, she had even started to regain her sense of humor and joked around a bit with Wu Peizhen, who remarked that Wang Qiyao looked like the Lady in the Moon descending into the secular world, whereupon Wang Qiyao quipped that if she were a Lady in the Moon, she was the kind whose image was found on boxes of mooncakes.
+ The two of them had a good laugh.
+ Once this happened, Wang Qiyao's expression relaxed, her powdered face lit up, and she came to life.
+ As she returned the gaze of the beauty in the mirror, the image she saw no longer seemed quite as distant and unrecognizable.
+ Before long the director sent someone over to escort Wang Qiyao to the set, Wu Peizhen naturally following close behind.
+ The lights were already set up and Wu Peizhen's cousin was up on the scaffolding, smiling down at them.
+ The director, on the other hand, became serious and cold, as if he did not even know them.
+ He had Wang Qiyao sit on a bed.
+ It was a Nanjing-style bed with ornate flower patterns carved into the woodwork, a mirror set into the headboard, and high bed curtains all around—all the signs of rustic elegance.
+ Wang Qiyao was to play a bride in a traditional wedding ceremony.
+ She would be wearing a crimson bridal veil over her head when the groom entered and he would pull it away, slowly revealing her face.
+ The director explained that her character had to be bashful and charming, filled with longing and uncertainty; he unloaded these adjectives on her all at once, expecting her to capture them all with a single expression.
+ Wang Qiyao nodded, but deep down she was completely lost and had no idea where to begin.
+ But having decided to let everything ride, she was actually quite calm and composed.
+ She was aware of everything going on around her, down to the shouts of "Camera" coming from the adjacent set.
+ The next thing she knew, a crimson bridal veil came down over her head.
+ Suddenly everything was swathed in darkness.
+ In that instant her heart began pounding like a drum.
+ She understood that her moment had come and fear welled up inside her as her knees began to tremble faintly.
+ The set lights came on, transforming the darkness into a thick crimson hue.
+ Suddenly she felt feverish, and the tremors worked their way from her knees up through her body.
+ Even her teeth began to chatter.
+ All the mystery and grandeur of the film studio hung suspended in the light shimmering outside her veil.
+ Someone came and straightened out her clothing and then quickly walked off set.
+ The air whisked against her as he passed by.
+ The crimson veil fluttered a bit, for a moment softening the anxieties of that afternoon.
+ She heard a series of "okay"s repeating in rhythmic succession around her, as if converging upon a common target.
+ Finally came the word, "Camera."
+ Wang Qiyao's breathing stopped.
+ She could not catch her breath.
+ She could hear the film running through the camera, a mechanical sound that seemed to override everything.
+ Her mind just went blank.
+ When a hand pulled away her wedding veil, she was so startled that she shrank back with fright.
+ "Cut," the director yelled.
+ The set lights went dim, the crimson veil went back over her head, and they took it once more from the top.
+ As they redid the scene, everything grew fuzzy.
+ Things faded off into the distance, never to reappear, as if they had been an illusion.
+ Then Wang Qiyao snapped out of her daze, her shivering ceased, and her heart rate returned to normal.
+ Her eyes adjusted to the darkness once more and through the wedding veil she could make out silhouettes of people moving around.
+ The set lights came up and this time the shouts of "OK" sounded perfunctory.
+ When the word "Camera" was called out, it too seemed little more than a formality—but this formality still carried with it an air of authority, of unwavering power.
+ She began to prepare the emotions the director wanted to see on her face; the only problem was that she had no inkling of how to act bashful or charming, or what it meant to be filled with longing and uncertainty.
+ Human emotions are not simple symbols that can be called up at will.
+ The crimson wedding veil was lifted to reveal a rigid expression; even the bit of natural charm that she normally had about her was frozen.
+ As soon as he saw her through the eye of the camera, the director sensed that he had made a mistake; Wang Qiyao's was not an artistic beauty, but quite ordinary.
+ It was the kind of beauty to be admired in by close friends and relatives in her own living room, like the shifting moods of everyday life; a retrained beauty, it was not the kind that made waves.
+ It was real, not dramatic—the kind of beauty that people noticed on the street and photo studios displayed in their front windows.
+ Through the camera's lens, it was simply too bland.
+ The director was disappointed, but his disappointment was partly for Wang Qiyao's sake.
+ Her beauty will be buried and lost to the world, he said to himself.
+ Later, in order to make things up to her, he had a photographer friend of his do a photo shoot for her—but this photo shoot turned into something quite extraordinary.
+ One of the photos even made it into the inside front cover of Shanghai Life with the caption, "A Proper Young Lady of Shanghai."
+ And so that is how the screen test ended, just another trifling incident in the life of the film studio.
+ After that, Wang Qiyao stopped going.
+ She wanted to forget the whole affair—that it had ever happened.
+ But the image of that crimson wedding veil and the dazzling studio lights were already imprinted in her mind and reappeared whenever she closed her eyes.
+ There was a strange frisson attached to that scene; it was the most dramatic moment in Wang Qiyao's quiet life.
+ The moment had come and gone in an instant, but it added a dab of melancholic color to her heart.
+ Occasionally, on her way home from school, something would unexpectedly stir up her memory of the screen test.
+ Wang Qiyao was sixteen years old at the time, but that one day's experience left her with the feeling that she had already been through a lot—she felt much older than sixteen.
+ She started to avoid Wu Peizhen, as if the latter had stolen some secret from her.
+ Whenever Wu Peizhen invited her out after school, Wang Qiyao would almost always find some excuse not to go.
+ Several times Wu Peizhen even went to Wang Qiyao's apartment to look for her, but each time Wang Qiyao had the maidservant say that she was not home.
+ Sensing that she was being avoided, Wu Peizhen felt heartbroken, but she held on to the hope that Wang Qiyao would eventually come back to her.
+ Her friendship changed into a kind of pious waiting; she did not even look for any new girlfriends, afraid that they might take Wang Qiyao's place.
+ Wu Peizhen had a faint notion that the reason Wang Qiyao was avoiding her had something to do with that failed screen test, so she too stopped going to the film studio, even breaking off contact with her cousin.
+ The screen test became a source of sorrow for both of them, leaving them with a deep sense of defeat.
+ Things gradually got to the point where they were no longer on speaking terms: running into one another at school, each would make haste to awkwardly get out of the other's way.
+ They sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but, though their eyes never met, they could always feel one another's' presence.
+ A wall of pity grew between them.
+ The incident at the film studio ended with the word "camera," and the result was what they call in the industry a "freeze frame."
+ Gone, never to return, but the memory hangs on for all eternity.
+ Their after-school lives gradually returned to normal; but things were not really the same—something had been snatched away.
+ They were hurt, but neither could say where the pain was.
+ At their girls' school, where rumors usually flew rampant, not a soul knew about Wang Qiyao's screen test; they had succeeded in keeping it completely under wraps.
+ It was implicitly understood between them that they should never broach the subject.
+ Actually, just to be chosen by a director for a screen test would already have been a great honor in the eyes of most girls—any hopes of getting a part would be a long shot in a long shot.
+ This was also what Wang Qiyao thought at first, but once she reached that stage everything changed.
+ Suddenly, a price had been exacted and loss was imminent.
+ Only because Wu Peizhen stepped out of her own shoes and empathized completely with her friend was she able to understand the grief Wang Qiyao was going through.
+
+ 6. 片厂
+ 四十年的故事都是从去片厂这一天开始的。
+ 前一天，吴佩珍就说好，这天要带王琦瑶去片厂玩。
+ 吴佩珍是那类粗心的女孩子。
+ 她本应当为自己的丑自卑的，但因为家境不错，有人疼爱，养成了豁朗单纯的个性，使这自卑变成了谦虚，这谦虚里是很有一些实事求是的精神的。
+ 由这谦虚出发，她就总无意地放大别人的优点，很忠实地崇拜，随时准备奉献她的热诚。
+ 王琦瑶无须提防她有妒忌之心，也无须对她有妒忌之心，相反，她还对她怀有一些同情，因为她的丑。
+ 这同情使王琦瑶变得慷慨了，自然这慷慨是只对吴佩珍一个人的。
+ 吴佩珍的粗心其实只是不在乎，王琦瑶的宽待她是心领的，于是加倍地要待她好，报恩似的。
+ 一来二去的，两人便成了最贴心的朋友。
+ 王琦瑶和吴佩珍做朋友，有点将做人的重头推给吴佩珍的意思。
+ 她的好看突出了吴佩珍的丑，她的精细突出了吴佩珍的粗疏，她的慷慨突出的是吴佩珍的受恩，使吴佩珍负了债。
+ 好在吴佩珍是压得起的，她的人生任务不如王琦瑶来得重，有一点吃老本，也有一点不计较，本是一身轻，也是为王琦瑶分担的意思。
+ 这么一分担，两头便达到平衡，友情逐日加深。
+ 吴佩珍有个表哥是在片厂做照明工，有时来玩，就穿着钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，有些炫耀的样子。
+ 吴佩珍本来对他是不在意的，拉拢他全是为了王琦瑶。
+ 片厂这样的地方是女学生们心向往之的地方，它生产罗曼蒂克，一种是银幕上的，人所周知的电影； 一种是银幕下的，流言蜚语似的明星轶事。
+ 前者是个假，却像真的； 后者是个真，倒像是假的。
+ 片厂里的人生啊，一世当作两世做的。
+ 像吴佩珍这样吃得下睡得着的女孩子，是不大有梦想的，她又只有兄弟，没有姐妹，从小做的是男孩的游戏，对女孩子的窍门反倒不在行了。
+ 但和王琦瑶做朋友以后，她的心却变细了。
+ 她是将片厂当作一件礼物一样献给王琦瑶的。
+ 她很有心机的，将一切都安排妥了，日子也定下了，才去告诉王琦瑶。
+ 不料王琦瑶却还有些勉强，说她这一天正好有事，只能向她表哥抱歉了。
+ 吴佩珍于是就一个劲儿地向王琦瑶介绍片厂的有趣，将表哥平日里吹嘘的那些事迹都搬过来，再加上自己的想象。
+ 事情一时上有些弄反了，去片厂倒是为了照顾吴佩珍似的。
+ 等王琦瑶最终拗不过她，答应换个日子再去的时候，吴佩珍便像又受了一次恩，欢天喜地去找表哥改日子。
+ 其实这一天王琦瑶并非有事，也并非对片厂没兴趣，这只是她做人的方式，越是有吸引力的事就越要保持矜持的态度，是自我保护的意思，还是欲擒故纵的意思？
+ 反正不会是没道理。
+ 吴佩珍要学会这些，还早着呢。
+ 去找表哥的路上，她满心里都是对王琦瑶的感激，觉得她是太给自己面子了。
+ 这表哥是她舅舅家的孩子。
+ 舅舅是个败家子，把杭州城里一爿茧行吃空卖空，就离家出走，也不知去了什么地方。
+ 她母亲平素最怕这门亲戚，上门不是要钱就是要粮，也给过几句难听话，还给过几次钉子碰，后来就渐渐不来了，断了关系。
+ 忽有一日，那表哥再上门时，便是穿着这身钉了铜扣的黄咔叽制服，还带了两盒素点心，好像发了个宣言似的。
+ 自此，他每过一两月会来一次，说些片厂里的趣事，可大家都淡淡的，只有吴佩珍上了心。
+ 她按了地址去到肇嘉浜找表哥，一片草棚子里，左一个岔，右一个岔，布下了迷魂阵。
+ 一看她就是个外来的，都把目光投过去，待她要问路时，目光又都缩了回去。
+ 等她终于找到表哥的门，表哥又不在，同他合住的也是一个青年，戴着眼镜，穿的却是做工的粗布衣服，让她进屋等。
+ 她有点窘，只站在门口，自然又招来好奇的目光。
+ 天将黑的时候，才见表哥七绕八拐地走来，手里提着一个油浸浸的纸包，想是猪头肉之类的。
+ 她回到家里，已经开晚饭了，她还得编个谎搪塞她父母，也是煞费了苦心。
+ 可她无怨无艾，洗脚时看见脚底走出的泡，也觉得很值得。
+ 这晚上，吴佩珍竟也做了个关于片厂的梦，梦见水银灯下有个盛装的女人，回眸一笑，竟是王琦瑶，不由感动得醒了。
+ 她对王琦瑶的感情，有点像一个少年对一个少女，那种没有欲念的爱情，为她做什么都肯的。
+ 她在黑漆漆的房间里睁着眼，心想：片厂是个什么地方呢？
+ 到了那一天，去往片厂的时候，吴佩珍的兴奋要远超过王琦瑶，几乎按捺不住的。
+ 有同学问她们去哪里，吴佩珍一边说不去哪里，一边在王琦瑶的胳膊上拧一下，再就是拖着王琦瑶快走，好像那同学要追上来，分享她们的快乐似的。
+ 她一路聒噪，引得许多路人回头侧目，王琦瑶告诫几次没告诫住，最后只得停住脚步，说不去了，片厂没到，洋相倒先出够了。
+ 吴佩珍这才收敛了一些。
+ 两人上车，换车，然后就到了片厂。
+ 表哥站在门口正等她们，给她们一人一个牌挂在胸前，表示是厂里的人，便可以随处乱走了。
+ 她们挂好牌，跟了表哥往里走。
+ 先是在空地上走，四处都扔了木板旧布，还有碎砖破瓦，像一个垃圾场，也像一个工地。
+ 迎面来的人，都匆匆的，埋着头走路。
+ 表哥的步子也迈得很快，有要紧事去做似的。
+ 她们两人被甩在后头，互相拉着手，努力地加快步子。
+ 下午三四点的太阳有点人意阑珊的，风贴着地吹，吹起她们的裙摆。
+ 两人心里都有些暗淡，吴佩珍也沉默下来。
+ 三人这样走了一阵，几百步的路感觉倒有十万八千里的样子，那两个跟着的已经没有耐心。
+ 表哥放慢了脚步与她们拉扯片厂里的琐事，却有点不着边际的。
+ 这些琐事在外面听起来是真事，到了里面反倒像是传闻，不大靠得住了，两人心里又有些恍惚。
+ 然后就走进了一座仓库似的大屋，一眼望过去，都是穿了制服的做工的人走来走去，爬上爬下，大声吆喝着。
+ 类似明星的，竟一个也见不着。
+ 她们跟着表哥一阵乱走，一会儿小心头上，一会儿小心脚底，很快就迷失了方向。
+ 头上脚下都是绳索之类的东西，灯光一片明一片暗的。
+ 她们好像忘记了目的，不知来到了什么地方，只是一心一意地走路。
+ 又好像走了十万八千里，表哥站住了脚，让她们就在这边看，他要去工作了。
+ 她们站的这块地方，是有些熙攘的，人们都忙碌着，从她们的身前身后走过。
+ 好几次她们觉得挡了别人的路，忙着让开，不料却撞到另一人的身上。
+ 而明星样的人还是一个不见。
+ 她们惴惴的，心想是来错了，吴佩珍更是愧疚有加，不敢看王琦瑶的脸色。
+ 这时，灯光亮了，好像有十几个太阳相交地升起，光芒刺眼，她们这才看见面前是半间房间的摆设。
+ 那三面墙的房间看起来是布景，可里头的东西样样都是熟透的。
+ 床上的被子是七成新的，烟灰缸里留有半截烟头的，床头柜上的手绢是用过的，揉成了一团，就像是正过着日子，却被拆去了一堵墙，揪出来示众一般。
+ 看了心里有点欢喜，还有点起腻。
+ 因她们站得远，听不见那里在说什么，只见有一个穿睡袍的女人躺在床上，躺了几种姿势，一回是侧身，一回是仰天，还有一回只躺了半个身子，另半个身子垂到地上的。
+ 她的半透明的睡袍裹着身子，床已经皱了，也是有点起腻的。
+ 灯光暗了几次，又亮了几次。
+ 最后终于躺定了，再不动了，灯光再次暗下来。
+ 再一次亮起时，似与前几次都不同了。
+ 前几次的亮是那种敞亮，大放光明，无遮无挡的。
+ 这一次，却是一种专门的亮，那种夜半时分外面漆黑里面却光明的亮。
+ 那房间的景好像退远了一些，却更生动了一些，有点熟进心里去的意思。
+ 王琦瑶注意到那盏布景里的电灯，发出着真实的光芒，莲花状的灯罩，在三面墙上投下波纹的阴影。
+ 这就像是旧景重现，却想不起是何时何地的旧景。
+ 王琦瑶再把目光移到灯下的女人，她陡地明白这女人扮的是一个死去的人，不知是自杀还是他杀。
+ 奇怪的是，这情形并非阴森可怖，反而是起腻的熟。
+ 王琦瑶看不清这女人的长相，只看见她乱蓬蓬的一头鬈发，全堆在床脚头，因她是倒过来脚顶床头，头抵床脚地躺着，拖鞋是东一只，西一只。
+ 片厂里闹哄哄的，货码头似的，“开麦拉”“OK”的叫声此起彼伏，唯有那女人是个不动弹，千年万载不醒的样子。
+ 吴佩珍先有些不耐烦，又因为有点胆大，就拉王琦瑶去别处看。
+ 下一处地方是拍打耳光的，在一个也是三面墙的饭店，全是西装革履的，却冲进一个穷汉，进来就对那做东的打耳光。
+ 做派都有点滑稽的，耳光是打在自己手上，再贴到对方的脸上，却天衣无缝的样子。
+ 吴佩珍喜欢看这个，往复了多少遍都看不厌，直说有趣。
+ 王琦瑶却有些不耐烦，说还是方才那场景有看头，是个正经的片子，不像这，全是插科打诨，猴把戏一样的。
+ 两人又回到方才那棚里，不料人都散了，那床也挪开了，剩几个人在地上收拾东西。
+ 她们疑心走错了地方，要重新去找，却听表哥叫她们，原来，收拾东西的人里头就有表哥。
+ 他让她们等一会儿，再带她们去别处逛，今日有一个棚在做特技呢！
+ 她们只得站在一旁干等。
+ 有人问表哥她们是谁，表哥说了，又问她们在哪个学校读书，表哥说不上来，吴佩珍自己说了，那人就朝她们笑，一口白牙齿在暗中亮了一下。
+ 过后，表哥告诉她俩，这人是导演，在外国留过学的，还会编剧，今天拍的这戏，就是他自编自导的。
+ 说罢，就带上她们去看拍特技，又是烟又是火，还有鬼的。
+ 也都是底下的工人在折腾，留给演员去做的事，只一眨眼。
+ 吴佩珍又要表哥带她们去看明星，表哥却面露难色，说今天哪个棚都没拍明星的戏，说这明星的戏不是哪天都有的，也不是想排哪天就排哪天的，要随着明星的意思。
+ 吴佩珍便揭底似的说：你不是讲每天都可看见谁谁谁的？
+ 王琦瑶见表哥脸上下不来，就圆场道：下回再来吧，天也黑了，家里人要等了！
+ 表哥这就带了她们往外走，路上又遇见那导演一回，竟还记得她们，叫她们某某中学的女学生，很幽默的，两人都红了脸。
+ 回去的电车上，两人就有些懒得说话，听那电车的当当声。
+ 电车上有些空，下班的人都到了家，过夜生活的人又还没有出门。
+ 那片场的经验有些出人意料，说不上是扫兴还是尽兴，总之都是疲乏了。
+ 吴佩珍本来对片厂没有多少准备，她的向往是因王琦瑶而生的向往，她自然是希望片厂越精彩越好，可究竟是什么样的精彩，心中却是没数的，所以她是要看王琦瑶的态度再决定她的意见。
+ 片厂给王琦瑶的感想却有些复杂。
+ 它是不如她想象中的那样神奇，可正因为它的平常，便给她一个唾手可得的印象。
+ 唾手可得的是什么？
+ 她还不知道。
+ 原先的期待是有些落空，但那期待里的紧张却释然了。
+ 从片厂回来几天，她都没什么表示，这使吴佩珍沮丧，以为王琦瑶其实是不喜欢片厂这地方，去片厂全是她多此一举。
+ 有一日，她用作忏悔一样的口气对王琦瑶说，表哥又请她们去片厂玩，她拒绝了。
+ 王琦瑶却转过脸，说：你怎么能这样不懂道理，人家是一片诚心。
+ 吴佩珍瞪大了眼睛，不相信地看着她，王琦瑶被她看得不自在，就转回头说：我的意思是不该不给人家面子，这是你们家的亲戚呀！
+ 这一回，连吴佩珍都看出王琦瑶想去又不说的意思了，她非但不觉得她作假，还有一种怜爱心中生起，心想她看上去是大人，其实还是个孩子呀！
+ 这时候，吴佩珍对王琦瑶的心情又有点像母亲，包容一切的。
+ 从此，片厂就变成她们常去的地方。
+ 拍电影的窍门懂得了不少，知道那拍摄完全不是按着情节的顺序来的，而是一个镜头一个镜头分别拍了，最后才连成的。
+ 拍摄的现场又是要多破烂有多破烂，可是从开麦拉里摄取的画面总是整洁美妙。
+ 炙手可热的大明星她们也真见着了一二回，到了镜头面前，也是道具一般无所作为的。
+ 那电影的脚本则是随意地改变，一转眼死人变活人的。
+ 她们钻进电影的幕后，摸着了奥秘的机关，内心都有一些变化。
+ 片厂的经验确是不寻常的经验，它带有一些人生的含义。
+ 尤其在她们那个年龄，有些虚实不分，真伪不辨； 又尤其是在那样的时代，电影已成为我们生活的一个重要部分。
+ 7. 开麦拉
+ 王琦瑶知道了，拍电影最重要最关键的一瞬，是“开麦拉”的这一瞬，之前全是准备和铺垫。
+ 之后呢？
+ 则是永远的结束。
+ 她看出这一声“开麦拉”的不同寻常的意义，几乎是接近顶点的。
+ 那导演有时让她们看镜头，镜头总是美妙，将杂乱和邋遢都滤去了。
+ 还使暗淡生辉。
+ 镜头里的世界是另一个，经过修改和制作，还有精华的意思。
+ 那导演已成为熟人，她们见他不再脸红。
+ 有几回，表哥不在片厂，她们便直接找他。
+ 他自作主张的，喊她们一个叫“珍珍”，一个叫“瑶瑶”，好像她们成了他戏里的角色似的。
+ 他背地里和片厂的人说，珍珍是个丫头相，不过是荣国府贾母身边的粗使丫头，傻大姐那样的；瑶瑶是小姐样，却是员外家的小姐，祝英台之流的。
+ 他把吴佩珍当小孩子看，喜欢逗她，开些玩笑；对王琦瑶则说有机会要让她上一回镜头，因她的眉眼有些像阮玲玉，趁着人们对阮玲玉的怀念，说不定能捧出一颗明星。
+ 也是带点玩笑的意思，却含蓄得多。
+ 王琦瑶当然也不会认真，只是有点喜欢自己和阮玲玉的相像。
+ 可是有一日，导演竟真的打电话到家里，让她去试一试镜头。
+ 王琦瑶心怦怦跳着，手心有点发凉，她不知道这是不是个机会，她想，机会难道就是这般容易得的吗？
+ 她不相信，又不敢不信，心里有些挣扎。
+ 她本是想不告诉吴佩珍，一个人悄悄地去，再悄悄地回，就算没结果，也只她自己知道，好比没发生过的一样。
+ 可临到那一天，她还是告诉了吴佩珍，要她陪自己一起去，为了壮胆子。
+ 晚上她没睡好，眼睛下有一片青晕，下巴也尖了一些。
+ 吴佩珍自然是雀跃，浮想联翩，转眼间，已经在策划为王琦瑶开记者招待会了。
+ 王琦瑶听她聒噪，便又后悔告诉了她。
+ 这一天的课，两人都没上好，心不知飞到哪里去了。
+ 终于放学，两人便踅出校门，上了电车。
+ 这时间的电车，多是些家庭主妇般的女人，手里拎着布袋，身上的旗袍是有皱痕的，腿后的丝袜也没对准缝，偏了那么一点，头发或是蓬乱，或是理发店刚出来戴了一顶盔似的，脸上表情也是木着的，万事俱不关心的样子。
+ 电车在轨道里哐哐当当地走，也是漠然的表情。
+ 她们俩却是这漠然里的一个活跃，虽然也是不做声，却是有着几百年的大事在酝酿的。
+ 下午三点钟的马路，是有疲惫感的，心里都在准备着结束和换班了。
+ 太阳是在马路西面的楼房上，黄熟的颜色。
+ 她们俩倒好像是去开始这一天的，心里有着许多等待。
+ 导演先将她俩领进化妆室，让一个化妆师来给王琦瑶化妆。
+ 王琦瑶从镜子里看见自己的形象，觉得自己的脸是那么小，五官是那么简单，不会有奇迹发生的样子，不由颓丧起来。
+ 她由化妆师摆弄，听天由命的表情，有一段时间，她闭起眼睛不去看镜子。
+ 她感到十分的难堪，恨不得这一切早点结束；她还有些神经过敏，认为那化妆师也是恨不得早点结束，手的动作难免急躁和粗暴的。
+ 她睁开眼睛再看镜子，镜子里的自己是个尴尬的自己，眼睛鼻子都是不得已的样子。
+ 化妆室的光是充足的平均分配的光，没有抑扬顿挫，看上去都有些平铺直叙的。
+ 王琦瑶对自己没有信心了，反倒是豁出去地，睁大眼睛看那化妆师的手法，看着自己一点一点变得不是自己，成了个陌生人。
+ 这时，她倒平静下来，心情也松弛了，等那化妆师结束工作走开时，她甚至还生出几分幽默感同吴佩珍开玩笑。
+ 吴佩珍说她简直像是嫦娥下凡，她就说嫦娥也是月饼盒上的嫦娥，于是两人都笑。
+ 一笑，表情舒展了，脂粉的颜色里有了活气，便生动起来。
+ 再看那镜子里的美人，也不那么生分和隔膜了。
+ 不一会儿，导演就派人来招呼她去，吴佩珍自然尾随着。
+ 棚里灯架都支好了，那吴佩珍的表哥在一个高处朝着她笑，导演却变得很严肃，六亲不认似的，指定她坐在一个床上，是那种宁式眠床，有着高大的帐篷，架上雕着花，嵌着镜子，是乡下人的华丽。
+ 导演告诉她，她现在是一个旧式婚礼中的新娘，披着红盖头，然后有新郎官来揭盖头，一点一点露出了脸庞。
+ 导演规定她是娇羞的，妩媚的，有憧憬又有担忧的，一股脑儿交给她这些形容词，全要做在一张脸上。
+ 王琦瑶虽是点头，心却茫然，还恍恍的，不知从何着手。
+ 可此时她只是一个豁出去，反倒是很镇定，竟能注意到周围，听见有邻近棚里传出来的“开麦拉”的叫声。
+ 接着，一块红盖头蒙上来了，眼前陡地暗了。
+ 这时，王琦瑶的心才擂鼓似的跳起来。
+ 她领悟这一时刻的来临，心生畏惧，膝盖微微地打颤。
+ 灯光齐明，眼前的暗变成了溶溶的红色，虽是有光，却是不明就里的光。
+ 王琦瑶发热似的，寒颤沿了膝盖升上去，牙齿都磕碰起来。
+ 片厂里的神奇在光里聚集和等候着。
+ 有人走过来，整理她的衣服，又走开了，带来一阵风，红盖头动了一下，抚着她的脸，是这一下午的紧张里的一个温柔。
+ 她听见四周围一连串的“OK”声，是递进的节奏，有几分激越的，齐心奔向一个目标的，最终是一声“开麦拉”。
+ 王琦瑶的呼吸屏住了，透不过气来，她听见开麦拉走片的机械声，这声音盖住了一切，她完全忘记了她该做什么了。
+ 当一只手揭去红盖头的时候，她陡然一惊，往后缩了一下，导演便嚷了一声停。
+ 灯光暗下，红盖头罩上，再从头来起。
+ 再一遍来起就有些人事皆非了。
+ 很多情景远去了，不复再现，本来也是幻觉一样的东西。
+ 王琦瑶清醒过来，寒颤止住了，心跳恢复正常。
+ 红盖头里的暗适应了，能辨出活动的人影。
+ 灯光亮起，是例行公事的，一连串“OK”也是例行公事，那一声“开麦拉”虽是例行公事，也是权威性的，有一点不变的震撼。
+ 她开始依着导演的交代在脸上做准备，却不知该如何娇羞，如何妩媚，如何有憧憬又有担忧。
+ 喜怒哀乐本来也没个符号，连个照搬都没地方去搬的。
+ 红盖头揭起时，她脸上只是木着，连她天生就有的那妩媚也木住了。
+ 导演在镜头里已经觉察到自己的失误，王琦瑶的美不是那种文艺性的美，她的美是有些家常的，是在客堂间里供自己人欣赏的，是过日子的情调。
+ 她不是兴风作浪的美，是拘泥不开的美。
+ 她的美里缺少点诗意，却是忠诚老实的。
+ 她的美不是戏剧性的，而是生活化，是走在马路上有人注目，照相馆橱窗里的美。
+ 从开麦拉里看起来，便过于平淡了。
+ 导演不觉失望，他的失望还有一点为王琦瑶的意思，他想，她的美是要被埋没了。
+ 后来，为了补偿，他请一个摄影的朋友，为王琦瑶拍了一些生活照，这些生活照果真情形大异，其中一张还用在了《上海生活》的封二，以“沪上淑媛”为题名。
+ 试镜头的经历就这样结束了，这是片厂里的小事一桩。
+ 王琦瑶从此不再去片厂了，她是想把这事淡忘，最好是没发生过。
+ 可是罩着红盖头，灯光齐明的情景却长在了心里，眼一闭就会出现的。
+ 那情景有一种莫测的悸动，是王琦瑶平静生活中的一个戏剧性的片刻。
+ 这一片刻的转瞬即逝，在王琦瑶心里留下一笔感伤的色彩。
+ 有时放学走在回家的路上，会有一点不期然的东西唤起去试镜头的那个下午的记忆。
+ 王琦瑶这年是十六岁，这事情使她有了沧桑感，她觉得自己已经不止十六岁这个岁数了。
+ 她还有点躲避吴佩珍，像有什么底细被她窥伺了去似的。
+ 放学吴佩珍约她去哪里，十有九次她找理由拒绝。
+ 吴佩珍有几次上她家找她玩，她也让娘姨说不在家推了。
+ 吴佩珍感觉到王琦瑶的回避，不由黯然神伤。
+ 但她却并不丧失信心，她觉得无论过多少日子，王琦瑶终究会回到她的身边。
+ 她的友情化成虔诚的等待，她甚至没有去交新的女朋友，因不愿让别人侵占王琦瑶的位置。
+ 她还隐约体会到王琦瑶回避的原委，似乎是与那次失败的试镜头有关，她也不再去片厂了，甚至与表哥断了来往。
+ 这次试镜头变成她们两人的伤心事，都怀有一些失败感的。
+ 后来，她们逐渐变得连话也不大讲了，碰面都有些尴尬地匆匆避开。
+ 当她们坐在课堂的两头，虽不对视，可彼此都感觉到对方的存在，有一种类似同情的气氛在她们之间滋生出来。
+ 去片厂的事情是以一声“开麦拉”告终的，这有一种电影里称作“定格”的效果，是一去不返，也是记忆永存。
+ 如今，课余的生活又回复到老样子，而老样子里面又是有一点新的被剥夺，心都是有点受伤的，伤在哪里，且不明白的。
+ 本来见风就是雨的女子学校，对这回王琦瑶试镜头的事，竟无一点声气，瞒得紧紧的。
+ 两人虽然没互相叮嘱，却不约而同地缄口不提。
+ 其实在一般女学生看来，能为导演看上去试一回，已是足够的光荣，成功则是奢望中的奢望。
+ 这也是王琦瑶她们原先的想法，可一旦走到了那一步，情形便不是旧时旧地，人也不是旧人，是付出过代价的，有些损失的。
+ 若非吴佩珍这样将心比心的旁观者，是体尝不到这番心境的。
+
+ Wang Miao drove along Jingmi Road until he was in Miyun County.
+ From there he headed to Heilongtan, climbed up the mountain along a winding road, and arrived at the radio astronomy observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Center.
+ He saw a line of twenty-eight parabolic antenna dishes, each with a diameter of nine meters, like a row of spectacular steel plants.
+ At the end were two tall radio telescopes with dishes fifty meters in diameter, built in 2006.
+ As he drove closer, Wang could not help but think of the background in the picture of Ye and her daughter.
+ But the work of Sha Ruishan, Ye's student, had nothing to do with these radio telescopes.
+ Dr. Sha's lab was mainly responsible for receiving the data transmitted from three satellites: the Cosmic Background Explorer, COBE, launched in November of 1989 and about to be retired; the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, WMAP, launched in 2003; and Planck, the space observatory launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.
+ Cosmic microwave background radiation very precisely matched the thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.7255 K and was highly isotropic—meaning nearly uniform in every direction—with only tiny temperature fluctuations at the parts per million range.
+ Sha Ruishan's job was to create a more detailed map of the cosmic microwave background using observational data.
+ The lab wasn't very big.
+ Equipment for receiving satellite data was squeezed into the main computer room, and three terminals displayed the information sent by the three satellites.
+ Sha was excited to see Wang.
+ Clearly bored with his long isolation and happy to have a visitor, he asked Wang what kind of data he wanted to see.
+ "I want to see the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background."
+ "Can you ... be more specific?"
+ "What I mean is ...
+ I want to see the isotropic fluctuation in the overall cosmic microwave background, between one and five percent," he said, quoting from Shen's email.
+ Sha grinned.
+ Starting at the turn of the century, the Miyun Radio Astronomy Observatory had opened itself to visitors.
+ In order to earn some extra income, Sha often played the role of tour guide or gave lectures.
+ This was the grin he reserved for tourists, as he had grown used to their astounding scientific illiteracy.
+ "Mr. Wang, I take it you're not a specialist in the field?"
+ "I work in nanotech."
+ "Ah, makes sense.
+ But you must have some basic understanding of the cosmic microwave background?"
+ "I don't know much.
+ I know that as the universe cooled after the big bang, the leftover 'embers' became the cosmic microwave background.
+ The radiation fills the entire universe and can be observed in the centimeter wavelength range.
+ I think it was back in the sixties when two Americans accidentally discovered the radiation when they were testing a supersensitive satellite reception antenna—"
+ "That's more than enough," Sha interrupted, waving his hands.
+ "Then you must know that unlike the local variations we observe in different parts of the universe, the overall fluctuation in the cosmic microwave background is correlated with the expansion of the universe.
+ It's a very slow change measured at the scale of the age of the universe.
+ Even with the sensitivity of the Planck satellite, continuous observation for a million years might not detect any such shift.
+ But you want to see a five percent fluctuation tonight?
+ Do you realize what that would mean?
+ The universe would flicker like a fluorescent tube that's about to burn out!"
+ And it will be flickering for me, Wang thought.
+ "This must be some joke from Professor Ye," Sha said.
+ "Nothing would please me more than to discover that it was a joke," Wang said.
+ He was about to tell Sha that Ye didn't know the details of his request, but he was afraid that Sha would then refuse to help him.
+ "Well, since Professor Ye asked me to help you, let's do the observation.
+ It's not a big deal.
+ If you just need one percent precision, data from the antique COBE is sufficient."
+ As he spoke, Sha typed quickly at the terminal.
+ Soon a flat green line appeared on the screen.
+ "This curve is the real-time measurement of the overall cosmic microwave background—oh, calling it a straight line would be more accurate.
+ The temperature is 2.725±0.002K.
+ The error range is due to the Doppler effect from the motion of the Milky Way, which has already been filtered out.
+ If the kind of fluctuation you anticipate—in excess of one percent—occurs, this line would turn red and become a waveform.
+ I would bet that it's going to stay a flat green line until the end of the world, though.
+ If you want to see it show the kind of fluctuation observable by the naked eye, you might have to wait until long after the death of the sun."
+ "I'm not interfering in your work, am I?"
+ "No.
+ Since you need such low precision, we can just use some basic data from COBE.
+ Okay, it's all set.
+ From now on, if such great fluctuations occur, the data will be automatically saved to disk."
+ "I think it might happen around one o'clock A.M."
+ "Wow, so precise!
+ No problem, since I'm working the night shift, anyway.
+ Have you had dinner yet?
+ Good, then I'll take you on a tour."
+ The night was moonless.
+ They walked along the row of antenna dishes, and Sha pointed to them.
+ "Breathtaking, aren't they?
+ It's too bad that they are all like the ears of a deaf man."
+ "Why?"
+ "Ever since construction was completed, interference has been unceasing in the observational bands.
+ First, there were the paging stations during the eighties.
+ Now, it's the scramble to develop mobile communications networks and cell towers.
+ These telescopes are capable of many scientific tasks—surveying the sky, detecting variable radio sources, observing the remains of supernovae—but we can't perform most of them.
+ We've complained to the State Regulatory Radio Commission many times, never with any results.
+ How can we get more attention than China Mobile, China Unicom, China Netcom?
+ Without money, the secrets of the universe are worth shit.
+ At least my project only depends on satellite data and has nothing to do with these 'tourist attractions.'"
+ "In recent years, commercial operation of basic research has been fairly successful, like in high-energy physics.
+ Maybe it would be better if the observatories were built in places farther away from cities?"
+ "It all comes down to money.
+ Right now, our only choice is to find technical means to shield against interference.
+ Well, it would be much better if Professor Ye were here.
+ She accomplished a lot in this field."
+ So the topic of conversation turned to Ye Wenjie.
+ And from her student, Wang finally learned about her life.
+ He listened as Sha told of how she witnessed the death of her father during the Cultural Revolution, how she was falsely accused at the Production and Construction Corps, how she then seemed to disappear until her return to Beijing at the beginning of the nineties, when she began teaching astrophysics at Tsinghua, where her father had also taught, until her retirement.
+ "It was only recently revealed that she had spent more than twenty years at Red Coast Base."
+ Wang was stunned.
+ "You mean, those rumors—"
+ "Most turned out to be true.
+ One of the researchers who developed the deciphering system for the Red Coast Project emigrated to Europe and wrote a book last year.
+ Most of the rumors you hear came out of that book.
+ Many who participated in Red Coast are still alive."
+ "That is ... a fantastical legend."
+ "Especially for it to happen during those years—absolutely incredible."
+ They continued to speak for a while.
+ Sha asked the purpose behind Wang's strange request.
+ Wang avoided giving a straight answer, and Sha didn't press.
+ The dignity of a specialist did not allow Sha to express too much interest in a request that clearly went against his professional knowledge.
+ Then they went to an all-night bar for tourists and sat for two hours.
+ As Sha finished one beer after another, his tongue loosened even more.
+ But Wang became anxious, and his mind kept returning to that green line on the terminal in Sha's office.
+ It was only at ten to one in the morning that Sha finally gave in to Wang's repeated pleas to go back to the lab.
+ The spotlights that had lit up the row of radio antennas had been turned off, and the antennas now formed a simple two-dimensional picture against the night sky like a series of abstract symbols.
+ All of them gazed up at the sky at the same angle, as though waiting expectantly for something.
+ The scene made Wang shudder despite the warmth of the spring evening.
+ He was reminded of the giant pendulums in Three Body.
+ They arrived back at the lab at one.
+ As they looked at the terminal, the fluctuation was just getting started.
+ The flat line turned into a wave, the distance between one peak and the next inconstant.
+ The line's color became red, like a snake awakening after hibernation, wriggling as its skin refilled with blood.
+ "It must be a malfunction in COBE!"
+ Sha stared at the waveform, terrified.
+ "It's not a malfunction."
+ Wang's tone was exceedingly calm.
+ He had learned to control himself when faced with such sights.
+ "We'll know soon enough," Sha said.
+ He went to the other two terminals and typed rapidly to bring up the data gathered by the other two satellites, WMAP and Planck.
+ Now three waveforms moved in sync across the three terminals, exactly alike.
+ Sha took out a notebook computer and rushed to turn it on.
+ He plugged in a network cable and picked up the phone.
+ Wang could tell from the one-sided conversation that he was trying to get in touch with the Ürümqi radio astronomy observatory.
+ He didn't explain to Wang what he was doing, his eyes locked onto the browser window on the notebook.
+ Wang could hear his rapid breathing.
+ A few minutes later, a red waveform appeared in the browser window, moving in step with the other three.
+ The three satellites and the ground-based observatory confirmed one fact: The universe was flickering.
+ "Can you print out the waveform?" Wang asked.
+ Sha wiped away the cold sweat on his forehead and nodded.
+ He moved his mouse and clicked "Print."
+ Wang grabbed the first page as soon as it came out of the laser printer, and, with a pencil, began to match the distance between the peaks with the Morse code chart he took out of his pocket.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-long-short-short-short.
+ That's 1108:21:37, Wang thought.
+ short-long-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-long-long-long, short-long-long-long-long, long-long-long-short-short-short, short-short-short-long-long, long-short-short-short-short—that's 1108:21:36.
+ The countdown continued at the scale of the universe.
+ Ninety-two hours had already elapsed, and only 1,108 hours remained.
+ Sha paced back and forth anxiously, pausing from time to time to look at the sequence of numbers Wang was writing down.
+ "Can't you tell me what's going on?" he shouted.
+ "I can't possibly explain this to you, Dr. Sha.
+ Trust me."
+ Wang pushed away the pile of papers filled with waveforms.
+ As he stared at the sequence of numbers, he said, "Maybe the three satellites and the observatory are all malfunctioning."
+ "You know that's impossible!"
+ "What if it's sabotage?"
+ "Also impossible!
+ To simultaneously alter the data from three satellites and an observatory on Earth?
+ You're talking about a supernatural saboteur."
+ Wang nodded.
+ Compared to the idea of the universe flickering, he would prefer a supernatural saboteur.
+ But Sha then deprived him of this last glimmer of hope.
+ "It's easy to confirm this.
+ If the cosmic microwave background is fluctuating this much, we should be able to see it with our own eyes."
+ "What are you talking about?
+ The wavelength of the cosmic microwave background is seven centimeters.
+ That's five orders of magnitude longer than the wavelength of visible light.
+ How can we possibly see it?"
+ "Using 3K glasses."
+ "Three-K glasses?"
+ "It's a sort of science toy we made for the Capital Planetarium.
+ With our current level of technology, we could take the six-meter horn antenna used by Penzias and Wilson almost half a century ago to discover the cosmic microwave background and miniaturize it to the size of a pair of glasses.
+ Then we added a converter in the glasses to compress the detected radiation by five orders of magnitude so that seven-centimeter waves are turned into visible red light.
+ This way, visitors can put on the glasses at night and observe the cosmic microwave background on their own.
+ And now, we can use it to see the universe flicker."
+ "Where can I find these glasses?"
+ "At the Capital Planetarium.
+ We made more than twenty pairs."
+ "I must get my hands on a pair before five."
+ Sha picked up the phone.
+ The other side picked up only after a long while.
+ Sha had to expend a lot of energy to convince the person awakened in the middle of the night to go to the planetarium and wait for Wang's arrival in an hour.
+ As Wang left, Sha said, "I won't go with you.
+ What I've seen is enough, and I don't need any more confirmation.
+ But I hope that you will explain the truth to me when you feel the time is right.
+ If this phenomenon should lead to some research result, I won't forget you."
+ Wang opened the car door and said, "The flickering will stop at five in the morning.
+ I'd suggest you not pursue it after this.
+ Believe me, you won't get anywhere."
+ Sha stared at Wang for a long time and then nodded.
+ "I understand.
+ Strange things have been happening to scientists lately...."
+ "Yes."
+ Wang ducked into the car.
+ He didn't want to discuss the subject any further.
+ "Is it our turn?"
+ "It's my turn, at least."
+ Wang started the engine.
+ An hour later, Wang arrived at the new planetarium and got out of the car.
+ The bright lights of the city penetrated the translucent walls of the immense glass building and dimly revealed its internal structure.
+ Wang thought that if the architect had intended to express a feeling about the universe, the design was a success:
+ The more transparent something was, the more mysterious it seemed.
+ The universe itself was transparent; as long as you were sufficiently sharp-eyed, you could see as far as you liked.
+ But the farther you looked, the more mysterious it became.
+ The sleepy-eyed planetarium staffer was waiting by the door for Wang.
+ He handed him a small suitcase and said, "There are five pairs of 3K glasses in here, all fully charged.
+ The left button switches it on.
+ The right dial is for adjusting brightness.
+ I have a dozen more pairs upstairs.
+ You can look as much as you like, but I'm going to take a nap now in the room over there.
+ This Dr. Sha must be mental."
+ He went into the dim interior of the planetarium.
+ Wang opened the suitcase on the backseat of his car and took out a pair of 3K glasses.
+ It resembled the display inside the panoramic viewing helmet of the V-suit.
+ He put the glasses on and looked around.
+ The city looked the same as before, only dimmer.
+ Then he remembered that he had to switch them on.
+ The city turned into many hazy glowing halos.
+ Most were fixed, but a few flickered or moved.
+ He realized that these were sources of radiation in the centimeter range, all now converted to visible light.
+ At the heart of each halo was a radiation source.
+ Because the original wavelengths were so long, it was impossible to see their shapes clearly.
+ He lifted his head and saw a sky glowing with a faint red light.
+ Just like that, he was seeing the cosmic microwave background.
+ The red light had come from more than ten billion years ago.
+ It was the remnants of the big bang, the still-warm embers of Creation.
+ He could not see any stars.
+ Normally, since visible light would be compressed to invisible by the glasses, each star should appear as a black dot.
+ But the diffraction of centimeter-wave radiation overwhelmed all other shapes and details.
+ Once his eyes had grown used to the sight, Wang could see that the faint red background was indeed pulsing.
+ The entire sky flickered, as if the universe was but a quivering lamp in the wind.
+ Standing under the flashing dome of the night sky, Wang suddenly felt the universe shrink until it was so small that only he was imprisoned in it.
+ The universe was a cramped heart, and the red light that suffused everything was the translucent blood that filled the organ.
+ Suspended in the blood, he saw that the flickering of the red light was not periodic—the pulsing was irregular.
+ He felt a strange, perverse, immense presence that could never be understood by human intellect.
+ Wang took off the 3K glasses and sat down weakly on the ground, leaning against the wheel of his car.
+ The city at night gradually recovered the reality of visible light.
+ But his eyes roamed, trying to capture other sights.
+ By the entrance of the zoo across the street, there was a row of neon lights.
+ One of the lights was about to burn out and flickered irregularly.
+ Nearby, a small tree's leaves trembled in the night breeze, twinkling without pattern as they reflected streetlight.
+ In the distance, the red star atop the Beijing Exhibition Center's Russian-style spire reflected the light from the cars passing below, also twinkling randomly....
+ Wang tried to interpret the flickers as Morse code.
+ He even felt that the wrinkles in the flags flapping next to him and the ripples in the puddle on the side of the road might be sending him messages.
+ He struggled to understand all the messages, and felt the passing of the countdown, second by second.
+ He didn't know how long he stayed there.
+ The planetarium staffer finally emerged and asked him whether he was done.
+ But when he saw Wang's face, sleep disappeared from the staffer's eyes and was replaced by fear.
+ He packed up the 3K glasses, stared at Wang for a few seconds, and quickly left with the suitcase.
+ Wang took out his mobile and dialed Shen Yufei's number.
+ She picked up right away.
+ Perhaps she was also suffering from insomnia.
+ "What happens at the end of the countdown?" Wang asked.
+ "I don't know."
+ She hung up.
+ What can it be?
+ Maybe my own death, like Yang Dong's.
+ Or maybe it will be a disaster like the great tsunami that swept through the Indian Ocean more than a decade ago.
+ No one will connect it to my nanotech research.
+ Could it be that every previous great disaster, including the two World Wars, was also the result of reaching the end of ghostly countdowns?
+ Could it be that every time there was someone like me, who no one thought of, who bore the ultimate responsibility?
+ Or maybe it signals the end of the whole world.
+ In this perverse world, that would be a relief.
+ One thing was certain.
+ No matter what was at the end of the countdown, in the remaining one thousand or so hours, the possibilities would torture him cruelly, like demons, until he suffered a complete mental breakdown.
+ Wang ducked back into the car and left the planetarium.
+ Just before dawn, the roads were relatively empty.
+ But he didn't dare to drive too fast, feeling that the faster the car moved, the faster the countdown would go.
+ When a glimmer of light appeared in the eastern sky, he parked and walked around aimlessly.
+ His mind was empty of thoughts: Only the countdown pulsed against the dim red background of cosmic radiation.
+ He seemed to have turned into nothing but a simple timer, a bell that tolled for he knew not whom.
+ The sky brightened.
+ He was tired, so he sat down on a bench.
+ When he lifted his head to see where his subconscious had brought him, he shivered.
+ He sat in front of St. Joseph's Church at Wangfujing.
+ In the pale white light of dawn, the church's Romanesque vaults appeared as three giant fingers pointing out something in space for him.
+ As Wang got up to leave, he was held back by a snippet of hymnal music.
+ It wasn't Sunday, so it was likely a choir rehearsal.
+ The song was "Come, Gracious Spirit, Heavenly Dove."
+ As he listened to the solemn, sacred music, Wang Miao once again felt that the universe had shrunk until it was the size of an empty church.
+ The domed ceiling was hidden by the flashing red light of the background radiation, and he was an ant crawling through the cracks in the floor.
+ He felt a giant, invisible hand caressing his trembling heart, and he was once again a helpless babe.
+ Something deep in his mind that had once held him up softened like wax and collapsed.
+ He covered his eyes and began to cry.
+ Wang's cries were interrupted by laughter.
+ "Hahaha, another one bites the dust!"
+ He turned around.
+ Captain Shi Qiang stood there, blowing out a mouthful of white smoke.
+
+ 汪淼驱车沿京密路到密云县，再转至黑龙潭，又走了一段盘山路，便到达中科院国家天文观测中心的射电天文观测基地。
+ 他看到二十八面直径为九米的抛物面天线在暮色中一字排开，像一排壮观的钢铁植物，2006年建成的两台高大的五十米口径射电望远镜天线矗立在这排九米天线的尽头，车驶近后，它们令汪淼不由想起了那张杨冬母女合影的背景。
+ 但叶文洁的学生从事的项目与这些射电望远镜没有什么关系，沙瑞山博士的实验室主要接收三颗卫星的观测数据：1989年11月升空、即将淘汰的微波背景探测卫星COBE，2003年发射的威尔金森微波各向异性探测卫星WMAP和2009年欧洲航天局发射的普朗克高精度宇宙微波背景探测卫星Planek。
+ 宇宙整体的微波背景辐射频谱非常精确地符合温度为2.726K的黑体辐射谱，具有高度各向同性，但在不同局部也存在大约百万分之五涨落的幅度。
+ 沙瑞山的工作就是根据卫星观测数据，重新绘制一幅更精确的全宇宙微波辐射背景图。
+ 这个实验室不大，主机房中挤满了卫星数据接收设备，有三台终端分别显示来自三颗卫星的数据。
+ 沙瑞山见到汪淼，立刻表现出了那种长期在寂寞之地工作的人见到来客的热情，问他想了解哪方面的观测数据。
+ “我想观测宇宙背景辐射的整体波动。”
+ “您能…… 说具体些吗？”
+ 沙瑞山看汪淼的眼神变得奇怪起来。
+ “就是，宇宙3K微波背景辐射整体上的各向同性的波动，振幅在百分之一至百分之五之间。”
+ 沙瑞山笑笑，早在本世纪初，密云射电天文基地就对游客开放参观，为挣些外快，沙瑞山时常做些导游或讲座的事，这种笑容就是他回答游客（他已适应了他们那骇人的科盲）问题时常常露出的。
+ “汪先生，您…… 不是搞这个专业的吧？”
+ “我搞纳米材料。”
+ “哦，那就对了。
+ 不过，对于宇宙3K背景辐射，您大概有个了解吧？”
+ “知道的不多。
+ 目前的宇宙起源理论认为，宇宙诞生于距今约一百四十亿年前的一次大爆炸。
+ 在诞生早期，宇宙温度极高，随后开始冷却，形成被称为微波背景辐射的‘余烬’。
+ 这种弥漫全宇宙的残留背景辐射，在厘米波段上是可以观测到的。
+ 好像是在一九六几年吧，两个美国人在调试一个高精度卫星接收天线时意外地发现了宇宙背景辐射……”
+ “足够了，”沙瑞山挥手打断了汪淼的话，“那你就应该知道，与我们观测的不同部分的微小不均匀不同，宇宙整体辐射背景波动是随着宇宙的膨胀，在宇宙时间尺度上缓慢变化的，以Planck卫星的精度，直到一百万年后都未必能测出这种变化，你却想在今天晚上发现它百分之五的波动？！
+ 知道这意味着什么吗？
+ 这意味着整个宇宙像一个坏了的日光灯管那样闪烁！”
+ 而且是为我闪烁，汪淼心里说。
+ “叶老师这是在开什么玩笑。”
+ 沙瑞山摇摇头说。
+ “但愿真是个玩笑。”
+ 汪淼说，本想告诉他，叶文洁并不知道详情，但又怕因此招致他的拒绝，不过这倒是他的心里话。
+ “既然是叶老师交待的，就观测吧，反正也不费劲，百分之一的精度。
+ 用老古董COBE就行了。”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在终端上忙活起来，很快屏幕上出现一条平直的绿线，“你看，这就是当前宇宙整体背景辐射的实时数值曲线，哦，应该叫直线才对，数值是2.726±0.010K，那个误差是银河系运动产生的多普勒效应，已经滤掉了。
+ 如果发生你所说的超过百分之一振幅的波动，这条线就会变红并将波动显示出来。
+ 我敢打赌直到世界末日它也是条绿直线，要看到它显现肉眼看得到的变化，可能比看太阳毁灭还要等更长的时间。”
+ “这不会影响您的正常工作吧？”
+ “当然不会，那么粗的精度，用COBE观察数据的边角料就足够了。
+ 好了，从现在开始，如果那伟大的波动出现，数值会自动存盘。”
+ “可能要等到凌晨一点。”
+ “哇，这么精确？
+ 没关系，反正我本来就是值夜班。
+ 您吃饭了吗？
+ 那好，我带您去参观一下吧。”
+ 这一夜没有月亮，他们沿着长长的天线阵列漫步。
+ 沙瑞山指着天线说：“壮观吧？
+ 可惜都是聋子的耳朵。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “自它们建成以来，在观测频段上就干扰不断，先是上世纪八十年代末的寻呼台，到现在是疯狂发展的移动通信。
+ 这些米波综合孔径射电望远镜能做的那些项目，像米波巡天、射电变源、超新星遗迹研究等等，大部分都不能正常开展。
+ 多次找过无委会（国家无线电管理委员会），没有用，我们能玩得过中国移动、联通、网通？
+ 没有钱，宇宙奥秘算个球！
+ 好在我的项目靠卫星数据，与这些‘旅游景观’无关了。”
+ “近年来很多基础研究的商业运行还是很成功的，比如高能物理。
+ 把观测基地建到离城市远些的地方应该好些吧？”
+ “那还是钱的问题。
+ 就目前而言，只能是在技术上屏蔽干扰。
+ 唉，叶老师要在就好了，她在这方面造诣很深。”
+ 于是话题转到叶文洁身上。
+ 从她的学生那里，汪淼得知了她那历经风霜的一生：
+ 他听沙瑞山讲她如何目睹父亲在“文革”中的惨死，讲她后来在建设兵团被诬陷，后来杳无音讯； 九十年代初才又回到了这座城市，在父亲曾工作过的大学中讲授天体物理学直到退休。
+ “最近才知道，她那二十多年，是在红岸基地度过的。”
+ “红岸？！”
+ 汪淼吃惊地停住了脚步，“难道那些传说……”
+ “大部分是真的。
+ 红岸自译解系统的一名研制者移民到欧洲，去年写了一本书，你所说的传说大多来自于那本书，据我了解是真的。
+ 红岸工程的参与者大都还健在。”
+ “这可真是…… 传奇啊！”
+ “尤其是发生在那个年代，更是传奇中的传奇。” ……
+ 他们又谈了一会儿，沙瑞山问起进行这次奇怪观测的目的，汪淼避而不答，他也就没有再问。
+ 显然，一个专家的尊严，不允许他对这种违反专业常识的观测表现出过多的兴趣。
+ 然后他们到一间为游客开的通宵酒吧中去坐了两个多小时，沙瑞山一杯接着一杯地灌啤酒，变得更加健谈，而汪淼却早已心神不定，脑子里不断地浮现出那条绿色直线。
+ 直到差十分钟凌晨一点时，沙瑞山才接受了汪淼的多次提议，起身返回实验室。
+ 这时，照向射电天线阵列的聚光灯已经熄灭，天线在夜空下变成了简明的黑色二维图案，仿佛是一排抽象的符号，以同一个仰角齐齐地仰望着宇宙，似乎在等待着什么。
+ 这景象令汪淼不寒而栗，他想起了《三体》中的那些巨摆。
+ 回到实验室时正好是凌晨一点，当他们将目光投向终端屏幕时，波动刚刚出现，直线变成了曲线，出现了间隔不一的尖尖的波峰，颜色也变红了，如同一条冬眠后的蛇开始充血蠕动了。
+ “肯定是COBE卫星的故障！”
+ 沙瑞山惊恐地盯着曲线讲。
+ “不是故障。”
+ 汪淼平静地说，在这样的事情面前，他已经初步学会了控制自己。
+ “我们马上就能知道！”
+ 沙瑞山说着，在另外两台终端上快速操作起来。
+ 很快，他调出了另外两颗卫星WMAP和Planck的宇宙背景辐射实时数据，并将其变化显示为曲线——
+ 三条曲线在同步波动，一模一样。
+ 沙瑞山又搬出一台笔记本电脑，手忙脚乱地启动系统，插上宽带网线，然后打电话—— 汪淼听出他在联系乌鲁木齐射电观测基地——然后等待着。
+ 他没有对汪淼解释什么，两眼死盯着屏幕上的浏览器，汪淼能听到他急促的呼吸声：
+ 几分钟后，浏览器上出现了一个坐标窗口，一条红色曲线在窗口上出现，与另外三条进行着精确同步的波动。
+ 这样，三颗卫星和一套地面观测设备同时证实了一件事：宇宙在闪烁！
+ “能将前面的曲线打印出来吗？” 汪淼问。
+ 沙瑞山抹了一把头上的冷汗，点点头，移动鼠标启动了打印程序。
+ 汪淼迫不及待地抓过激光打印机吐出的第一张纸，用一枝铅笔划过曲线，将波峰问的距离与他刚拿出来的那张莫尔斯电码表对照起来。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长长短短短，这是1108：21：37。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、长短短短短，这是1108：21：36。
+ 短长长长长、短长长长长、短短短短短、长长长短短、长长短短长长、短短长长长、短短短短长、长长短短长长、短短短长长、短短短短短，这是1108：21：35。 ……
+ 倒计时在宇宙尺度上继续，已经过去了92小时，还剩1108小时？
+ 沙瑞山焦躁地来回踱步，不时在汪淼身后停下来看看他正在写出的那一串数字。
+ “你真的不能把实情告诉我吗？！”
+ 他耐不住大声问。
+ “沙博士，相信我，一时说不清的。”
+ 汪淼推开那一堆印着波动曲线的纸，盯着那行倒计时数字，“也许，三颗卫星和一个地面观测点都出现了故障。”
+ “你知道这不可能！”
+ “如果有人故意破坏呢？”
+ “也不可能！
+ 同时改变三颗卫星和一个地面观测站的数据？
+ 那这破坏也有些超自然了。”
+ 汪淼点点头，比起宇宙闪烁来，他宁愿接受这个超自然。
+ 但沙瑞山立刻抽走了他怀中这唯一的一根救命稻草。
+ “要想最终证实这一切，其实很简单。
+ 宇宙背景辐射这样幅度的波动，已经大到我们能用肉眼觉察的程度。”
+ “你胡说什么？
+ 现在是你在违反常识了：背景辐射的波长是7cm，比可见光大了七八个数量级，怎么能看到？”
+ “用3K眼镜。”
+ “3K眼镜？”
+ “是我们为首都天文馆做的一个科普小玩意儿。
+ 现在的技术，已经能将彭齐阿斯和威尔逊在四十多年前用于发现3K背景辐射的二十英尺的喇叭形天线做成眼镜大小，并且在这个眼镜中设置一个转换系统，将接收到的背景辐射的波长压缩七个数量级，将7cm波转换成红光。
+ 这样，观众在夜里戴上这种眼镜，就能亲眼看到宇宙的3K背景辐射，现在，也能看到宇宙闪烁。”
+ “这东西现在在哪儿？”
+ “在天文馆，有二十副呢。”
+ “我必须在五点以前拿到它。”
+ 沙瑞山拿起电话拨了个号码，对方很长时间才接起电话，沙瑞山费尽口舌才说服那个被半夜叫醒的人一小时后在天文馆等汪淼。
+ 临别时沙瑞山说：“我就不同您去了，刚才看到的已经足够，我不需要这样的证明。
+ 我还是希望您能在适当的时候把实情告诉我，如果这种现象引出什么研究成果的话，我不会忘记您的。”
+ “闪烁在凌晨五点就会停止，以后别去深究它吧，相信我，不会有什么成果的。”
+ 汪淼扶着车门说。
+ 沙瑞山对着汪淼注视良久，点点头：“明白了，现在科学界出了一些事……”
+ “是的。”
+ 汪淼说着，钻进车里，他不想把这个话题继续下去了。
+ “轮到我们了吗？”
+ “至少轮到我了。”
+ 汪淼说着发动了车子。
+ 汪淼一小时后到达市内，他在新天文馆前下了车。
+ 城市午夜的灯光透过这栋巨大玻璃建筑的透明幕墙，将内部的结构隐隐约约显现出来。
+ 汪淼现在体会到，如果新天文馆的建筑师想表达对宇宙的感觉，那他成功了——
+ 越透明的东西越神秘，宇宙本身就是透明的，只要目力能及，你想看多远就看多远，但越看越神秘。
+ 那名睡眼惺忪的天文馆工作人员已经在门口等汪淼了，他把一个手提箱递给汪淼，“这里面有五副3K眼镜，都是充好电的，左边的按钮是开关，右边是光度调节。
+ 上面还有十几副，你想怎么看就怎么看吧，我先去睡会儿，就在靠门口那个房间。
+ 这个沙博士，真是个神经病。”
+ 说完转身走进昏暗的馆内。
+ 汪淼将箱子放到车座上打开，拿出一副3K眼镜，这东西很像他刚用过的V装具中的头盔显示器。
+ 他拿起一副走到车外戴上，透过镜片看到的城市夜景没有变化，只是暗了些，这时他才想起要将开关打开，立刻，城市化作一团团朦胧的光晕，大部分亮度固定，还有一些闪烁或移动着。
+ 他知道，这都是被转化为可见光的厘米微波，每团光晕的中心就是一个发射源，由于波长的原因，不可能看清形状。
+ 他抬起头，看到了一个发着暗红色微光的天空，就这样，他看到了宇宙背景辐射，这红光来自于一百多亿年前，是大爆炸的延续，是创世纪的余温。
+ 看不到星星，本来，由于可见光波段已被推至不可见，星星应该是一个个黑点，但厘米波的衍射淹没了一切形状和细节。
+ 当汪淼的眼睛适应了这一切后，他看到了天空的红光背景在微微闪动，整个太空成一个整体在同步闪烁，仿佛整个宇宙只是一盏风中的孤灯。
+ 站在这闪烁的苍穹下，汗淼突然感到宇宙是这么小，小得仅将他一人禁锢于其中。
+ 宇宙是一个狭小的心脏或子宫，这弥漫的红光是充满于其中的半透明的血夜，他悬浮于血液中，红光的闪烁周期是不规则的，像是这心脏或子宫不规则地脉动，他从中感受到了一个以人类的智慧永远无法理解的怪异、变态的巨大存在。
+ 汪淼摘下3K眼镜，虚弱地靠着车轮坐在地上。
+ 在他的眼中，午夜的城市重新恢复了可见光波段所描绘的现实图景，但他的目光游移，在捕捉另外一些东西：
+ 对面动物园大门旁的一排霓虹灯中有一根灯管坏了，不规则地闪烁着；近处的一棵小树上的树叶在夜风中摇动，反射着街灯的光，不规则地闪烁着；远处北京展览馆俄式尖顶上的五角星也在反射着下面不同街道上车灯的光，不规则地闪烁着……
+ 汪淼按莫尔斯电码努力破译着这些闪烁。
+ 他甚至觉得，旁边几幅彩旗在微风中飘出的皱褶、路旁一洼积水表面的涟漪，都向他传递着莫尔斯电码……
+ 他努力地破译着，感受着幽灵倒计时的流逝。
+ 不知过了多久，那个天文馆的工作人员出来了，问汪淼看完了没有。
+ 当看到他时，他的样子使那人双眼中的睡意一下子消失了。
+ 收拾好了3K眼镜的箱子，那人又盯着汪淼看了几秒钟，提着箱子快步走了回去。
+ 汪淼拿出手机，拨通了申玉菲的电话，她很快就接了，也许她也度过一个不眠之夜。
+ “倒计时的尽头是什么？” 汪淼无力地问。
+ “不知道。”
+ 说了这简短的三个字后，电话挂断了。
+ 是什么？
+ 也许是自己的死亡，像杨冬那样；也许是一场像前几年印度洋海啸那样的大灾难，谁也不会将其与自己的纳米研究项目相联系（由此联想到，以前的每一次大灾难，包括两次世界大战，是否都是一次次幽灵倒计时的尽头？
+ 都有一个谁都想不到的像自己这样的人要负的最终责任）；也许是全世界的彻底毁灭，在这个变态的宇宙中，那倒对谁都是一种解脱……
+ 有一点可以肯定，不管幽灵倒计时的尽头是什么，在这剩下的千余个小时中，对尽头的猜测将像恶魔那样残酷地折磨他，最后在精神上彻底摧毁他。
+ 汪淼钻进车子，离开了天文馆，在城市里漫无目的地开着。
+ 黎明前，路上很空，但他不敢开快，仿佛车开得快，倒计时走得也快。
+ 当东方出现一线晨光时，他将车停在路边，下车走了起来，同样漫无目标的。
+ 他的意识中一片空白，只有倒计时在那暗红的背景辐射上显现着，跳动着，他自己仿佛变成了一个单纯的计时器，一口不知道为谁而呜的丧钟。
+ 天亮了起来，他走累了，在一条长椅上坐下来。
+ 当他抬头看看自己下意识走到的目的地时，不由打了个寒颤。
+ 他正坐在王府井天主教堂前。
+ 在黎明惨白的天空下，教堂的罗马式尖顶像三根黑色的巨指，似乎在为他指出冥冥太空中的什么东西。
+ 汪淼起身要走，一阵从教堂传出的圣乐留住了他。
+ 今天不是礼拜日，这可能是唱诗班为复活节进行的排练，唱的是这个节日弥撒中常唱的《圣灵光照》。
+ 在圣乐的庄严深远中，汪淼再次感到宇宙变小了，变成了一座空旷的教堂，穹顶隐没于背景辐射闪烁的红光中，他则是这宏伟教堂地板砖缝中的一只小蚂蚁。
+ 他感觉到自己那颗颤抖的心灵被一只无形的巨手抚摸着，一时间又回到了脆弱无助的孩童时代，意识深处硬撑着的某种东西像蜡一样变软了，崩溃了。
+ 他双手捂着脸哭了起来。
+ “哈哈哈，又放倒了一个！”
+ 汪淼的哭泣被身后的一阵笑声打断，他扭头一看，大史站在那里，嘴里吐出一口白烟。
+
+ At twenty-one, I was placed in a production team for reeducation in Yunnan.
+ That year Chen Qingyang was twenty-six and a doctor who happened to work where I did.
+ I was on the fourteenth production team down the mountain, and she was on the fifteenth team up the mountain.
+ One day she came down the mountain to see me, to discuss the fact that she was not damaged goods.
+ I didn't know her too well at the time, barely you might say.
+ The issue she wanted to discuss was this: Despite the fact that everyone believed she was damaged goods, she didn't think she was.
+ Because, to be damaged goods she had to have cheated on her husband, but she never did.
+ Although her husband had been in prison for a year, she hadn't slept with another man, nor had she ever done anything like that.
+ Therefore she simply couldn't understand why people kept calling her damaged goods.
+ If I'd wanted to comfort her, it wouldn't have been hard; I could prove logically that she was not damaged goods.
+ If Chen Qingyang were damaged goods, she would have had to have cheated on her husband, and therefore, there must be a man with whom she'd cheated.
+ Since at present no one could point out such a man, the proposition that Chen Qingyang had slept with another man was untenable.
+ Yet I insisted on saying that Chen Qingyang was damaged goods, and that this was beyond question.
+ Chen Qingyang came to me to ask me to prove she wasn't damaged goods because I had come to her for a shot.
+ The whole thing unfolded as follows: During the farm's busy season our team leader would not assign me to plow fields.
+ Instead he made me plant rice seedlings so that I could not stand straight most of the time.
+ Anyone familiar with me knew about the injury to my lower back, not to mention that I was a tall man, over six feet.
+ Having worked like this for a month, the pain in my lower back became so intolerable that I couldn't fall asleep without steroid injections.
+ The clinic at our team had a bunch of needles whose coating had completely peeled off, with tips all bent like fishhooks, which often pulled flesh from my lower back.
+ After a while my waist looked like it had been peppered by a shotgun, and the scars didn't fade for a long time.
+ Under the circumstances, I recalled that the doctor at the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, had graduated from Beijing Medical School.
+ Maybe she would be able to tell the difference between a hypodermic and a crotchet needle.
+ So I went to see her.
+ Not half an hour after my visit, she chased after me to my room, wanting me to prove that she wasn't damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said she didn't look down on damaged goods at all.
+ In fact, from what she observed, damaged goods seemed to have soft hearts, loved to help others and, most of all, hated to disappoint people.
+ Therefore, she even had a sneaking admiration for people like them.
+ However, the problem was not whether damaged goods were good or not good, but lay in the fact that she was not damaged goods at all, just as a cat was not a dog.
+ If a cat were called a dog, it wouldn't feel comfortable.
+ Now everyone called her damaged goods, which drove her to distraction and made her almost forget who she was.
+ As Chen Qingyang sat in my thatched shack and poured out her troubles, she had on a white smock that left her arms and legs exposed, the same outfit she had worn earlier in her clinic.
+ The only differences were that she had tied back her long, loose hair with a handkerchief and put on a pair of sandals.
+ As I looked at her, I began to wonder what was under her white smock, whether she had something on—or nothing at all, which would show what a beautiful woman Chen Qingyang was because she believed that it didn't really matter whether or not she wore underwear.
+ That kind of confidence needs to have been built up from childhood.
+ I told her that she was definitely damaged goods, and even enumerated several reasons to convince her.
+ I said that so-called damaged goods was just a denotation.
+ If people say you're damaged goods, then you must be damaged goods—there isn't much logic to it; if people say you slept with another man, you must have done it—there is not much logic to that either.
+ As for why they say you're damaged goods, in my opinion it's because of this: People generally agree that if a married woman hasn't cheated on her husband, her face must be leathery, and her breasts must sag.
+ Now your face is not dark but fair, your breasts are not hanging down but jutting out, so you must be damaged goods.
+ If you don't want to be damaged goods, you should try to darken your face and make your breasts sag so people won't accuse you of being damaged goods, which, of course, is a raw deal for you.
+ If you don't want a raw deal, sleep with another man so you can think of yourself as damaged goods, too.
+ Other people are not obliged to find out if you are damaged goods before calling you that, but you are obliged to stop them from calling you damaged goods.
+ As Chen Qingyang listened to my words, her face flushed and her eyes widened with anger.
+ She looked like she was about to slap me.
+ This woman was famous for her slapping; many men had felt her slaps.
+ However, suddenly disheartened, she said, "All right, let me be damaged goods.
+ As far as drooping or not drooping, dark or not dark, that's none of your business."
+ She also said that if I spent too much time pondering these matters, I would very likely get slapped.
+ Imagine the scene twenty years ago, when Chen Qingyang and I discussed the damaged goods issue.
+ Back then, my face was baked brown, my lips were dry and chapped, with bits of paper and tobacco stuck to them, my hair was matted like a coconut husk, the many holes in the ragged army greatcoat I wore were patched with bandages, as I sat, legs crossed, on the wooden bed, looking like a total hooligan.
+ You can imagine when Chen Qingyang heard such a person talking about whether her breasts drooped or not, how the palm of her hand itched.
+ She was a little oversensitive, but that was because many strong men went to see her who weren't sick at all.
+ What they wanted to see was damaged goods, not a doctor.
+ I was the only exception.
+ My lower back looked like it had been struck by Pigsy's rake.
+ Whether my back really hurt or not, those holes alone would justify my visit to the doctor.
+ Those holes also made her hope she might be able to convince me she was not damaged goods.
+ Even if there were just one person who believed she wasn't damaged goods, it would be very different than no one believing her.
+ But I intentionally disappointed her.
+ This is what I thought: if I wanted to prove she was not damaged goods and I could, then things would be too easy.
+ The truth was I couldn't prove anything, except things that didn't need proving.
+ In spring, our team leader claimed I was the one who had shot out the left eye of his dog, which was why the dog always looked at people with its head tilted, as if she were dancing ballet.
+ From then on, he always gave me a hard time.
+ Three things could have proved my innocence: 1. The team leader had no dog; 2. The dog was born blind in the left eye; 3. I'm a man with no hands who can't aim a gun.
+ Finally, none of the three requirements could be established: the team leader did have a brown dog; her left eye was indeed blinded by a shot; I could not only aim a gun but was also was an excellent marksman.
+ To make matters worse, I'd borrowed an air rifle from Luo Xiaosi not long before the incident, and using a bowl of mung beans as bullets, killed a couple of pounds of mice in an empty granary.
+ Of course, there were other crack shots on our production team, and one of them was Luo Xiaosi.
+ When he fired at the team leader's dog, I stood right beside him watching.
+ But I couldn't inform on other people, and my relationship with Luo Xiaosi was not bad.
+ Besides, if the team leader could have handled Luo Xiaosi, he wouldn't have accused me.
+ So I kept quiet.
+ To keep silent meant to acquiesce.
+ That was why in the spring I had to plant rice seedlings, stooped over in the field like a broken electricity pole; in the autumn I had to herd cattle, so I couldn't get a hot meal.
+ Of course, I could not take this lying down.
+ One day as I walked on the mountain, the team leader's dog came into view.
+ I happened to have Luo Xiaosi's air rifle with me, so I fired a bullet and blinded her right eye.
+ With neither left eye nor right eye, the dog couldn't get back to the team leader's house—God knows where she went.
+ I remember in those days, besides herding cattle on the mountain and lying in bed, I didn't have anything to do and nothing seemed to matter.
+ But Chen Qingyang came down the mountain again to see me.
+ There was another rumor in the air that she was having an affair with me and this time she wanted me to prove our innocence.
+ I told her that we would have to prove two things first before our innocence could be established: 1. Chen Qingyang was a virgin; 2. Castrated at birth, I was unable to have sex.
+ These two things would be hard to prove, so we couldn't prove our innocence.
+ I preferred to prove our guilt.
+ On hearing my words, Chen Qingyang's face first turned pale and then blushed all over.
+ Finally she stood up and left without saying a word.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that I had always been a scoundrel.
+ The first time she wanted me to prove her innocence, I looked up at the ceiling and began to talk nonsense; the next time she wanted me to prove our innocence, I earnestly suggested having intercourse with her.
+ So she decided she was going to slap me sooner or later.
+ If I had guessed her plan at the time, the things that happened later might never have happened.
+ On my twenty-first birthday, I was herding buffalo at the riverside.
+ In the afternoon I fell asleep on the grass.
+ I remembered covering myself with a few banana leaves before I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up I found nothing on my body. (Perhaps the buffalo had eaten the leaves.)
+ The sunshine in the subtropical dry season had burned my entire body red, leaving me in an agony of burning and itching.
+ My little Buddha pointed to the sky like an arrow, bigger than ever.
+ That was how I spent my birthday.
+ When I woke up, the sun glared down on me from a frighteningly blue sky.
+ A layer of fine dust, like a coating of talcum powder, covered my whole body.
+ I'd experienced numerous erections in my life, but none as vigorous and magnificent as that time.
+ Perhaps it was because of the location, so isolated from the villages that not even a soul could be seen.
+ I got up to check on my buffalo, only to find them all crouching at the far fork of the rivers, chewing grass quietly.
+ It was a surpassingly still moment, and the white wind was gently blowing across the field.
+ On the bank, several pairs of bulls from the mountain village were fighting each other.
+ Their eyes had turned red, and saliva drooled from the corner of their mouths.
+ This sort of bull had tightly packed balls and protruding penises.
+ Our bulls were not like that.
+ They would lie on the ground and stay put no matter how hard the other bulls tried to provoke them.
+ To prevent our bulls from hurting each other and slowing down the spring plowing, we castrated all of them.
+ I was present every time they castrated the bulls.
+ Ordinary bulls could just be cut with a knife.
+ But for extremely wild ones, you have to employ the art of hammer-smashing, which is to cut open their scrotums, take out the balls, and then use a wooden hammer to pulverize them.
+ From then on these altered bulls knew nothing but grazing and working.
+ No need to tie them down if you wanted to kill them.
+ Our team leader, the one who always wielded the hammer, had no doubts that surgery of this kind would also work on humans.
+ He would shout at us all the time: You young bulls!
+ You need a good hammering to make you behave.
+ In his way of thinking, this red, stiff, foot-long thing on my body was the incarnation of evil.
+ Of course, I had a different opinion.
+ To me, the thing was extremely important, as important as my existence itself.
+ The darkness began to settle in, and a cloud drifted idly across the sky.
+ The lower half of the cloud was immersed in darkness and the upper half still floated in sunshine.
+ That day I was twentyone, and in the golden age of my life.
+ I had so many desires; I wanted to love, to eat, and to be turned in a flash into the halfbright and half-dark cloud in the sky.
+ Only much later did I realize that life is a slow process of being hammered.
+ People grow old day after day, their desire disappears little by little, and finally they become like those hammered bulls.
+ However, that idea never crossed my mind on my twenty-first birthday.
+ I thought I would always be lively and strong, and that nothing could beat me.
+ I had invited Chen Qingyang over to eat fish with me that night, so I was supposed to catch fish in the afternoon.
+ But not until five o'clock did I remember I needed to go to where the fish were supposed to have been trapped to take a look.
+ Before I reached the small fork of the rivers, two Jingpo boys ran up, hurling mud at one another all the way.
+ Some landed on me.
+ They stopped fighting only after I picked them up by their ears.
+ I shouted at them, "You pricks, where're the fish?"
+ The older one said, "It was all that prick Le Long's fault!
+ He sat on the dam all the time, so the dam fucking collapsed."
+ Le Long roared back, "Wang Er, the fucking dam you built wasn't strong enough!"
+ I said, "That's bullshit!
+ I built the dam with sod.
+ What prick has the nerve to say it wasn't strong enough?"
+ I went down to see for myself.
+ Whether Le Long's fault or mine, the dam was gone anyway.
+ The water we bailed out all flowed back, any hope of catching fish went down the drain, and the whole day went to waste.
+ Of course, I wouldn't admit it was my fault.
+ Instead I yelled at Le Long.
+ Le Du (the other boy) also chimed in.
+ Le Long began to get angry.
+ He jumped up a couple of feet and roared, "Wang Er!
+ Le Du!
+ You pricks!
+ You are ganging up on me!
+ I'm going to tell my father.
+ He'll shoot the two of you with his bronze-barreled shotgun!"
+ After saying this, the little bastard tried to leap onto the bank to escape.
+ I caught his ankle and pulled him back.
+ "You want to run off and leave us to herd your buffalo?
+ You're fucking dreaming!"
+ The little bastard wailed wa-wa and tried to bite me.
+ But I grabbed him, pinned him to the ground, and held him hard.
+ He frothed at the mouth, cursing me in a mix of Mandarin, Jingpo, and Thai.
+ I talked back in standard Beijing dialect.
+ All of a sudden, he stopped cursing, eyeing the lower part of my body with envy.
+ I looked down and found my little Buddha standing up again.
+ I heard Le Long click his tongue admiringly, "Wow!
+ Want to fuck Le Du's sister?"
+ I immediately dropped him to put on my pants.
+ When I lit the gas lamp at the pump house, Chen Qingyang would often arrive unexpectedly and complain that life was meaningless.
+ She also said that she believed she was innocent in every respect.
+ I said that the way she dared claim innocence was itself the biggest sin.
+ In my opinion, craving good food and aversion to hard work, together with lust for beauty and sex, make up a human being's basic nature.
+ If you were a hard worker who lived a frugal and chaste life, you would commit the sin of hypocrisy, which was more disgusting than greed, sensuality, or laziness.
+ Words like this seemed to please her, although she never agreed with what I said out loud.
+ However, when I lit the gas lamp that night, she didn't show up for a long time.
+ It was not until nine that she appeared at my door and called my name, "Wang Er, you stinker!
+ Come out!"
+ I went out to see what was going on.
+ Dressed all in white, she looked especially smart, although her expression seemed tense.
+ She said, You invited me over to eat fish and have a heart-to-heart, but where is the fish?
+ I had to admit that the fish were still in the river.
+ All right, she said, at least we can still have a heart-to-heart.
+ Then let's talk.
+ I said, How about we go inside first?
+ She said that's fine, too.
+ So she went in and found herself a place to sit.
+ She looked angry.
+ I had planned to seduce Chen Qingyang on my twenty-first birthday, because she was my friend; and she had a full bosom, a slender waist, and shapely buttocks; besides, her neck was long and graceful and her face was pretty, too.
+ I wanted to have sex with her and thought she shouldn't refuse.
+ Because if she'd needed my body to practice vivisection, I would have lent it to her without giving it a second thought; likewise, if I needed to use her body for pleasure, it shouldn't be a problem either.
+ But she was a woman, and women in general were more or less small-minded.
+ For that reason, I needed to expand her mind, so I began to explain what "brotherhood" was.
+ In my opinion, brotherhood was the kind of great friendship that only existed among the outlaws of the forest.
+ Take the heroes in The Legend of the Water Margins for example.
+ Those guys would kill and set fires as soon as eat.
+ But as long as they heard the great name of Timely Rain, they would fall to their knees and kowtow.
+ Like them, I believed in nothing but brotherhood.
+ If you were my friend, even if you committed a crime beyond Heaven's forgiveness, I would still stand by you.
+ That night, I offered my great friendship to Chen Qingyang and she was immediately moved to tears.
+ She accepted my friendship right away, and, what was more, even expressed her wish to reward me with a greater friendship, saying that she would never betray me even if I turned out to be a low-down, shifty little scoundrel.
+ Relieved by her words, naturally I told her what was really on my mind: I'm twenty-one, but I've never experienced what happens between a man and a woman.
+ I really can't resign myself to that.
+ She stared at me blankly after hearing my words—maybe she was not prepared for this.
+ I kept persuading her, which didn't seem to work, so I put my hand on her shoulder and felt the tension in her muscles.
+ The woman could change her mind any minute and slap me—if that occurred, it would only prove that women didn't understand what great friendship meant.
+ But to my surprise, she didn't slap me.
+ Instead she snorted and then started laughing.
+ How stupid I am!
+ To be tricked so easily!
+ What trick?
+ What are you talking about?
+ I played dumb.
+ She said, I didn't say anything.
+ I asked her will you do it or not?
+ She said "Pah!" and she blushed.
+ It looked like she was a little shy, so I decided to take the initiative and began to get fresh with her.
+ She tried to push me away a few times, and then said, No, not here.
+ Let's go up to the mountain.
+ So I followed her all the way up to the mountain.
+ Later on, Chen Qingyang told me that she had never been able to figure out whether my great friendship was true or just a lie that I had made up then to trick her.
+ But she said that those words enchanted her like a spell, and that even if she lost everything because of it she'd have no regrets.
+ Actually, the great friendship was neither true nor false, like everything else in the world.
+ It was true if you believed it, and false if you didn't; my words were also neither true nor false, but I was prepared to stand by my words anytime and wouldn't back off even if the sky collapsed and the earth cracked open.
+ Because of this attitude of mine, no one really believed me, which explained why I made no more than a couple of friends, including Chen Qingyang, even though I took it on as a lifelong cause.
+ That night, halfway up the mountain, Chen Qingyang told me that she needed to go back to her place to get something, telling me to wait for her on the other side of the mountain.
+ I suspected that she might want to stand me up, but I didn't say anything.
+ I went straight to the other side of the mountain and smoked.
+ After a while, she arrived.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the first time I went to her for a shot, she was dozing at her desk.
+ In Yunnan everyone had plenty of time to nap, so they always seemed half asleep and half awake.
+ When I walked into her clinic, the room dimmed for a moment because it was a thatched mud hut where most of the sunshine came in through the door.
+ She awakened right then, raised her head, and asked what I was doing there.
+ I said my lower back hurt and she told me to lie down so that she could take a look at it.
+ I threw myself headlong onto the bamboo bed and nearly crushed it—my lower back hurt so much that I simply could not bend.
+ If it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have gone to see her.
+ Chen Qingyang said my mouth had lines around it even when I was very young, and dark circles always showed under my eyes.
+ I was a tall man of few words in worn-out clothes.
+ She gave me a shot and I left.
+ Maybe I thanked her, or maybe I didn't.
+ When she had the idea I could prove she wasn't damaged goods, only half a minute passed.
+ She ran out and found me taking a shortcut to the fourteenth team.
+ I strode down the slope, leaping over the ditches and mounds whenever there was one, descending rapidly along the mountain slope.
+ It was a morning in the dry season, and the wind blew up from the foot of the mountain, so I couldn't have heard anything even if she'd called me, not to mention that I never looked back anyway.
+ So that was the way I left.
+ Chen Qingyang said she had wanted to go after me then, but felt it would be hard to catch up, and besides I might not be able to prove her innocence.
+ So she walked back to the clinic.
+ She changed her mind later because she realized since everyone accused her of being damaged goods, they were all her enemies.
+ It was possible that I was not her enemy.
+ She didn't want to risk turning me into an enemy also.
+ I smoked on the back slope of the mountain that night.
+ Even though it was evening I could see into the distance, because the moonlight was bright, and the air was clear in that region.
+ Every now and then, I could hear dogs barking in the distance.
+ I spotted Chen Qingyang as soon as she came out of the fifteenth team—I doubted if I could see that far during the day.
+ But it felt different from the day.
+ Perhaps because there was no one around.
+ I couldn't tell whether there were people around or not in the evening, because it was silver-gray everywhere.
+ If you traveled with a torch, it meant you wanted the whole world to know where you were; if you didn't, it would be like wearing a cape of invisibility—people who knew you were there could see you, and people who didn't couldn't.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang slowly coming toward me, my heart began to pound, and it occurred to me without any instruction that we should have a little foreplay before getting down to business.
+ Chen Qingyang reacted pretty coldly to this.
+ Her lips were icy, and she didn't respond to my caresses at all.
+ By the time I tried to unbutton her dress, all thumbs, she pushed me away and started taking off her clothes by herself, piece by piece.
+ She folded her clothes neatly and put them aside.
+ Then she lay down stiffly on the grass.
+ Her naked body was extremely beautiful.
+ I took off my clothes in a hurry and crawled over to her.
+ Again she pushed me off, handing me something, saying, "Know how to use this?
+ Want me to teach you?"
+ It was a condom.
+ I was at the height of my excitement and the tone of her voice upset me a little.
+ But I put on the condom anyway and crawled on top of her.
+ Heart racing and out of breath, I fumbled for quite a while and couldn't get it right.
+ Again I heard her cold voice, "Hey, do you know what you're doing?"
+ I said, Of course I do.
+ Could you please move a little closer?
+ I want to study your anatomy in the light.
+ Then with a sound as loud as a thunderclap at my ear, I realized she'd given me a big slap.
+ I jumped to my feet, grabbed my clothes, and ran.
+
+ 我二十一岁时，正在云南插队。
+ 陈清扬当时二十六岁，就在我插队的地方当医生。
+ 我在山下十四队，她在山上十五队。
+ 有一天她从山上下来，和我讨论她不是破鞋的问题。
+ 那时我还不大认识她，只能说有一点知道。
+ 她要讨论的事是这祥的：虽然所有的人都说她是一个破鞋，但她以为自己不是的。
+ 因为破鞋偷汉，而她没有偷过汉。
+ 虽然她丈夫已经住了一年监狱，但她没有偷过汉。
+ 在此之前也未偷过汉。
+ 所以她简直不明白，人们为什么要说她是破鞋。
+ 如果我要安慰她，并不困难。
+ 我可以从逻辑上证明她不是破鞋。
+ 如果陈清扬是破鞋，即陈清扬偷汉，则起码有一个某人为其所偷。
+ 如今不能指出某人，所以陈清扬偷汉不能成立。
+ 但是我偏说，陈清扬就是破鞋，而且这一点毋庸置疑。
+ 陈清扬找我证明她不是破鞋，起因是我找她打针。
+ 这事经过如下：农忙时队长不叫我犁田，而是叫我去插秧，这样我的腰就不能经常直立。
+ 认识我的人都知道，我的腰上有旧伤，而且我身高在一米九以上。
+ 如此插了一个月，我腰痛难忍，不打封闭就不能入睡。
+ 我们队医务室那一把针头镀层剥落，而且都有倒钩，经常把我腰上的肉钩下来。
+ 后来我的腰就像中了散弹枪，伤痕久久不褪。
+ 就在这种情况下，我想起十五队的队医陈清扬是北医大毕业的大夫，对针头和勾针大概还能分清，所以我去找她看病。
+ 看完病回来，不到半个小时，她就追到我屋里来，要我证明她不是破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她丝毫也不藐视破鞋。
+ 据她观察，破鞋都很善良，乐于助人，而且最不乐意让人失望。
+ 因此她对破鞋还有一点钦佩。
+ 问题不在于破鞋好不好，而在于她根本不是破鞋。
+ 就如一只猫不是一只狗一样。
+ 假如一只猫被人叫成一只狗，它也会感到很不自在。
+ 现在大家都管她叫破鞋，弄得她魂不守舍，几乎连自己是谁都不知道了。
+ 陈清扬在我的草房里时，裸臂赤腿穿一件白大褂，和她在山上那间医务室里装束一样。
+ 所不同的是披散的长发用个手绢束住，脚上也多了一双拖鞋。
+ 看了她的样子，我就开始捉摸：她那件白大褂底下是穿了点什么呢，还是什么都没穿。
+ 这一点可以说明陈清扬很漂亮，因为她觉得穿什么不穿什么无所谓。
+ 这是从小培养起来的自信心。
+ 我对她说，她确实是个破鞋。
+ 还举出一些理由来：所谓破鞋者，乃是一个指称，大家都说你是破鞋，你就是破鞋，没什么道理可讲。
+ 大家说你偷了汉，你就是偷了汉，这也没什么道理可讲。
+ 至于大家为什么要说你是破鞋，照我看是这样：大家都认为，结了婚的女人不偷汉，就该面色黝黑，乳房下垂。
+ 而你脸不黑而且白，乳房不下垂而且高耸，所以你是破鞋。
+ 假如你不想当破鞋，就要把脸弄黑，把乳房弄下垂，以后别人就不说你是破鞋。
+ 当然这样很吃亏，假如你不想吃亏，就该去偷个汉来。
+ 这样你自己也认为自己是个破鞋。
+ 别人没有义务先弄明白你是否偷汉再决定是否管你叫破鞋。
+ 你倒有义务叫别人无法叫你破鞋。
+ 陈清扬听了这话，脸色发红，怒目圆睁，几乎就要打我一耳光。
+ 这女人打人耳光出了名，好多人吃过她的耳光。
+ 但是她忽然泄了气，说：好吧，破鞋就破鞋吧。
+ 但是垂不垂黑不黑的，不是你的事。
+ 她还说，假如我在这些事上琢磨得太多，很可能会吃耳光。
+ 倒退到二十年前，想像我和陈清扬讨论破鞋问题时的情景。
+ 那时我面色焦黄，嘴唇干裂，上面沾了碎纸和烟丝，头发乱如败棕，身穿一件破军衣，上面好多破洞都是橡皮膏粘上的，跷着二郎腿，坐在木板床上，完全是一副流氓相。
+ 你可以想像陈清扬听到这么个人说起她的乳房下垂不下垂时，手心是何等的发痒。
+ 她有点神经质，都是因为有很多精壮的男人找她看病，其实却没有病。
+ 那些人其实不是去看大夫，而是去看破鞋。
+ 只有我例外。
+ 我的后腰上好像被猪八戒筑了两耙。
+ 不管腰疼真不真，光那些窟窿也能成为看医生的理由。
+ 这些窟窿使她产生一个希望，就是也许能向我证明，她不是破鞋。
+ 有一个人承认她不是破鞋，和没人承认大不一样。
+ 可是我偏让她失望。
+ 我是这么想的：假如我想证明她不是破鞋，就能证明她不是破鞋，那事情未免太容易了。
+ 实际上我什么都不能证明，除了那些不需证明的东西。
+ 春天里，队长说我打瞎了他家母狗的左眼，使它老是偏过头来看人，好像在跳芭蕾舞。
+ 从此后他总给我小鞋穿。
+ 我想证明我自己的清白无辜，只有以下三个途径：1、队长家不存在一只母狗；2、该母狗天生没有左眼；3、我是无手之人，不能持枪射击。
+ 结果是三条一条也不成立。
+ 队长家确有一棕色母狗，该母狗的左眼确是后天打瞎，而我不但能持枪射击，而且枪法极精。
+ 在此之前不久，我还借了罗小四的汽枪，用一碗绿豆做子弹，在空粮库里打下了二斤耗子。
+ 当然，这队里枪法好的人还有不少，其中包括罗小四。
+ 汽枪就是他的，而且他打瞎队长的母狗时，我就在一边看着。
+ 但是我不能揭发别人，罗小四和我也不错。
+ 何况队长要是能惹得起罗小四，也不会认准了是我。
+ 所以我保持沉默。
+ 沉默就是默认。
+ 所以春天我去插秧，撅在地里像一根半截电线杆，秋收后我又去放牛，吃不上热饭。
+ 当然，我也不肯无所作为。
+ 有一天在山上，我正好借了罗小四的汽枪，队长家的母狗正好跑到山上叫我看见，我就射出一颗子弹打瞎了它的右眼。
+ 该狗既无左眼，又无右眼，也就不能跑回去让队长看见——天知道它跑到哪儿去了。
+ 我记得那些日子里，除了上山放牛和在家里躺着，似乎什么也没做。
+ 我觉得什么都与我无关。
+ 可是陈清扬又从山上跑下来找我。
+ 原来又有了另一种传闻，说她在和我搞破鞋。
+ 她要我给出我们清白无辜的证明。
+ 我说，要证明我们无辜，只有证明以下两点：1、陈清扬是处女；2、我是天阉之人，没有性交能力。
+ 这两点都难以证明。
+ 所以我们不能证明自己无辜。
+ 我倒倾向于证明自己不无辜。
+ 陈清扬听了这些话，先是气得脸白，然后满面通红，最后一声不吭地站起来走了。
+ 陈清扬说，我始终是一个恶棍。
+ 她第一次要我证明她清白无辜时，我翻了一串白眼，然后开始胡说八道。
+ 第二次她要我证明我们俩无辜，我又一本正经地向她建议举行一次性交。
+ 所以她就决定，早晚要打我一个耳光。
+ 假如我知道她有这样的打算，也许后面的事情就不会发生。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，正在河边放牛。
+ 下午我躺在草地上睡着了。
+ 我睡去时，身上盖了几片芭蕉叶子，醒来时身上已经一无所有（叶子可能被牛吃了）。
+ 亚热带旱季的阳光把我晒得浑身赤红，痛痒难当，我的小和尚直翘翘地指向天空，尺寸空前。
+ 这就是我过生日时的情形。
+ 我醒来时觉得阳光耀眼，天蓝得吓人，身上落了一层细细的尘土，好像一层爽身粉。
+ 我一生经历的无数次勃起，都不及那一次雄浑有力，大概是因为在极荒僻的地方，四野无人。
+ 我爬起来看牛，发现它们都卧在远处的河岔里静静地嚼草。
+ 那时节万籁无声，田野上刮着白色的风。
+ 河岸上有几对寨子里的牛在斗架，斗得眼珠通红，口角流涎。
+ 这种牛阴囊紧缩，阳具挺直。
+ 我们的牛不干这种事。
+ 任凭别人上门挑衅，我们的牛依旧安卧不动。
+ 为了防止斗架伤身，影响春耕，我们把它们都阉了。
+ 每次阉牛我都在场。
+ 对于一般的公牛，只用刀割去即可。
+ 但是对于格外生性者，就须采取锤骟术，也就是割开阴囊，掏出睾九，一木锤砸个稀烂。
+ 从此后受术者只知道吃草干活，别的什么都不知道，连杀都不用捆。
+ 掌锤的队长毫不怀疑这种手术施之于人类也能得到同等的效力，每回他都对我们呐喊：你们这些生牛蛋子，就欠砸上一锤才能老实！
+ 按他的逻辑，我身上这个通红通红，直不愣登，长约一尺的东西就是罪恶的化身。
+ 当然，我对此有不同的意见。
+ 在我看来，这东西无比重要，就如我之存在本身。
+ 天色微微向晚，天上飘着懒洋洋的云彩。
+ 下半截沉在黑暗里，上半截仍浮在阳光中。
+ 那一天我二十一岁，在我一生的黄金时代， 我有好多奢望。
+ 我想爱，想吃，还想在一瞬间变成天上半明半暗的云。
+ 后来我才知道，生活就是个缓慢受锤的过程，人一天天老下去，奢望也一天天消失，最后变得像挨了锤的牛一样。
+ 可是我过二十一岁生日时没有预见到这一点。
+ 我觉得自己会永远生猛下去，什么也锤不了我。
+ 那天晚上我请陈清扬来吃鱼，所以应该在下午把鱼弄到手。
+ 到下午五点多钟我才想起到戽鱼的现场去看看。
+ 还没走进那条小河岔，两个景颇族孩子就从里面一路打出来，烂泥横飞，我身上也挨了好几块，直到我拎住他们的耳朵，他们才罢手。
+ 我喝问一声：“鸡巴，鱼呢？”
+ 那个年记大点的说：“都怪鸡巴勒农！
+ 他老坐在坝上，把坝坐鸡巴倒了！”
+ 勒农直着嗓子吼：“王二！
+ 坝打得不鸡巴牢！”
+ 我说：“放屁！
+ 老子砍草皮打的坝，哪个鸡巴敢说不牢？”
+ 到里面一看，不管是因为勒农坐的也好，还是因为我的坝没打好也罢，反正坝是倒了，戽出来的水又流回去，鱼全泡了汤，一整天的劳动全都白费。
+ 我当然不能承认是我的错，就痛骂勒农。
+ 勒都（就是那另一个孩子）也附合我。
+ 勒农上了火，一跳三尺高，嘴里吼道：“王二！
+ 勒都！
+ 鸡巴！
+ 你们姐夫舅子合伙搞我！
+ 我去告诉我家爹，拿铜炮枪打你们！”
+ 说完这小免崽子就往河岸上窜，想一走了之。
+ 我一把薅住他脚脖子，把他揪下来。
+ “你走了我们给你赶牛哇？
+ 做你娘的美梦！”
+ 这小子哇哇叫着要咬我，被我劈开手按在地上。
+ 他口吐白沫，杂着汉话、景颇话、傣话骂我，我用正庄京片子回骂。
+ 忽然间他不骂了，往我下体看去，脸上露出无限羡慕之情。
+ 我低头一看，我的小和尚又直立起来了。
+ 只听勒农啧啧赞美道： “哇！
+ 想日勒都家姐啊！”
+ 我赶紧扔下他去穿裤子。
+ 晚上我在水泵房点起汽灯，陈清扬就会忽然到来，谈起她觉得活着很没意思，还说到她在每件事上都是清白无辜。
+ 我说她竟敢觉得自己清白无辜，这本身就是最大的罪孽。
+ 照我的看法，每个人的本性都是好吃懒作，好色贪淫，假如你克勤克俭，守身如玉，这就犯了矫饰之罪，比好吃懒作、好色贪淫更可恶。
+ 这些话她好像很听得进去，但是从不附合。
+ 那天晚上我在河边上点起汽灯，陈清扬却迟迟不至，直到九点钟以后，她才到门前来喊我：“王二，混蛋！
+ 你出来！”
+ 我出去一口看，她穿了一身白，打扮得格外整齐，但是表情不大轻松。
+ 她说道：你请我来吃鱼，做倾心之谈，鱼在哪里？
+ 我只好说，鱼还在河里。
+ 她说好吧，还剩下一个倾心之谈。
+ 就在这儿谈罢。
+ 我说进屋去谈，她说那也无妨，就进屋来坐着，看样子火气甚盛。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，打算在晚上引诱陈清扬，因为陈清扬是我的朋友，而且胸部很丰满，腰很细，屁股浑圆。
+ 除此之外，她的脖子端正修长，脸也很漂亮。
+ 我想和她性交，而且认为她不应该不同意。
+ 假如她想借我的身体练开膛，我准让她开。
+ 所以我借她身体一用也没什么不可以。
+ 唯一的问题是她是个女人，女人家总有点小器。
+ 为此我要启发她，所以我开始阐明什么叫作“义气”。
+ 在我看来，义气就是江湖好汉中那种伟大友谊。
+ 水浒中的豪杰们，杀人放火的事是家常便饭，可一听说及时雨的大名，立即倒身便拜。
+ 我也像那些草莽英雄，什么都不信，唯一不能违背的就是义气。
+ 只要你是我的朋友，哪怕你十恶不赦，为天地所不容，我也要站到你身边。
+ 那天晚上我把我的伟大友谊奉献给陈清扬，她大为感动，当即表示道：这友谊她接受了。
+ 不但如此，她还说要以更伟大的友谊还报我，哪怕我是个卑鄙小人也不背叛。
+ 我听她如此说，大为放心，就把底下的话也说了出来：我已经二十一岁了，男女间的事情还没体验过，真是不甘心。
+ 她听了以后就开始发愣，大概是没有思想准备。
+ 说了半天她毫无反应。
+ 我把手放到她的肩膀上去，感觉她的肌肉绷得很紧。
+ 这娘们随时可能翻了脸给我一耳光，假定如此，就证明女人不懂什么是交情。
+ 可是她没有。
+ 忽然间她哼了一声，就笑起来。
+ 还说：我真笨！
+ 这么容易就着了你的道儿！
+ 我说：什么道儿？
+ 你说什么？
+ 她说：我什么也没有说。
+ 我问她我刚才说的事儿你答应不答应？
+ 她说呸，而且满面通红。
+ 我看她有点不好意思，就采取主动，动手动脚。
+ 她搡了我几把，后来说，不在这儿，咱们到山上去。
+ 我就和她一块到山上去了。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她始终没搞明白我那个伟大友谊是真的呢，还是临时编出来骗她。
+ 但是她又说，那些话就像咒语一样让她着迷，哪怕为此丧失一切，也不懊侮。
+ 其实伟大友谊不真也不假，就如世上一切东西一样，你信它是真，它就真下去。
+ 你疑它是假，它就是假的。
+ 我的话也半真不假。
+ 但是我随时准备兑现我的话，哪怕天崩地裂也不退却。
+ 就因为这种态度，别人都不相信我。
+ 我虽然把交朋友当成终身的事业，所交到的朋友不过陈清扬等二三人而已。
+ 那天晚上我们到山上去，走到半路她说要回家一趟，要我到后山上等她。
+ 我有点怀疑她要晾我，但是我没说出来，径直走到后山上去抽烟。
+ 等了一些时间，她来了。
+ 陈清扬说，我第一次去找她打针时，她正在伏案打瞌睡。
+ 在云南每个人都有很多时间打瞌睡，所以总是半睡半醒。
+ 我走进去时，屋子里暗了一下，因为是草顶土坯房，大多数光从门口进来。
+ 她就在那一刻醒来，抬头问我干什么。
+ 我说腰疼，她说躺下让我看看。
+ 我就一头倒下去，扑到竹板床上，几乎把床砸塌。
+ 我的腰痛得厉害，完全不能打弯。
+ 要不是这样，我也不会来找她。
+ 陈清扬说，我很年轻时就饿纹入嘴，眼睛下面乌黑。
+ 我的身材很高，衣服很破，而且不爱说话。
+ 她给我打过针，我就走了，好像说了一声谢了，又好像没说。
+ 等到她想起可以让我证明她不是破鞋时，已经过了半分钟。
+ 她追了出来，看见我正取近路走回十四队。
+ 我从土坡上走下去，逢沟跳沟，逢坎跃坎，顺着山势下得飞快。
+ 那时正逢旱季的上午，风从山下吹来，喊我也听不见。
+ 而且我从来也不回头。
+ 我就这样走掉了。
+ 陈清扬说，当时她想去追我，可是觉得很难追上。
+ 而且我也不一定能够证明她不是破鞋。
+ 所以她走回医务室去。
+ 后来她又改变了主意去找我，是因为所有的人都说她是破鞋，因此所有的人都是敌人。
+ 而我可能不是敌人。
+ 她不愿错过了机会，让我也变成敌人。
+ 那天晚上我在后山上抽烟。
+ 虽然在夜里，我能看见很远的地方。
+ 因为月光很明亮，当地的空气又很干净。
+ 我还能听见远处的狗叫声。
+ 陈清扬一出十五队我就看见了，白天未必能看这么远。
+ 虽然如此，还是和白天不一样。
+ 也许是因为到处都没人。
+ 我也说不准夜里这片山上有人没人，因为到处是银灰色的一片。
+ 假如有人打着火把行路，那就是说，希望全世界的人都知道他在那里。
+ 假如你不打火把，就如穿上了隐身衣，知道你在那里的人能看见，不知道的人不能看见。
+ 我看见陈清扬慢慢走近，怦然心动，无师自通地想到，做那事之前应该亲热一番。
+ 陈清扬对此的反应是冷冰冰的。
+ 她的嘴唇冷冰冰，对爱抚也毫无反应。
+ 等到我毛手毛脚给她解扣子时，她把我推开，自己把衣服一件件脱下来，叠好放在一边，自己直挺挺躺在草地上。
+ 陈清扬的裸体美极了。
+ 我赶紧脱了衣服爬过去，她又一把把我推开，递给我一个东西说：“会用吗？
+ 要不要我教你？”
+ 那是一个避孕套。
+ 我正在兴头上，对她这种口气只微感不快。
+ 套上之后又爬到她身上去，心慌气躁地好一阵乱弄，也没弄对。
+ 忽然她冷冰冰他说： “喂！
+ 你知道自己在干什么吗？”
+ 我说当然知道。
+ 能不能劳你大驾躺过来一点？
+ 我要就着亮儿研究一下你的结构。
+ 只听啪的一声巨响，好似一声耳边雷，她给我一个大耳光。
+ 我跳起来，拿了自己的衣服，拔腿就走。
+
+ Finally we were taken into custody and forced to write confessions for a long time.
+ At first I wrote the following: Chen Qingyang and I have an indecent relationship.
+ That was all.
+ But it came down from above that what I wrote was too simple, and they asked me to start over.
+ Later on I wrote that Chen Qingyang and I had an indecent relationship, and that I had screwed her many times, and she liked being screwed by me.
+ This time the opinions from above said it needed more detail.
+ So I added detail: The fortieth time that we made illegal love, the location was the thatched hut I secretly built on the mountain.
+ It was either the fifteenth or the sixteenth by the lunar calendar—whatever the date, the moon shone brightly.
+ Chen Qingyang sat on the bamboo bed, her body gleaming in the moonlight that shone through the door.
+ I stood on the ground, and she locked her legs around my waist.
+ We chatted for a while.
+ I told her that her breasts were not just full, but also shapely; her navel not only round, but shallow too.
+ All of this was very good.
+ She said, Really?
+ I had no idea.
+ After a while the moonlight moved away.
+ I lit a cigarette, but she took it from me after I finished half of it, taking several drags.
+ She pinched my nose, for the locals believed that a virgin's nose would be very hard, and a man dying of too much sex would have a soft nose.
+ On some of these occasions she lazed on the bed, leaning against the bamboo wall; other times she held me like a koala bear, blowing warm breath on my face.
+ At last the moonlight shone through the window opposite the door and we were separate by then.
+ However, I wrote these confessions not for the military deputy — he was no longer our military deputy, having been discharged from the army and gone back home.
+ It didn't matter whether he was our military deputy or not, we had to write confessions about our errors anyway.
+ Years later, I had a good relationship with the director of personnel at our school.
+ He told me that the great thing about the job was that you could read other people's confessions, which I believe included mine.
+ I thought of all the confessions mine would be the richest and most vivid.
+ That was because I wrote it in a hotel, with nothing else to do, like a professional writer.
+ In the evening I made my escape.
+ That morning, I asked the mess officer for a day off because I needed to go to Jingkan to buy toothpaste.
+ I worked under the mess officer, who also had the task of watching me.
+ He was supposed to keep an eye on me every minute, but I disappeared as soon as it got dark.
+ In the morning I brought him a lot of loquats, all very good.
+ The loquats growing on the plain aren't edible, because of the ant colonies in them.
+ Only the ones on the mountain don't have ants.
+ The mess officer said since we got along, and the military deputy wasn't around, he'd allow me to go buy toothpaste.
+ But he also said the military deputy might return any minute.
+ If I were not here by the time the military deputy returned, he couldn't cover for me.
+ I left my team and climbed to the fifteenth team's mountainside, holding a small piece of mirror to reflect light on Chen Qingyang's back window.
+ After a while, she came up the mountain and told me that since people had been keeping a close eye on her for the past two days, she hadn't been able to get out.
+ And right now she was having her period.
+ She said that shouldn't be a problem and we could still do it.
+ I said that wasn't going to work.
+ When we said goodbye to each other, she insisted on giving me two hundred yuan.
+ I refused at first, but then took it after a while.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that nobody had been keeping a close eye on her those two days, and she hadn't been having her period when she saw me.
+ In fact, people in the fifteenth team didn't pay attention to her at all.
+ People there were used to accusing the innocent of being damaged goods, but as for real damaged goods, they just let them do whatever they wanted.
+ The reason that she didn't come up the mountain and kept me waiting for nothing was because she began to feel tired of it.
+ She couldn't do it unless she was in the right mood; having sex wouldn't necessarily put her in a good mood.
+ Of course, after her deception she felt guilty.
+ That was why she gave me two hundred yuan.
+ I thought since she might have trouble spending the two hundred yuan, I wouldn't mind helping her.
+ So I brought the money with me to Jingkan and bought a double-barreled shotgun for myself.
+ Later when I wrote my confessions, the double-barreled shotgun was also an issue.
+ They suspected that I might want to kill someone with it.
+ Actually, if I'd wanted to kill someone, it wouldn't have made any difference whether I used a two hundred-yuan double-barreled shotgun or a forty-yuan bronze-barreled gun.
+ A bronze-barreled gun, normally used to shoot wild ducks by the water, was not practical at all in the mountains; besides, it was as heavy as a corpse.
+ When I got to the street in Jingkan that day, it was already afternoon, and since it wasn't a market day, there was just a deserted dirt road and a few deserted state-run stores.
+ Inside one store a saleswoman dozed while a swarm of flies circled around.
+ The shelf display read "aloomenum wokk" and "aloomenum kittel," and underneath were aluminum woks and aluminum kettles.
+ I chatted awhile with the saleswoman, who was from Shandong Province, and she let me go in their storeroom to look around myself.
+ In there I saw a shotgun made in Shanghai.
+ So I bought it even though it had sat there for nearly two years.
+ At dusk I tested it on the riverbank and killed a heron.
+ The military deputy happened to return from the farm headquarters right then and was shocked to see my shotgun.
+ He went on about how it was not right that everyone could have a gun, and that someone had to talk to the team leader and confiscate Wang Er's gun.
+ When I heard this, I felt the urge to fire at his belly.
+ If I had, it would probably have killed him.
+ Then most likely I wouldn't be around today.
+ On the way back from Jingkan that afternoon, I waded through the paddy field and stood among the rice seedlings for a while.
+ I saw leeches swimming out like fish and sticking to my legs.
+ I was naked to the waist then, because I had used my clothes to wrap brown sugar buns (the only kind of food sold in the town's restaurant), and with the buns in my hands and a gun slung over my back, I felt really loaded down.
+ So I ignored the leeches.
+ Only when I got up the bank did I start pulling them off one by one and burning them.
+ They turned soft and blistery in the fire.
+ All of a sudden, I felt very frustrated and tired, nothing like a twenty-one-year-old.
+ I realized I would get old quickly if things continued like this.
+ After a while, I ran into Le Du, who told me that they had caught all the fish at the fork of the rivers.
+ My share had been dried into stockfish and stored at his sister's place.
+ His sister wanted me to come get it.
+ I knew his sister very well; she was a dark, pretty girl.
+ I told him that I couldn't get there for a while.
+ I gave him all my brown sugar buns and asked him to take a message to the fifteenth team, telling Chen Qingyang that I'd bought a gun with her money.
+ Le Du went to the fifteenth team and told Chen Qingyang.
+ She was afraid that I might shoot the military deputy.
+ This concern was not completely unreasonable.
+ By the evening I really began to consider taking a shot at the military deputy.
+ At dusk, when I shot the heron by the river, I ran into the military deputy.
+ As usual, I stayed mute and he kept nagging at me.
+ I got really angry.
+ For more than two weeks, he had been holding forth on the same subject over and over, that I was a bad person and needed thought reform.
+ People shouldn't let up on me for a minute.
+ I'd been hearing that sort of thing all my life but never got angrier than that night.
+ After a while, he said he had wonderful good news to announce later that day, but wouldn't reveal what it was except that "the rotten whore" Chen Qingyang and I were going to have a really hard time from now on.
+ Infuriated by what he said, I was tempted to choke him right on the spot, but my curiosity about the great news got the better of me.
+ However, he went on talking nonsense to keep me guessing.
+ Not until we reached our team did he say, Come to the meeting tonight.
+ I'll announce the news at the meeting.
+ But I didn't go to the meeting that evening.
+ I packed my stuff, ready to flee back to the mountains.
+ I believed that some major event must have happened to give the military deputy a way to take care of Chen Qingyang and me.
+ As for what the event was, I couldn't figure it out—in those days anything could happen.
+ I even imagined that the emperor had been restored and the military deputy had become the local chief.
+ He could castrate me with a hammer and then take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ By the time I finished my packing and was about to leave, I realized that things were not that bad.
+ People were shouting slogans at the meeting that I could hear even from my room.
+ It turned out that our state-run farm had been changed into an Army Production Corps, and the military deputy might be promoted to Regimental Commander.
+ At any rate, he couldn't castrate me, or take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ After a few minutes' hesitation, I slung the pack on my back.
+ Then I hacked up everything in the place with a machete, found a piece of charcoal, and wrote "xxx (the military deputy's name), fuck your mother!" on the wall.
+ After that I left and headed up the mountain.
+ That was how I ran away from the fourteenth team.
+ I also included these things in my confessions.
+ To summarize, it went like this: The military deputy had a personal grudge against me, which was twofold.
+ Firstly, I told the relief delegation that I had been beaten unconscious, which made the military deputy lose face; secondly, he and I fought over a woman, which was why he was always trying to screw me.
+ So, when I learned he was about to become Regimental Commander, I felt that I couldn't take it anymore and fled into the mountains.
+ Even today I still believe that was the true reason for my escape.
+ But they said that the military deputy hadn't become Regimental Commander, so my explanation for running away wouldn't stand up.
+ So, they said my confessions were unconvincing.
+ A convincing confession would be that Chen Qingyang and I were having a love affair.
+ As the saying goes: For sex, a man would dare anything.
+ We would do anything for it — well, there's some truth to that.
+ But when I ran away from our team, I didn't plan to see Chen Qingyang, thinking that I could just leave without telling anyone.
+ When I reached the edge of the mountains I realized that after all Chen Qingyang was a friend of mine and I should go back to say goodbye to her.
+ I hadn't expected Chen Qingyang to say she wanted to run away with me.
+ She said if she didn't join me in such an adventure, we would throw our great friendship to the dogs.
+ So she packed some stuff in a hurry and took off with me.
+ Without her and what she packed, I would have gotten sick and died on the mountain for sure.
+ The supplies she packed included lots of malaria medicine, and plenty of jumbo-sized condoms.
+ After Chen Qingyang and I escaped to the mountains, the farm panicked for a while.
+ They believed we had run off to Burma.
+ It wouldn't have been good for any of us if that news had gotten out.
+ So they didn't report us, only issued a wanted poster on the farm.
+ Both Chen Qingyang and I were easily recognized, and, besides, the double-barreled shotgun we brought along was hard to hide.
+ But for some reason nobody found us until half a year later when each of us returned to our own teams.
+ And then after another month, the public security section summoned us to write our confessions.
+ It was our bad luck to be the victims of a new political campaign and have someone inform on us.
+ The office of public security was located at the entrance to our farm's headquarters.
+ It was a lonely mud-brick house.
+ You could see it from far off, because it was whitewashed and set on a hill.
+ When people went to the market at headquarters, they could see it from a distance.
+ A patch of sisal hemp, a perennial dark green in color, surrounded the house, but the clay underneath was red.
+ I confessed my errors there, making a clean breast of everything.
+ We went up the mountains, and first we planted some corn on the back slope of the fifteenth team.
+ The soil there was poor, and half the corn didn't grow.
+ And then we left, sleeping in the daytime and walking at night, looking for other places to settle.
+ Finally we remembered an abandoned mill on the mountain, where there was a large, deserted area of fertile ground.
+ Since an escapee from the leper colony, whom people called Grandpa Liu, lived there, no one visited except Chen Qingyang, prompted by her sense of duty as a doctor.
+ We finally went there for shelter, living in the valley behind the mill.
+ Chen Qingyang treated Grandpa Liu's leprosy, and I tended the land for him.
+ After a while, I traveled to the market in Qingping and ran into some classmates.
+ They told me that the military deputy had been transferred someplace else and nobody remembered our affair anymore.
+ So we came back.
+ That was how the whole business went.
+ I remained in the public security section for a long time.
+ For a while the atmosphere was not bad.
+ They said my problem was pretty clear and all I needed to do was to write confessions.
+ But after a while the situation turned more serious; they suspected that we had gone abroad, colluded with the enemy, and come back on a mission.
+ So they took Chen Qingyang to the office, interrogating her severely.
+ While they interrogated her, I looked out the window—the sky was filled with clouds.
+ They wanted me to confess how I had slipped across the border.
+ As far as border-crossing went, I wasn't completely innocent.
+ I did cross the border.
+ I disguised myself as a Thai to go to the market on the other side.
+ I bought a few boxes of matches and salt.
+ But it was unnecessary to tell them about this.
+ Things unnecessary to say shouldn't be said.
+ Later I led those security people to our place to investigate.
+ The thatched hut that I built on the back slope of the fifteenth team had leaks in the roof, the cornfield attracted many birds, and the heap of used condoms behind our hut supplied ironclad evidence of our former occupancy.
+ The locals didn't like to use condoms, holding that condoms block exchange between yin and yang and gradually weaken people.
+ Actually, those local condoms were better than any other ones I used later.
+ They were made of 100 percent natural rubber.
+ Afterward I refused to take them there again.
+ Anyway, I told them I had never crossed the border, and they didn't believe me;
+ I showed them the place, but they still didn't believe me.
+ Things unnecessary to do shouldn't be done.
+ I stayed mute all day long, and so did Chen Qingyang.
+ The investigators asked us questions at first, but got lazy after a while.
+ On market day, many Thais and Jingpos came by, carrying fresh fruits and vegetables on their backs, and our interrogators got fewer and fewer.
+ Finally there was only one person left.
+ He also wanted to go to the market, but it wasn't time to release us yet and leaving us unattended was against the rules.
+ So he went outside to call someone.
+ He ordered a few passing women to stop.
+ They didn't stop but sped up.
+ We smiled when we saw this.
+ The security comrade finally stopped a woman.
+ Chen Qingyang rose to her feet, smoothed out her hair, straightened the collar of her shirt, and then turned around, putting her hands behind her back.
+ The woman tied her up, starting from her hands and then running the rope over her neck and arms to make a knot.
+ She apologized, I'm just hopeless at tying people up.
+ The security comrade said, That's good enough.
+ Then he tied me up, sat us back-to-back in two separate chairs, and roped the whole thing together.
+ He locked the door and went to the market.
+ After a long time, he came back to get something from the office desk.
+ He asked, Want to go to the bathroom?
+ It's still early.
+ I'll come back after a while and then let you two leave.
+ Then he went out again.
+ When he finally came to set us free, Chen Qingyang wiggled her fingers, smoothed her hair, and brushed the dust from her clothes.
+ Then we returned to our hotel room.
+ We went to the public security section every day and would be tied up every market day.
+ Beyond that, we had to go to every team to accept public denouncement with other bad elements.
+ They threatened, more than once, to use other methods of the proletarian dictatorship on us—that was how our investigation went.
+ Later on they stopped suspecting we had gone abroad.
+ They began to deal with Chen Qingyang in a more civilized way, often asking her to go to the hospital and treat the prostatitis of the chief of staff.
+ At that time, our farm had admitted a large number of retired army cadres, many of whom suffered from prostatitis.
+ Through the investigation, they found that Chen Qingyang was the only one on our entire farm who knew there was such a thing as a prostate gland in a human.
+ The security comrades told us to confess our love affair.
+ I said, How do you know we had a love affair?
+ Did you see it?
+ They said, Then confess your speculation problem.
+ Again I asked, How do you know I had a speculation problem?
+ They said, A traitorship problem would do.
+ Anyway, you have to confess something.
+ As far as what specific problem you want to confess, that's up to you.
+ If you confess nothing, we won't release you.
+ After discussing it, Chen Qingyang and I decided to confess our love affair.
+ She said, Things we actually did we shouldn't be afraid to confess.
+ That was how I got started writing confessions like a writer.
+ The first thing I confessed was what happened the night we ran away.
+ After a few drafts, I finally wrote that Chen Qingyang looked like a koala bear.
+ She admitted that she was very excited that night and really felt like a koala bear.
+ She finally had a chance to fulfill her great friendship.
+ So she locked her legs around my waist, grabbed my shoulder with her hands, and imagining that I was a tall tree, tried to climb up several times.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang again, it was already the nineties.
+ She told me that she had divorced her husband and was now living with her daughter in Shanghai.
+ She came to Beijing on a business trip.
+ As soon as she got to Beijing, she began to recall that Wang Er lived here and she might be able to see me.
+ Subsequently, she did run into me at Dragon-Lair Lake Temple Fair.
+ I had the same old look—deep wrinkles stretching toward my mouth, dark circles under my eyes, and I wore an old-fashioned cotton jacket.
+ Squatting on the ground, I was eating spiced giblets and baked pancakes that fancy places wouldn't serve.
+ The only difference was that my fingers had been burned yellow by nitric acid.
+ Chen Qingyang had changed a lot.
+ She wore a thin beige coat, a tweed skirt, high-heeled leather boots and a pair of goldrimmed glasses, like a public relations person in a big company.
+ If she hadn't called my name, I wouldn't have recognized her.
+ At that moment it dawned on me that everyone had his own essence, which would shine in the right setting.
+ I was essentially a rascal or bandit.
+ Now that I was a city dweller and a schoolteacher, mine didn't look quite right.
+ Chen Qingyang said her daughter had gone into her sophomore year at the university.
+ Recently she found out about our affair and wanted to meet me.
+ What occasioned this was: Her hospital wanted to promote Chen Qingyang, but they found this pile of confessions in her dossier.
+ After a discussion, the leaders decided they were persecutory materials from the Cultural Revolution and should be discarded.
+ So they sent someone to Yunnan to investigate her case, spent over ten thousand yuan on the trip, and finally removed all the confessions from the file.
+ Since she was the author, they returned them to her.
+ She brought them home and stashed them somewhere, and her daughter found them.
+ Her daughter said, Wow!
+ So that's how the two of you made me.
+ Actually, I had nothing to do with her daughter.
+ When her daughter was conceived, I had already left Yunnan.
+ Chen Qingyang explained things to her daughter that way, too.
+ But the girl said I could have put my sperm in a test tube and mailed it to Chen Qingyang, who was still in Yunnan at that time, for artificial insemination.
+ In her words, "There's nothing you pair of jerks wouldn't do."
+ The first night we escaped to the mountains, Chen Qingyang was very aroused.
+ When I finally got to sleep at daybreak, she woke me again.
+ At that time fog was pouring through the crack in the wall.
+ She wanted me to do it again, telling me not to wear the rubber thing.
+ She was going to have a brood of babies with me.
+ Let them hang down to here in a few years.
+ Meanwhile, she pulled her breasts down by the nipples to show me where they would reach.
+ But I didn't like the idea that her breasts would droop and said, Let's think of a way to keep them from drooping.
+ That was why I continued to wear the rubber thing.
+ After that she lost interest in making love to me.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang all those years later, I asked, How are they?
+ Did they droop?
+ She said, You bet they did.
+ They're as droopy as hell.
+ Want to see the droop?
+ I got to see them shortly after—they weren't that bad.
+ But she said, They will be that bad sooner or later.
+ There's no way out.
+ When I turned in this confession, the leaders really liked it.
+ One big shot, either the chief of staff or the commissar, received us and praised our attitudes.
+ They believed that we hadn't thrown ourselves into the enemy's embrace and betrayed our country, and our task in the future was to confess our illicit love affair.
+ If we confessed well, they would allow us to get married.
+ But we didn't want to get married.
+ So later they said if we confessed well, they would let me go back to civilization, and Chen Qingyang would get to work in a bigger hospital.
+ So I stayed in my hotel room and wrote confessions for over a month.
+ Nothing interrupted me except the government business that I had to perform.
+ I used carbon copies; the originals I kept, the duplicates I gave to her.
+ We used exactly the same confessions.
+ After a while, the security comrades came to talk to me, telling me about the big denouncement meeting they were going to hold.
+ All the people who had been investigated by the public security section would have to attend, including speculators, grafters, and all kinds of bad elements.
+ We belonged in the group, but the regimental leaders said that since we were young people, and had good attitudes, we didn't have to go.
+ But people compared their situation with ours, and asked, if everyone who'd been investigated had to be there, why were we being let off?
+ The security comrades were in a fix.
+ So we would have to take part in the meeting.
+ Finally they decided to work on mobilizing us to take part.
+ They told us that public denouncing had an impact on a person's mind, which could prevent us from committing errors in the future.
+ Since there was such an advantage, how could we miss the opportunity?
+ When the meeting day came, several thousand people flooded in from the farm headquarters and the nearby production teams.
+ We stood on the stage with many others.
+ After waiting a long time and hearing quite a few articles of denouncement read, our turn, convicts Wang and Chen, finally came.
+ It turned out that we were loose in morals and corrupted in lifestyle, and what was more, in order to evade thought reform, we had fled into the mountains.
+ Only under the influence of our party's policy did we come down the mountain to abandon darkness for sunlight.
+ Hearing comments like this, our emotions were stirred up, too.
+ So we raised our arms and shouted out the slogans: Down with Wang Er!
+ Down with Chen Qingyang!
+ After this round of public denouncement, we thought we were done with it.
+ But we still had to write confessions because the leaders wanted to read them.
+ On the back slope of the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, seized with an impulse once, said she was going to bear a litter of young for me, but I wasn't interested.
+ Later I thought having babies wasn't a bad idea.
+ But when I mentioned it to her, she changed her mind.
+ And she always thought that it was me who wanted to have sex.
+ She said, If you feel like it, just do it.
+ I don't care.
+ I thought it would be too selfish if it were only for me.
+ So I rarely asked for it.
+ Besides, cultivating the wilderness was very tiring and I didn't have the energy for it.
+ What I could confess was that I fondled her breasts when we rested at the edge of the field.
+ When we cultivated the wilderness in the dry season, hot air was all around.
+ We didn't sweat at all, but our muscles felt dry and painful.
+ On the hottest days, we could only sleep under a tree, with heads pillowed on bamboo stalks and bodies lying on palmbark rain capes.
+ I wondered why nobody asked me to confess about the palm-bark rain cape, one of the labor-protection supplies for our farm, and very expensive.
+ I brought two along; one was mine, the other one I picked up conveniently from someone's doorway.
+ I returned neither of them to the farm.
+ Even when I left Yunnan, no one asked me to return the palm-bark rain capes.
+ During our break at the edge of the field, Chen Qingyang covered her face with a bamboo hat, opened her shirt collar, and immediately fell asleep.
+ I reached in, feeling the beautiful curves.
+ After a while, I unbuttoned a few more buttons, seeing that her skin was pink.
+ Even though she always worked with her clothes on, the sunshine still got through the thin fabric.
+ As for me, working bare to the waist, I had turned as black as a devil.
+ Chen Qingyang's breasts were two firm scoops, even when she lay back.
+ But the other parts of her body were very slender.
+ She hadn't changed much in twenty years, except that her nipples had grown a little bit bigger and darker.
+ She said the culprit was her daughter.
+ When the child was a newborn, she looked like a pink baby pig.
+ With eyes closed, she swooped down on her mother's nipples sucking with all her might, until her mother became an old woman and she a beautiful young woman, a young version of her mother.
+ An older woman now, Chen Qingyang had become more sensitive.
+ When we relived our old days in the hotel, she seemed nervous about such subjects.
+ She hadn't been that way before.
+ Back when I hesitated to mention her breasts in the confessions, she said, Just write it down.
+ I said, You'd be exposed then.
+ She said, Let me be exposed.
+ I don't care.
+ She also said her breasts were made this way.
+ It wasn't like she had done something to fake them.
+ As for what other people thought when they heard about them, it wasn't her problem.
+ After all those years, I just discovered that Chen Qingyang was actually my ex-wife.
+ After we finished our confessions, they wanted us to get married.
+ I thought it was unnecessary.
+ But the leaders said that not getting married would have a very bad influence and insisted that we register.
+ So we registered to get married in the morning and divorced in the afternoon.
+ I thought it hadn't counted.
+ In the confusion they forgot to take our marriage certificate back, and so Chen Qingyang kept one for herself.
+ We used this shabby certificate issued to us twenty years ago to get a double room.
+ Without this, we wouldn't be allowed to stay in the same room.
+ It was different twenty years ago.
+ Twenty years ago they let us stay in the same hotel room to write our confessions, and back then we didn't even have the marriage certificate.
+ I wrote about what we had done on the back slope.
+ But the regional leaders asked the security comrades to pass on a message to me, saying that I could skip over the irrelevant details.
+ Just move on to the next case.
+ Hearing this, I lost my stubborn-as-amule temper: The motherfuckers!
+ Is this a case?
+ Chen Qingyang tried to help me understand: How many people are there in the world?
+ How many times do people do it every day?
+ And how many of them are important enough to be called cases?
+ I said actually they were all cases.
+ It was just that the leaders couldn't check on them all.
+ She said, Well then, just confess.
+ So I confessed: That night, we left the back slope and returned to the scene of the crime.
+
+ 最后我们被关了起来，写了很长时间的交待材料。
+ 起初我是这么写的：我和陈清扬有不正当的关系。
+ 这就是全部。
+ 上面说，这样写太简单， 叫我重写。
+ 后来我写，我和陈清扬有不正当关系，我干了她很多回，她也乐意让我干。
+ 上面说，这样写缺少细节。
+ 后来又加上了这样的细节：我们俩第四十次非法性交，地点是我在山上偷盖的草房。
+ 那天不是阴历十五就是阴历十六，反正月亮很亮。
+ 陈清扬坐在竹床上，月光从门里照进来，照在她身上。
+ 我站在地上，她用腿圈着我的腰。
+ 我们还聊了几句，我说她的乳房不但圆，而且长的很端正，脐窝不但圆，而且很浅。
+ 这些都很好。
+ 她说是吗，我自己不知道。
+ 后来月光移走了，我点了一根烟，抽到一半她拿走了，接着吸了几口。
+ 她还捏过我的鼻子，因为本地有一种说法，说童男的鼻子很硬，而纵欲过度行将死去的人鼻子很软。
+ 这些时候她懒懒地躺在床上，倚着竹板墙。
+ 其它的时间她像澳大利亚考拉熊一样抱住我，往我脸上吹热气。
+ 最后月亮从门对面的窗子里照进来。
+ 这时我和她分开。
+ 但是我写这些材料，不是给军代表看。
+ 他那时早就不是军代表了，而且已经复员回家去。
+ 他是不是代表不重要，反正犯了我们这种错误，总是要写交待材料。
+ 我后来和我们学校人事科长关系不错。
+ 他说当人事干部最大的好处就是可以看到别人写的交待材料。
+ 我想他说的包括了我写的交待材料。
+ 我以为我的交待材料最有文彩。
+ 因为我写这些材料时住在招待所，没有别的事可干，就像专业作家一样。
+ 我逃跑是晚上的事。
+ 那天上午，我找司务长请假，要到井坎镇买牙膏。
+ 我归司务长领导，他还有监视我的任务。
+ 他应该随时随地看住我，可是天一黑我就不见了。
+ 早上我带给他很多酸琶果，都是好的。
+ 平原上的酸琶果都不能吃，因为里面是一窝蚂蚁。
+ 只有山里的酸琶果才没蚂蚁。
+ 司务长说，他个人和我关系不坏，而且军代表不在。
+ 他可以准我去买牙膏。
+ 但是司务长又说，军代表随时会回来。
+ 要是他回来时我不在，司务长也不能包庇我。
+ 我从队里出去，爬上十五队的后山，拿个镜片晃陈清扬的后窗。
+ 过一会儿，她到山上来，说是头两天人家把她盯得特紧，跑不出来。
+ 而这几天她又来月经。
+ 她说这没关系，干吧。
+ 我说那不行。
+ 分手时她硬要给我二百块钱。
+ 起初我不要，后来还是收下了。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，头两天人家没有把她盯得特紧，后来她也没有来月经。
+ 事实上，十五队的人根本就不管她。
+ 那里的人习惯于把一切不是破鞋的人说成破鞋，而对真的破鞋放任自流。
+ 她之所以不肯上山来，让我空等了好几天，是因为对此事感到厌倦。
+ 她总要等有了好心情才肯性交，不是只要性交就有好心情。
+ 当然这样做了以后，她也不无内疚之心。
+ 所以她给我二百块钱。
+ 我想既然她有二百块钱花不掉，我就替她花。
+ 所以我拿了那些钱到井坎镇上，买了一条双筒猎枪。
+ 后来我写交待材料，双筒猎枪也是一个主题。
+ 人家怀疑我拿了它要打死谁。
+ 其实要打死人，用二百块钱的双筒猎枪和四十块钱的铜炮枪打都一样。
+ 那种枪是用来在水边打野鸭子的，在山里一点不实用，而且像死人一样沉。
+ 那天我到井坎街上时，已经是下午时分，又不是赶街的日子，所以只有一条空空落落的土路和几间空空落落的国营商店。
+ 商店里有一个售货员在打瞌睡，还有很多苍蝇在飞。
+ 货架上写着“吕过吕乎”，放着铝锅铝壶。
+ 我和那个胶东籍的售货员聊了一会天，她叫我到库房里看了看。
+ 在那儿我看见那条上海出的猎枪，就不顾它已经放了两年没卖出去的事实，把它买下了。
+ 傍晚时我拿它到小河边试放，打死了一只鹭鸶。
+ 这时军代表从场部回来，看见我手里有枪，很吃了一惊。
+ 他唠叨说，这件事很不对，不能什么人手里都有枪。
+ 应该和队里说一下，把王二的枪没收掉。
+ 我听了这话，几乎要朝他肚子上打一枪。
+ 如果打了的话，恐怕会把他打死。
+ 那样多半我也活不到现在了。
+ 那天下午我从井坎回队的路上，涉水从田里经过，曾经在稻棵里站了一会。
+ 我看见很多蚂蝗像鱼一样游出来，叮上了我的腿。
+ 那时我光着膀子，衣服包了很多红糖馅的包子（镇上饭馆只卖这一种食品），双手提包子，背上还背了枪，很累赘。
+ 所以我也没管那些蚂蝗。
+ 到了岸上我才把它们一条条揪下来用火烧死。
+ 烧得它们一条条发软起泡。
+ 忽然间我感到很烦很累，不像二十一岁的人。
+ 我想，这样下去很快就会老了。
+ 后来我遇上了勒都。
+ 他告诉我说，他们把那条河岔里的鱼都捉到手了。
+ 我那一份已经晒成了鱼干，在他姐姐手里。
+ 他姐姐叫我去。
+ 他姐姐和我也很熟，是个微黑俏丽的小姑娘。
+ 我说一时去不了。
+ 我把那一包包子都给了勒都，叫他给我到十五队送个信，告诉陈清扬，我用她给我的钱买了一条枪。
+ 勒都去了十五队，把这话告诉陈清扬，她听了很害怕，觉得我会把军代表打死。
+ 这种想法也不是没有道理，傍晚时我就想打军代表一枪。
+ 傍晚时分我在河边打鹭鸶，碰上了军代表。
+ 像往常一样，我一声不吭，他喋喋不休。
+ 我很愤怒，因为已经有半个多月了，他一直对我喋喋不休，说着同样的话：我很坏，需要思想改造。
+ 对我一刻也不能放松。
+ 这样的话我听了一辈子，从来没有像那天晚上那么火。
+ 后来他又说，今天他有一个特大好消息，要向大家公布。
+ 但是他又不说是什么，只说我和我的“臭婊子”陈清扬今后的日子会很不好过。
+ 我听了这话格外恼火，想把他就地掐死，又想听他说出是什么好消息以后再下手。
+ 他却不说，一直卖着关子，只说些没要紧的话，到了队里以后才说，晚上你来听会吧，会上我会宣布的。
+ 晚上我没去听会，在屋里收拾东西，准备逃上山去。
+ 我想一定发生了什么大事，以致军代表有了好办法来收拾我和陈清扬，至于是什么事我没想出来，那年头的事很难猜。
+ 我甚至想到可能中国已经复辟了帝制，军代表已经当上了此地的土司。
+ 他可以把我锤骟掉，再把陈清扬拉去当妃子。
+ 等我收拾好要出门，才知道没有那么严重。
+ 因为会场上喊口号，我在屋里也能听见。
+ 原来是此地将从国营农场改做军垦兵团。
+ 军代表可能要当个团长。
+ 不管怎么说，他不能把我阉掉，也不能把陈清扬拉走。
+ 我犹豫了几分钟，还是把装好的东西背上了肩，还用砍刀把屋里的一切都砍坏，并且用木炭在墙上写了：“XXX（军代表名），操你妈！”
+ 然后出了门，上山去了。
+ 我从十四队逃跑的事就是这样。
+ 这些经过我也在交待材料里写了。
+ 概括地说，是这样的：我和军代表有私仇，这私仇有两个方面：
+ 一是我在慰问团面前说出了曾经被打晕的事，叫军代表很没面子；二是争风吃醋，所以他一直修理我。
+ 当他要当团长时，我感到不堪忍受，逃到山上去了。
+ 我到现在还以为这是我逃上山的原因。
+ 但是人家说，军代表根本就没当上团长，我逃跑的理由不能成立。
+ 所以人家说，这样的交待材料不可信。
+ 可信的材料应该是，我和陈清扬有私情。
+ 俗话说，色胆包天，我们什么事都能干出来。
+ 这话也有一点道理，可是我从队里逃出来时，原本不打算找陈清扬，打算一走算了。
+ 走到山边上才想到，不管怎样，陈是我的一个朋友，该去告别。
+ 谁知陈清扬说，她要和我一起逃跑。
+ 她还说，假如这种事她不加入，那伟大友谊岂不是喂了狗。
+ 于是她匆匆忙忙收拾了一些东西跟我走了。
+ 假如没有她和她收拾的东西，我一定会病死在山上。
+ 那些东西里有很多治疟疾的药，还有大量的大号避孕套。
+ 我和陈清扬逃上山以后，农场很惊慌了一阵。
+ 他们以为我们跑到缅甸去了。
+ 这件事传出去对谁都没好处，所以就没向上报告，只是在农场内部通缉王二和陈清扬。
+ 我们的样子很好认，还带了一条别人没有的双筒猎枪，很容易被人发现，可是一直没人找到我们。
+ 直到半年后以后，我们自己回到农场来，各回各的队，又过了一个多月，才被人保组叫去写交待。
+ 也是我们流年不利，碰上了一个运动，被人揭发了出来。
+ 人保组的房子在场部的路口上，是一座孤零零的土坯房。
+ 你从很远的地方就能看见，因为它粉刷得很白，还因为它在高岗上。
+ 大家到场部赶街，老远就看见那间房子。
+ 它周围是一片剑麻地，剑麻总是睛绿色，剑麻下的土总是鲜红色。
+ 我在那里交待问题，把什么都交待了。
+ 我们上了山，先在十五队后山上种玉米，那里土不好，玉米有一半没出苗。
+ 我们就离开，昼伏夜行，找别的地方定居。
+ 最后想起山上有个废水碾，那里有很大一片丢荒了的好地。
+ 水碾里住了一个麻疯寨跑出来的刘大爹。
+ 谁也不到那里去，只有陈清扬有一回想起自己是大夫，去看过一回。
+ 我们最后去了刘大爹那里，住在水碾背后的山洼里，陈清扬给刘大爹看病，我给刘大爹种地。
+ 过了一些时候，我到清平赶街，遇上了同学。
+ 他们说，军代表调走了，没人记着我们的事。
+ 我们就回来。
+ 整个事情就是这样的。
+ 我在人保组里呆了很长时间。
+ 有一段时间，气氛还好，人家说，问题清楚了，你准备写材料。
+ 后来忽然又严重起来，怀疑我们去了境外，勾结了敌对势力，领了任务回来。
+ 于是他们把陈清扬也叫到人保组，严加审讯。
+ 问她时，我往窗外看。
+ 天上有很多云。
+ 人家叫我交待偷越国境的事。
+ 其实这件事上，我也不是清白无辜。
+ 我确实去过境外。
+ 我曾经打扮成老傣的模样，到对面赶过街。
+ 我在那里买了些火柴和盐。
+ 但是这没有必要说出来。
+ 没必要说的话就不说。
+ 后来我带人保组的人到我们住过的地方去勘查。
+ 我在十五队后山上搭的小草房已经漏了顶，玉米地招来很多鸟。
+ 草房后面有很多用过的避孕套，这是我们在此住过的铁证。
+ 当地人不喜欢避孕套，说那东西阻断了阴阳交流，会使人一天天弱下去。
+ 其实当地那种避孕套，比我后来用过的任何一种都好。
+ 那是百分之百的天然橡胶。
+ 后来我再不肯带他们去那些地方看，反正我说我没去国外，他们不信。
+ 带他们去看了，他们还是不信。
+ 没必要做的事就别做。
+ 我整天一声不吭。
+ 陈清扬也一声不吭。
+ 问案的人开头还在问，后来也懒得吭声。
+ 街子天里有好多老傣、老景颇背着新鲜的水果蔬菜走过，问案的人也越来越少。
+ 最后只剩了一个人。
+ 他也想去赶街，可是不到放我们回去的时候，让我们呆在这里无人看管，又不合规定。
+ 他就到门口去喊人，叫过路的大嫂站住。
+ 但是人家经常不肯站住，而是加快了脚步。
+ 见到这种情况，我们就笑起来。
+ 人保组的同志终于叫住了一个大嫂。
+ 陈清扬站起来，整理好头发，把衬衣领子折起来，然后背过手去。
+ 那位大嫂就把她捆起来，先捆紧双手，再把绳子在脖子和胳膊上扣住。
+ 那大嫂抱歉地说，捆人我不会啦。
+ 人保组的同志说，可以了。
+ 然后他再把我捆起来，让我们在两张椅子上背靠背坐好，用绳子拦腰捆上一道，然后他锁上门，也去赶集。
+ 过了好半天他才回来，到办公桌里拿东西，问道：要不要上厕所？
+ 时间还早，一会回来放你们。
+ 然后又出去。
+ 到他最后来放开我们的时候，陈清扬活动一下手指，整理好头发，把身上的灰土掸干净，我们俩回招待所去。
+ 我们每天都到人保组去，每到街子天就被捆起来，除此之外，有时还和别人一道到各队去挨斗。
+ 他们还一再威胁说，要对我们采取其它专政手段——我们受审查的事就是这样的。
+ 后来人家又不怀疑我们去了国外，开始对她比较客气，经常叫她到医院去，给参谋长看前列腺炎。
+ 那时我们农场来了一大批军队下来的老干部，很多人有前列腺炎。
+ 经过调查，发现整个农场只有陈清扬知道人身上还有前列腺。
+ 人保组的同志说，要我们交待男女关系问题。
+ 我说，你怎知我们有男女关系问题？
+ 你看见了吗？
+ 他们说，那你就交待投机倒把问题。
+ 我又说，你怎知我有投机倒把问题？
+ 他们说，那你还是交待投敌叛变的问题。
+ 反正要交待问题，具体交待什么，你们自己去商量。
+ 要是什么都不交待，就不放你。
+ 我和陈清扬商量以后，决定交待男女关系问题。
+ 她说，做了的事就不怕交待。
+ 于是我就像作家一样写起交待材料来。
+ 首先交待的就是逃跑上山那天晚上的事。
+ 写了好几遍，终于写出陈清扬像考拉熊。
+ 她承认她那天心情非常激动，确实像考拉熊。
+ 因为她终于有了机会，来实践她的伟大友谊。
+ 于是她腿圈住我的腰，手抓住我的肩膀，把我想像成一棵大树，几次想爬上去。
+ 后来我又见到陈清扬，已经到了九十年代。
+ 她说她离了婚和女儿住在上海，到北京出差。
+ 到了北京就想到，王二在这里，也许能见到。
+ 结果真的在龙潭湖庙会上见到了我。
+ 我还是老样子，饿纹入嘴，眼窝下乌青，穿过了时的棉袄，蹲在地上吃不登大雅之堂的卤煮火烧。
+ 唯一和过去不同的是手上被硝酸染得焦黄。
+ 陈清扬的样子变了不少，她穿着薄呢子大衣，花格呢裙子，高跟皮靴，戴金丝眼镜，像个公司的公关职员，她不叫我，我绝不敢认。
+ 于是我想到每个人都有自己的本质，放到合适的地方就大放光彩。
+ 我的本质是流氓土匪一类，现在做个城里的市民，学校的教员，就很不像样。
+ 陈清扬说，她女儿已经上了大二，最近知道了我们的事，很想见我。
+ 这事的起因是这样的：她们医院想提拔她，发现她档案里还有一堆东西。
+ 领导上讨论之后，认为是文革时整人的材料，应予撤销。
+ 于是派人到云南外调，花了一万元差旅费，终于把它拿了出来。
+ 因为是本人写的，交还本人。
+ 她把它拿回家去放着，被女儿看见了。
+ 该女儿说，好哇，你们原来是这么造的我！
+ 其实我和她女儿没有任何关系。
+ 她女儿产生时，我已经离开云南了。
+ 陈清扬也是这么解释的，可是那女孩说，我可以把精液放到试管里，寄到云南让陈清扬人工授精。
+ 用她原话来说就是：你们两个混蛋什么干不出来。
+ 我们逃进山里的第一个夜晚，陈清扬兴奋得很。
+ 天明时我睡着了，她又把我叫起来，那时节大雾正从墙缝里流进来。
+ 她让我再干那件事，别戴那捞什子。
+ 她要给我生一窝小崽子，过几年就耷拉到这里。
+ 同时她揪住乳头往下拉，以示耷拉之状。
+ 我觉得耷拉不好看，就说，咱们还是想想办法，别叫它耷拉。
+ 所以我还是戴着那捞什子。
+ 以后她对这件事就失去了兴趣。
+ 后来我再见陈清扬时，问道，怎么样，耷拉了吧？
+ 她说可不是，耷拉得一塌糊涂。
+ 你想不想看看有多耷拉。
+ 后来我看见了，并没有一蹋糊涂。
+ 不过她说，早晚要一塌糊涂，没有别的出路。
+ 我写了这篇交待材料交上去，领导上很欣赏。
+ 有个大头儿，不是团参谋长就是政委，接见了我们，说我们的态度很好。
+ 领导上相信我们没有投敌叛变。
+ 今后主要的任务就是交待男女关系问题。
+ 假如交待得好，就让我们结婚。
+ 但是我们并不想结婚。
+ 后来又说，交待得好，就让我调回内地。
+ 陈清扬也可以调上级医院。
+ 所以我在招待所写了一个多月交待材料，除了出公差，没人打搅，我用复写纸写，正本是我的，副本是她的。
+ 我们有一模一样的交待材料。
+ 后来人保组的同志找我商量，说是要开个大的批斗会。
+ 所有在人保组受过审查的人都要参加，包括投机倒把分子，贪污犯，以及各种坏人。
+ 我们本该属于同一类，可是团领导说了，我们年轻，交待问题的态度好，所以又可以不参加。
+ 但是有人攀我们，说都受审查，他们为什么不参加。
+ 人保组也难办。
+ 所以我们必须参加。
+ 最后的决定是来做工作，动员我们参加。
+ 据说受受批斗，思想上有了震动，以后可以少犯错误。
+ 既然有这样的好处，为什么不参加。
+ 到了开会的日子，场部和附近生产队来了好几千人。
+ 我们和好多别的人站到台上去。
+ 等了好半天，听了好几篇批判稿，才轮到我们王陈二犯。
+ 原来我们的问题是思想淫乱，作风腐败，为了逃避思想改造，逃到山里去。
+ 后来在党的政策感召下，下山弃暗投明。
+ 听了这样的评价，我们心情激动，和大家一起振臂高呼：打倒王二！
+ 打倒陈清扬！
+ 斗过这一台，我们就算没事了。
+ 但是还得写交待，因为团领导要看。
+ 在十五队后山上，陈清扬有一回很冲动，要给我生一群小崽子，我没要。
+ 后来我想，生生也不妨，再跟她说，她却不肯生了。
+ 而且她总是理解成我要干那件事。
+ 她说，要干就干，没什么关系。
+ 我想纯粹为我，这样太自私了，所以就很少干。
+ 何况开荒很累，没力气干。
+ 我所能交待的事就是在地头休息时摸她的乳房。
+ 旱季里开荒时，到处是热风，身上没有汗，可是肌肉干疼。
+ 最热时，只能躺在树下睡觉。
+ 枕着竹筒，睡在棕皮蓑衣上。
+ 我奇怪为什么没人让我交待蓑衣的事。
+ 那是农场的劳保用品，非常贵。
+ 我带进山两件，一件是我的，一件是从别人门口顺手拿来的。
+ 一件也没拿回来。
+ 一直到我离开云南，也没人让我交还蓑衣。
+ 我们在地头休息时，陈清扬拿斗笠盖住脸，敞开衬衣的领口，马上就睡着了。
+ 我把手伸进去，有很优美的浑圆的感觉。
+ 后来我把扣子又解开几个，看见她的皮肤是浅红色。
+ 虽然她总穿着衣服干活，可是阳光透过了薄薄的布料。
+ 至于我，总是光膀子，已经黑得像鬼一样。
+ 陈清扬的乳房是很结实的两块，躺着的时候给人这样的感觉。
+ 但是其它地方很纤细。
+ 过了二十多年，大模样没怎么变，只是乳头变得有点大，有点黑。
+ 她说这是女儿做的孽。
+ 那孩子刚出世，像个粉红色的小猪，闭着眼一口叼住她那个地方狠命地吃，一直把她吃成个老太太，自己却长成个漂亮大姑娘，和她当年一样。
+ 年纪大了，陈清扬变得有点敏感。
+ 我和她在饭店里重温旧情，说到这类话题，她就有恐慌之感。
+ 当年不是这样。
+ 那时候在交待材料里写到她的乳房，我还有点犹豫。
+ 她说，就这么写。
+ 我说，这样你就暴露了。
+ 她说，暴露就暴露，我不怕！
+ 她还说是自然长成这样，又不是她捣了鬼。
+ 至于别人听说了有什么想法，不是她的问题。
+ 过了这么多年我才发现，陈清扬是我的前妻哩。
+ 交待完问题人家叫我们结婚。
+ 我觉得没什么必要了。
+ 可是领导上说，不结婚影响太坏，非叫去登记不可。
+ 上午登记结婚，下午离婚。
+ 我以为不算呢。
+ 乱秧秧的，人家忘了把发的结婚证要回去。
+ 结果陈清扬留了一张。
+ 我们拿这二十年前发的破纸头登记了一间双人房。
+ 要是没有这东西，就不许住在一间房子里。
+ 二十年前不这样。
+ 二十年前他们让我们住在一间房子里写交待材料，当时也没这个东西。
+ 我写了我们住在后山上的事。
+ 团领导要人保组的人带话说，枝节问题不要讲太多，交待下一个案子罢。
+ 听了这话，我发了犟驴脾气：妈妈的，这是案子吗？
+ 陈清扬开导我说：这世界上有多少人，每天要干多少这种事，又有几个有资格成为案子。
+ 我说其实这都是案子，只不过领导上查不过来。
+ 她说既然如此，你就交待罢。
+ 所以我交待道：那天夜里，我们离开了后山，向做案现场进发。
+
+ Later I saw Chen Qingyang again.
+ We registered for a room at a hotel, went in together, and then I helped her take off her coat.
+ Chen Qingyang said, Wang Er has become civilized.
+ It meant I had changed a lot.
+ In the old days, I did not just look ferocious, but also acted ferociously.
+ Chen Qingyang and I committed the crime one more time in the hotel.
+ The room was well heated, and the windows were glazed with tea-colored panes.
+ I sat on the sofa, and she sat in the bed.
+ We chatted for a while, and then the criminal atmosphere began to build.
+ I said, Didn't you want me to see how they sag now?
+ Let me take a look!
+ So she got to her feet and took off her sweater—she had on a flowery shirt underneath.
+ Then she sat back and said, It's still early.
+ After a while, the attendant brought us boiling water.
+ They had keys, so they just came in without even knocking on the door.
+ I asked, What would the attendant say if he came in right in the middle of things?
+ She said she had never gotten caught in the act, but she had heard that the attendant would slam the door shut and curse, Motherfuckers!
+ Disgusting!
+ Before Chen Qingyang and I escaped into the mountains, I cooked pig feed for a while.
+ At the time I had to tend the fire, chop the pig feed (the so-called pig feed consisted of things like sweet potato vine and water hyacinth), and add chaff and water to the wok all by myself.
+ As I bustled around doing several things at once, the military deputy stood beside me, talking his head off.
+ He went on nagging about how bad I was, and how bad Chen Qingyang was, even asking me to pass the message to my "stinking whore" Chen Qingyang.
+ All of a sudden, I flew into a fury.
+ I grabbed a machete and slashed at a bottle gourd used for storing pumpkin seeds that hung on the beam, cutting it in half.
+ Frightened, the military deputy leaped out of the room.
+ If he had kept scolding, I would have cut his head off.
+ I appeared especially ferocious, because I didn't speak.
+ Later, in the public security office, I didn't talk much either, even when they were tying me up.
+ So my hands often turned dark blue.
+ Chen Qingyang talked all the time.
+ She would say something like this: Big sister, it hurts! or, Big sister, can you tuck a handkerchief under the rope?
+ There is a handkerchief holding my hair.
+ She cooperated at every point, which was why she suffered much less than I did.
+ We were different in every way.
+ Chen Qingyang said that back then I wasn't very civilized.
+ When we went back to the public security office, people untied us.
+ The rope left lines of smudge on her shirt, which was because the rope was stored in a kitchen shed and picked up ash from the bottom of woks and bits of firewood.
+ She tried to flick the ashes off with her stiff fingers, but could only do the front, not the back.
+ By the time she wanted to ask me to help her, I had already strode out of the room.
+ She followed out the door, but I had gone pretty far.
+ I walked very fast, never looking back.
+ Because of these things, she didn't love me at all; she didn't even like me.
+ According to the leaders, what we did on the back slope was not considered a primary offense—except the time that she looked like a koala bear.
+ For example, the thing we did while cultivating the wilderness was just a secondary offense.
+ So I didn't finish my confession.
+ There was actually something more.
+ A hot wind blew really hard at the time and Chen Qingyang slept soundly with her arms under her head.
+ I unbuttoned all the buttons on her shirt so she was half naked.
+ It looked like she had done it herself.
+ The sky was so blue and bright that you could even see blue light in the shadows.
+ All of a sudden, I felt tenderness in my heart, so I bent over her reddened body.
+ I'd forgotten what I did then.
+ When I mentioned this to Chen Qingyang, I thought she'd have forgotten.
+ But she said, "I remember, I remember.
+ I was already awake by that time.
+ You kissed my belly button, right?
+ I was just on the edge—I almost fell in love with you at that moment."
+ Chen Qingyang said that she had just awakened in time to see my tousled head on her belly, and then she felt a gentle touch on her navel.
+ For a moment she could hardly restrain herself, but she still pretended to sleep, waiting to see what else I would do.
+ But I didn't do anything.
+ I raised my head and looked around.
+ And then I walked away.
+ My confession says that on that night, we left the back slope and set off for the crime scene.
+ We carried pots and pans on our backs and planned to settle down on the mountain in the south.
+ Over there the soil was so much richer that the grasses on both sides of the road stood as tall as people, unlike the back slope of the fifteenth team where they were about half a foot.
+ The moon shone that night.
+ We even walked on the road for a while.
+ By the time fog rose at daybreak, we had walked twelve miles and went up to the mountain in the south.
+ To be more specific, we arrived at the grassland to the south of Zhang Feng village and the forest wasn't far off.
+ We camped under a huge green tree, picking up two pieces of cow dung to start a fire, and spread a plastic sheet on the ground.
+ Then we took off all our clothes (the clothes were drenched by then), cuddled into each other, wrapped ourselves in three blankets, and then fell asleep.
+ We woke up frozen after an hour.
+ The three layers of blankets were all soaked, and the dung fire had died out, too.
+ Dewdrops fell from the trees in a downpour, and even the drops floating in the air were as big as mung beans.
+ This was in January, the coldest days of the dry season.
+ The shady side of the mountain could be that damp.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she woke up she heard my teeth chattering like a machine gun by her ear.
+ The upper teeth were clicking against the lower more than once a second.
+ I already had a temperature.
+ Once I caught a cold, it would be hard to recover unless I got a shot.
+ So she sat up and said, Enough.
+ Both of us will get sick this way.
+ Hurry, we have to do the thing.
+ Not wanting to move, I said, Hold on for a bit.
+ The sun is coming out soon.
+ After a few minutes I said, Do you think I have energy to do it now?
+ That was the situation prior to the offense.
+ The offense went as follows: Chen Qingyang rode my body, up and down; behind her back was a broad expanse of white fog.
+ It didn't feel that cold anymore, and the sound of buffalo bells floated all around.
+ Since Thai people here didn't pen their buffaloes, they would ramble at daybreak.
+ Hung with wooden bells, the buffaloes would make clunking sounds as they walked.
+ A hulk suddenly turned up beside us, with dewdrops dangling from a hairy ear.
+ It was a white buffalo, who turned its head and stared at us with one of its eyes.
+ A white buffalo's horn can be used to make a knife handle, glittering and crystal clear, very pretty.
+ But its texture is brittle, easy to crack.
+ I used to have a dagger with a white-horn handle that didn't have any cracks, which was very unusual.
+ The blade was also made of excellent materials.
+ Unfortunately public security confiscated it.
+ I asked them to return it to me after my case was cleared.
+ They said they couldn't find it.
+ They didn't return my hunting gun either.
+ Old Guo from the public security section promised shamelessly to buy it, but he only wanted to pay fifty yuan.
+ In the end I got nothing back, not my gun or my knife.
+ Chen Qingyang and I chatted for a long time before we committed our crime in the hotel room.
+ Finally, she took off her shirt, but still wore her skirt and leather boots.
+ I went over to sit next to her and moved her hair back; some of it had turned gray.
+ Chen Qingyang had permed her hair.
+ She said she used to have excellent hair and didn't want to perm it.
+ Now it didn't matter anymore.
+ As the assistant head of the hospital, she was very busy and couldn't even find time to wash her hair every day.
+ Other than that, the corners of her eyes and her neck had begun to crease.
+ She said her daughter suggested that she have plastic surgery, but she couldn't find time to do it.
+ At last she said, OK, now take a look at them.
+ So she started to undo her bra.
+ I wanted to help her, but I couldn't.
+ The clasp was in the front, but I reached around to her back.
+ She said, Looks like you haven't learned what it takes to be bad.
+ And then she turned to let me see her breasts.
+ I looked carefully at them for a while, and gave her my opinion.
+ For some reason, her face blushed a little.
+ She said, Well, you've seen them.
+ What else do you want to do?
+ As she said this, she began to put her bra back on.
+ I said, What's the hurry?
+ Leave them out.
+ She said, What?
+ Still want to study my anatomy?
+ I said, Of course.
+ But let's not rush.
+ We can talk a little longer.
+ The color in her face deepened.
+ She said, Wang Er, you'll never learn how to be good.
+ You'll always be a bastard!
+ When I was detained in the public security section, Luo Xiaosi came to see me.
+ He leaned on the windowsill and found me tied up like a package.
+ Believing that my case was very serious and I might be shot soon, he tossed a box of cigarettes in from the window and said, Brother Er, just a little gift.
+ Then he burst into tears.
+ Luo Xiaosi was a sentimental man, easily touched.
+ I asked him to light a cigarette and hand it to me through the window.
+ He did as I asked, almost dislocating his shoulder to reach me.
+ After that he asked me what else he could do for me.
+ I said nothing else.
+ I also said, Don't bring a crowd to see me.
+ He promised he wouldn't.
+ After he was gone, a gang of boys climbed up to the window ledge to see me.
+ Right then the cigarette smoke choked me, and with one eye open and the other closed I looked terrible.
+ The leader of the boys couldn't help crying out: Hooligan!
+ I answered back, Your father and mother are hooligans!
+ If they're not hooligans, where did a little hooligan like you come from?
+ The boy grabbed some dirt and flung it at me.
+ After I was released, I went to see the boy's father and said: Today I was in the public security office.
+ I was hog-tied.
+ Your son is young, but he has great ambition.
+ He took the opportunity to fling dirt at me.
+ After hearing this, the man grabbed his son and beat the shit out of the little bastard.
+ I didn't leave until I witnessed the whole episode.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this, she commented, Wang Er, you're a bastard!
+ Actually I'm not always a bastard.
+ Now that I have a wife and family, I have learned a lot about how to be good.
+ After finishing the cigarette, I drew her to me, fondled her breasts skillfully for a while, and then wanted to take off her skirt.
+ She said, No rush.
+ Let's talk a little more.
+ Give me a cigarette too.
+ So I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and handed it to her.
+ Chen Qingyang said on Mount Zhang Feng, when she rode up and down on my body, she looked far and near, and saw nothing but gray, watery fog floating in the air.
+ All of a sudden, she felt very alone, very lonely.
+ Even though a part of me was rubbing inside her body, she still felt sad and lonely.
+ After a while I came back to life and said: Let's switch.
+ Here we go.
+ So I rolled over onto her body.
+ She said, That time, you were a bigger bastard than ever.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was a bigger bastard than ever, she meant that I suddenly noticed her feet were cute and pretty.
+ I said, Old Chen, I've decided to be a foot fetishist.
+ Then I raised her legs and started to kiss the soles of her feet.
+ Chen Qingyang lay on the grass with her arms spread out and her hands grabbing the grass, and then she turned her head aside, her hair covering her face, and moaned.
+ In my confession I wrote: I let go of her legs and parted the hair on her face.
+ She struggled violently to break free, tears rolling down from her eyes, but she didn't slap me.
+ There were two unhealthy red spots on her cheeks.
+ After a while, she no longer struggled and said, You bastard!
+ What are you going to do with me?
+ I said, What's wrong?
+ She smiled and said, Nothing.
+ Keep going.
+ So I raised her legs again.
+ She lay like that motionless, her arms spread out, teeth biting her lower lip without uttering a sound.
+ If I looked at her again, she smiled back.
+ I remember her face was extremely pale, and her hair was especially dark.
+ That's how the whole thing went.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she lay in the cold rain that time, she felt the chill penetrate every pore.
+ She felt an endless flow of sorrow.
+ Just then a huge surge of orgasm sliced through her body.
+ Cold fog and icy rain both seeped into her body.
+ For a moment she wanted to die.
+ She couldn't stand it; she wanted to cry out.
+ But at the sight of me she changed her mind.
+ There was no man in this world who could make her scream in front of him.
+ She felt disconnected from everyone.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she was deeply troubled every time I made love to her.
+ In the depth of her heart, she wanted to cry out, hug me, and kiss me passionately, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
+ She didn't want to love other people, not even one.
+ But still, when I kissed the soles of her feet that time, a sharp feeling still bored its way into her heart.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I made love on Mount Zhang Feng, an old buffalo alongside us watched.
+ Later it lowed and ran away, leaving the two of us alone there.
+ After a long while, the sky gradually lightened and the fog began to disappear from above us.
+ Chen Qingyang's body glistened with dew.
+ I let go of her and rose to my feet, to find that we were actually not far from the village.
+ So I said, Let's go.
+ We left that place and never went back.
+ In my confession, I admitted that Chen Qingyang and I had committed crimes on numerous occasions on Grandpa Liu's back mountain.
+ This was because Grandpa Liu's fields had already been cultivated and didn't need much work.
+ So our life was relatively easy there.
+ And since we didn't have to worry about food and shelter, we thought more about sex.
+ There was nobody else on that part of the mountain, and Grandpa Liu lay on his deathbed.
+ The mountain was either rainy or foggy.
+ Chen Qingyang fastened my belt around her waist, with a knife dangling from it.
+ She wore high boots, and nothing else.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she had made only one friend in her life, and that was me.
+ She said all that happened came about because I talked about great friendship in my small house by the river.
+ A person had to accomplish a few things in life and this was one of them.
+ After that she didn't have deep relationships with other people.
+ It's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ I've had a feeling about this all along.
+ So whenever I asked her for sex, I would say, Old pal, how about strengthening our great friendship now?
+ Married couples have a code of ethics to strengthen, and we don't have that, so we can only strengthen our friendship.
+ She said, No problem.
+ How do you want to strengthen it, from the front or from the back?
+ I said, From the back.
+ We were at the edge of the field then.
+ Because it was from the back, we had to spread two palm-bark rain capes on the ground.
+ She knelt on her hands and knees, like a horse, and said, You'd better hurry.
+ It's time to give Grandpa Liu a shot.
+ I wrote all these things in my confessions, but the leaders wanted me to confess in response to the following: 1. Who is Comrade Strain-thing Eh-thics?
+ 2. What does "strengthening the great friendship" mean?
+ 3. What is strengthening it from the back?
+ And what is strengthening it from the front?
+ After I cleared things up, the leaders told me not to play word games.
+ Whatever my crimes were, they said, I needed to confess them.
+ While we were strengthening our great friendship on the mountain, white breath puffed from our mouths.
+ It was not that cold, but very humid.
+ You could grab a handful of air and wring water out of it.
+ Worms wriggled next to our palm-bark rain capes.
+ That piece of land was really rich.
+ Later on, before the corn fully ripened, we picked the ears and ground the kernels in a mortar.
+ The Jingpos in the mountains prepared corn cakes that way, and they weren't bad at all.
+ Storing them in cold water could preserve them for a long time.
+ As Chen Qingyang crouched on her hands and knees in the cold rain, her breasts felt like cool apples.
+ Her skin all over was as smooth as a piece of burnished marble.
+ After a while I pulled my little Buddha out and ejaculated onto the field.
+ She looked back at this with a surprised and fearful expression.
+ I told her that it would fertilize the land.
+ She said, I know.
+ And a moment later she asked, Will a little Wang Er grow out of the land?— Does this sound like something a doctor would say?
+ When the rainy season passed, we dressed like Thais and went to Qingping market.
+ As I've already written before, I met a classmate in Qingping.
+ Although I was dressed like a Thai, he still recognized me on sight.
+ I was too tall to be a Thai.
+ He said, Hi, brother Er, where have you been?
+ I said, I'm hopeless at speaking Mandarin.
+ Despite the fact that I tried very hard to speak in a weird accent, it still sounded like the Beijing dialect.
+ That one sentence gave me away.
+ It was her idea to go back to the farm.
+ Since I myself had decided to go up the mountain, I was determined not to go back.
+ She'd come to the mountains for the sake of our great friendship, so I couldn't refuse to go down the mountain with her.
+ Actually, we could have left anytime, but she didn't want to.
+ She said our current life was fun.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said life on the mountain was also fun.
+ When cold mist drifted over the mountain, she would tuck a knife into her belt, put on a pair of rain boots, and enter the drizzle.
+ But it's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ That was why she still wanted to come down the mountain, to put up with the torment of human society.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I relived our great friendship in the hotel room, we spoke of the time we came down the mountain and reached a junction of roads.
+ There were four byroads at that place, and each of them led in a single direction.
+ East, west, south, north didn't really matter.
+ One led abroad, to an unknown place; one to the interior; one to the farm; and one back to where we came from, and that road also led to Husha.
+ In Husha there were a lot of Ahcang blacksmiths, who had passed on the skill from generation to generation.
+ Though I didn't come from a family of smiths, I could have been a blacksmith.
+ I knew those people very well; they all admired my skill.
+ Ahcang women were all very pretty, their bodies adorned with many bronze bracelets and necklaces and silver coins.
+ That kind of dress fascinated Chen Qingyang, and she wanted to go up to the mountains and become one of them.
+ At the time, the rainy season had just passed, and clouds rose up from every direction.
+ Threads of sunshine flashed in the sky.
+ We could have made any choice and set off in any direction.
+ So I stood at the crossroads for a long time.
+ Later when I was going back to the interior, waiting for the bus by the road, I also had two choices: I could keep waiting, or return to the farm.
+ When I walked along one path, I often thought about things that might happen on another path.
+ Then I would feel confused.
+ Chen Qingyang once said I was a man of average intelligence but with skillful hands, and very nutty, which all meant something.
+ Her saying my intelligence was only average, I didn't agree with; her saying I was nutty, I couldn't deny because it's a fact; as to my skillful hands, she probably knew that from her own body.
+ My hands are indeed very skillful, which wasn't just shown by how I touched women.
+ My palms are not big, but my fingers are unusually long and able to perform any delicate and complex task.
+ Those Ahcang blacksmiths on the mountain were better than me at forging blades, but for etching designs on a knife no one could match me.
+ So, at least twenty blacksmiths invited us to move in with them.
+ Each suggested that he would forge the blades and I would etch the designs, and we would make a good team.
+ If I had moved in then, I probably would have forgotten how to speak Mandarin.
+ If I had moved in with an Ahcang big brother, I would be etching designs on Husha knives in that dark, deep blacksmith shop now.
+ In the muddy backyard of his house, there would be a brood of little children, comprised of four combinations: 1. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and me; 2. Those produced by Ahcang big brother and Ahcang big sister; 3. Those produced by Ahcang big sister and me; 4. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and Ahcang big brother.
+ When Chen Qingyang would come down from the mountain with firewood on her back, she would pull up her clothes, revealing her full and firm breasts, and, without making any distinction, feed one of the babies.
+ If I had returned to the mountains then, that would have happened.
+ Chen Qingyang said such things wouldn't happen because they didn't happen.
+ What really happened was that we returned to the farm, wrote confessions, and went on denouncement trips.
+ Even though we could have run away at any minute, we never did.
+ That was what really happened.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was of average intelligence, she obviously didn't consider my literary talent.
+ Everyone loved to read the confessions I wrote.
+ When I first started writing those things, I was dead set against it.
+ But as I wrote more, I became obsessed, clearly because the things I wrote all happened.
+ Things that really happen have incomparable charm.
+ I wrote down almost every detail in my confessions except the things that happened below: On the back mountain of the fifteenth team, after making love in our thatched hut, Chen Qingyang and I went to a creek to play in the water.
+ The water from the mountain had washed away the red soil, exposing the blue clay underneath.
+ We lay on the blue clay to sun ourselves.
+ After I recovered my warmth, my little Buddha stood up again.
+ Since he had been relieved not long before, I was not as eager as a sex maniac.
+ So I lay on my side behind her, pillowed on her long hair and entered her body from behind.
+ Later in the hotel room, we relived our great friendship in the same way.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on our sides on the blue clay, it was getting dark and the wind had cooled a bit.
+ It felt very peaceful lying together, and sometimes we moved a little.
+ I've heard that dolphins had two ways of doing it, one for procreation and the other for entertainment, which is to say that dolphins also have the great friendship.
+ Chen Qingyang and I were connected, just like a pair of dolphins.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on the blue clay with our eyes closed, we felt like a pair of dolphins swimming in the sea.
+ It was getting darker and the sunlight gradually reddened.
+ A cloud came over the horizon, pale as countless dead fish bellies turned up and countless dead fish eyes gaping.
+ A current of wind slipped down the mountain without a sound, without a breath, and a sadness in the air filled every space between the sky and the earth.
+ Chen Qingyang shed a lot of tears.
+ She said the scene depressed her.
+ I still keep the duplicates of my confessions from back then.
+ Once, I showed them to a friend who majored in English and American literature.
+ He said they were all very good, with the charm of Victorian underground novels.
+ As for the details I had cut out, he said it was a good idea to cut them out, because those details destroyed the unity of the story.
+ My friend is really erudite.
+ I was very young when I wrote the confessions and didn't have any learning (I still don't have much learning), or any idea what Victorian underground novels were.
+ What I had in my mind was that I shouldn't be an instigator.
+ Many people would read my confessions.
+ If after reading them they couldn't help screwing damaged goods, that wasn't so bad; but if they learned the other thing, that would be really bad.
+ I also left out the facts that follow, for the same reason mentioned above.
+ We had committed many errors and deserved execution.
+ But the leaders decided to save us, making me write confessions.
+ How forgiving of them!
+ So I made up my mind that I would only write about how bad we were.
+ When we lived on Grandpa Liu's back slope, Chen Qingyang made a Thai skirt for herself, disguising herself as a Thai woman so she could go to Qingping on market days.
+ But after putting the skirt on she could barely walk.
+ South of Qingping, we ran into a river.
+ The mountain water was ice-cold, and green as marinated mustard.
+ The water reached to my waist, and the current was very swift.
+ I walked over to her, hoisted her onto my shoulder, went right across the river, and then put her down.
+ Her waist was exactly the width of my shoulder.
+ I remember her face turning deep red then.
+ I said, I could carry you to Qingping and back, faster than your swishy walking.
+ She said, Go take a crap.
+ A Thai skirt is like a cloth sheath.
+ The hem is only about a foot around.
+ People who know how to wear them can do all kinds of things with them on, including peeing on the street without squatting down.
+ Chen Qingyang said she could never learn that trick.
+ After conducting an observation for a while in Qingping market, she drew the conclusion that if she wanted to disguise herself like someone, she would rather be an Ahcang woman.
+ On the way back, the mountain road was all uphill, and she was exhausted, too.
+ So whenever we needed to jump over a ditch or cross a ridge, she would find a stump, gracefully mount it, and let me carry her.
+ So on the way home I carried her on my shoulder climbing the hills.
+ The dry season had just arrived, white clouds coasted through the sky, and the sun gave brilliant light.
+ But in the mountains it would drizzle from time to time.
+ The red clay was very slippery.
+ Walking on slabs of red mud was like learning to skate for the first time.
+ So with my right hand locked around her thighs and my left hand carrying the rifle, not to mention the basket on my back, I could hardly manage the slippery incline.
+ All of a sudden, I slipped to the left, and was about to fall into the valley.
+ Fortunately I had a rifle, which I used to hold me up.
+ I tensed my whole body and struggled to keep us from going over.
+ But the idiot picked that moment to give me trouble, flopping around on my back and demanding that I put her down.
+ We almost lost our lives that time.
+ As soon as I caught my breath, I switched the rifle to my right hand, raised my left hand, and slapped her bottom really hard.
+ Through the layer of thin cloth, it felt unusually smooth.
+ Her bottom was very round.
+ Fuck, I felt terrific.
+ She immediately behaved herself after getting spanked.
+ She became very submissive, not saying another word.
+ Of course, it was wrong to slap her bottom, but I thought this kind of thing might not be what other damaged goods and their lovers get into.
+ So the incident seemed beside the point and I didn't write about it.
+
+ 我后来又见到陈清扬，和她在饭店里登记了房间，然后一起到房间里去，我伸手帮她脱下大衣。
+ 陈清扬说，王二变得文明了。
+ 这说明我已经变了很多。
+ 以前我不但相貌凶恶，行为也很凶恶。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里又做了一回案。
+ 那里暖气烧得很暖，还装着茶色玻璃。
+ 我坐在沙发上，她坐在床上，聊了一会儿天， 逐渐有了犯罪的气氛。
+ 我说，不是让我看有多耷拉吗，我看看。
+ 她就站起来，脱了外衣，里面穿着大花的衬衫。
+ 然后她又坐下去，说，还早一点。
+ 过一会服务员来送开水。
+ 他们有钥匙，连门都不敲就进来了。
+ 我问她，碰上了人家怎么说？
+ 她说，她没被碰上过。
+ 但是听说人家会把门一摔，在外面说：真他妈的讨厌！
+ 我和陈清扬逃进山以前，有一次我在猪场煮猪食。
+ 那时我要烧火，要把猪菜切碎（所谓猪菜，是番薯藤、水葫芦一类东西），要往锅里加糠添水。
+ 我同时做着好几样事情。
+ 而军代表却在一边碟碟不休，说我是如何之坏。
+ 他还让我去告诉我的“臭婊子”陈清扬，她是如何之坏。
+ 忽然间我暴怒起来，抡起长勺，照着粱上挂的盛南瓜籽的葫芦劈去，把它劈成两半。
+ 军代表吓得一步跳出房去。
+ 如果他还要继续数落我，我就要砍他脑袋了。
+ 我是那样凶恶，因为我不说话。
+ 后来在人保组，我也不大说话，包括人家捆我的时候。
+ 所以我的手经常被捆得乌青。
+ 陈清扬经常说话。
+ 她说：大嫂，捆疼了。
+ 或者：大嫂，给我拿手绢垫一垫。
+ 我头发上系了一块手绢。
+ 她处处与人合作，苦头吃得少。
+ 我们处处都不一样。
+ 陈清扬说，以前我不够文明。
+ 在人保组里，人家给我们松了绑。
+ 那条绳子在她的衬衣上留下了很多道痕迹。
+ 这是因为那绳子平时放在烧火的棚子里，沾上了锅灰和柴草沫。
+ 她用不灵活的手把痕迹掸掉，只掸了前面，掸不了后面。
+ 等到她想叫我来掸时，我已经一步跨出门去。
+ 等到她追出门去，我已经走了很远，我走路很快，而且从来不回头看。
+ 就因为这些原因，她根本就不爱我，也说不上喜欢。
+ 照领导定的性，我们在后山上干的事，除了她像考拉那次之外，都不算案子。
+ 像我们在开荒时干的事，只能算枝节问题。
+ 所以我没有继续交待下去。
+ 其实还有别的事。
+ 当时热风正烈，陈清扬头枕双臂睡得很熟。
+ 我把她的衣襟完全解开了。
+ 这样她袒露出上身，好像是故意的一样。
+ 天又蓝又亮，以致阴影里都是蓝黝黝的光。
+ 忽然间我心里一动，在她红彤彤的身体上俯身下去。
+ 我都忘了自己干了些什么了。
+ 我把这事说了出来，以为陈清扬一定不记得。
+ 可是她说，“记得记得！
+ 那会儿我醒了。
+ 你在我肚脐上亲了一下吧？
+ 好危险，差一点爱上你。”
+ 陈清扬说，当时她刚好醒来，看见我那颗乱蓬蓬的头正在她肚子上，然后肚脐上轻柔的一触。
+ 那一刻她也不能自持。
+ 但是她还是假装睡着，看我还要干什么。
+ 可是我什么都没干，抬起头来往四下看看，就走开了。
+ 我写的交待材料里说，那天夜里，我们离开后山，向做案现场进发，背上背了很多坛坛罐罐，计划是到南边山里定居。
+ 那边土地肥沃，公路两边就是一人深的草。
+ 不像十五队后山，草只有半尺高。
+ 那天夜里有月亮，我们还走了一段公路，所以到天明将起雾时，已经走了二十公里，上了南面的山。
+ 具体地说，到了章风寨南面的草地上，再走就是森林。
+ 我们在一棵大青树下露营，拣了两块干牛粪生了一堆火，在地上铺了一块塑料布。
+ 然后脱了一切衣服（衣服已经湿了），搂在一起，裹上三条毯子，滚成一个球，就睡着了。
+ 睡了一个小时就被冻醒。
+ 三重毯子都湿透了，牛粪火也灭了。
+ 树上的水滴像倾盆大雨往下掉。
+ 空气里漂着的水点有绿豆大小。
+ 那是在一月里，旱季最冷的几天。
+ 山的阴面就有这么潮。
+ 陈清扬说，她醒时，听见我在她耳边打机关枪。
+ 上牙碰下牙，一秒钟不只一下。
+ 而且我已经有了热度。
+ 我一感冒就不容易好，必须打针。
+ 她就爬起来说，不行，这样两个人都要病。
+ 快干那事。
+ 我不肯动，说道：忍忍罢。
+ 一会儿就出太阳。
+ 后来又说：你看我干得了吗？
+ 案发前的情况就是这样的。
+ 案发时的情形是这样：陈清扬骑在我身上，一起一落，她背后的天上是白茫茫的雾气。
+ 这时好像不那么冷了，四下里传来牛铃声。
+ 这地方的老傣不关牛，天一亮水牛就自己跑出来。
+ 那些牛身上拴着木制的铃裆，走起来发出闷闷的响声。
+ 一个庞然大物骤然出现在我们身边，耳边的刚毛上挂着水珠。
+ 那是一条白水牛，它侧过头来，用一只眼睛看我们。
+ 白水牛的角可以做刀把，晶莹透明很好看。
+ 可是质脆容易裂。
+ 我有一把匕首，也是白牛角把，却一点不裂，很难得。
+ 刃的材料也好，可是被人保组收走了。
+ 后来没事了，找他们要，却说找不到了。
+ 还有我的猎枪，也不肯还我。
+ 人保组的老郭死乞白咧地说要买，可是只肯出五十块钱。
+ 最后连枪带刀，我一样也没要回来。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里做案之前聊了好半天。
+ 最后她把衬衣也脱下来，还穿着裙子和皮靴。
+ 我走过去坐在她身边，把她的头发撩了起来。
+ 她的头发有不少白的了。
+ 陈清扬烫了头。
+ 她说，以前她的头发好，舍不得烫。
+ 现在没关系了。
+ 她现在当了副院长，非常忙，也不能每天洗头。
+ 除此之外，眼角脖子下有不少皱纹。
+ 她说，女儿建议她去做整容手术。
+ 但是她没时间做。
+ 后来她说，好啦，看罢。
+ 就去解乳罩。
+ 我想帮她一把，也没帮上。
+ 扣在前面，我把手伸到后面去了。
+ 她说看来你没学坏，就转过身来让我看。
+ 我仔细看了一阵，提了一点意见。
+ 不知为什么，她有点脸红，说，好啦，看也看过了。
+ 还要干什么？
+ 就要把乳罩戴上。
+ 我说，别忙，就这样罢。
+ 她说，怎么，还要研究我的结构？
+ 我说，那当然。
+ 现在不着急，再聊一会。
+ 她的脸更红了，说道：王二，你一辈子学不了好，永远是个混蛋。
+ 我在人保组，罗小四来看我，趴窗户一看，我被捆得像粽子一样。
+ 他以为案情严重，我会被枪毙掉，把一盒烟从窗里扔进来，说道：二哥，哥们儿一点意思。
+ 然后哭了。
+ 罗小四感情丰富，很容易哭。
+ 我让他点着了烟从窗口递进来，他照办了，差点肩关节脱臼才递到我嘴上。
+ 然后他问我还有什么事要办，我说没有。
+ 我还说，你别招一大群人来看我。
+ 他也照办了。
+ 他走后，又有一帮孩子爬上窗台看，正看见我被烟熏的睁一眼闭一眼，样子非常难看。
+ 打头的一个不禁说道：耍流氓。
+ 我说，你爸你妈才耍流氓，他们不流氓能有你？
+ 那孩子抓了些泥巴扔我。
+ 等把我放开，我就去找他爸，说道：今天我在人保组，被人像捆猪一样捆上。
+ 令郎人小志大，趁那时朝我扔泥巴。
+ 那人一听，揪住他儿子就揍。
+ 我在一边看完了才走。
+ 陈清扬听说这事，就有这种评价：王二，你是个混蛋。
+ 其实我并非永远是混蛋。
+ 我现在有家有口，已经学了不少好。
+ 抽完了那根烟，我把她抱过来，很熟练地在她胸前爱抚一番，然后就想脱她的裙子。
+ 她说：别忙，再聊会儿。
+ 你给我也来支烟。
+ 我点了一支烟，抽着了给她。
+ 陈清杨说，在章风山她骑在我身上一上一下，极目四野，都是灰蒙蒙的水雾。
+ 忽然间觉得非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 虽然我的一部分在她身体里磨擦，她还是非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 后来我活过来了，说道：换换，你看我的，我就翻到上面去。
+ 她说， 那一回你比哪回都混蛋。
+ 陈清扬说，那回我比哪回都混蛋，是指我忽然发现她的脚很小巧好看。
+ 因此我说，老陈，我准备当个拜脚狂。
+ 然后我把她两腿捧起来，吻她的脚心。
+ 陈清扬平躺在草地上，两手摊开，抓着草。
+ 忽然她一晃头，用头发盖住了脸，然后哼了一声。
+ 我在交待材料里写道，那时我放开她的腿，把她脸上的头发抚开。
+ 陈清扬猛烈地挣扎，流着眼泪，但是没有动手。
+ 她脸上有两点很不健康的红晕。
+ 后来她不挣扎了，对我说，混蛋，你要把我怎么办。
+ 我说，怎么了。
+ 她又笑，说道：不怎么。
+ 接着来。
+ 所以我又捧起她的双腿。
+ 她就那么躺着不动，双手平摊，牙咬着下唇，一声不响。
+ 如果我多看她一眼，她就笑笑。
+ 我记得她脸特别白，头发特别黑，整个情况就是这样的。
+ 陈清扬说，那一回她躺在冷雨里，忽然觉得每一个毛孔都进了冷雨。
+ 她感到悲从中来，不可断绝。
+ 忽然间一股巨大的快感劈进来。
+ 冷雾，雨水，都沁进了她的身体。
+ 那时节她很想死去。
+ 她不能忍耐，想叫出来，但是看见了我她又不想叫出来。
+ 世界上还没有一个男人能叫她肯当着他的面叫出来。
+ 她和任何人都格格不入。
+ 陈清扬后来和我说，每回和我做爱都深受折磨。
+ 在内心深处她很想叫出来，想抱住我狂吻，但是她不乐意。
+ 她不想爱别人，任何人都不爱；尽管如此，我吻她脚心时，一股辛辣的感觉还是钻到她心里来。
+ 我和陈清扬在章风山上做爱，有一只老水牛在一边看。
+ 后来它哞了一声跑开了，只剩我们两人。
+ 过了很长时间，天渐渐亮了。
+ 雾从天顶消散。
+ 陈清扬的身体沾了露水，闪起光来。
+ 我把她放开，站起来，看见离寨子很近，就说：走。
+ 于是离开了那个地方，再没回去过。
+ 我在交待材料里说，我和陈清扬在刘大爹后山上作案无数。
+ 这是因为刘大爹的地是熟地，开起来不那么费力。
+ 生活也安定，所以温饱生淫欲。
+ 那片山上没人，刘大爹躺在床上要死了。
+ 山上非雾即雨，陈清扬腰上束着我的板带，上面挂着刀子。
+ 脚上穿高筒雨靴，除此之外不着一丝。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她一辈子只交了我一个朋友。
+ 她说，这一切都是因为我在河边的小屋里谈到伟大友谊。
+ 人活着总要做几件事情，这就是其中之一。
+ 以后她就没和任何人有过交情。
+ 同样的事做多了没意思。
+ 我对此早有预感。
+ 所以我向她要求此事时就说：老兄，咱们敦敦伟大友谊如何？
+ 人家夫妇敦伦，我们无伦可言，只好敦友谊。
+ 她说好。
+ 怎么敦？
+ 正着敦反着敦？
+ 我说反着敦。
+ 那时正在地头上。
+ 因为是反着敦，就把两件蓑衣铺在地上，她趴在上面，像一匹马，说道：你最好快一点，刘大爹该打针了。
+ 我把这些事写进了交待材料，领导上让我交待：1. 谁是“郭伦”；2. 什么叫“郭郭”伟大友谊；3 .什么叫正着郭，什么叫反着郭。
+ 把这些都说清以后，领导上又叫我以后少掉文，是什么问题就交待什么问题。
+ 在山上敦伟大友谊时，嘴里喷出白气。
+ 天不那么凉，可是很湿，抓过一把能拧出水来。
+ 就在蓑衣旁边，蚯蚓在爬。
+ 那片地真肥。
+ 后来玉米还没熟透，我们就把它放在捣臼里捣，这是山上老景颇的做法。
+ 做出的玉米粑粑很不坏。
+ 在冷水里放着，好多天不坏。
+ 陈清扬趴在冷雨里，乳房摸起来像冷苹果。
+ 她浑身的皮肤绷紧，好像抛过光的大理石。
+ 后来我把小和尚拔出来，把精液射到地里。
+ 她在一边看着，面带惊恐之状。
+ 我告诉她：这样地会更肥。
+ 她说：我知道。
+ 后来又说：地里会不会长出小王二来——这像个大夫说的话吗？
+ 雨季过去后，我们化装成老傣，到清平赶街。
+ 后来的事我已经写过，我在清平遇上了同学。
+ 虽然化了装，人家还是一眼就认出我来。
+ 我的个子太高，装不矮。
+ 人家对我说：二哥，你跑哪儿去了？
+ 我说：我不会讲汉话哟！
+ 虽然尽力加上一点怪腔，还是京片子。
+ 一句就露馅了。
+ 回到农场是她的主意。
+ 我自己既然上了山，就不准备下去。
+ 她和我上山，是为了伟大友谊。
+ 我也不能不陪她下去。
+ 其实我们随时可以逃走，但她不乐意。
+ 她说现在的生活很有趣。
+ 陈清扬后来说，在山上她也觉得很有趣。
+ 漫山冷雾时，腰上别着刀子，足蹬高统雨靴，走到雨丝里去。
+ 但是同样的事做多了就不再有趣。
+ 所以她还想下山，忍受人世的摧残。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里重温伟大友谊，说到那回从山上下来，走到岔路口上。
+ 那地方有四条岔路，各通一方。
+ 东西南北没有关系，一条通到国外，是未知之地； 一条通到内地；一条通到农场； 一条是我们来的路。
+ 那条路还通到户撒。
+ 那里有很多阿伧铁匠，那些人世世代代当铁匠。
+ 我虽然不是世世代代，但我也能当铁匠。
+ 我和那些人熟得很，他们都佩服我的技术。
+ 阿伧族的女人都很漂亮，身上挂了很多铜箍和银钱。
+ 陈清扬对那种打扮十分神往，她很想到山上去当个阿伧。
+ 那时雨季刚过，云从四面八方升起来。
+ 天顶上闪过一缕缕阳光。
+ 我们有各种选择，可以到各方向去。
+ 所以我在路口上站了很久。
+ 后来我回内地时，站在公路上等汽车，也有两种选择，可以等下去，也可以回农场去。
+ 当我沿着一条路走下去的时候，心里总想着另一条路上的事。
+ 这种时候我心里很乱。
+ 陈清扬说过，我天资中等，手很巧，人特别混。
+ 这都是有所指的。
+ 说我天资中等，我不大同意。
+ 说我特别混，事实俱在，不容抵赖。
+ 至于说我手巧，可能是自己身上体会出来的。
+ 我的手的确很巧，不光表现在摸女人方面。
+ 手掌不大，手指特长，可以做任何精细的工作。
+ 山上那些阿伧铁匠打刀刃比我好，可是要比在刀上刻花纹，没有任何人能比得上。
+ 所以起码有二十个铁匠提出过，让我们搬过去，他打刀刃我刻花纹，我们搭一伙。
+ 假如当初搬了过去，可能现在连汉话都不会说了。
+ 假如我搬到一位阿伧大哥那里去住，现在准在黑洞洞的铁匠铺里给户撒刀刻花纹。
+ 在他家泥泞的后院里，准有一大窝小崽子，共有四种组合形式：1. 陈清扬和我的；2. 阿伧大哥和阿伧大嫂的；3. 我和阿伧大嫂的；4. 陈清扬和阿伧大哥的。
+ 陈清扬从山上背柴回来，撩起衣裳，露出极壮硕的乳房，不分青红皂白，就给其中一个喂奶。
+ 假如当初我退回山上去，这样的事就会发生。
+ 陈清扬说，这样的事不会发生，因为它没有发生，实际发生的是，我们回了农场，写交待材料出斗争差。
+ 虽然随时都可以跑掉，但是没有跑。
+ 这是真实发生了的事。
+ 陈清扬说，我天资平常，她显然没把我的文学才能考虑在内。
+ 我写的交待材料人人都爱看。
+ 刚开始写那些东西时，我有很大抵触情绪。
+ 写着写着就入了迷。
+ 这显然是因为我写的全是发生过的事。
+ 发生过的事有无比的魅力。
+ 我在交待材料里写下了一切细节，但是没有写以下已经发生的事情：我和陈清扬在十五队后山上，在草房里干完后，到山涧里戏水。
+ 山上下来的水把红土剥光，露出下面的蓝粘土来。
+ 我们爬到蓝粘土上晒太阳。
+ 暖过来后，小和尚又直立起来。
+ 但是刚发泄过，不像急色鬼。
+ 于是我侧躺在她身后，枕着她的头发进入她的身体。
+ 我们在饭店里，后来也是这么重温伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬侧躺在蓝粘土上，那时天色将晚，风也有点凉。
+ 躺在一起心平气和，有时轻轻动一下。
+ 据说海豚之间有生殖性的和娱乐性的两种搞法，这就是说，海豚也有伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬连在一起，好像两只海豚一样。
+ 我和陈清扬在蓝粘土上，闭上眼睛，好像两只海豚在海里游动。
+ 天黑下来，阳光逐渐红下去。
+ 天边起了一片云，惨白惨白，翻着无数死鱼肚皮，瞪起无数死鱼眼睛。
+ 山上有一股风，无声无息地吹下去。
+ 天地间充满了悲惨的气氛。
+ 陈清扬流了很多眼泪。
+ 她说是触景伤情。
+ 我还存了当年交待材料的副本，有一回拿给一位搞英美文学的朋友看，他说很好，有维多利亚时期地下小说的韵味。
+ 至于删去的细节，他也说删得好，那些细节破坏了故事的完整性。
+ 我的朋友真有大学问。
+ 我写交待材料时很年轻，没什么学问（到现在也没有学问），不知道什么是维多利亚时期地下小说。
+ 我想的是不能教会了别人。
+ 我这份交待材料不少人要看，假如他们看了情不自禁，也去搞破鞋，那倒不伤大雅，要是学会了这个，那可不大好。
+ 我在交待材料里还漏掉了以下事实，理由如前所述。
+ 我们犯了错误，本该被枪毙，领导上挽救我们，让我写交待材料，这是多么大的宽大！
+ 所以我下定决心，只写出我们是多么坏。
+ 我们俩在刘大爹后山上时，陈清扬给自己做了一件筒裙，想穿了它化装成老傣，到清平去赶街。
+ 可是她穿上以后连路都走不了啦。
+ 走到清平南边遇到一条河，山上下来的水像冰一样凉，像腌雪里一样绿。
+ 那水有齐腰深，非常急。
+ 我走过去，把她用一个肩膀扛起来，径直走过河才放下来。
+ 我的一边肩膀正好和陈清扬的腰等宽，记得那时她的脸红得厉害。
+ 我还说，我可以把你扛到清平去，再扛回来，比你扭扭捏捏地走更快。
+ 她说，去你妈的吧。
+ 筒裙就像个布筒子，下口只有一尺宽。
+ 会穿的人在里面可以干各种事，包括在大街上撒尿，不用蹲下来。
+ 陈清扬说，这一手她永远学不会。
+ 在清平集上观摩了一阵，她得到了要扮就扮阿伧的结论。
+ 回来的路是上山，而且她的力气都耗光了。
+ 每到跨沟越坎之处，她就找个树墩子，姿仪万方地站上去，让我扛她。
+ 回来的路上扛着她爬坡。
+ 那时旱季刚到，天上白云纵横，阳光灿烂。
+ 可是山里还时有小雨。
+ 红土的大板块就分外地滑。
+ 我走上那块烂泥板，就像初次上冰场。
+ 那时我右手扣住她的大腿，左手提着猎枪，背上还有一个背篓，走在那滑溜溜的斜面上，十分吃力。
+ 忽然间我向左边滑动，马上要滑进山沟，幸亏手里有条枪，拿枪拄在地上。
+ 那时我全身绷紧，拼了老命，总算支持住了。
+ 可这个笨蛋还来添乱，在我背上扑腾起来，让我放她下去。
+ 那一回差一点死了。
+ 等我刚能喘过气来，就把枪带交到右手，抡起左手在她屁股上狠狠打了两巴掌。
+ 隔了薄薄一层布，倒显得格外光滑。
+ 她的屁股很圆。
+ 鸡巴，感觉非常之好的啦！
+ 她挨了那两下登时老实了。
+ 非常地乖，一声也不吭。
+ 当然打陈清扬屁股也不是好事，但是我想别的破鞋和野汉子之间未必有这样的事。
+ 这件事离了题，所以就没写。
+
+ When we relived our great friendship later in the hotel room, we talked about all kinds of things.
+ We talked about everything we could have done back then, the confessions I wrote, and even the little Buddha of mine.
+ As soon as the thing heard people talking about him, he became excited and began to stir.
+ So I concluded: back then they'd wanted to hammer us but failed.
+ I was still as hard as ever.
+ For the sake of our great friendship, I would even run three times around the block, bare assed.
+ A person like me never cares much about saving face.
+ After all, that was my golden age, even though I was considered a hooligan.
+ I knew a lot of people there, including the nomads in caravans, the old Jingpos living on the mountains, and so on.
+ When you mentioned Wang Er who knew how to fix watches, everyone knew who he was.
+ I could sit with them by the fire and drink the kind of wine that only costs twenty fen for half a gallon.
+ I could drink a lot.
+ I was very popular there.
+ Other than those people, the pigs in the farm also liked me.
+ That was because when I fed them, I used three times more bran than others did.
+ Because of that I fought with the mess chief.
+ I said, at least our pigs should have enough food.
+ I always had a lot of friendship, and would have liked to share it with everyone.
+ Since they didn't want my friendship, I unloaded all of it on Chen Qingyang.
+ The strengthening of our great friendship that Chen Qingyang and I did while in the hotel room was of the recreational sort.
+ I pulled out once in the middle of it and found my little Buddha smeared with blood.
+ She said, An older woman's insides get a bit thin, don't push too hard.
+ She also said she'd stayed in the south so long that her hands cracked when she came to the north.
+ The quality of skin cream had declined and it was no use putting it on her hands.
+ After saying this, she took out a small bottle of glycerin and applied some to my little Buddha.
+ Then we did it from the front so we could keep talking.
+ I felt like a wedge for splitting wood, lying between her widely opened legs.
+ In the lamplight, the network of fine lines on Chen Qingyang's face looked like pieces of golden thread.
+ I kissed her mouth, and she didn't object—that is to say her lips were soft and parted.
+ She hadn't let me kiss her mouth before, only letting me kiss the line between her chin and her neck.
+ She said this would arouse her.
+ Then we continued to talk about things past.
+ Chen Qingyang said that was also her golden age.
+ Even though people called her damaged goods, she was innocent.
+ She was still innocent now.
+ After hearing this, I laughed.
+ But she said, what we're doing now doesn't count as a sin.
+ We had a great friendship, ran away, went on denouncement trips together, and now that we met again after twenty years' separation, of course she would open her legs to let me crawl in.
+ So even if it were considered a sin, she didn't know where the sin lay.
+ More importantly, she had no knowledge of this sin.
+ Then once again, she began to breathe heavily.
+ Her face turned scarlet, her legs locked me tightly, and her body beneath me tensed while again and again muffled screams came through her clenched teeth.
+ Only after a long while did she relax.
+ Then she said it was not bad at all.
+ After the "not bad at all," she still said it was no sin.
+ Because she was like Socrates, ignorant of everything.
+ Even though she had lived more than forty years, the world before her eyes still appeared miraculous and new.
+ She didn't know why they dispatched her to a desolate place like Yunnan, nor did she know the reason for letting her return; she didn't know why they accused her of being damaged goods and escorted her to the stage to be denounced, nor could she figure out why they said she was not damaged goods and removed the confessions she had written from her file.
+ There were all kinds of explanations for these things, but she understood none of them.
+ She was so ignorant that she had to be innocent.
+ So it is written in all the law books.
+ Chen Qingyang said, People live in this world to suffer torment until they die.
+ Once you figure this out, you'll be able to bear everything calmly.
+ To explain how she came to this realization, we need to go all the way back to the time I returned from the hospital and left for the mountains from her place.
+ I asked her to come to see me and she hesitated for a long time.
+ When she finally decided and walked through the hot noon air to my thatched hut, many beautiful images went through her mind during those moments.
+ Then she entered the thatched hut and saw my little Buddha sticking up like an ugly instrument of torture.
+ She cried out then and abandoned all hope.
+ Chen Qingyang said, twenty years earlier, on a winter day, she walked into her courtyard.
+ She had on a cotton coat then, and climbed across the threshold clumsily.
+ A grain of sand suddenly got into her eye.
+ It was so painful and the cold wind was so cutting that her tears kept rolling down.
+ She couldn't bear it and wept, as if she were in her little bed trying to cry herself awake.
+ This was an old habit born with her, deeply rooted, that we are wailing our way from one dream into another—this was the extravagant hope that we all have.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she went to look for me, golden flies danced in the woods.
+ The wind blew from every direction, penetrating her clothes and climbing her body.
+ The place I lived could be called an empty mountain without a human trace.
+ The burning sunlight dropped from the heights like shattered bits of mica.
+ Beneath her thin, white smock, she had stripped off all her underwear.
+ At that moment her heart, too, was full of extravagant hope.
+ After all, it was also her golden age, even though she was called damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went into the mountains to look for me, she climbed over a bare hill.
+ Wind blew in from below and caressed her sensitive parts.
+ And the desire she felt then was as unpredictable as wind.
+ It dispersed just like the wild mountain wind.
+ She thought about our great friendship, thought about how I hurried down the mountain.
+ She also remembered my head of tousled hair; how directly I stared at her when I proved she was damaged goods.
+ She felt she needed me, and we could become one, female and male in a single body, just as when she crawled over the threshold as a child and felt the wind outside.
+ The sky was so blue, the sunshine so bright, and there were pigeons flying around in the sky.
+ The whistling of those pigeons you would remember for the rest of your life.
+ She wanted to talk to me at that moment, just as she longed to merge with the outside world, to dissolve into the sky and the earth.
+ If there were only one person—only her—in this world, she would feel too lonely.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went to my little thatched hut, she thought about everything except the little Buddha.
+ That thing was too ugly to appear in her musing.
+ Chen Qingyang wanted to wail then, but she couldn't cry out, as if someone were choking her.
+ This is the so-called truth.
+ The truth is that you can't wake up.
+ That was the moment she finally figured out what the world was made of; and the next moment she made up her mind: she stepped forward to accept the torment.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang also said, just then, she once again remembered the moment she cried without restraint in the doorway.
+ She cried and cried, but couldn't awaken from crying, and the agony was undiminished.
+ She cried for a long time, but she didn't want to give up hope, not until twenty years later when she faced the little Buddha.
+ It was not the first time that she faced the little Buddha.
+ But before then she didn't believe there was such a thing in the world.
+ Chen Qingyang said, facing this ugly thing, she remembered our great friendship.
+ When she was in the university, she had a female classmate who was as ugly as a devil (or to put it in these terms, she looked like my little Buddha).
+ But the girl insisted on sharing a bed with her.
+ What was more, when everyone fell fast sleep, the girl would kiss her mouth and fondle her breasts.
+ To tell the truth, she didn't have this particular hobby, but tolerated it for the sake of their friendship.
+ Now, here was this thing baring its teeth and unsheathing its claws, and wanting exactly the same thing.
+ Then let it be satisfied, which in addition can be a way to make friends.
+ So she stepped forward, burying its ugliness deep inside her.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang said until then she still believed she was innocent, even after she ran away into the heart of the mountains and strengthened our great friendship almost every day.
+ She said this wouldn't prove she was bad at all because she didn't know why my little Buddha and I wanted to do this.
+ She did it for our great friendship.
+ Great friendship is a promise.
+ Keeping a promise is certainly no sin.
+ She had promised to help me in every respect.
+ But I spanked her bottom in the midst of the mountains, which completely tarnished her innocence.
+ I wrote confessions for a long time.
+ The leaders always said that I didn't confess thoroughly enough and needed to continue.
+ So I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life confessing.
+ Finally, Chen Qingyang wrote a confession without letting me see it and turned it into the public security office.
+ After that, no one asked us to write confessions or go on denouncement trips anymore.
+ What was more, Chen Qingyang began to distance herself from me.
+ I lived a listless existence for a while and went back to the interior alone.
+ What she wrote in the end, I hadn't a clue.
+ I lost everything when I came back from Yunnan: my gun, my knife, and my tools.
+ I gained one thing: a bulging file of confessions.
+ From then on, wherever I went, people would know that I was a hooligan.
+ One benefit I got was that I returned to the city earlier than the other city students.
+ But what was the good of returning earlier?
+ I still had to be reeducated in the countryside near Beijing.
+ When I went to Yunnan, I had brought a full set of tools with me: wrench, small vise, and so on.
+ Besides a set of fitter's tools, I also had a set of watchmaker's tools.
+ I used them to fix watches while living on Grandpa Liu's back slope.
+ Even though the mountain was empty and lonely, some bands of horsemen passed by from time to time.
+ Some of them let me appraise the smuggled watches.
+ Whatever the value I suggested, that would be the price, the watch would be worth that much.
+ Of course I didn't do it for free.
+ So I lived quite comfortably in the mountains.
+ If I hadn't come down, I'd be a millionaire by now.
+ As for that double-barreled shotgun, it was a treasure as well.
+ It turned out that the locals didn't value carbines and rifles much, but the double-barreled shotgun was a rarity to them.
+ The barrel was so heavy, plus there were two.
+ I could really scare people off with it.
+ Otherwise we would have been robbed long ago.
+ Nobody wanted to rob me or Grandpa Liu, but they might want to take Chen Qingyang away.
+ As for my knife, I always fastened it on a cowhide belt, and the cowhide belt was always fastened around Chen Qingyang's waist.
+ She wouldn't take it off even when she was sleeping or making love to me.
+ She thought it was charming to carry a knife with her.
+ So you can say that the knife actually belonged to Chen Qingyang.
+ As I mentioned before, both the knife and gun were confiscated by the public security office.
+ I didn't bring my tools with me when I came down the mountains; I left them on the mountain in case things didn't go smoothly.
+ By the time I went back to Beijing, I was in a hurry and didn't have time to fetch the tools.
+ That was how I was reduced to a complete zero.
+ I told Chen Qingyang that I could never figure out what she wrote in her last confession.
+ She said she couldn't tell me right then.
+ She wanted to wait until we said goodbye to each other.
+ She was going back to Shanghai the next day.
+ She asked me to see her off at the train station.
+ Chen Qingyang was different from me in every respect.
+ After daybreak, she took a cold shower (the hot water had run out), and then began to dress up.
+ From underwear to outfit, she was a perfumed lady.
+ I, on the other hand, was a genuine local hooligan from underwear to outfit.
+ No wonder people took the confessions out of her file but left mine.
+ That is to say, her hymen had grown back.
+ As for me, I never had that thing anyway.
+ Besides that, I also committed the crime of instigation.
+ We had committed many errors together and since she didn't know what her sin was, it had to be counted as mine.
+ We checked out and walked in the street.
+ Now I began to think that the last confession of hers must be extremely obscene.
+ Those who read our confessions were people with stone hearts and high political consciousness.
+ If they couldn't bear reading it, it had to be pretty bad.
+ Chen Qingyang said, in that confession, she wrote nothing but her true sin.
+ Chen Qingyang said that by her true sin she meant the incident on Mount Qingping.
+ She was being carried on my shoulder then, wearing the Thai skirt that bound her legs tightly together, and her hair hung down to my waist.
+ The white cloud in the sky hurried on its journey, and there were only two of us in the midst of mountains.
+ I had just smacked her bottom; I spanked her really hard.
+ The burning feeling was fading.
+ After that I cared about nothing else but continuing to climb the mountain.
+ Chen Qingyang said that moment she felt limp all over, so she let go of herself, hanging over my shoulder.
+ That moment she felt like a spring vine entangling a tree, or a young bird clinging to its master.
+ She no longer cared about anything else, and at that moment she had forgotten everything.
+ At that moment she fell in love with me, and that would never change.
+ At the train station, Chen Qingyang told me when she submitted this confession, the regimental commander read it immediately.
+ And after he finished reading his face was red all over, just like your little Buddha.
+ People who read this confession later all blushed too, like the little Buddha.
+ Afterward the public security people approached her several times, asking her to rewrite it.
+ But she said, This is what really happened.
+ Not a word should be changed.
+ They had no choice but to place it into her file.
+ Chen Qingyang said, admitting this amounts to admitting all her sins.
+ When she was in the public security office, they showed her all kinds of confessions, just to let her know what she couldn't write in her confession.
+ But she insisted on writing in this way.
+ She said that the reason that she wanted to write about it was because it was worse than anything else she had done.
+ She admitted before that she opened her legs; now she added that the reason she had done it was because she liked it.
+ Doing something is very different from liking it.
+ The former warranted going on denouncement trips; and the latter warranted being torn apart by five running horses or being minced by thousands of knives.
+ But no one had the power to tear us apart with five horses, so they had no choice but to set us free.
+ After Chen Qingyang told me this, the train roared away.
+ From that moment on, I never saw her again.
+
+ 后来我们在饭店里重温伟大友谊，谈到各种事情。
+ 谈到了当年的各种可能性，谈到了我写的交待材料，还谈到了我的小和尚。
+ 那东西一听别人谈到它，就激昂起来，蠢动个不停。
+ 因此我总结道，那时人家要把我们锤掉，但是没有锤动。
+ 我到今天还强硬如初。
+ 为了伟大友谊，我还能光着屁股上街跑三圈。
+ 我这个人，一向不大知道要脸。
+ 不管怎么说，那是我的黄金时代。
+ 虽然我被人当成流氓。
+ 我认识那里好多人，包括赶马帮的流浪汉，山上的老景颇等等。
+ 提起会修表的王二，大家都知道。
+ 我和他们在火边喝那种两毛钱一斤的酒，能喝很多。
+ 我在他们那里大受欢迎。
+ 除了这些人，猪场里的猪也喜欢我，因为我喂猪时，猪食里的糠比平时多三倍。
+ 然后就和司务长吵架，我说，我们猪总得吃饱吧。
+ 我身上带有很多伟大友谊，要送给一切人。
+ 因为他们都不要，所以都发泄在陈清扬身上了。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里敦伟大友谊，是娱乐性的。
+ 中间退出来一次，只见小和尚上血迹斑斑。
+ 她说，年纪大了，里面有点薄，你别那么使劲。
+ 她还说，在南方待久了，到了北方手就裂。
+ 而蛤蜊油的质量下降，抹在手上一点用都不管。
+ 说完了这些话，她拿出一小瓶甘油来，抹在小和尚上面。
+ 然后正着敦，说话方便。
+ 我就像一根待解的木料，躺在她分开的双腿中间。
+ 陈清扬脸上有很多浅浅的皱纹，在灯光下好像一条条金线。
+ 我吻她的嘴，她没反对。
+ 这就是说，她的嘴唇很柔软，而且分开了。
+ 以前她不让我吻她嘴唇，让我吻她下巴和脖子交界的地方。
+ 她说，这样刺激性欲。
+ 然后继续谈到过去的事。
+ 陈清扬说，那也是她的黄金时代。
+ 虽然被人称做破鞋，但是她清白无辜。
+ 她到现在还是无辜的。
+ 听了这话，我笑起来。
+ 但是她说，我们在干的事算不上罪孽。
+ 我们有伟大友谊，一起逃亡，一起出斗争差，过了二十年又见面，她当然要分开两腿让我趴进来。
+ 所以就算是罪孽，她也不知罪在何处。
+ 更主要的是，她对这罪恶一无所知。
+ 然后她又一次呼吸急促起来。
+ 她的脸变得赤红，两腿把我用力夹紧，身体在我下面绷紧，压抑的叫声一次又一次穿过牙关，过了很久才松驰下来。
+ 这时她说很不坏。
+ 很不坏之后，她还说这不是罪孽。
+ 因为她像苏格拉底，对一切都一无所知。
+ 虽然活了四十多岁，眼前还是奇妙的新世界。
+ 她不知道为什么人家要把她发到云南那个荒凉的地方，也不知为什么又放她回来。
+ 不知道为什么要说她是破鞋，把她押上台去斗争，也不知道为什么又说她不是破鞋，把写好的材料又抽出来。
+ 这些事有过各种解释，但没有一种她能听懂。
+ 她是如此无知，所以她无罪。
+ 一切法律书上都是这么写的。
+ 陈清扬说，人活在世上，就是为了忍受摧残，一直到死。
+ 想明了这一点，一切都能泰然处之。
+ 要说明她怎会有这种见识，一切都要回溯到那一回我从医院回来，从她那里经过进了山。
+ 我叫她去看我，她一直在犹豫。
+ 等到她下定了决心，穿过中午的热风，来到我的草房前面，那一瞬间，她心里有很多美丽的想像。
+ 等到她进了那间草房，看见我的小和尚直挺挺，像一件丑恶的刑具。
+ 那时她惊叫起来，放弃了一切希望。
+ 陈清扬说，在此之前二十多年前一个冬日，她走到院子里去。
+ 那时节她穿着棉衣，艰难地爬过院门的门槛。
+ 忽然一粒砂粒钻进了她的眼睛，那么的疼，冷风又是那样的割脸，眼泪不停地流。
+ 她觉得难以忍受，立刻大哭起来，企图在一张小床上哭醒。
+ 这是与生俱来的积习，根深蒂固。
+ 放声大哭从一个梦境进入另一个梦境，这是每个人都有的奢望。
+ 陈清扬说，她去找我时，树林里飞舞着金蝇。
+ 风从所有的方向吹来，穿过衣襟，爬到身上。
+ 我待的那个地方可算是空山无人。
+ 炎热的阳光好像细碎的云母片，从天顶落下来。
+ 在一件薄薄的白大褂下，她已经脱得精光。
+ 那时她心里也有很多奢望。
+ 不管怎么说，那也是她的黄金时代，虽然那时她被人叫作破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她到山里找我时，爬过光秃秃的山岗。
+ 风从衣服下面吹进来，吹过她的性敏感带，那时她感到的性欲，就如风一样捉摸不定。
+ 它放散开，就如山野上的凤。
+ 她想到了我们的伟大友谊，想起我从山上急匆匆地走下去。
+ 她还记得我长了一头乱蓬蓬的头发，论证她是破鞋时，目光笔直地看着她。
+ 她感到需要我，我们可以合并，成为雄雌一体。
+ 就如幼小时她爬出门槛，感到了外面的风。
+ 天是那么蓝，阳光是那么亮，天上还有鸽子在飞。
+ 鸽哨的声音叫人终身难忘。
+ 此时她想和我交谈，正如那时节她渴望和外面的世界合为一体，溶化到天地中去。
+ 假如世界上只有她一个人，那实在是太寂寞了。
+ 陈清扬说，她到我的小草房里去时，想到了一切东西，就是没想到小和尚。
+ 那东西太丑，简直不配出现在梦幻里。
+ 当时陈清扬也想大哭一场，但是哭不出来，好像被人捏住了喉咙。
+ 这就是所谓的真实。
+ 真实就是无法醒来。
+ 那一瞬间她终于明白了在世界上有些什么，下一瞬间她就下定了决心，走上前来，接受摧残，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬还说，那一瞬间，她又想起了在门槛上痛哭的时刻。
+ 那时她哭了又哭，总是哭不醒。
+ 而痛苦也没有一点减小的意思。
+ 她哭了很久，总是不死心。
+ 她一直不死心，直到二十年后面对小和尚。
+ 这已经不是她第一次面对小和尚。
+ 但是以前她不相信世界上还有这种东西。
+ 陈清扬说，她面对这丑恶的东西，想到了伟大友谊。
+ 大学里有个女同学，长得丑恶如鬼（或者说，长得也是这个模样），却非要和她睡一个床。
+ 不但如此，到夜深入静的时候，还要吻她的嘴，摸她的乳房。
+ 说实在的，她没有这方面的嗜好。
+ 但是为了交情，她忍住了。
+ 如今这个东西张牙舞爪，所要求的不过是同一种东西。
+ 就让它如愿以尝，也算是交友之道。
+ 所以她走上前来，把它的丑恶深深埋葬，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬说，到那时她还相信自己是无辜的。
+ 甚至直到她和我逃进深山里去，几乎每天都敦伟大友谊。
+ 她说这丝毫也不能说明她有多么坏，因为她不知道我和我的小和尚为什么要这样。
+ 她这样做是为了伟大友谊，伟大友谊是一种诺言。
+ 守信肯定不是罪孽。
+ 她许诺过要帮助我，而且是在一切方面。
+ 但是我在深山里在她屁股上打了两下，彻底玷污了她的清白。
+ 我写了很长时间交待材料，领导上总说，交待得不彻底，还要继续交待。
+ 所以我以为，我的下半辈子要在交待中度过。
+ 最后陈清扬写了一篇交待材料，没给我看，就交到了人保组。
+ 此后就再没让我们写材料。
+ 不但如此，也不叫我们出斗争差。
+ 不但如此，陈清扬对我也冷淡起来。
+ 我没情没绪地过了一段时间，自己回了内地。
+ 她到底写了什么，我怎么也猜不出来。
+ 从云南回来时我损失了一切东西：我的枪，我的刀，我的工具，只多了一样东西，就是档案袋鼓了起来。
+ 那里面有我自己写的材料，从此不管我到什么地方，人家都能知道我是流氓。
+ 所得的好处是比别人早回城，但是早回来没什么好，还得到京郊插队。
+ 我到云南时，带了很全的工具，桌拿子、小台钳都有。
+ 除了钳工家具，还有一套修表工具。
+ 住在刘大爹后山上时，我用它给人看手表。
+ 虽然空山寂寂，有些马帮却从那里过。
+ 有人让我鉴定走私表，我说值多少就值多少。
+ 当然不是白干。
+ 所以我在山上很活得过。
+ 要是不下来，现在也是万元户。
+ 至于那把双筒猎枪，也是一宝。
+ 原来当地卡宾枪老套筒都不希罕，就是没见过那玩意。
+ 筒子那么粗，又是两个管，我拿了它很能唬人。
+ 要不人家早把我们抢了。
+ 我，特别是刘老爹，人家不会抢，恐怕要把陈清扬抢走。
+ 至于我的刀，老拴在一条牛皮大带上。
+ 牛皮大带又老拴陈清扬腰上。
+ 睡觉做爱都不摘下来。
+ 她觉得带刀很气派。
+ 所以这把刀可以说已经属于陈清扬。
+ 枪和刀我已说过，被人保组要走了。
+ 我的工具下山时就没带下来，就放在山上，准备不顺利时再往山上跑。
+ 回来时行色匆匆，没顾上去拿，因此我成了彻底的穷光蛋。
+ 我对陈清扬说，我怎么也想不出来在最后一篇交待里她写了什么。
+ 她说，现在不能告诉我。
+ 要告诉我这件事，只能等到了分手的时候。
+ 第二天她要回上海，她叫我送她上车站。
+ 陈清扬在各个方面都和我不同。
+ 天亮以后，洗了个冷水澡（没有热水了），她穿戴起来。
+ 从内衣到外衣，她都是一个香喷喷的LADY。
+ 而我从内衣到外衣都是一个地道的土流氓。
+ 无怪人家把她的交待材料抽了出来，不肯抽出我的。
+ 这就是说，她那破裂的处女膜长了起来。
+ 而我呢，根本就没长过那个东西。
+ 除此之外，我还犯了教唆之罪，我们在一起犯了很多错误，既然她不知罪，只好都算在我账上。
+ 我们结了账，走到街上去。
+ 这时我想，她那篇交待材料一定淫秽万分。
+ 看交待材料的人都心硬如铁，水平无比之高，能叫人家看了受不住，那还好得了？
+ 陈清扬说，那篇材料里什么也没写，只有她真实的罪孽。
+ 陈清扬说她真实的罪孽，是指在清平山上。
+ 那时她被架在我的肩上，穿着紧裹住双腿的筒裙，头发低垂下去，直到我的腰际。
+ 天上白云匆匆，深山里只有我们两个人。
+ 我刚在她屁股上打了两下，打得非常之重，火烧火撩的感觉正在飘散。
+ 打过之后我就不管别的事，继续往山上攀登。
+ 陈清扬说，那一刻她感到浑身无力，就瘫软下来，挂在我肩上。
+ 那一刻她觉得如春藤绕树，小鸟依人。
+ 她再也不想理会别的事，而且在那一瞬间把一切都遗忘。
+ 在那一瞬间她爱上了我，而且这件事永远不能改变。
+ 在车站上陈清扬说，这篇材料交上去，团长拿起来就看。
+ 看完了面红耳赤，就像你的小和尚。
+ 后来见过她这篇交待材料的人，一个个都面红耳赤，好像小和尚。
+ 后来人保组的人找了她好几回，让她拿回去重写，但是她说，这是真实情况，一个字都不能改。
+ 人家只好把这个东西放进了我们的档案袋。
+ 陈清扬说，承认了这个，就等于承认了一切罪孽。
+ 在人保组里，人家把各种交待材料拿给她看，就是想让她明白，谁也不这么写交待。
+ 但是她偏要这么写。
+ 她说，她之所以要把这事最后写出来，是因为它比她干过的一切事都坏。
+ 以前她承认过分开双腿，现在又加上，她做这些事是因为她喜欢。
+ 做过这事和喜欢这事大不一样。
+ 前者该当出斗争差，后者就该五马分尸千刀万剐。
+ 但是谁也没权力把我们五马分尸，所以只好把我们放了。
+ 陈清扬告诉我这件事以后，火车就开走了。
+ 以后我再也没见过她。
+
+ Along a coastal road somewhere south of the Yangtze River, a detachment of soldiers, each of them armed with a halberd, was escorting a line of seven prison carts, trudging northwards in the teeth of a bitter wind.
+ In each of the first three carts a single male prisoner was caged, identifiable by his dress as a member of the scholar class.
+ One was a white-haired old man.
+ The other two were men of middle years.
+ The four rear carts were occupied by women, the last of them by a young mother holding a baby girl at her breast.
+ The little girl was crying in a continuous wail which her mother's gentle words of comfort were powerless to console.
+ One of the soldiers marching alongside, irritated by the baby's crying, aimed a mighty kick at the cart.
+ 'Stop it!
+ Shut up!
+ Or I'll really give you something to cry about!'
+ The baby, startled by this sudden violence, cried even louder.
+ Under the eaves of a large house, some hundred yards from the road, a middle-aged scholar was standing with a ten- or eleven-year-old boy at his side.
+ He was evidently affected by this little scene, for a groan escaped his lips and he appeared to be very close to tears.
+ 'Poor creatures!' he murmured to himself.
+ 'Papa,' said the little boy, 'what have they done wrong?'
+ 'What indeed!' said the man, bitterly.
+ 'During these last two days they must have made more than thirty arrests.
+ All our best scholars.
+ And all of them innocents, caught up in the net,' he added in an undertone, for fear that the soldiers might hear him.
+ That girl's only a baby,' said the boy.
+ 'What can she possibly be guilty of?
+ It's very wrong.'
+ 'So you understand that what the Government soldiers do is wrong,' said the man.
+ 'Good for you, my son!'
+ He sighed.
+ 'They are the cleaver and we are the meat.
+ They are the cauldron and we are the deer.'
+ 'You explained "they are the cleaver and we are the meat" the other day, papa,' said the boy.
+ 'It's what they say when people are massacred or beheaded.
+ Like meat or fish being sliced up on the chopping-board.
+ Does "they are the cauldron and we are the deer" mean the same thing?'
+ 'Yes, more or less,' said the man; and since the train of soldiers and prison carts was now fast receding, he took the boy by the hand.
+ 'Let's go indoors now,' he said.
+ 'It's too windy for standing outside.'
+ Indoors the two of them went, and into his study.
+ The man picked up a writing-brush and moistened it on the ink-slab, then, on a sheet of paper, he wrote the character for a deer.
+ 'The deer is a wild animal, but although it is comparatively large, it has a very peaceable nature.
+ It eats only grass and leaves and never harms other animals.
+ So when other animals want to hurt it or to eat it, all it can do is run away.
+ If it can't escape by running away, it gets eaten.'
+ He wrote the characters for 'chasing the deer' on the sheet of paper.
+ 'That's why in ancient times they often used the deer as a symbol of Empire.
+ The common people, who are the subjects of Empire, are gentle and obedient.
+ Like the deer's, it is their lot to be cruelly treated and oppressed.
+ In the History of the Han Dynasty it says "Qin lost the deer and the world went chasing after it".
+ That means that when the Qin Emperor lost control of the Empire, ambitious men rose up everywhere and fought each other to possess it.
+ In the end it was the first Han Emperor who got this big, fat deer by defeating the Tyrant King of Chu.'
+ 'I know,' said the boy.
+ 'In my story-books it says "they chased the deer on the Central Plain".
+ That means they were all fighting each other to become Emperor.'
+ The scholar nodded, pleased with his young son's astuteness.
+ He drew a picture of a cauldron on the sheet of paper.
+ 'In olden times they didn't use a cooking-pot on the stove to cook their food in, they used a three-legged cauldron like this and lit a fire underneath it.
+ When they caught a deer they put it in a cauldron to seethe it.
+ Those ancient Emperors and great ministers were very cruel.
+ If they didn't like somebody, they would pretend that they had committed some crime or other, and then they would put them in a cauldron and boil them.
+ In the Records of an Historian Lin Xiangru says to the King of Qin, "Deceiving Your Majesty was a capital offence.
+ I beg to approach the cauldron."
+ What he meant was, "I deserve to die.
+ Put me in the cauldron and boil me."'
+ 'Often in my story-books I've seen the words "asking about the cauldrons in the Central Plain",' said the boy.
+ 'It seems to mean the same thing as "chasing the deer in the Central Plain".'
+ 'It does,' said the man.
+ 'King Yu of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty that ever was, collected metal from all the nine provinces of the Empire and used it to cast nine great cauldrons with.
+ "Metal" in those days meant bronze.
+ Each of these bronze cauldrons had the name of one of the nine provinces on it and a map showing the mountains and rivers of that province.
+ In later times whoever became master of the Empire automatically became the guardian of these cauldrons.
+ In The Chronicle of Zuo it says that when the Viscount of Chu was reviewing his troops on Zhou territory and the Zhou king sent Prince Man to him with his royal compliments, the Viscount questioned Prince Man about the size and weight of the cauldrons.
+ Of course, as ruler of the whole Empire, only the Zhou king had the right to be guardian of the cauldrons.
+ For a mere Viscount like the ruler of Chu to ask questions about them showed that he was planning to seize the Empire for himself.'
+ 'So "asking about the cauldrons" and "chasing the deer" both mean wanting to be Emperor, ' said the boy.
+ 'And "not knowing who will kill the deer" means not knowing who is going to be Emperor.'
+ 'That's right,' said the man.
+ 'As time went by these expressions came to be applied to other situations as well, but originally they were only used in the sense of wanting to be Emperor.'
+ He sighed.
+ 'For the common people though, the subjects of Empire, our role is to be the deer.
+ It may be uncertain who will kill the deer, but the deer gets killed all right.
+ There's no uncertainty about that.'
+ He walked over to the window and gazed outside.
+ The sky had now turned a leaden hue showing that snow was on its way.
+ He sighed again, 'He must be a cruel God up there.
+ Those hundreds of poor, innocent souls on the roads in this freezing weather.
+ The snow will only add to their sufferings.'
+ Two figures caught his eye, moving along the highway from the south.
+ They walked close together, side by side, each of them wearing a coolie hat and a rain-cape.
+ As they drew nearer, he recognized them with a cry of pleasure.
+ 'It's Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu,' he said to the boy as he hurried out to greet them.
+ 'Zongxi, Yanwu, what good wind blows you hither?' he called out to them.
+ The one he addressed as 'Zongxi' was a somewhat portly man with a plentiful beard covering the lower half of his face.
+ His full name was Huang Zongxi and he, like his host, was a man of Zhejiang Province.
+ The other one, a tall, thin man with a swarthy complexion, was Gu Yanwu, a native of Kunshan in Jiangsu Province.
+ Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu were two of the foremost scholars of their day.
+ Both of them, from patriotic motives, had gone into retirement when the Ming Empire collapsed, being unwilling to take office under a foreign power.
+ Gu Yanwu drew a little closer before replying.
+ 'Liuliang, we have something serious to discuss with you.
+ That's what brings us here today.'
+ Liuliang was the man's name, then—Lü Liuliang.
+ His family had lived for generations in Chongde, a prefecture in the Hangzhou district of Zhejiang Province.
+ Like Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu, to whom you have just been introduced, he is an historical personage, famous among those Southern gentlemen who, during the last days of the Ming dynasty and the early days of the Manchu conquest, buried themselves away on their estates and refused to take part in public life.
+ Lü Liuliang observed the grave expression on his visitors' faces.
+ Knowing of old how unfailingly Gu Yanwu's political judgement was to be trusted, he realized that what the latter had referred to as 'something serious' must be very serious indeed.
+ He clasped his hands and bowed to his guest politely.
+ 'Come inside,' he said.
+ 'Drink a few cups of wine first, to warm yourselves up a bit.'
+ As he ushered them into the study, he gave an order to the boy.
+ 'Baozhong, tell your mother that Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu are here.
+ Ask her to slice a couple of platefuls of that goat's meat pate to go with our wine.'
+ In a minute or two the boy came in again, accompanied by his younger brother.
+ They were carrying three sets of chopsticks and wine-cups which they laid on the study table.
+ An old servant followed them carrying a wine-kettle and balancing some plates of cold meat.
+ Lü Liuliang waited until the two boys and the servant were outside the room and closed the study door.
+ 'Come, my friends, ' he said.
+ 'Wine first.'
+ Huang Zongxi declined gloomily with a brief shake of the head; but Gu Yanwu, helping himself unceremoniously from the wine-kettle, downed half a dozen of the tiny cupfuls in quick succession.
+ 'I suppose your visit has something to do with this Ming History business,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ 'Precisely, ' said Huang Zongxi.
+ Gu Yanwu raised his wine-cup and, in ringing tones, recited the following couplet:
+ The cool wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the bright moon still shines everywhere.
+ 'That's a splendid couplet of yours, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'Whenever I drink wine now, I have to recite it—and do it justice, too,' he added, with a ceremonious flourish of his wine-cup.
+ In spite of Lü Liuliang's patriotic unwillingness to serve, a local official, impressed by what he had heard of Lü's reputation, had once sought to recommend him as a 'hidden talent' meriting a summons to the Manchu Court for suitable employment; but Lü had made it clear that he would die rather than accept such a tones, recited summons, and the matter had been dropped.
+ Some time later, however, when another high-ranking official sent forward his name as a 'distinguished scholar of exceptional merit', Lü realized that his continued refusal would be construed by the Court as an open slight, with fatal consequences for himself and perhaps his family.
+ Accordingly he had had himself tonsured (though not in fact with any intention of becoming a real monk), whereupon the Government officials were finally convinced of his determination and ceased urging him to come out of his retirement.
+ Gu Yanwu's enthusiasm for Lü's somewhat pedestrian couplet sprang from the fact that it contained a hidden message.
+ In Chinese the word for 'cool' is qing (the word chosen by the Manchus for their new 'Chinese' dynasty) and the word for 'bright' is ming (the name of the old Chinese dynasty they had supplanted).
+ So the couplet Gu had recited could be understood to mean: The Qing wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the Ming moon still shines everywhere.
+ In other words, 'I will never bow to the Manchus, however they may threaten and cajole.
+ For me the Empire is still the Ming Empire, whose loyal subject I remain.'
+ Although the poem in which these lines occurred could not be published, they were familiar to all the like-minded scholars of Lü's wide acquaintance, and Huang, hearing them recited now by Gu, responded to the challenge by raising a wine-cup in homage.
+ 'Yes, it is a very good poem,' he said, and drained it off at a gulp.
+ 'Thank you both, but it doesn't deserve your praise,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ Chancing to glance upwards at that moment, Gu Yanwu found his attention caught by a large painting which was hanging on one of the walls.
+ It must have measured near enough four feet from top to bottom and well over three yards horizontally.
+ It was a landscape, so magnificently conceived and boldly executed that he could not forbear a cry of admiration.
+ The sole inscription on this enormous painting was the phrase 'This Lovely Land' written in very large characters at the top.
+ 'From the brushwork I should say this must be Erzhan's work,' he said.
+ 'You are absolutely right,' said Lü.
+ This Erzhan's real name was Zha Shibiao.
+ He was a well-known painter in the late Ming, early Manchu period and a good friend of the three men present.
+ 'How is it that so fine a painting lacks a signature?' said Huang.
+ Lü sighed.
+ The painting had a message, ' he said.
+ 'But you know what a stolid, careful person Erzhan is.
+ He wouldn't sign it and he wouldn't write any inscription.
+ He painted it for me on a sudden impulse when he was staying with me a month or so ago.
+ Why don't you two write a few lines on it?'
+ Gu and Huang got up and went over to examine the painting more closely.
+ It was a picture of the Yangtze, the Great River, rolling majestically eastwards between innumerable peaks, with a suitable garnishing of gnarled pines and strange misshapen rocks: a very beautiful landscape were it not for the all-pervading mist and cloud which seemed calculated to create an oppressive feeling of gloom in anyone looking at it.
+ 'This lovely land under the heel of the barbarian!' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'And we have to swallow our humiliation and go on living in it.
+ It makes my blood boil.
+ Why don't you do an inscription, Liuliang — a poem that will give voice to what Erzhan had in mind to say?'
+ 'Very well,' said Lü Liuliang, and he took the huge scroll carefully down from the wall and spread it out on the desk, while Huang Zongxi set about grinding him some ink.
+ He picked up a writing-brush and for some minutes could be observed muttering to himself in the throes of composition; then, writing straight on to the painting and with pauses only for moistening the brush, he quickly completed the following poem:
+ Is this the same of Great Song's south retreat, This lovely land that hides its face in shame?
+ Or is it after Mount Yai's fateful leap? This lovely land then scarce dared breathe its name.
+ Now that I seem to read the painter's mind, My bitter teardrops match his drizzling rain.
+ Past woes I see reborn in present time: This draws the groans that no gag can restrain.
+ Methinks the painter used poor Gaoyu's tears To mix his colours and his brush to wet.
+ 'This Lovely Land' was commentary enough; No need was there for other words to fret.
+ The blind would see, the lame would walk again, Could we but bring, back Hong Wu's glorious days.
+ With what wild joy we'd look down from each height And see the landscape free of mist and haze!
+ He threw the brush on the floor as he finished and burst into tears.
+ 'It says all there is to say, ' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'Masterly!'
+ 'It lacks subtlety, ' said Lü.
+ 'In no way could you call it a good poem.
+ I merely wanted to put Erzhan's original idea into writing so that anyone looking at the picture in days to come will know what it is about.'
+ 'When China does eventually emerge from this time of darkness, ' said Huang, 'we shall indeed "see the landscape free of mist and haze".
+ When that time comes, we shall gaze at even the poorest, meanest, most barren landscape with a feeling of joyful liberation.
+ Then, indeed, we shall look down with "wild joy . . . from each height"!'
+ 'Your conclusion is excellent, ' said Gu.
+ 'When we do eventually rid our country of this foreign scum, the feeling of relief will be infinitely greater than the somewhat arid satisfaction we get from occasionally uncorking our feelings as we do now.'
+ Huang carefully rolled up the painting.
+ 'You won't be able to hang this up any more now, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'You'd better put it away somewhere safe.
+ If some evil-intentioned person like Wu Zhirong were to set eyes on it, you'd soon have the authorities round asking questions and the consequences could be serious not only for you but probably for Erzhan as well.'
+ That vermin Wu Zhirong!' said Gu Yanwu, smiting the desk with his hand.
+ 'I could willingly tear his flesh with my teeth!'
+ 'You said when you came that you had something serious to discuss with me, ' said Lü, 'yet here we are, like typical scholars, frittering our time away on poetry and painting instead of attending to business.
+ What was it, exactly, that brought you here?'
+ 'It has to do with Erzhan's kinsman Yihuang, ' said Huang.
+ The day before yesterday Gu and I learned that he has now been named in connection with the Ming History affair.'
+ 'Yihuang?' said Lü.
+ 'You mean he's been dragged into it too?'
+ 'I'm afraid so, ' said Huang.
+ 'As soon as we heard, the two of us hurried as quickly as we could to his home in Yuanhua Town, but he wasn't there.
+ They said he'd gone off to visit a friend.
+ In view of the urgency, Yanwu advised the family to make their getaway as soon as it was dark.
+ Then, remembering that Yihuang was a good friend of yours, we thought we'd come and look for him here, '
+ 'No, ' said Lü, 'no, he's not here.
+ I don't know where he can have gone.'
+ 'If he had been here, he would have shown himself by now, ' said Gu.
+ 'I left a poem for him on his study wall.
+ If he goes back home, he will understand when he reads the poem that he is to go and hide.
+ What I'm afraid of, though, is that he may not have heard the news yet and may expose himself unnecessarily outside and get himself arrested.
+ That would be terrible, '
+ 'Practically every scholar in West Zhejiang has fallen victim to this wretched Ming History business,' said Huang.
+ 'The Manchu Court has obviously got it in for us.
+ You are too well known.
+ Gu and I both think that you ought to leave here — for the time being, at any rate.
+ Find somewhere away from here where you can shelter from the storm, '
+ Lü Liuliang looked angry.
+ 'Let the Tartar Emperor have me arrested and carried off to Peking!' he said.
+ 'If I could curse him to his face and get rid of some of the anger that is pent up inside me, I think I should die happy, even though it meant having the flesh cut slice by slice from my bones!'
+ 'I admire your heroic spirit,' said Gu, 'but I don't think there's much likelihood of your meeting the Tartar Emperor face to face.
+ You would die at the hands of miserable slaves.
+ Besides, the Tartar Emperor is still a child who knows nothing about anything.
+ The Government is in the hands of the all-powerful minister Oboi.
+ Huang and I are both of the opinion that Oboi is at the back of this Ming History affair.
+ The reason they are making such a song and dance about it and pursuing it with such ferocity is that he sees in it a means of breaking the spirit of the Southern gentry.'
+ 'I'm sure you are right,' said Lü.
+ 'When the Manchu troops first came inside the Wall, they had pretty much of a free run in the whole of Northern China.
+ It wasn't till they came south that they found themselves running into resistance everywhere.
+ The scholars in particular, as guardians of Chinese culture, have given them endless trouble.
+ So Oboi is using this business to crush the Southern gentry, is he?
+ Humph!
+ What does the poet say?
+ The bush fire cannot burn them out. For next year's spring will see them sprout. —Unless, that is, he plans to wipe out the lot of us!'
+ 'Quite,' said Huang.
+ 'If we are to carry on the struggle against the Tartars, we need anyone who can be of use to stay alive.
+ Indulging in heroics at this juncture might be satisfying, but would be merely falling into their trap.'
+ Lü suddenly understood.
+ It was not only to look for Zha Yihuang that his friends had made their journey to him in the bitter cold.
+ They had come because they wanted to persuade him to escape.
+ They knew how impetuous he was and were afraid that he might throw his life away to no purpose.
+ This was true friendship and he felt grateful for it.
+ 'You give me such good advice, ' he said, 'I can hardly refuse to follow it.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll leave with the family first thing tomorrow.'
+ Huang and Gu were visibly delighted and chorused their approval of his decision, but Lü looked uncertain.
+ 'But where can we go?'
+ The whole world belonged to the Tartars now, it seemed.
+ Not a single patch of land was free of their hated presence.
+ He thought of the poet Tao Yuanming's story about the fisherman who, by following a stream that flowed between flowering peach trees, had stumbled on an earthly paradise—a place where refugees from ancient tyranny had found a haven.
+ 'Ah, Peach Tree Stream,' he murmured, 'if I could but find you!'
+ 'Come,' said Gu, 'even if there were such a place, we cannot, as individuals, opt out altogether.
+ In times like these—'
+ Before he could finish, Lü struck the desk with his hand and jumped to his feet, loudly disclaiming his own weakness, 'You do right to rebuke me, Yanwu.
+ The citizen of a conquered country still has his duty.
+ It's all very well to take temporary refuge, but to live a life of ease in some Peach Tree Haven while millions are suffering under the iron heel of the Tartars would be less than human.
+ I spoke without thinking.'
+ Gu Yanwu smiled.
+ 'I've knocked about a great deal during these last few years,' he said, 'and made friends with an extraordinary variety of people.
+ And wherever I've been, north or south of the River, I've discovered that it isn't only among educated people like ourselves that resistance to the Tartars is to be found.
+ Many of our most ardent patriots are small tradesmen, Yamen runners, or market folk—people belonging to the very lowest ranks of society.
+ If you'd care to join us, the three of us could travel to Yangzhou together.
+ I have a number of contacts there I could introduce you to.
+ What do you think?'
+ 'But that would be wonderful,' said Lü Liuliang delightedly.
+ 'We leave for Yangzhou tomorrow, then.
+ If the two of you will just sit here for a moment, I'll go and tell my wife to start getting things ready.'
+ He hurried off to the inner quarters, but was back in the study again after only a few minutes.
+ 'About this Ming History business,' he said.
+ 'I've heard a good deal of talk about it outside, but you can't believe everything people say; and in any case they conceal a lot of what they do know out of fear.
+ I'm so isolated here, I have no means of finding out the truth.
+ Tell me, how did it all begin?'
+ Gu Yanwu sighed.
+ 'We've all seen this Ming History.
+ There are, inevitably, passages in it which are not very complimentary to the Tartars.
+ It was written by Zhu Guozhen, who, as you know, was a former Chancellor at the Ming Court.
+ When he came to write about the "antics of the Paramount Chief of the Jianzhou tribe", which is how the Ming Court used to refer to the Tartars, it's a bit hard to see how he could have been polite.'
+ Lü nodded: 'I heard somewhere that a member of the Zhuang family of Huzhou paid one of Chancellor Zhu's heirs a thousand taels of silver for the manuscript and published it under his own name— never dreaming, of course, that it would lead to such terrible consequences.'
+ Gu went on to tell him the whole story.
+
+ 北风如刀，满地冰霜。
+ 江南近海滨的一条大路上，一队清兵手执刀枪，押着七辆囚车，冲风冒寒，向北而行。
+ 前面三辆囚车中分别监禁的是三个男子，都作书生打扮，一个是白发老者，两个是中年人。
+ 后面四辆囚车中坐的是女子，最后一辆囚车中是个少妇，怀中抱着个女婴。
+ 女婴啼哭不休。
+ 她母亲温言相呵，女婴只是大哭。
+ 囚车旁一清兵恼了，伸腿在车上踢了一脚，喝道：“再哭，再哭！
+ 老子踢死你！”
+ 那女婴一惊，哭得更加响了。
+ 离开道路数十丈处有座大屋，屋檐下站着一个中年文士，一个十一二岁的小孩。
+ 那文士见到这等情景，不禁长叹一声，眼眶也红了，说道：“可怜，可怜！”
+ 那小孩问道：“爹爹，他们犯了什么罪？”
+ 那文士道：“又犯了什么罪？
+ 昨日和今朝已逮去了三十几人，都是我们浙江有名的读书人，个个都是无辜株连。”
+ 他说到“无辜株连”四子，声音压得甚低，生怕给押囚车的官兵听见了。
+ 那小孩道：“那个小女孩还在吃奶，难道也犯了罪么？
+ 真没道理。”
+ 那文士道：“你懂得官兵没道理，真是好孩子。
+ 哎，人为刀俎，我为鱼肉，人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿！”
+ 那小孩道：“爹，你前几天教过我， ‘人为刀俎，我为鱼肉’，就是给人家斩割屠杀的意思。
+ 人家是切菜刀，是砧板，我们就是鱼和肉。
+ “人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿”这两句话，意思也差不多么？”
+ 那文士道：“正是！”
+ 眼见官兵和囚车已经去远，拉着小孩的手道：“外面风大，我们回屋里去。”
+ 当下父子二人走进书房。
+ 那文士提笔蘸上了墨，在纸上写了个“鹿”字，说道：“鹿这种野兽，虽是庞然大物，性子却极为平和，只吃青草和树叶，从来不伤害别的野兽。
+ 凶猛的野兽要伤它吃它，它只有逃跑，倘若逃不了，那只有给人家吃了。”
+ 又写了“逐鹿”两字，说道：“因此古人常常拿鹿来比喻天下。
+ 世上百姓都温顺善良，只有给人欺压残害的份儿。
+ 《汉书》上说：‘秦失其鹿，天下共逐之。’
+ 那就是说，秦朝失了天下，群雄并起，大家争夺，最后汉高祖打败了楚霸王，就得了这只又肥又大的鹿。”
+ 那小孩点头道：“我明白了。
+ 小说书上说‘逐鹿中原’，就是大家争着要作皇帝的意思。”
+ 那文士甚是喜欢，点了点头，在纸上画了一只鼎的图形，道：“古人煮食，不用灶头锅子，用这样三只脚的鼎，下面烧柴，捉到了鹿，就在鼎里煮来吃。
+ 皇帝和大官都很残忍，心里不喜欢谁，就说他犯了罪，把他放在鼎里活活煮熟。
+ 《史记》中记载蔺相如对秦王说：‘臣知欺大王之罪当诛也，臣请就鼎锅。’
+ 就是说：‘我该死，将我在鼎里烧死了罢！’”
+ 那小孩道：“小说书上又常说‘问鼎中原’，这跟‘逐鹿中原’好像意思差不多。”
+ 那文士道：“不错。
+ 夏禹王收九州之金，铸了九大鼎。
+ 当时所谓的“金”其实是铜。
+ 每一口鼎上铸了九州的名字和山川图形，后世为天下之主的，便保有九鼎。
+ 《左传》上说：‘楚子观兵于周疆。
+ 定王使王孙满劳楚子。
+ 楚子问鼎之大小轻重焉。’
+ 只有天下之主，方能保有九鼎。
+ 楚子只是楚国的诸侯，他问鼎的轻重大小，便是心存不轨，想取周王之位而代之。”
+ 那小孩道：“所以‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’便是想做皇帝。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，就是不知哪一个做成了皇帝。”
+ 那文士道：“正是。
+ 到得后来，‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’，这四个字，也可借用于别处，但原来的出典，是专指做皇帝而言。”
+ 说到这里，叹了口气，道：“咱们做百姓的，总是死路一条。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，只不过未知是谁来杀了这头鹿，这头鹿，却是死定了的。”
+ 他说着走到窗边，向窗外望去， 只见天色沉沉的，似要下雪，叹道：“老天爷何其不仁，数百个无辜之人，在这冰霜遍地的道上行走。
+ 下起雪来，可又多受一番折磨了。”
+ 忽见南边大道上两个人戴着斗笠，并肩而来，走到近处，认出了面貌。
+ 那文士大喜，道：“是你黄伯伯、顾伯伯来了！”
+ 快步迎将出去，叫道：“梨洲兄、亭林兄，哪一阵好风，吹得你二位光临？”
+ 右首一人身形微胖，颏下一部黑须，姓黄名宗羲，字梨洲，浙江余姚人士。
+ 左首一人又高又瘦，面目黝黑，姓顾名炎武，字亭林，江苏昆山人士。
+ 黄顾两人都是当世大儒，明亡之后，心伤国变，隐居不仕，这日连袂来到崇德。
+ 顾炎武走上几步，说道：“晚村兄，有一件要紧的事，特来和你商议。”
+ 这文士姓吕名留良，号晚村，世居浙江府崇德县，也是明末、清初一位极有名的隐士。
+ 他眼见黄顾二人脸色凝重，又知顾炎武向来极富机变，临事镇定，既说是要紧事，自然非同小可， 拱手道：“两位请进去先喝三杯，解解寒气。”
+ 当下请二人进屋，吩咐那小孩道：“葆中，去跟娘说，黄伯伯、顾伯伯到了，先切两盘羊膏来下酒。”
+ 不多时，那小孩吕葆中和兄弟毅中搬出三副杯筷，布在书房桌上。
+ 一名老仆奉上酒菜。
+ 吕留良待三人退出，关上了书房门，说道：“黄兄，顾兄，先喝三杯！”
+ 黄宗羲神色惨淡，摇了摇头。
+ 顾炎武却自斟自饮，一口气连干了六七杯。
+ 吕留良道：“二位此来，可是和‘明史’一案有关吗？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“正是。”
+ 顾炎武举起酒杯，高声吟道：
+ “‘清风虽细难吹我，明月何尝不照人？’
+ 晚村兄，你这两句诗，真是绝唱！
+ 我每逢饮酒，必诵此诗，必浮大白。”
+ 吕留良心怀故国，不肯在清朝做官。
+ 当地大吏仰慕他声名，保荐他为“山林隐逸”，应征赴朝为官，吕留良誓死相拒，大吏不敢再逼。
+ 后来又有一名大官保荐他为“博学鸿儒”，吕留良眼见若再相拒，显是轻侮朝廷，不免有杀身之祸，于是削发为僧，做了假和尚。
+ 地方官员见他意坚，从此不再劝他出山。
+ “清风、明月”这两句诗，讥刺满清，怀念前明， 虽然不敢刊行，但在志同道合的朋辈之间传诵已遍，此刻顾炎武又读了出来。
+ 黄宗羲道：“真是好诗！”
+ 举起酒杯，也喝了一杯。
+ 吕留良道：“两位谬赞了。”
+ 顾炎武一抬头，见到壁上挂着一幅高约五尺，宽约丈许的大画，绘的是一大片山水，笔势纵横，气象雄伟，不禁喝了声采，画上只题了四个大字：“如此江山”， 说道：“看这笔路，当是二瞻先生的丹青了。”
+ 留良道：“正是。”
+ 那“二瞻”姓查，名士标，是明末清初的一位大画家，也和顾黄吕诸人交好。
+ 黄宗羲道：“这等好画，如何却无题跋？”
+ 吕留良叹道：“二瞻先生此画，颇有深意。
+ 只是他为人稳重谨慎，既不落款，亦无题跋。
+ 他上个月在舍间盘桓，一时兴到，画送了我，两位便题上几句如何？”
+ 顾黄二人站起身来，走到画前仔细观看，只见大江浩浩东流，两岸峰峦无数，点缀着奇松怪石，只是画中云气弥漫，山川虽美，却令人一见之下，胸臆间顿生郁积之气。
+ 顾炎武道：“如此江山，沦于夷狄。
+ 我辈忍气吞声，偷生其间，实令人悲愤填膺。
+ 晚村兄何不便题诗一首，将二瞻先生之意，表而出之？”
+ 吕留良道：“好！”
+ 当即取下画来，平铺于桌。
+ 黄宗羲研起了墨。
+ 吕留良提笔沉吟半晌，便在画上振笔直书。
+ 顷刻诗成，诗云：
+ “ 其为宋之南渡耶？ 如此江山真可耻。
+ 其为崖山以后耶？ 如此江山不忍视。
+ 吾今始悟作画意， 痛哭流涕有若是。
+ 以今视昔昔犹今， 吞声不用枚衔嘴。
+ 画将皋羽西台泪， 研入丹青提笔泚。
+ 所以有画无诗文， 诗文尽在四字里。
+ 尝谓生逢洪武初，如瞽忽瞳跛可履。
+ 山川开霁故璧完，何处登临不狂喜？”
+ 书完，掷笔于地，不禁泪下。
+ 顾炎武道：“痛快淋漓，真是绝妙好辞。”
+ 吕留良道：“这诗殊无含蓄，算不得好，也只是将二瞻先生之原意写了出来，好教观画之人得知。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“何日故国重光，那时‘山川开霁故璧完’，纵然穷山恶水，也令人观之大畅胸怀，真所谓‘何处登临不狂喜’ 了！”
+ 顾炎武道：“此诗结得甚妙！
+ 终有一日驱除胡虏，还我大汉河山，比之徒抒悲愤，更加令人气壮。”
+ 黄宗羲慢慢将画卷了起来，说道：“这画是挂不得了，晚村兄得须妥为收藏才是。
+ 倘若给吴之荣之类的奸人见到，官府查究起来，晚村兄固然麻烦，还牵连了二瞻先生。”
+ 顾炎武拍桌骂道：“吴之荣这狗贼，我真恨不得生食其肉。”
+ 吕留良道：“二位枉顾，说道有件要紧事。
+ 我辈书生积习，作诗题画，却搁下了正事。
+ 不知究竟如何？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“我二人来此，乃是为了二瞻先生的那位本家伊璜先生。
+ 小弟和顾兄前日得到讯息，原来这场‘明史’大案，竟将伊璜先生也牵连在内。”
+ 吕留良惊道：“伊璜兄也受了牵连？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 我二人前日晚上匆匆赶到海宁袁花镇，伊璜先生并不在家，说是出外访友去了。
+ 炎武兄眼见事势紧急，忙瞩伊璜先生家人连夜躲避；想起伊璜先生和晚村兄交好，特来探访。”
+ 吕留良道：“他…… 他却没有来。
+ 不知到了何处。”
+ 顾炎武道：“他如在府上，这会儿自已出来相见。
+ 我已在他的书房的墙壁上提诗一首，他若归家，自然明白，知所趋避，怕的是不知讯息，在外露面，给公人拿住，那可糟了。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“这‘明史’一案，令我浙西名士几乎尽遭毒手。
+ 清廷之意甚恶，晚村兄名头太大，亭林兄和小弟之意，要劝晚村兄暂且离家远游，避一避风头。”
+ 吕留良气愤道：“清廷皇帝倘若将我捉到北京，拼着千刀万剐，好歹也要痛骂他一场，出了胸中这口恶气，才痛痛快快的就死。”
+ 顾炎武道：“晚村兄豪气干云，令人好生敬佩。
+ 怕的是见不到鞑子皇帝，却死于一般的下贱奴才手里。
+ 再说，鞑子皇帝只是个小孩子，什么也不懂，朝政大权，尽操于权臣鳌拜之手。
+ 兄弟和梨洲兄推想，这次‘明史’一案所以如此大张旗鼓，雷厉风行，当是鳌拜意欲挫折我江南士人之气。”
+ 吕留良道：“两位所见甚是。
+ 清兵入关以来，在江北横行无阻，一到江南，却处处遇到反抗，尤其读书人知道华夷之防，不断跟他们捣乱。
+ 鳌拜乘此机会，对我江南士子大加镇压。
+ 哼，野火烧不尽，春风吹又生，除非他把咱们江南读书人杀得干干净净。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 因此咱们要留着有用之身，和鞑子周旋到底，倘若逞了一时血气之勇，反是堕入鞑子的算中了。”
+ 吕留良登时省悟，黄顾二人冒寒枉顾，一来固是寻觅查伊璜，二来是劝自己出避，生怕自己一时按奈不住，枉自送了性命，良友苦心，实深感激，说道：“二位金石良言，兄弟那敢不遵？
+ 明日一早，兄弟全家便出去避一避。”
+ 顾黄二人大喜，齐声道：“自该如此。”
+ 吕留良沉吟道：“却不知避向何处才好？”
+ 只觉天涯茫茫，到处是鞑子的天下，真无一片干净土地，沉吟道：“桃源何处，可避暴秦？
+ 桃源何处，可避暴秦？”
+ 顾炎武道：“当今之世，便真有桃源乐土，咱们也不能独善其身，去躲了起来……”
+ 吕留良不等他辞毕，拍案而起，大声道：“亭林兄此言责备得是。
+ 国家兴亡，匹夫有责，暂时避祸则可，但若去躲在桃花源里，逍遥自在，忍令亿万百姓在鞑子铁蹄下受苦，于心何安？
+ 兄弟失言了。”
+ 顾炎武微笑道：“兄弟近年浪迹江湖，着实结交了不少朋友。
+ 大江南北，见闻所及，不但读书人反对鞑子，而贩夫走卒、屠沽市井之中，也到处有热血满腔的豪杰。
+ 晚村兄要是有意，咱三人结伴同去扬州，兄弟给你引见几位同道中人如何？”
+ 吕留良大喜，道：“妙极，妙极！
+ 咱们明日便去扬州，二位少坐，兄弟去告知拙荆，让她收拾收拾。”
+ 说着匆匆入内。
+ 不多时吕留良回到书房，说道：“‘明史’一案，外间虽传说纷纷，但一来传闻未必确实，二来说话之人又顾忌甚多，不敢尽言。
+ 兄弟独处蜗居，未知其详，到底是何起因？”
+ 顾炎武叹了口气，道：“这部明史，咱们大家都是看过的了，其中对鞑子不大恭敬，那也是有的。
+ 此书本是出于我大明朱国桢相国之手，说到关外建州卫之事，又如何会对鞑子客气？”
+ 吕留良点头道：“听说湖州庄家花了几千两银子，从朱相国后人手中将明史原稿买了来，以己名刊行，不想竟然酿此大祸。”
+ 顾炎武道：“此中详情，兄弟倒曾打听明白。”
+ 于是将“明史案”的前因后果，原本说出来。
+
+ When Old Hai asked what he had been doing that day, Trinket told him that he had been helping supervise the confiscation of Oboi's estate.
+ He concluded his account—which of course omitted any mention of the dagger and various other valuables that he had pocketed for himself—by telling him about the two copies of the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections that had been discovered in Oboi's house.
+ The old eunuch jumped up in surprise.
+ 'Did you say there were two copies at Oboi's place?'
+ 'Yes,' said Trinket.
+ 'We were told to look for them by the Empress Dowager; otherwise I could have brought them to you without anyone knowing.'
+ Old Hai's face fell, but he soon recovered his composure.
+ 'Hm, in the Empress Dowager's hands now, are they?' he said grimly.
+ 'Well, it could be worse.'
+ Shortly after this their evening meal was brought in from the Imperial kitchens.
+ After eating barely half a bowl of rice, the old eunuch sat back, turned up his pale, unseeing eyes towards the ceiling, and appeared to be lost in thought.
+ When he had finished his own meal, Trinket decided to get a little sleep in before going to his midnight assignation with the maid-in-waiting.
+ Not wishing to disturb the old eunuch, who was still sitting motionless in his chair, he slipped over to his bed, lay down on it fully clothed, and was soon asleep.
+ After sleeping fitfully for what must have been several hours, he got up silently, stuffed the box of cakes inside his breast pocket,and made his way on tiptoe across the room, pausing at each step for fear the old eunuch might waken.
+ Then, slowly and gently, he slid back the door-bar and opened one of the leaves of the door.
+ At that very moment he heard the old eunuch's voice calling out from behind him.
+ 'Laurie, where are you going?'
+ 'I'm . . . I'm going out for a piss.'
+ 'Why can't you piss in the pot?'
+ 'I can't get to sleep,' said Trinket.
+ 'I thought I'd walk around in the garden for a bit.'
+ No point in standing there talking, he thought; better get off quickly, before the Old Devil could stop him.
+ But just as his foot crossed the threshold, he felt a tightening around the throat.
+ 'Ow!' he hollered.
+ The old eunuch had him by the collar and was propelling him back into the room.
+ 'Damn!' thought Trinket, 'Damn!' as the old man threw him down on the bed.
+ 'The Old Devil knows I want to go and see that little maid and now he's going to stop me.'
+ 'Is this to test my reactions, Goong-goong?' he said, forcing a laugh.
+ 'It's a long time since you've taught me any kungfu.
+ What do you call that grip?'
+ 'Catching a Turtle in a Jar, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Little turtle!'
+ 'Turtle yourself!' thought Trinket, but didn't dare say it out loud.
+ His eyes were darting all round him, looking for some means of escape; but the old eunuch sat himself down beside him on the bed and began addressing him in a low, almost mournful voice.
+ 'You're bold but not careless,' he said.
+ 'You're a sharp, intelligent lad.
+ You haven't shown much willingness to exert yourself, but if I could have taken you in hand and knocked you into some sort of shape, you might have made quite a promising little fighter.
+ It seems such a pity.'
+ 'What does, Goong-goong?'
+ Trinket asked.
+ 'What seems a pity?'
+ The old eunuch ignored his question and heaved a sigh.
+ After a pause he said: 'Your Peking accent is almost perfect now.
+ If your voice had sounded like this a few months ago, without a trace of the Yangzhou twang in it, I might have been taken in.'
+ Shock raised the fine hairs on Trinket's body.
+ An uncontrollable shivering took possession of him and his teeth began chattering.
+ Nevertheless he managed a nervous laugh.
+ 'G-g-goong-goong, you're speaking very—ha ha!—s-strangely tonight.'
+ The old eunuch heaved another sigh.
+ 'How old are you, child?'
+ He was speaking so calmly that Trinket's terror was somewhat allayed.
+ 'About fourteen, I think.'
+ 'If you're thirteen, you're thirteen; if you're fourteen, you're fourteen.
+ What do you mean, you "think"?'
+ 'My mother's not sure herself,' said Trinket.
+ 'I can't say exactly.'
+ This was true.
+ His mother had always been vague when asked about his age.
+ The old eunuch nodded and coughed for a bit.
+ 'A few years ago I overtaxed my body in some way while I was training.
+ It brought on this cough which just seems to get worse and worse.
+ This last year I've begun to realize there's no hope for me.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know,' said Trinket, not quite sure where this conversation was heading.
+ 'I thought your cough was getting a bit better lately.'
+ 'Better?' said the old eunuch shaking his head.
+ 'It's not the least bit better.
+ I've got a terrible pain in my chest all the time.
+ What would you know about it?'
+ 'What's it like at the moment?' said Trinket.
+ 'Would you like me to get you some of your medicine?'
+ Again the old man sighed.
+ 'I've already lost my eyesight.
+ Medicine has to be taken in the proper doses.'
+ Trinket almost stopped breathing.
+ Did this mean that the Old Devil had guessed about that as well?
+ 'You've got a lucky streak,' the old eunuch continued.
+ 'Getting yourself into the Emperor's graces like that—it could have been very useful.
+ You haven't been purified, of course, but that's no problem.
+ I could have done the cutting for you.
+ Ah, it's a pity.
+ Too late.
+ Just too late.'
+ Trinket had no idea what 'purified' meant; but everything the old eunuch was saying tonight seemed to have something odd about it.
+ 'Goong-goong,' he said, 'it's very late.
+ Shouldn't you be getting some sleep?'
+ 'Sleep?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Sleep?
+ There's plenty of sleeping to come: sleeping all day, sleeping all night, sleeping and never waking up again.
+ No more getting up in the morning, no more pains in the chest, no more coughing.
+ What do you think, boy?
+ Don't you think it would be nice?'
+ Trinket was too frightened to answer.
+ Tell me, boy,' said the old eunuch, 'who else is there besides you in your family?'
+ The question was straightforward enough and seemed to have been asked without sinister intent, yet Trinket did not know how to answer it.
+ He hadn't the faintest idea what family the late Laurie had had and feared that almost any answer he gave was likely to betray his ignorance; yet he had to say something.
+ He settled for a modified version of the truth, hoping that Old Hai himself knew nothing about Laurie's family.
+ 'My mother's the only one at home,' he said.
+ 'What's happened to the rest of the family during these past few years, I'd rather not say.'
+ 'Only a mother,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'And what word do you use for "mother" in the Fujian dialect?'
+ Here was another surprise for Trinket.
+ 'Could the real Laurie have been a Fujianese?' he wondered.
+ 'I thought he said just now that I used to have a Yangzhou accent.
+ Perhaps . . . perhaps he does know that I blinded him.'
+ Some seconds elapsed while his brain raced through a number of possibilities.
+ His final response was a lame one.
+ 'I... I—why do you ask?'
+ There was another sigh from the old eunuch.
+ 'So young and yet so wicked!
+ I wonder where you get it from.
+ Who do you most resemble, your father or your mother?'
+ 'I don't think I'm like anyone,' said Trinket.
+ 'Anyway, I'm not all that bad.
+ I may not be very good, but I don't think I'm wicked.'
+ 'I haven't always been a eunuch,' the old man said after a few more coughs.
+ 'I was already a grown man when I was purified.'
+ Trinket was horrified.
+ 'So that's what being "purified" means: having your piss-pipe and the other bits cut off.
+ I hope he doesn't think he's going to purify me.
+ Holy ding-a-ling dongs!'
+ But the old man's thoughts were on another track.
+ 'I had a son once,' he said.
+ 'Unfortunately he died when he was only eight years old.
+ If he'd lived, I might have had a grandson today of about your age.
+ Tell me, is that Whiskers Mao your father?'
+ 'No.
+ No, he's not.
+ Hot-piece momma, of course he's not!'
+ 'I didn't think he was,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'If you were my son and you were trapped here in the Palace, I would find the means of getting you out somehow, whatever the danger.'
+ Trinket forced a smile.
+ 'Pity you're not my father,' he said.
+ 'I could do with a nice, kind father like you.'
+ 'Those two kinds of Martial Art I was teaching you, the Greater Catch-Can and the Merciful Guanyin,' said the old eunuch, '—I'd only started you on them: you couldn't be said to have more than a smattering of either.'
+ 'You ought to teach me them properly, Goong-goong,' said Trinket.
+ 'You're a world champion.
+ You ought to have someone to carry on the tradition when you're gone.
+ Teach me, so that one day I can make you famous: that's what you ought to do.'
+ The old man shook his head.
+ 'I'm not a "world champion".
+ There are any number of kungfu Masters in the world as highly qualified as I am.
+ In any case, you couldn't master my two kinds of kungfu if you spent a whole lifetime studying them.'
+ After a moment he said: 'Put your fingers on your belly about three inches to the left of your navel and press.
+ Hard.
+ Tell me what you feel.'
+ Trinket did as he said.
+ A pain shot through his vitals, so intense that he cried out loud.
+ He found himself panting, and the sweat stood out on his brow.
+ As a matter of fact, for several weeks now he had from time to time been conscious of a slight pain in his left side which he put down to indigestion.
+ Since it had invariably gone away after a bit, he had not paid it much attention.
+ He had certainly never imagined that pressure on the source of this pain could produce such agony.
+ 'Interesting, isn't it!' said the old eunuch with ill-disguised satisfaction.
+ Trinket cursed him inwardly: 'Hateful Old Devil!
+ Stinking Old Turtle!'
+ But all he said was: 'It hurts a bit.
+ I wouldn't have said it was interesting exactly.'
+ 'Every morning when they deliver our food from the kitchens, you're still not back from gambling with your friends or wrestling with the Emperor, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'I noticed some time ago that the soup they serve is in need of seasoning, so every day I've been getting out one of the little bottles from my medicine chest and tipping a little of the powder in the soup to give it a bit of flavour.
+ Only a tiny bit.
+ Too much of the poison would have too obvious an effect.
+ A smart lad like you doesn't miss much; but as I had been careful never to take soup myself anyway, you didn't suspect anything.'
+ Trinket could feel his skin crawling.
+ 'But. . . but...
+ I thought you didn't like soup,' he said.
+ 'You said it made you cough.'
+ 'I'm very fond of soup as a matter of fact,' said the old eunuch, 'but when the soup's poisoned, even if there's only a minute amount of poison in it, the effect of drinking it day after day could in the end become a little dangerous, don't you think?'
+ 'I should say it could!' said Trinket indignantly.
+ 'You think of everything, Goong-goong, don't you!'
+ 'Oh, I don't know, ' said the old eunuch with a sigh.
+ 'I'd originally been planning to let "you take the poison for about three months and then set you free so that it would have a nice long time to work on you.
+ To start with you'd just have about half-an-hour's pain every day, not very severe.
+ Then, as time went by, it would get gradually worse and the periods when you felt it would get longer.
+ After about a year you would be in pain continuously, night and day, and the pain would get so terrible that in the end you would be dashing your head against walls and tearing the flesh of your arms and legs with your teeth, '
+ He sighed again.
+ 'Unfortunately my health is getting so bad that I doubt if I can wait that long.
+ Now then, no one else has an antidote for this poison but me, so why don't you be a good little boy and tell me who you are working for?
+ Who was it that put you up to blinding me?
+ If you will give me an honest answer to that question, I promise to give you the antidote this minute. '
+ The question was unanswerable because there was no such person; but Trinket, though young, was not so naive as to believe that the old eunuch would spare his life even if he answered it.
+ 'The person I'm working for?' he said.
+ 'You'd get a nasty shock if I told you.
+ So you knew all along that I wasn't Laurie and you thought this trick up to make me suffer?
+ Well—ha ha ha!— you're the one who's been tricked.
+ Ha ha ha!
+ You've been had good and proper.'
+ He kept up the artificial laughter in order to cover up the wriggling of his body.
+ While he was talking and laughing he had managed to draw up his right leg so that he could get his hand on the dagger in his boot and draw it from its sheath.
+ Any slight sound that this operation might have given rise to was masked by his idiotic cachinnation.
+ 'What do you mean?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'How have I been had?'
+ Trinket had to go on talking in order to keep the old man's attention distracted.
+ Any old nonsense would do.
+ 'I could tell there was something funny about that soup the very first day I tasted it, ' he said.
+ 'I asked Misty about it and he told me you were trying to poison me . . .'
+ The old eunuch was clearly startled by this.
+ 'The Emperor knew this?'
+ 'Of course he did, ' said Trinket, '—though I didn't realize at the time that he was the Emperor.
+ Misty advised me not to let on that I knew.
+ He said pretend to drink the soup but don't swallow it; then afterwards you can spit it back in the bowl.
+ So that's what I did.
+ It wasn't very difficult to fool you because you couldn't see.'
+ All the while he was saying this, he was raising the dagger inch by inch and aiming it at the pit of the old man's stomach.
+ He knew that in order to succeed he would have to kill him instantly.
+ Even a correctly aimed blow, if it did not kill him at once, would cost him his own life.
+ The old eunuch wasn't sure whether to believe him or not.
+ 'If you didn't drink the soup, ' he said, 'how is it that it hurt so badly when you pressed your belly?'
+ Trinket affected a sigh.
+ 'I suppose it's because I didn't rinse my mouth after spitting it out.
+ Some of the poison must still have got into my stomach.'
+ While he was saying this he managed to move the dagger a few inches nearer.
+ 'Good!' said the old eunuch.
+ The important thing is, there's no cure; so though you've had a lighter dose, all that means is that the poison will act more slowly and you will have that much longer to suffer.'
+ Trinket began laughing loudly again.
+ Under cover of his laughter he made a tremendous stab, concentrating all the strength of his body into his right arm and aiming at a place he had chosen just beneath the old man's ribs.
+ He had worked out in advance that, after driving the dagger home, he would roll towards the corner of the bed, crawl out from under the foot of it, and make for the still open door.
+ But at that very moment the old eunuch sensed a slight coldness of the air caused by the proximity of the metal.
+ Surprised but, because of a lifetime of training, never totally off his guard, he raised his left hand almost automatically to fend off an attack—though of what nature, he had no time to think—while his right hand followed with a blow of such giant force that it knocked Trinket flying through the papered lattice of the bedside window and into the garden outside.
+ Almost at the same time the old eunuch became aware of an agonizing pain in his left hand.
+ The dagger had severed all four of the fingers on it.
+ The old man calculated that the blow must have killed Trinket instantaneously and that he was probably already dead when he crashed through the window.
+ 'Pity!' he muttered to himself, smiling grimly.
+ The little devil didn't deserve to die so quickly.'
+ When he had recovered somewhat from the shock of his own gruesome accident, he went to his medicine chest and got out some wound-powder to put on the bleeding stumps; then he tore a strip off the bed-sheet to bind up his left hand with, continuing to mutter to himself as he did so.
+ 'Where on earth could the little devil have got hold of a blade like that?
+ I've never come across anything so sharp in my life before.'
+ Forcing himself to endure the excruciating pain in his hand, he jumped through the broken window into the garden, groped his way to the place where he thought Trinket must have fallen, and began feeling around for this extraordinary weapon; but though he searched for a long time, he could not find it.
+ Because he had come to know the garden so well while he still had his sight, he retained a clear memory of where each rock and shrub was situated.
+ According to his calculation, Trinket must have fallen into the bed of peonies.
+ He could understand that the weapon might have flown from his hand and be lying at quite some distance away, but where was the body?
+ The blow that Trinket sustained had knocked all the air out of his lungs and caused an agonizing pain in his chest, coupled with the feeling that every bone in his body had been broken.
+ When he hit the ground, he very nearly fainted; but somewhere at the back of his fading consciousness there was an awareness that to lie where he was would mean certain death, for the old eunuch had not been killed and would certainly come after him to finish him off.
+ Making a supreme effort, he struggled to his feet, but after staggering no more than a couple of steps, his legs gave way and he collapsed once more onto the ground.
+ Fortunately the place where he had fallen was the beginning of a fairly steep declivity in an open part of the garden, so instead of lying where he fell, he began rolling downwards.
+ If the old eunuch had not been so distracted by pain, he would probably have heard something; though so certain was he that the boy was dead, that even if he had, he would probably have attributed the sound to some other cause.
+ The slope was a long one and Trinket must have rolled a dozen yards or more before his body came to rest.
+ He struggled to his feet and began walking again in the same direction.
+ This time, though his whole body hurt unbearably, he did not fall.
+ Incredibly, he was still holding the dagger tightly in his hand.
+ 'I think I must have a lucky streak,' he said to himself when he became aware of this.
+ 'After being knocked through the window and rolling down the bank and everything, it's a miracle I didn't cut myself.'
+ He stopped for a moment to put the dagger back inside his boot.
+ 'Well, the cat's really out of the bag now, ' he thought.
+ 'If the Old Devil knows I'm not what I'm pretending to be, I can't stay in the Palace a moment longer.
+ Pity about that half a million taels though.
+ Fancy winning all that money in a single go and then losing the lot in an evening!
+ That's what I call real style!'
+ A few minutes before this he had been nearly dead, but now, after a little boasting, he was on top of the world.
+ 'That little maid will be wondering what's become of me,' he thought.
+ 'I can't get out of the Palace anyway in the middle of the night, so I might as well still go and see her. —Aiyo!'
+ Fishing it out from inside his gown, he found that the box of honey-cakes had, as he feared, been squashed completely flat.
+ 'Better take this as evidence, in case she's feeling cross because I've kept her waiting so long, ' he thought.
+ 'I'll tell her I had a fall.
+ Ha!
+ Some fall!
+ It's turned the cakes into a cow-pat.'
+ He sampled a small piece of the sticky mess.
+ 'Hot-piece tamardy, this is really nice!
+ Have you ever eaten a piece of cow-pat?
+ Do try some, it's delicious!'
+ As he started walking again, this time in the direction of the Hall of Maternal Tranquillity, the Empress Dowager's compound, he was feeling so cock-a-hoop that he was stepping out at quite a pace.
+ The result was a most frightful pain in his chest which at once slowed him down to a shuffle.
+ When he reached his goal, however, he found the gate tightly closed.
+ 'Damn!' he thought.
+ 'I didn't think this one would be shut.
+ Now how the devil am I going to get inside?'
+ Just as he was wondering what to do next, the gate suddenly opened a bit and a girl's head popped out which he recognized in the moonlight as Blossom's.
+ She smiled at him and beckoned to him to come in.
+ He complied happily, and when he had slipped inside, she fastened the gate after him.
+ 'I thought I'd better wait here in case you had trouble getting in,' she said softly in his ear.
+ 'I've been waiting ever such a long time.'
+ 'I know, I'm late,' Trinket whispered back, 'but I had a fall on the way.
+ I tripped over a horrible old turtle.'
+ 'I didn't know there were any in the Palace,' said Blossom.
+ 'I've never seen one.
+ Did you hurt yourself?'
+ The effort of getting to this appointment had absorbed so much of his attention that it had almost taken his mind off the pain; but as soon as she asked the question he became aware that he was hurting dreadfully all over and groaned in spite of himself.
+ Blossom seized his hand in her own.
+ 'Where does it hurt?' she asked in an anxious whisper.
+ As Trinket was on the point of answering her, a shadow appeared on the ground and he looked up to see a dark figure like a great eagle floating down from the top of the garden wall and softly alighting at the foot of it.
+ He was so startled that he almost called out.
+ While he watched, the monstrous bird-shape transformed itself into a much taller, thinner shape which he could see now, in the light of the moon, was no eagle but a man—a tall, thin man with hunched shoulders and a rounded back: none other, in fact, than Old Hai the eunuch.
+ Blossom, who had her face towards Trinket and away from the wall, had not seen this apparition; but when Trinket fell silent and turned to stare at something with a startled look on his face, she turned to look as well.
+ The next moment Trinket had his hand over her mouth, holding it perhaps rather tighter than was necessary for fear she might cry out.
+ At the same time he signalled to her with his other hand to keep quiet.
+ When she nodded to show that she understood, he slowly withdrew the hand from her mouth, though all the time keeping his eyes on the old eunuch.
+ Old Hai had now straightened himself up and was standing rather stiffly with his head cocked to one side as if listening for something.
+ After a while he began, very slowly, to move forwards.
+ Trinket breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw that he was not walking in his direction.
+ 'Who'd have thought the Old Turtle would be able to follow me all the way here in spite of being blind?' he thought.
+ 'Still, provided neither of us makes any noise, he isn't likely to find me.'
+ After taking a few steps forwards, the old eunuch made a sudden leap sideways which brought him right in front of Trinket; then, shooting out his right arm, he grasped Blossom round the neck.
+ She tried to scream, but because of the pressure on her throat, it was only a little smothered sound that came out.
+ 'It's me he's after, not this girl,' thought Trinket.
+ 'I don't think he'll kill her.'
+ He was only a couple of feet away from the old man and so scared that he was nearly wetting himself, but he dared not budge an inch, knowing that if he made the slightest movement he would be heard.
+ 'Don't make any noise,' the old eunuch hissed to Blossom.
+ 'If you don't do as I tell you, I shall strangle you.
+ Now tell me, but keep your voice down, who are you?'
+ 'I. . . I. . .' Blossom began.
+ The old eunuch ran his hand over her head, then over her face.
+ ''You're one of the maids-in-waiting, aren't you?' he said.
+ 'Yes,' said Blossom in a little voice.
+ 'So what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?'
+ 'I'm just. . . just playing,' said Blossom.
+ A faint smile appeared on the face of the old eunuch which the dim moonlight transformed into a ghastly leer.
+ 'Who is here with you?'
+ He cocked his head to listen.
+ What had enabled him to tell where Blossom was standing was the fact that she did not know how to control her breathing and had been breathing rather heavily because she was frightened.
+ He hadn't been aware of Trinket's presence because Trinket's breathing was more restrained.
+ When Trinket heard the old eunuch's question, he wanted to signal to Blossom not to let on that he was there, but dared not risk even moving his hand.
+ Fortunately Blossom's quick wits had already sensed that the old man was blind and she said 'no one' without needing to be told.
+ 'Where are the Empress Dowager's rooms?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Take me to her!'
+ 'Goong-goong, please, ' said Blossom pleadingly, 'please don't tell her.
+ I... I promise never to do this again.'
+ She assumed that he intended to report her for being caught wandering outside at an unauthorized hour.
+ 'No use bleating,' said the old eunuch.
+ Take me to her, or I'll strangle you this minute.'
+ He increased the pressure on her throat so that she could no longer breathe and her face became swollen and purple.
+ Trinket was so frightened that he lost control of his bladder and piss soaked through his trousers and began falling drip after drip on the ground.
+ Fortunately the faint sound it made was not detected by the old eunuch; or if it was, he must have assumed that it was the little maid of honour who was wetting herself.
+ He released the pressure on her throat.
+ 'Come on!
+ Take me there!'
+ Blossom had no choice but to obey, but before they went, she shot a look full of tenderness at Trinket which seemed to say, 'Go, quickly!
+ I promise I won't give you away.'
+ 'That's the Empress Dowager's bedroom, over there,' she whispered, temporarily forgetting that the old man couldn't see.
+ She began walking, very slowly, in the direction she had indicated.
+ The old eunuch walked beside her, his right hand still encircling her throat.
+ 'The Old Devil's going to tell the Empress Dowager about me,' thought Trinket.
+ 'He'll tell her everything—how I killed Laurie and dressed up in his clothes, and how I made him blind, and he'll ask her to have me arrested.
+ But I wonder why he doesn't tell the Emperor?
+ I suppose it's because he knows the Emperor likes me and is afraid he might not do anything about it.
+ Oh help!
+ What am I going to do?
+ I have to get out of this Palace as quickly as possible.
+ Aiyo, I can't though!
+ The gates will have been shut long ago.
+ It won't be long now before the Empress Dowager gives orders for my arrest.
+ I shan't get away then, even if I grow wings.'
+
+ 海老公问起今日做了什么事，韦小宝说了到鳌拜家中抄家，至于吞没珍宝、金银、匕首等事，自然绝口不提，最后道：“太后命我到鳌拜家里拿两部《四十二章经》……”
+ 海老公突然站起，问道：“鳌拜家有两部《四十二章经》？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊。
+ 是太后和皇上吩咐去取的，否则的话，我拿来给了你，别人也未必知道。”
+ 海老公脸色阴沉，哼了一声，冷冷的道：“落入了太后手里啦，很好，很好！”
+ 待会厨房中送了饭来，海老公只吃了小半碗便不吃了，翻着一双无神的白眼，仰起了头只是想心事。
+ 韦小宝吃完饭，心想我先睡一会，到三更时分再去和那小宫女说话玩儿，见海老公呆呆的坐着不动，便和衣上床而睡。
+ 他迷迷糊糊的睡了一会，悄悄起身，把那盒蜜饯糕饼揣在怀里，生怕惊醒海老公，慢慢一步步的蹑足而出，走到门边，轻轻拔开了门闩，再轻轻打开了一扇门，突然听得海老公问道：“小桂子，你去哪里？”
+ 韦小宝一惊，说道：“我…… 我小便去。”
+ 海老公道：“干么不在屋里小便？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我睡不着，到花园里走走。”
+ 生怕海老公阻拦，也不多说，拔步往外便走，左足刚踏出一步，只觉后领一紧，已给海老公抓住，提了回来。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声，尖叫了出来，当下便有个念头：“糟糕，糟糕，老乌龟知道我要去见那小宫女，不许我去。”
+ 念头还未转完，已给海老公摔在床上。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“公公，你试我武功么？
+ 好几天没教我功夫了，这一抓是什么招式？”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“这叫做‘瓮中抓鳖’，手到擒来。
+ 鳖便是甲鱼，捉你这只小甲鱼。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“老甲鱼捉小甲鱼！”
+ 可是毕竟不敢说出口，眼珠骨溜溜的乱转，寻思脱身之计。
+ 海老公坐在他床沿上，轻轻的道：“你胆大心细，聪明伶俐，学武虽然不肯踏实，但如果由我来好好琢磨琢磨，也可以算得是可造之材，可惜啊可惜。”
+ 韦小宝问道：“公公，可惜什么？”
+ 海老公不答，只叹了口气，过了半晌，说道：“你的京片子学得也差不多了。
+ 几个月之前，倘若就会说这样的话，不带丝毫扬州腔调，倒也不容易发觉。”
+ 韦小宝大吃一惊，霎时之间全身寒毛直竖，忍不住身子发抖，牙关轻轻相击，强笑道：“公公，你…… 你今儿晚上的说话，真是…… 嘻嘻…… 真是奇怪。”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，问道：“孩子，你今年几岁啦？”
+ 韦小宝听他语气甚和，惊惧之情渐减，道：“我…… 我是十四岁罢。”
+ 海老公道：“十三岁就十三岁，十四岁就十四岁，为什么是‘十四岁罢？’”
+ 韦小宝道：“我妈妈也记不大清楚，我自己可不知道。”
+ 这一句倒是真话，他妈妈胡里胡涂，小宝到底几岁，向来说不大准。
+ 海老公点了点头，咳嗽了几声，道：“前几年练功夫，练得走了火，惹上了这咳嗽的毛病，越咳越厉害，近年来自己知道是不大成的了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我…… 我觉得你近来…… 近来咳得好了些。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“好什么？
+ 一点也没好。
+ 我胸口痛得好厉害，你又怎知道？”
+ 韦小宝道：“现下怎样？
+ 要不要我拿些药给你吃？”
+ 海老公叹道：“眼睛瞧不见，药是不能乱服的了。”
+ 韦小宝大气也不敢透，不知他说这些话是什么用意。
+ 海老公又道：“你机缘挺好，巴结上了皇上，本来嘛，也可以有一番大大的作为。
+ 你没净身，我给你净了也不打紧，只不过，唉，迟了，迟了。”
+ 韦小宝不懂“净身”是什么意思，只觉他今晚话说的语气说不出的古怪，轻声道：“公公，很晚了，你这就睡罢。”
+ 海老公道：“睡罢，睡罢！
+ 唉，睡觉的时候以后可多着呢，朝也睡，晚也睡，睡着了永远不醒。
+ 孩子，一个人老是睡觉，不用起身，不会心口痛，不会咳嗽得难过，那不是挺美么？”
+ 韦小宝吓得不敢作声。
+ 海老公道：“孩子，你家里还有些什么人？”
+ 这平平淡淡一句问话，韦小宝却难以回答。
+ 他可不知那死了的小桂子家中有些什么人，胡乱回答，多半立时便露出马脚，但又不能不答，只盼海老公本来不知小桂子家中底细，才这样问，便道：“我家里只有个老娘，其余的人，这些年来，唉，那也不用提了。”
+ 话中拖上这样个尾巴，倘若小桂子还有父兄姊弟，就不妨用“那也不用提了”这六字来推搪。
+ 海老公道：“只有个老娘。
+ 你们福建话，叫娘是叫什么的？”
+ 韦小宝又是一惊：“什么福建话？
+ 莫非小桂子是福建人？
+ 他说我以前的说话中有扬州腔调，恐怕…… 恐怕…… 那么他眼睛给我弄瞎这回事，他知不知道？”
+ 刹那之间，心中转过了无数念头，含含糊糊的道：“这个…… 这个…… 你问这个干么？”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，说道：“你年纪小小，就这样坏，嘿，到底是像你爹呢，还是像你妈？”
+ 韦小宝嘻嘻一笑，说道：“我是谁也不像。
+ 好是不大好，坏也不算挺坏。”
+ 海老公咳了几声，道：“我是成年之后，才净身做太监的……”
+ 韦小宝暗暗叫苦：“原来做太监要净身，那就是割去小便的东西。
+ 他说知道我没净身，要是来给我净身，那可乖乖龙的东……”
+ 只听海老公续道：“我本来有个儿子，只可惜在八岁那年就死了。
+ 倘若活到今日，我的孙儿也该有你这般大了。
+ 那个姓茅的茅十八，不是你爹爹罢？”
+ 韦小宝颤声道：“不…… 不是！
+ 辣块妈妈的，当…… 当然不是。”
+ 心中一急，扬州话冲口而出。
+ 海老公道：“我也想不是的。
+ 倘若你是我儿子，失陷在皇宫之中，就算有天大危险，我也会来救你出去。”
+ 韦小宝苦笑道：“就可惜我没你这个好爹爹。”
+ 海老公道：“我教过你两套武功，第一套‘大擒拿手’，第二套‘大慈大悲千叶手’，这两套功夫，我都没教全，你自然也没学会，只学了这么一成半成，嘿嘿，嘿嘿。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊，你老人家最好将这两套功夫教得我学全了。
+ 你这样天下第一的武功，总算有个人传了下来，给你老人家扬名，那才成话。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“‘天下第一’四个字，哪里敢当？
+ 世上武功高强的，可不知有多少。
+ 我这两套功夫，你这一生一世也来不及学得全了。”
+ 他顿了一顿，说道：“你吸一口气，摸到左边小腹，离开肚脐眼三寸之处，用力掀一掀，且看怎样？”
+ 韦小宝依言摸到他所说之处，用力一掀，登时痛澈心肺，不由得“啊”的一声，大叫出来，霎时间满头大汗，不住喘气。
+ 近半个多月来，左边小腹偶然也隐隐作痛，只道吃坏了肚子，何况只痛得片刻，便即止歇，从来没放在心上，不料对准了一点用力掀落，竟会痛得这等厉害。
+ 海老公阴恻恻的道：“很有趣罢？”
+ 韦小宝肚中大骂：“死老乌龟，臭老乌龟！”
+ 说道：“有一点点痛，也没什么有趣。”
+ 海老公道：“你每天早上去赌钱，又去跟皇上练武，你还没回来，饭菜就送来了。
+ 我觉得这汤可不够鲜，每天从药箱之中，取了一瓶药出来，给你在汤里加上些料。
+ 只加这么一点儿，加得多了，毒性太重，对你身子不大妥当。
+ 你这人是很细心的，可是我从来不喝汤，你一点也不疑心吗？”
+ 韦小宝毛骨悚然，道：“我…… 我以为你不爱喝汤。
+ 你…… 你又说喝了汤，会…… 会…… 咳…… 咳嗽……”
+ 海老公道：“我本来很爱喝汤的，不过汤里有了毒药，虽然份量极轻，可是天天喝下去，时日久了，总有点危险，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝愤然道：“是极，是极！
+ 公公，你当真厉害。”
+ 海老公叹了口气，道：“也不见得。
+ 本来我想让你再服三个月毒药，这才放你出宫，那时你就慢慢肚痛了。
+ 先是每天痛半个时辰，痛得也不很凶，以后越痛越厉害，痛的时刻也越来越长，大概到一年以后，那便日夜不停的大痛，要痛到你将自己脑袋到墙上去狠狠的撞，痛得将自己手上、腿上的肉，一块块咬下来。”
+ 说到这里，叹道：“可惜我身子越来越不成了，恐怕不能再等。
+ 你身上中的毒，旁人没解药，我终究是有的。
+ 小娃娃，你到底是受了谁的指使，想这计策来弄瞎我眼睛？
+ 你老实说了出来，我立刻给你解药。”
+ 韦小宝年纪虽小，也知道就算自己说了指使之人出来，他也决不能饶了自己性命，何况根本就无人指使，说道：“指使之人自然有的，说出来只怕吓你一大跳。
+ 原来你早知道我不是小桂子，想了这个法子来折磨我，哈哈，哈哈，你这可上了我的大当啦！
+ 哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 纵声大笑，身子跟着乱动，右腿一曲，右手已抓住了匕首柄，极慢极慢的从剑鞘中拔出，不发出丝毫声息，就算有了些微声，也教笑声给遮掩住了。
+ 海老公道：“我上了你什么大当啦？”
+ 韦小宝胡说八道，原是要教他分心，心想索性再胡说八道一番，说道：“汤里有毒药，第一天我就尝了出来。
+ 我跟小玄子商量，他说你在下毒害我……”
+ 海老公一惊，道：“皇上早知道了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“怎么会不知道？
+ 只不过那时我可还不知他是皇上，小玄子叫我不动声色，留神提防，喝汤之时只喝入口中，随后都吐在碗里，反正你又瞧不见。”
+ 一面说，一面将匕首半寸半寸的提起，剑尖缓缓对准了海老公心口，心想若不是一下子便将他刺死，纵然刺中了，他一掌击下来，自己还是没命。
+ 海老公将信将疑，冷笑道：“你如没喝汤，干么一按左边肚子，又会痛得这么厉害？”
+ 韦小宝叹道：“想是我虽将汤吐了出来，差着没漱口，毒药还是吃进了肚里。”
+ 说着又将匕首移近数寸。
+ 只听海老公道：“那也很好啊。
+ 反正这毒药是解不了的，你中毒浅些，发作得慢些，吃的苦头只有更大。”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，长笑声中，全身力道集于右臂，猛力戳出，直指海老公心口，只待一刀刺入，便即滚向床角，从床脚边窜出逃走。
+ 海老公陡觉一阵寒气扑面，微感诧异，只知对方已然动手，更不及多想他是如何出手，左手挥出，便往戳来的兵刃上格去，右掌随出，砰的一声，将韦小宝打得飞身而起，撞破窗格，直摔入窗外的花园，跟着只觉左手剧痛，四根手指已被匕首切断。
+ 若不是韦小宝匕首上寒气太盛，他事先没有警兆，这一下非戳中心口不可。
+ 但如是寻常刀剑，二人功力相差太远，虽然戳中心口，也不过皮肉之伤，他内劲到处，掌缘如铁，击在刀剑之上，震飞刀剑，也不会伤到自己手掌。
+ 但这匕首实在太过锋锐，海老公苦练数十年的内劲，竟然不能将之震飞脱手，反而无声息的切断了四根手指。
+ 可是他右手一掌结结实实的打在韦小宝胸口，这一掌开碑裂石，非同小可，料得定韦小宝早已五脏俱碎，人在飞出窗外之前便已死了。
+ 他冷笑一声，自言自语：“死得这般容易，可便宜了这小鬼。”
+ 定一定神，到药箱中取出金创药敷上伤口，撕下床单，包扎了左掌，喃喃的道：“这小鬼用的是什么兵刃，怎地如此厉害？”
+ 强忍手上剧痛，跃出窗去，伸手往韦小宝跌落处摸去，要找那柄自己闻所未闻、见所未见的宝刀利刃。
+ 哪知摸索良久，竟什么也没摸到。
+ 他于眼睛未瞎之时，窗外的花园早看得熟了，何处有花，何处有石，无不了然于胸。
+ 明明听得韦小宝是落在一株芍药花旁，这小鬼手中的宝剑或许已震得远远飞出，可是他的尸体怎会突然不见？
+ 韦小宝中了这掌，当时气为之窒，胸口剧痛，四肢百骸似乎都已寸寸碎裂，一摔下地，险些便即晕去。
+ 他知此刻生死系于一线，既然没能将海老公刺死，老乌龟定会出来追击，当即奋力爬起，只走得两步，脚下一软，又即摔倒，骨碌碌的从一道斜坡上直滚下去。
+ 海老公倘若手指没给割断，韦小宝滚下斜坡之声自然逃不过他耳朵，只是他重伤之余，心烦意乱，加之做梦也想不到这小鬼中了自己这一掌竟会不死，虽然听到声音，却全没想到其中缘由。
+ 这条斜坡好长，韦小宝直滚出十余丈，这才停住。
+ 他挣扎着站起，慢慢走远，周身筋骨痛楚不堪，幸好匕首还是握在手中，暗自庆幸：“刚才老乌龟将我打出窗外，我居然没将匕首插入自己身体，当真运气好极。”
+ 将匕首插入靴筒，心想：“西洋镜已经拆穿，老乌龟既知我是冒牌货，宫中是不能再住了。
+ 只可惜四十五万两银子变成了一场空欢喜。
+ 他奶奶的，一个人哪有这样好运气，横财一发便是四十五万两？
+ 总而言之，老子有过四十五万两银子的身家，只不过老子手段阔绰，一晚之间就花了个精光。
+ 你说够厉害了罢？”
+ 肚里吹牛，不禁得意起来。
+ 又想：“那小宫女还巴巴的在等我，反正三更半夜也不能出宫，我这就瞧瞧她去，啊哟……”
+ 一摸怀中那只纸盒，早已压得一塌胡涂，心道：“我还是拿去给她看看，免她等得心焦。
+ 就说我摔了一交，将蜜饯糖果压得稀烂，变成了一堆牛粪，不过这堆牛粪又甜又香，滋味挺美。
+ 哈哈，辣块妈妈，又甜又香的牛粪你吃过没有？
+ 老子就吃过。”
+ 他想想觉得好玩，加快脚步，步向太后所住的慈宁宫，只走快几步，胸口随即剧痛，只得又放慢了步子。
+ 来到慈宁宫外，见宫门紧闭，心想：“糟糕，可没想到这门会关着，那怎么进去？”
+ 正没做理会处，宫门忽然无声无息的推了开来，一个小姑娘的头探出来，月光下看得分明，正是蕊初。
+ 只见她微笑着招手，韦小宝大喜，轻轻闪身过门。
+ 蕊初又将门掩上了，在他耳畔低声道：“我怕你进不来，已在这里等了许久。”
+ 韦小宝也低声道：“我来迟啦。
+ 我在路上绊到了一只又臭又硬的老乌龟，摔了一交。”
+ 蕊初道：“花园里有大海龟吗？
+ 我倒没见过。
+ 你…… 你可摔痛了没有？”
+ 韦小宝一鼓作气的走来，身上的疼痛倒也可以耐得，给蕊初这么一问，只觉得全身筋骨无处不痛，忍不住哼了一声。
+ 蕊初拉住他手，低声问：“摔痛了哪里？”
+ 韦小宝正要回答，忽见地下有个黑影掠过，一抬头，但见一只硕大无朋的大鹰从墙头飞了进来，轻轻落地。
+ 他大吃一惊，险些骇呼出声，月光下只见那大鹰人立起来，原来不是大鹰，却是一人。
+ 这人身材瘦削，弯腰曲背，却不是海老公是谁？
+ 蕊初本来面向着他，没见到海老公进来，但见韦小宝转过了头，瞪目而视，脸上满是惊骇之色，也转过身来。
+ 韦小宝左手一探，已按住了她的嘴唇，出力奇重，竟不让她发出半点声音，跟着右手急摇，示意不可作声。
+ 蕊初点了点头。
+ 韦小宝这才慢慢放开了左手，目不转睛的瞧着海老公。
+ 只见海老公僵立当地，似在倾听动静，过了一会，才慢慢向前走去。
+ 韦小宝见他不是向自己走来，暗暗舒了口气，心道：“老乌龟好厉害，眼睛虽然瞎了，居然能追到这里。”
+ 又想：“只要我和这小宫女不发出半点声音，老乌龟就找不到我。”
+ 海老公向前走了几步，突然跃起，落在韦小宝跟前，左手一探，扠住了蕊初的脖子。
+ 蕊初“啊”的一声叫，但咽喉被卡，这一声叫得又低又闷。
+ 韦小宝心念电转：“老乌龟找的是我，又不是找这小宫女，不会杀死她的。”
+ 此时和海老公相距不过两尺，吓得几乎要撒尿，却一动也不动，知道只要自己动上一根手指，就会给他听了出来。
+ 海老公低声道：“别作声！
+ 不听话就卡死你。
+ 轻轻回答我的话。
+ 你是谁？”
+ 蕊初低声道：“我…… 我……”
+ 海老公伸出右手，摸了摸她头顶，又摸了摸她脸蛋，道：“你是个小宫女，是不是？”
+ 蕊初道：“是，是！”
+ 海老公道：“三更半夜的，在这里干什么？”
+ 蕊初道：“我…… 我在这里玩儿！”
+ 海老公脸上露出一丝微笑，在惨淡的月光下看来，反显得更加阴森可怖，问道：“还有谁在这里？”
+ 侧过了头倾听。
+ 适才蕊初不知屏息凝气，惊恐之下呼吸粗重，给海老公听出了她站立之处。
+ 韦小宝和他相距虽近，呼吸极微，他一时便未察觉。
+ 韦小宝想要打手势叫她别说，却又不敢移动手臂。
+ 幸好蕊初乖觉，发觉他双眼已盲，说道：“没…… 没有了。”
+ 海老公道：“皇太后住在哪里？
+ 你带我去见她。”
+ 蕊初惊道：“公公，你…… 你别跟皇太后说，下次…… 下次我再也不敢了。”
+ 她只道这老太监捉住了自己，要去禀报太后。
+ 海老公道：“你求也没用。
+ 不带我去，立刻便扠死你。”
+ 手上微一使劲，蕊初气为之窒，一张小脸登时胀得通红。
+ 韦小宝惊惶之下，终于撒出尿来，从裤裆里一滴一滴的往下直流，幸好海老公没留神，就算听到了，也道是蕊初吓得撒尿。
+ 海老公慢慢松开左手，低声道：“快带我去。”
+ 蕊初无奈，只得道：“好！”
+ 侧头向韦小宝瞧了一眼，脸上神色示意他快走，自己决不供他出来，低声道：“太后寝宫在那边！”
+ 慢慢移动脚步。
+ 海老公的左手仍是抓住她咽喉，和她并肩而行。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“老乌龟定是去跟皇太后说，我是冒充的小太监，小桂子是给我杀死的，他自己的眼睛是给我弄瞎的，要太后立刻下令捉拿。
+ 他为甚么不去禀报皇上？
+ 是了，他知道皇上对我好，告状多半告不进。
+ 那…… 那便如何是好？
+ 我须得立即逃出宫去。
+ 啊哟，不好，这时候宫门早闭，又怎逃得出去？
+ 只要过得片刻，太后传下命令，更是插翅难飞了。”
+
+ Trinket accompanied Big Beaver, Brother Li, and the other leaders to the main gate.
+ Outside they found the members of the Lodge already waiting, between two and three hundred of them, spread out in V-shaped formation on either side of the gate, all with eager, expectant looks on their faces.
+ After a while the same two big fellows came out carrying Whiskers between them in his hammock.
+ 'Mao, old fellow,' said Brother Li, 'you don't need to wait out here with us.
+ You're our guest.'
+ 'Just hearing about the Helmsman has always been an inspiration to me,' said Whiskers.
+ 'Now that there's a chance to actually see him, I wouldn't miss it for the world.'
+ Because of his extreme weakness his voice was still faint, but there was a flush of excitement on his pallid cheeks.
+ Presently the sound of galloping grew nearer and a party of some ten or so horsemen could be seen approaching in a little cloud of dust.
+ The three foremost of them jumped lightly from their horses while they were still at some distance from the gate.
+ Brother Li and the other leaders went forward to meet them and there was much exchange of handclasps and friendly greetings.
+ Trinket overheard one of the horsemen saying that the Helmsman was waiting somewhere 'ahead' and wanted Brother Li, Big Beaver, and one or two other seniors to come and see him.
+ After standing there some minutes in discussion, six leading members of the Lodge—Brother Li, Big Beaver, Tertius, Father Obscurus, and two others whom Trinket didn't know by name—got on to waiting horses and galloped off with the other riders.
+ 'Isn't the Helmsman coming here then?' asked Whiskers, dreadfully disappointed.
+ None of those waiting had the heart to answer him, since they were all feeling equally disappointed.
+ 'What's the matter with you all?' thought Trinket.
+ 'Anyone would think someone had borrowed ten thousand taels off you and wouldn't pay it back, or you'd lost your wife's trousers gambling or something.
+ What a miserable-looking lot!'
+ After a good while longer, another horseman arrived and read out the names of thirteen Lodge-members who were to go for interviews with the Helmsman.
+ The thirteen men, with rapturous expressions on their faces, dashed to the ready-waiting horses, jumped into the saddle, and galloped away.
+ 'Whiskers,' Trinket asked his stricken friend, 'is this Helmsman a very old man?'
+ 'I... I've never met him,' said Whiskers.
+ 'On River and Lake there's no one who doesn't look up to him, but I do know that to actually get to meet him is very, very difficult.'
+ 'Tamardy!' thought Trinket.
+ 'What a big-head!
+ Well, you don't impress me, Mr Big Shot Helmsman.
+ It's all the same to me whether I see you or not.'
+ By this time it was beginning to look as if most members of the Lodge were definitely not going to get a glimpse of their beloved leader; nevertheless they continued to stand there outside the gate, nursing a faint hope that he might after all appear.
+ Some of them, tired of standing, sat on the ground.
+ One of them urged Whiskers to go indoors and rest.
+ 'If the Helmsman does come,' he told Whiskers, 'I promise to let you know straight away.'
+ But Whiskers shook his head.
+ 'No, no, I'd rather wait here.
+ If the Helmsman did come and I wasn't waiting here outside, it would be very—well, disrespectful.'
+ He sighed wistfully.
+ 'I wonder if it will be my luck to see him before I die.'
+ In his conversations with Trinket on the long journey from Yangzhou to Peking there was hardly a well-known practitioner of the Martial Arts whom Whiskers had not at one time or other disparaged.
+ Chen Jinnan, the Helmsman, appeared to be the only expert in these matters for whom he had unqualified respect.
+ Listening to Whiskers now, Trinket could not help absorbing a little of his enthusiasm, to the extent that he now stopped thinking of rude things to say about this paragon who seemed so conscious of his own worth.
+ Suddenly there was a sound of hoofbeats once more and another party of horsemen came riding up.
+ Those Triads who had been sitting on the ground leaped to their feet and everyone craned forward, hoping that this time the summons would be for him.
+ There were four messengers this time.
+ Their leader, having dismounted from his horse, clasped his hands together respectfully: 'The Helmsman requests Mr Mao and Mr Wei to favour him with their company.'
+ Whiskers leaped up with a joyful cry, then almost immediately sank back into the hammock with a groan.
+ 'Let's go!' he said to his bearers.
+ 'Hurry!'
+ Trinket, for his part, was extremely tickled to be called 'Mr Wei'.
+ Even his surname—his mother's actually, since his paternity was unknown—was seldom used; but never in his life before had anyone called him 'Mr'.
+ Well!' he thought.
+ 'I've heard plenty of "Goong-goongs" recently; but not "Mr".
+ Ha ha!
+ Now I'm "Mr Trinket Wei".'
+ Two of the mounted men took charge of Whiskers, supporting the ends of the carrying-pole from which his hammock was suspended on their saddle-bows and riding along in parallel very slowly and carefully.
+ Another of them gave up his horse to Trinket and found himself another horse on which he rode along behind.
+ The little party of six walked their horses along the road for about a mile before taking a right-hand turn into a little side-road.
+ Along this, every few hundred yards, were little knots of two or three men, some sitting, some walking to and fro, all evidently lookouts, since the leading horseman, on seeing them, would make a sign, stretching out the last three fingers of his right hand and pointing with them downwards, whereupon the men would nod and silently answer him with some mysterious signal of their own.
+ Trinket observed that the signals they made were all different, but was unable to guess their significance.
+ After they had been riding along this side-road for about four miles, they came to a large farmhouse or grange.
+ As they arrived at the entrance, a guard on the door shouted to the people inside, 'The guests have arrived,' whereupon the door opened and out came Brother Li, Big Beaver, and two other men whom Trinket hadn't seen before.
+ One of these last clasped his hands politely and welcomed them in: 'Mr Mao, Mr Wei, welcome!
+ Our Society's Helmsman looks forward to meeting you.'
+ Trinket was thrilled.
+ The 'Mr' seemed to be sticking.
+ Whiskers struggled to get up.
+ 'I can't see the Helmsman like this.
+ It's too . . . it's too . . .' but the effort to raise himself once more ended in a groan.
+ 'You're a wounded man,' said Brother Li.
+ 'You don't need to stand on ceremony.'
+ He ushered Trinket and Whiskers' bearers into the main reception room.
+ A man offered Trinket some tea and asked him to wait there a while as the Helmsman wanted to speak to Mr Mao first.
+ Whiskers was carried through an inner door for his interview.
+ While Trinket was drinking his cup of tea, a servant came in with four plates on which were various cakes and dimsum.
+ His reaction on sampling these was unfavourable.
+ 'These aren't a patch on the ones they do in the Palace,' he thought.
+ They're not even as good as the ones they used to serve in the brothel.'
+ His estimation of the Helmsman at once went down a couple of notches.
+ However, he was feeling empty, and in quite a short time had made considerable inroads into the eatables on all four of the plates.
+ After about the time it would take to consume an average meal, Brother Li and the other three came in again, and one of the two Trinket didn't know by name, an old man with a grizzled beard, told him that the Helmsman was now ready to see him.
+ At some risk of choking, he swallowed the large mouthful he had been chewing, brushed off the crumbs with his hands, and followed the four men into one of the wings of the building which, together with the main reception room, enclosed a large courtyard on three sides.
+ There, stopping outside a doorway, the old man with the grizzled beard lifted up the door-curtain and announced them.
+ 'Mr Trinket Wei, the Little White Dragon to see you.'
+ Trinket was surprised and a little flattered that they should somehow have got hold of his made-up nom de guerre.
+ This must be Whiskers' doing, he concluded.
+ A man in his thirties dressed in the costume of a scholar rose to his feet as they entered, smiling a welcome.
+ Trinket walked in and stood for a moment darting questioning glances around him.
+ 'This is the Helmsman,' said Big Beaver.
+ Trinket stole a glance at the scholar.
+ He had a mild and gentle face, but there was a force in his flashing eyes which seemed to bore right through him and made him gasp.
+ Almost unconsciously he sank to his knees and began to kowtow; but the scholar bent down to stop him.
+ 'No, no, that's not necessary,' he said with a laugh.
+ Trinket could feel the scholar's strong hands on his arms.
+ A warm sensation passed through his body, followed by a little tremor of excitement.
+ He abandoned his kowtow and got up.
+ 'By arresting and killing Oboi, the Manchu Champion,' said the scholar, speaking to the four older men but keeping his eyes on Trinket, 'our young hero here has avenged the deaths of countless numbers of our fellow-countrymen.
+ In the course of a few days his name has become a household word.
+ To have won such fame, and so early in life too, is an almost unparalleled achievement.'
+ Although Trinket had enough cheek to shame the devil and would normally, if anyone else had praised him like this, have treated it as an excuse to show off, he found himself, in the presence of this Helmsman with his gentleness and his air of quiet authority, completely tongue-tied.
+ 'Sit down!'
+ The Helmsman pointed to a chair and sat down himself.
+ Trinket followed his example but noticed that the four older men remained standing, their arms held respectfully at their sides.
+ 'I gather that your career as a strategist began very early,' said the Helmsman, smiling.
+ 'Mr Mao tells me that already, near Victory Hill, when you were still not far from Yangzhou, you killed a Manchu officer by means of a ruse.
+ I still haven't heard how you managed to arrest Oboi though.'
+ Lifting his head slightly, Trinket caught a glimpse of those dazzling eyes and felt his heart beating faster.
+ All desire to indulge in his customary trumpet-blowing drained from him on the instant and he found himself for once giving a completely honest account of what he had done.
+ He told the Helmsman how he had become Kang Xi's favourite; how Oboi had threatened and insulted the young Emperor; and how he and the Emperor had joined forces to take Oboi prisoner.
+ Out of a sense of loyalty to Kang Xi, he said nothing about Kang Xi stabbing Oboi in the back; but he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he had blinded Oboi with incense-ash and then hit him on the head with a bronze brazier, although he was fully aware that to a man of honour like the Helmsman this would seem, if not a third-rate, certainly a pretty second-rate way of overcoming an enemy.
+ The Helmsman listened to all that Trinket had to say without making a single interruption.
+ When at last Trinket had finished, he nodded.
+ 'I see.
+ Well, clearly you didn't learn your technique from Mr Mao.
+ Who was your teacher?'
+ 'I've had a little training,' said Trinket, 'but I didn't have a proper teacher.
+ What the Old Devil taught me wasn't real Martial Arts, it was just rubbish.'
+ 'The Old Devil?'
+ The Helmsman's vast knowledge did not encompass any practitioner with that nom de guerre.
+ Trinket burst out laughing.
+ 'Old Devil is what I used to call the old eunuch Hai-goong—among other things.
+ His real name was Hai Dafu.
+ He's the one who captured me and Mao Eighteen and brought us into the Palace . . .'
+ He suddenly realized that this flatly contradicted what he had said previously.
+ He had told the Triad members that he and Mao Eighteen had been captured and taken into the Palace by Oboi.
+ To a practised liar like Trinket, however, this presented little difficulty.
+ The old eunuch was acting on Oboi's orders.
+ I suppose Oboi, being so important, was too grand to do the dirty work himself.'
+ But the Helmsman appeared to be deep in thought.
+ 'Hai Dafu?
+ Hai Dafu?
+ Is there a eunuch with that name in the Tartar Palace?'
+ He turned to Trinket.
+ 'Show me a few of the things he taught you, little brother,' he said.
+ However immune to self-criticism Trinket might be, he knew that what he liked to call his Martial Arts training was really a joke.
+ 'The Old Devil only pretended to teach me,' he said.
+ 'He hated me because I made him blind, so he did everything in his power to harm me.
+ The sort of things he taught me were not the sort of things you'd want anyone else to see.'
+ The Helmsman nodded and made a little gesture with his left hand.
+ At once Big Beaver and the other three older men left the room, closing the door after them as they went.
+ 'Now,' said the Helmsman, 'what did you mean when you said you made the old eunuch go blind?'
+ In the presence of this heroic individual Trinket found it harder to tell his habitual lies than to tell the truth—a sensation he had never experienced before.
+ He now found himself telling the Helmsman how the massive dose of medicine he had put in the old eunuch's cup had caused him to go blind and how he had killed the little eunuch Laurie and taken his place.
+ The Helmsman, having heard this last piece of information with amusement and some surprise, felt with his left hand between Trinket's legs and satisfied himself that he was indeed equipped with those parts which eunuchs lack but ordinary little boys possess.
+ Then he gave what to Trinket sounded very much like a sigh of relief.
+ 'Good,' he said with a little smile.
+ 'If you haven't been mutilated and you aren't a eunuch, this suggests a way out of a difficulty that has been bothering me for some time.'
+ He tapped the table lightly with his left hand and continued speaking, apparently to himself.
+ 'Yes, of course.
+ This is obviously the solution.
+ It gives Brother Yin a successor and the Green Wood Lodge a Master.'
+ Trinket didn't understand what he was talking about, but he could tell from his pleased expression that some great weight had been lifted from his mind and couldn't help feeling pleased on his behalf.
+ The Helmsman walked to and fro in the room, his hands clasped behind him, muttering to himself.
+ 'Everything this Society has ever done has been unprecedented.
+ All innovation lies ultimately in the hands of the individual.
+ We must be bold enough to ignore the censures of the vulgar and the loud outcries of those to whom every novelty is shocking.'
+ To Trinket this book-language of the Helmsman's was even more incomprehensible than what he had said before.
+ 'Look,' said the Helmsman to Trinket, 'there are only two of us here now, so you've no need to feel embarrassed.
+ Never mind whether what Hai Dafu taught you was the real thing or not; just give me a demonstration of what it was.'
+ Trinket now realized that it was to spare him the embarrassment of making a fool of himself in front of the others that he had sent them out of the room.
+ There seemed to be nothing for it but to comply.
+ 'Well, it's what the Old Devil taught me,' he said, 'so it's not my fault how bad it is.
+ If it looks really ridiculous, you must put the blame on him.'
+ The Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Don't worry about that; just get on with it.'
+ So Trinket struck up an attitude and began to go through the motions of the Merciful Guanyin repertoire—the rather limited parts of it, that is, that the old eunuch had taught him.
+ He had already forgotten some bits of it, but could remember enough to put on some sort of performance.
+ The Helmsman watched him with fixed attention and nodded when he had finished.
+ 'From what you've just been doing,' he said, 'it looks as though you may have been taught a little bit of the Shaolin School of Catch-Can.
+ Am I right?'
+ The Greater Catch-Can is what Trinket had learned first, before he even started on the Merciful Guanyin method of self-defence.
+ He knew he must be even worse at Catch-Can than at the Merciful Guanyin stuff and had been hoping to conceal his inadequacy by keeping quiet about it; but there was no concealing anything from the Helmsman, who appeared to know everything: there was nothing for it but to go on making a fool of himself.
+ 'Yes, ' he said.
+ 'The Old Devil taught me a bit of Catch-Can to use in my wrestling-bouts with the Emperor.'
+ And he proceeded to demonstrate as much as he could remember of the Greater Catch-Can.
+ Once again the Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Not bad!'
+ 'I knew all along it would only make you laugh,' said Trinket.
+ 'I wasn't laughing at you,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'I was smiling because I was pleased to see that your memory and comprehension are so good.
+ That White Pony Kick you couldn't quite bring off I think Hai Dafu must have deliberately taught you incorrectly; but instead of letting it fluster you, you used your own imagination and initiative to develop it into a Carp-Fin Flick.
+ I thought that was very good.'
+ Trinket guessed that the Helmsman was a far greater Master of the Martial Arts than the Old Devil had been and the thought suddenly struck him how wonderful it would be if the Helmsman were willing to take him on as a disciple, to be his teacher, his Shifu.
+ Then, surely, he could become a real hero, not the fake one he was at present.
+ He glanced shyly in the Helmsman's direction and found that cold, electric gaze directed at him.
+ Trinket was a shameless young blackguard and could look even the formidable Empress Dowager in the eye without blenching; but the Helmsman was somehow different.
+ In the Helmsman's presence he had become suddenly terrified of misbehaving and as soon as their eyes met had quickly to avert his own.
+ 'Do you know what the Triad Society is for?' the Helmsman asked him, speaking very slowly and deliberately.
+ 'The Triad Society wants to drive out the Qing and restore the Ming,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's for helping the Chinese and killing Tartars.'
+ The Helmsman nodded.
+ 'Exactly.
+ Would you like to join the Triad Society and become a Brother?'
+ That would be terrific,' said Trinket delightedly.
+ In his mind every member of the Triad Society was a hero.
+ It had not occurred to him that he might ever become one himself.
+ But then he reflected that Whiskers wasn't a member, and it was absurd to imagine that he could be better-qualified than Whiskers; so he said, 'I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid I'm not good enough.'
+ His eyes, which for a moment had been shining, were now full of disappointment.
+ It was too much to hope that the Helmsman's offer had been serious.
+ He must have been joking.
+ 'If you want to be a member you can,' said the Helmsman, 'only you must remember that this is a very important business we are engaged in.
+ We have to put our country first, even before our lives.
+ Then again, the rules are very strict and the penalties for breaking them very heavy.
+ You need to think carefully before you decide.'
+ 'I don't need to think,' said Trinket.
+ 'Whatever your rules are, I'll keep them.
+ If you'll let me join, Helmsman, I'll be the happiest boy in the world.'
+ The Helmsman's smile gave way to a more grave expression.
+ 'This is an extremely serious business, involving matters of life and death.
+ We're not talking about children's games.'
+ 'I know that,' said Trinket.
+ 'I've heard lots about the Triad Society.
+ It fights for Honour and Justice.
+ It does all sorts of amazing things.
+ Of course it isn't a children's game.'
+ The Helmsman smiled.
+ 'Well, as long as you know.
+ There are thirty-six rules that everyone joining the Society must swear to follow.
+ The rules include ten absolute prohibitions, each with a very severe punishment laid down for anyone who breaks it.'
+ His face became grave again.
+ 'Some of the rules don't apply in your case yet, because you're too young; but there's one of them against dishonesty.
+ It says, "Every Brother must be honest in all his dealings.
+ He must not lie or cheat."
+ Do you think you are capable of keeping that rule?'
+ Trinket was slightly taken aback.
+ 'I'd never tell you a lie, Helmsman,' he said, 'but with the other Brothers, would I have to tell them the truth—all the time?'
+ 'Perhaps not in minor matters,' said the Helmsman, 'but in important ones, yes.'
+ 'Well that's all right,' said Trinket.
+ 'What about gambling?
+ If I'm gambling with other members of the Society, am I allowed to cheat a bit?'
+ The Helmsman was unprepared for a question of this nature.
+ 'Gambling is not a good thing,' he said with the faintest of smiles, 'but there is nothing in the rules which forbids it.
+ Of course, if you cheated them and they found out, they would probably beat you up, and there's no rule against that either: so you'd probably be well advised not to try.'
+ They wouldn't find out,' said Trinket, grinning.
+ 'Actually, though, I don't need to cheat.
+ When I gamble, nine times out of ten I win anyway.'
+ Since most members of the Society came from a travelling background in which gambling and drunken brawling were accepted as normal behaviour, the Helmsman was inclined to turn a blind eye on these matters.
+ He looked at Trinket intently for some moments as if trying to make his mind up about something.
+ 'Would you like to be my apprentice?'
+ What happiness!
+ Trinket fell at once to his knees and began kowtowing.
+ 'Shifu!'
+ This time the Helmsman made no effort to raise him up, but let him knock his head a dozen or more times on the floor before he stopped him.
+ 'All right, that's enough.'
+ Trinket got up again, smiling delightedly.
+ 'Now that I have become your Shifu, you had better know my real name,' said the Helmsman, 'but you are not to tell anyone.
+ My surname is Chen.
+ I expect you know that already.
+ But Chen Jinnan is only the name I am known by on River and Lake.
+ It is not my real name.
+ My real name is Chen Yonghua.'
+ 'I'll remember that,' said Trinket.
+ 'And I promise not to tell anyone.'
+ The Helmsman contemplated his new disciple for some moments in silence.
+ 'Now that we are Shifu and apprentice, ' he said gravely 'we have to be completely open with each other.
+ I don't mind telling you that I find you both glib-tongued and sly.
+ Your nature is a very different one from my own, and I must admit that I am not at all happy about this.
+ In taking you on as my apprentice, it's more the interests of the Society than anything else that I have in mind.'
+ 'From now on I'll do my best to change,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's easier for the earth to leave its moorings than for a man to change his nature,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'You won't be able to change very much.
+ On the other hand you're still young and comparatively unformed; and so far you don't seem to have done anything particularly bad.
+ In future you'll just have to keep reminding yourself all the time to do as I tell you.
+ I believe in being very strict with my apprentices, so if I find that you have been breaking the Society's rules or plotting mischief or doing anything really bad, I shall kill you without mercy.
+ And remember: I can kill you any time, as easily as breaking an egg.'
+ As if to demonstrate, he tapped the table with his left hand and then seized the corner of it in his grasp.
+ There was a crunching sound as it broke off.
+ Then he took the broken-off piece between his palms and rubbed it until it fell in a shower of tiny slivers on the floor.
+ Trinket stuck his tongue out in amazement and it was some time before he could put it back in again.
+ Yet his overriding feeling was not of amazement but of happiness that he had got this heroic strong man for his teacher.
+ 'I promise you I won't ever do anything bad,' he said.
+ 'I wouldn't want my Shifu to crunch my head up!
+ And besides, if I did do a few bad things, and you did crunch me up, with me gone, who'd there be to pass on your secrets!'
+ 'Not "a few bad things"!' said the Helmsman.
+ 'One!
+ Just one bad thing, and I shall no longer consider you my apprentice.'
+ 'What about two bad things?' said Trinket.
+ The Helmsman's face looked stern.
+ 'You're being flippant.
+ When I say one bad thing I mean one.
+ Do you think this is something you can haggle about?'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket; but a rebellious little voice inside him was saying, 'What about half a bad thing?'
+ 'You are my fourth apprentice,' said the Helmsman, 'and probably you will be my last.
+ The Triad Society keeps me so busy that I don't have much time for apprentices.
+ Of your three Brother-apprentices, two died fighting against the Tartars and the third was killed in Marshal Zheng's campaign to retake Taiwan.
+ All three were brave young men who gave their lives for their country.
+ Apart from that I have my own reputation to keep up and I don't want you disgracing me.'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket.
+ 'But. . . but—'
+ 'But what?' said the Helmsman.
+ 'Sometimes things that might disgrace you seem to happen to me when I can't help it,' said Trinket.
+ 'Like being captured by someone bigger and stronger than me and shut up in a barrel of dates and pushed around like goods to market.
+ You mustn't blame me for things like that.'
+ The Helmsman found he didn't quite know whether to be angry or amused.
+ Finally he gave a sigh.
+ 'I'm beginning to think that taking you on as my apprentice may prove to be the biggest mistake of my life.
+ There's so much that hangs on this though, I just have to take the chance.
+ Now listen, Trinket.
+ There's going to be some important business presently.
+ Just keep quiet, do everything I tell you, and don't talk a lot of nonsense, and you'll be all right.
+ Is that understood?'
+ 'Yes, sir,' said Trinket.
+ Observing that Trinket appeared to be hesitating, the Helmsman asked him if there was something else he wanted to say.
+ 'It's only that what I say always does seem sensible to me, ' said Trinket.
+ 'I never mean to talk nonsense.
+ So when you tell me I'm talking nonsense, it seems unfair.'
+ 'In that case the best thing is not to talk at all,' said the Helmsman.
+ But what he thought was, 'How many men of valour and reputation have I seen behaving like submissive flunkeys and hardly daring to breathe in my presence, yet this two-faced, shifty little urchin can stand here and give me all this lip!'
+ He got up and strode towards the door.
+ 'Come on,' he said.
+ 'Follow me.'
+ Trinket rushed to open it for him and held up the door-curtain for him to go through.
+ Then he followed him to the hall.
+
+ 韦小宝随着关安基、李力世等群豪来到大门外，只见二三百人八字排开，脸上均现兴奋之色。
+ 过了一会，两名大汉抬着担架，抬了茅十八出来。
+ 李力世道：“茅兄，你是客人，不用这么客气。”
+ 茅十八道：“久仰陈总舵主大名，当真如雷贯耳，今日得能拜见，就算…… 就算即刻便死，那…… 那也是不枉了。”
+ 他说话仍是有气没力，但脸泛红光，极是高兴。
+ 耳听得马蹄声渐近，尘头起处，十骑马奔了过来。
+ 当先三骑马上乘客，没等奔近便翻身下马。
+ 李力世等迎将上去，与那三人拉手说话，十分亲热。
+ 韦小宝听得其中一人说道：“总舵主在前面相候，请李大哥、关夫子几位过去……”
+ 几个人站着商量了几句，李力世、关安基、祁彪清、玄贞道人等六人便即上马，和来人飞驰而去。
+ 茅十八好生失望，问道：“陈总舵主不来了吗？”
+ 对他这句问话，没一人回答得出，各人见不到总舵主，个个垂头丧气。
+ 韦小宝心道：“人家欠了你们一万两银子不还吗？
+ 还是赌钱输掉了老婆裤子？
+ 你奶奶的，脸色这等难看！”
+ 过了良久，有一人骑马驰来传令，点了十三个人的名字，要他们前去会见总舵主。
+ 那十三人大喜，飞身上马，向前疾奔。
+ 韦小宝问茅十八道：“茅大哥，陈总舵主年纪很老了罢？”
+ 茅十八道：“我…… 我便是没…… 没见过。
+ 江湖之上，人人都仰慕陈总舵主，但要见上他…… 他老人家一面，可当真艰难得很。”
+ 韦小宝嘿了一声，心中却道：“哼，他妈的，好大架子，有什么希罕？
+ 老子才不想见呢。”
+ 群豪见这情势，总舵主多半是不会来了，但还是抱着万一希望，站在大门外相候，有的站得久了，便坐了下来。
+ 有人劝茅十八道：“茅爷，你还是到屋里歇歇。
+ 我们总舵主倘若到了，尽快来请茅爷相见。”
+ 茅十八摇头道：“不！
+ 我还是在这里等着。
+ 陈总舵主大驾光临，在下不在门外相候，那…… 那可太也不恭敬了。
+ 唉，也不知我茅十八这一生一世，有没福份见他老人家一面。”
+ 韦小宝跟着茅十八从扬州来到北京，一路之上，听他言谈之中，对武林中人物都不大瞧在眼内，但对这个陈总舵主却一直十分敬重，不知不觉的受了感染，心中也不敢再骂人了。
+ 忽听得蹄声响动，又有人驰来，坐在地下的会众都跃起身来，大家伸长了脖子张望，均盼总舵主又召人前去相会，这次有自己的份儿。
+ 果然来的又是四名使者，为首一人下马抱拳，说道：“总舵主相请茅十八茅爷、韦小宝韦爷两位，劳驾前去相会。”
+ 茅十八一声欢呼，从担架中跳起身来，但“哎唷”一声，又跌在担架之中，叫道：“快去，快去！”
+ 韦小宝也是十分高兴，心想：“人家叫我‘公公’的叫得多了，倒没什么人叫我‘韦爷’，哈哈，老子是‘韦小宝韦爷’。”
+ 两名使者在马上接过担架，双骑相并，缓缓而行。
+ 另一名使者将坐骑让给了韦小宝，自己另乘一马，跟随在后。
+ 六个人沿着大路行不到三里，便转入右边的一条小路。
+ 一路之上都有三三两两的汉子，或坐或行，巡视把守。
+ 为首的使者伸出中指、无名指、小指三根手指往地下一指，把守二人点点头，也伸手做个暗号。
+ 韦小宝见这些人所发暗号各各不同，也不知是何用意。
+ 又行了十二三里，来到一座庄院之前。
+ 守在门口的一名汉子大声叫道：“客人到！”
+ 跟着大门打开，李力世、关安基，还有两名没见过面的汉子出来，抱拳说道：“茅爷、韦爷，大驾光临，敝会总舵主有请。”
+ 韦小宝大乐，心想：“我这个‘韦爷’毕竟走不了啦！”
+ 茅十八挣扎着想起来，说道：“我这么去见陈总舵主，实在，实在…… 哎唷……”
+ 终于支撑不住，又躺倒在担架上。
+ 李力世道：“茅爷身上有伤，不必多礼。”
+ 让着二人进了大厅。
+ 一名汉子向韦小宝道：“韦爷请到这里喝杯茶，总舵主想先和茅爷谈谈。”
+ 当下将茅十八抬了进去。
+ 韦小宝喝得一碗茶，仆役拿上四碟点心，韦小宝吃了一块，心想：“这点心比之皇宫里的，可差得太远了，还及不上丽春院的。”
+ 对这个总舵主的身份，不免有了一点瞧不起。
+ 但肚中正饿，还是将这些瞧不在眼里的点心吃了不少。
+ 过了一顿饭时分，李力世等四人又一起出来，其中一个花白胡子老者道：“总舵主有请韦爷。”
+ 韦小宝忙将口中正在咀嚼的点心用力吞落了肚，双手在衣襟上擦了擦，跟着四人入内，来到一间厢房之外。
+ 那老者掀起门帷，说道：“‘小白龙’韦小宝韦爷到！”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，心想：“他居然知道我这个杜撰的外号，定然是茅大哥说的了。”
+ 房中一个文士打扮的中年书生站起身来，笑容满脸，说道：“请进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进房去，两只眼睛骨碌碌的乱转。
+ 关安基道：“这位是敝会陈总舵主。”
+ 韦小宝微微仰头向他瞧去，见这人神色和蔼，但目光如电，直射过来，不由得吃了一惊，双膝一曲，便即拜倒。
+ 那书生俯身扶起，笑道：“不用多礼。”
+ 韦小宝双臂被他一托，突然间全身一热，打了个颤，便拜不下去。
+ 那书生笑道：“这位小兄弟擒杀满洲第一勇士鳌拜，为我无数死在鳌拜手里的汉人同胞报仇雪恨，数日之间，名震天下。
+ 成名如此之早，当真古今罕有。”
+ 韦小宝本来脸皮甚厚，倘若旁人如此称赞，便即跟着自吹自擂一番，但在这位不怒自威的总舵主面前，竟然讷讷的不能出口。
+ 总舵主指着一张椅子，微笑道：“请坐！”
+ 自己先坐了，韦小宝便也坐下。
+ 李力世等四人却垂手站立。
+ 总舵主微笑道：“听茅十八茅爷说道，小兄弟在扬州得胜山下，曾用计杀了一名清军军官黑龙鞭史松，初出茅庐第一功，便已不凡。
+ 但不知小兄弟如何擒拿鳌拜。”
+ 韦小宝抬起头来，和他目光一触，一颗心不由得突突乱跳，满腹大吹法螺的胡说八道霎时间忘得干干净净，一开口便是真话，将如何得到康熙宠幸、鳌拜如何无礼、自己如何和小皇帝合力擒他之事说了。
+ 只是顾全对康熙的义气，不提小皇帝在鳌拜背后出刀子之事。
+ 但这样一来，自己撒香炉灰迷眼、举铜香炉砸头，明知不是下三滥、便是下二滥的手段，却也无法再行隐瞒了。
+ 总舵主一言不发的听完，点头道：“原来如此。
+ 小兄弟的武功和茅爷不是一路，不知尊师是哪一位？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我学过一些功夫，可算不得有什么尊师。
+ 老乌龟不是真的教我武功，他教我的都是假功夫。”
+ 总舵主纵然博知广闻，“老乌龟”是谁，却也不知，问道：“老乌龟？”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“老乌龟便是海老公，他名字叫作海大富。
+ 茅十八大哥和我，就是给他擒进宫里去的……”
+ 说到这里，突然惊觉不对，自己曾对天地会的人说，茅十八和自己是给鳌拜擒去的，这会儿却说给海老公擒进宫去，岂不是前言不对后语？
+ 好在他撒谎圆谎的本领着实不小，跟着道：“这老儿奉了鳌拜之命，将我二人擒去，想那鳌拜是个极大的大官，自然不能轻易出手。”
+ 总舵主沉吟道：“海大富？
+ 海大富？
+ 鞑子宫内的太监之中，有这样一号人物？
+ 小兄弟，他教你的武功，你演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝脸皮再厚，也知自己的武功实在太不高明，说道：“老乌龟教我的都是假功夫。
+ 他恨我毒瞎了他眼睛，因此想尽办法来害我。
+ 这些功夫是见不得人的。”
+ 总舵主点了点头，左手一挥，关安基等四人都退出房去，反手带上了门。
+ 总舵主问道：“你怎样毒瞎了他眼睛？”
+ 在这位英气逼人的总舵主面前，韦小宝只觉说谎十分辛苦，还是说真话舒服得多，这种情形那可是从所未有，当下便将如何毒瞎海老公、如何杀死小桂子、如何冒充他做小太监等情形说了。
+ 总舵主又是吃惊，又是好笑，左手在他胯下一拂，发觉他阳具和睾丸都在，并未净身，的的确确不是太监，不由得吁了口长气，微笑道：“好极，好极！
+ 我心中正有个难题，好久拿不定主意，原来小兄弟果然不是给净了身，做了太监！”
+ 左手在桌上轻轻一拍，道：“定当如此！
+ 尹兄弟后继有人，青木堂有主儿了。”
+ 韦小宝不明白他说些什么，只是见他神色欢愉，确是解开了心中一件极为难之事，也不禁代他高兴。
+ 总舵主负着双手，在室内走来走去，自言自语：“我天地会所作所为，无一不是前人从所未行之事。
+ 万事开创在我，骇人听闻，物议沸然，又何足论？”
+ 他文绉绉的说话，韦小宝更加不懂了。
+ 总舵主道：“这里只有你我二人，不用怕难为情。
+ 那海大富教你的武功，不论真也好，假也好，你试演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝这才明白，他命关安基等四人出去，是为了免得自己怕丑，眼见无可推托，说道：“是老乌龟教的，可不关我事，如果太也可笑，你骂他好了。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“放手练好了，不用担心！”
+ 韦小宝于是拉开架式，将海老公所教的小半套“大慈大悲千叶手”使了一遍，其中有些忘了，有些也还记得。
+ 总舵主凝神观看，待韦小宝使完后，点了点头，道：“从你出手中看来，似乎你还学过少林寺的一些擒拿手，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝学“大擒拿手”在先，自然知道这门功夫更加不行，原想藏拙，但总舵主似乎什么都知道，只得道：“老乌龟还教过我一些擒拿法，是用来和小皇帝打架的。”
+ 于是将“大擒拿手”中的一些招式也演了一遍。
+ 总舵主微微而笑，说道：“不错！”
+ 韦小宝道：“我早知你见了要笑。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“不是笑你！
+ 我见了心中喜欢，觉得你记性、悟性都不错，是个可造之材。
+ 那一招‘白马翻蹄’，海大富故意教错了，但你转到‘鲤鱼托鳃’之时，能自行略加变化，并不拘泥于死招。
+ 那好得很！”
+ 韦小宝灵机一动，寻思：“总舵主的武功似乎比老乌龟又高得多，如果他肯教我武功，我韦小宝定能成为一个真英雄，不再是冒牌货的假英雄。”
+ 斜头向他瞧去，便在这时，总舵主一双冷电似的目光也正射了过来。
+ 韦小宝向来惫懒，纵然皇太后如此威严，他也敢对之正视，但在这位总舵主跟前，却半点不敢放肆，目光和他一触，立即收了回来。
+ 总舵主缓缓的道：“你可知我们天地会是干什么的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“天地会反清复明，帮汉人，杀鞑子。”
+ 总舵主点头道：“正是！
+ 你愿不愿意入我天地会做兄弟？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“那可好极了。”
+ 在他心目中，天地会会众个个是真正英雄好汉，想不到自己也能为会中兄弟，又想：“连茅大哥也不是天地会的兄弟，我难道比他还行？”
+ 说道：“就怕…… 就怕我够不上格。”
+ 霎时间眼中放光，满心尽是患得患失之情，只觉这笔天外飞来的横财，多半不是真的，不过总舵主跟自己开开玩笑而已。
+ 总舵主道：“你要入会，倒也可以。
+ 只是我们干的是反清复明的大事，以汉人的江山为重，自己的身家性命为轻。
+ 再者，会里规矩严得很，如果犯了，处罚很重，你须得好好想一想。”
+ 韦小宝道：“不用想，你有什么规矩，我守着便是。
+ 总舵主，你如许我入会，我可快活死啦。”
+ 总舵主收起了笑容，正色道：“这是极要紧的大事，生死攸关，可不是小孩子们的玩意。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我当然知道。
+ 我听人说，天地会行侠仗义，做得都是惊天动地的大事，怎么会是小孩子的玩意？”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“知道了就好，本会入会时有誓词三十六条，又有十禁十刑的严规。”
+ 说到这里，脸色沉了下来，道：“有些规矩，你眼前年纪还小，还用不上，不过其中有一条：‘ 凡我兄弟，须当信实为本，不得谎言诈骗。’
+ 这一条，你能办到么？”
+ 韦小宝微微一怔，道：“对你总舵主，我自然不敢说谎。
+ 可是对其余兄弟，难道什么事也都要说真话？”
+ 总舵主道：“小事不论，只论大事。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是了。
+ 好比和会中兄弟们赌钱，出手段骗人可不可以？”
+ 总舵主没想到他会问及此事，微微一笑，道：“赌钱虽不是好事，会规倒也不禁。
+ 可是你骗了他们。
+ 他们知道了要打你，会规也不禁止，你岂不挨打吃亏？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“他们不会知道的，其实我不用欺骗，赢钱也是十拿九稳。”
+ 天地会的会众多是江湖豪杰，赌钱酗酒，乃是天性，向来不以为非，总舵主也就不再理会，向他凝视片刻，道：“你愿不愿拜我为师？”
+ 韦小宝大喜，立即扑翻在地，连连磕头，口称：“师父！”
+ 总舵主这次不再相扶，由他磕了十几个头，道：“够了！”
+ 韦小宝喜孜孜的站起身来。
+ 总舵主道：“我姓陈，名叫陈近南。
+ 这‘陈近南’三字，是江湖上所用。
+ 你今日既拜我为师，须得知道为师的真名。
+ 我真名叫作陈永华，永远的永，中华之华。”
+ 说到自己真名时压低了声音。
+ 韦小宝道：“是，徒弟牢牢记在心中，不敢泄漏。”
+ 陈近南又向他端相半晌，缓缓说道：“你我既成师徒，相互间什么都不隐瞒。
+ 我老实跟你说，你油腔滑调，狡猾多诈，跟为师的性格十分不合，我实在并不喜欢，所以收你为徒，其实是为了本会的大事着想。
+ “韦小宝道：“徒儿以后好好的改。”
+ 陈近南道：“江山易改，本性难移，改是改不了多少的。
+ 你年纪还小，性子浮动些，也没做了什么坏事。
+ 以后须当时时记住我的话。
+ 我对徒儿管教极严，你如犯了本会的规矩，心术不正，为非作歹，为师的要取你性命，易如反掌，也决不怜惜。”
+ 说着左手一探，擦的一声响，将桌子角儿抓了一块下来，双手搓了几搓，木屑纷纷而下。
+ 韦小宝伸出了舌头，半天缩不进去，随即喜欢得心痒难搔，笑道：“我一定不做坏事。
+ 一做坏事，师父你就在我头上这么一抓，这么一搓。
+ 再说，只消做得几件坏事，师父你这手功夫便不能传授徒儿了。”
+ 陈近南道：“不用几件，只是一件坏事，你我便无师徒之份。”
+ 韦小宝道：“两件成不成？”
+ 陈近南脸一板，道：“你给我正正经经的，少油嘴滑舌。
+ 一件便是一件，这种事也有讨价还价的？”
+ 韦小宝应道：“是！”
+ 心中却说：“我做半件坏事，却又如何？”
+ 陈近南道：“你是我的第四个徒儿，说不定便是我的关门弟子。
+ 天地会事务繁重，我没功夫再收弟子。
+ 你的三个师兄，两个在与鞑子交战时阵亡，一个死于国姓爷光复台湾之役，都是为国捐躯的大好男儿。
+ 为师的在武林中位份不低，名声不恶，你可别替我丢脸。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！
+ 不过…… 不过……”
+ 陈近南道：“不过什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“有时我并不想丢脸，不过真要丢脸，也没有法子。
+ 好比打不过人家，给人捉住了，关在枣子桶里，当货物一般给搬来搬去，师父你可别见怪。”
+ 陈近南皱起眉头，又好气，又好笑，叹了口长气，说道：“收你为徒，只怕是我生平所作的一件大错事。
+ 但以天下大事为重，只好冒一冒险。
+ 小宝，待会另有要务，你一切听我吩咐行事，少胡说八道，那就不错。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！”
+ 陈近南见他欲言又止，问道：“你还想说什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“徒儿说话，总是自以为有理才说。
+ 我并不想胡说八道，你却说我胡说八道，那岂不冤枉么？”
+ 陈近南不愿再跟他多所纠缠，说道：“那你少说几句好了。”
+ 心想：“天下不知多少成名的英雄好汉，在我面前都是恭恭敬敬，大气也不敢透一声，这个刁蛮古怪的顽童，偏有这许多废话。”
+ 站起身来，走向门口，道：“你跟我来。”
+ 韦小宝抢着开门，掀开门帷，让陈近南出去，跟着他来到大厅。
+
+ Returning to the Imperial kitchens from his duties with Kang Xi in the Upper Library, Trinket did not have long to wait for Butcher Qian's arrival.
+ This time the butcher had four assistants with him, carrying between them the neatly butchered, immaculately clean carcasses of two large, fat pigs, each, at a rough estimate, representing not less than three hundred catties of pork.
+ 'Laurie Goong-goong,' he told Trinket, 'to get the most value out of this China-root pork, you want to eat some each day, as soon as you get up in the morning.
+ It's best if you cut only as much as you need at one time and roast it straight away.
+ I'll have one of these pigs carried to your quarters now.
+ You'll be able to cut some off yourself and roast it first thing tomorrow.
+ What you can't eat yourself you can get the folk in the kitchen here to make salt pork of.'
+ Realizing that there must be some hidden purpose behind all this, Trinket thanked him for the advice and offered to show him the way, whereupon Butcher Qian, leaving one of the carcasses and its two bearers in the kitchen, accompanied him to his room, followed by the other two assistants carrying the second pig.
+ The Manager's quarters in the Imperial Catering Department were not very far from the Imperial kitchens.
+ As soon as they were inside, Trinket ordered a young eunuch to take the two assistants back to the kitchens, with instructions that they were to wait for their master there with the other two, and closed the door after them.
+ 'Master,' said Butcher Qian, speaking in a low voice, 'is there anyone else in this apartment?'
+ Seeing Trinket shake his head, he crouched down over the pig's carcass and gently turned it on its back again so that its legs were pointing upwards.
+ It was now possible to see that the slit-open underbelly of the animal had been drawn together and was being held in place by strips of pig-skin sewn across the slit.
+ It was obvious that something very out of the ordinary must be concealed inside.
+ Trinket could feel his heart thumping as he reflected that this might well be weapons which the Triads were smuggling in to be used in a killing spree inside the Palace.
+ He watched as Butcher Qian tore off the strips, opened out the carcass, and very gently lifted a large object out in his cradled arms.
+ 'Coo!' he gasped.
+ It was a human body.
+ Butcher Qian laid the body on the floor.
+ It was small and slight with an abundance of hair.
+ To his astonishment Trinket found himself looking down at a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl.
+ She was dressed in the flimsiest of summer garments, her eyes were tightly closed, and her body was completely motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
+ 'Who is this girl?' he asked softly.
+ 'Why have you brought her here?'
+ 'She's the Little Countess,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mu Family's Little Countess.'
+ Trinket's eyes grew round with astonishment.
+ 'The Mu Family's Little Countess?'
+ 'Young Lord Mu's little sister,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mus have kidnapped our Brother Xu, so we've grabbed her as a hostage, just to make sure they don't do Brother Xu any harm.'
+ 'Brilliant!' said Trinket, his surprise now mixed with pleasure.
+ 'But how did you get hold of her?'
+ 'Yesterday, after we found that Brother Xu had disappeared,' said Butcher Qian, 'while you and the others went back to Willow Lane, I went off on my own to make a few enquiries.
+ First of all I wanted to find out whether the Mu Family had any other places in the city besides the Willow Lane one where they might be holding him; and secondly I wanted to know how many more of them there are, so that we have some idea what we are up against if it comes to a fight-out.
+ Well—huh!—I can tell you the answer to the second question straight away.
+ A lot.
+ The young Lord Mu himself has come to the Capital and he's brought some of their best fighting-men with him.'
+ Trinket frowned.
+ 'Tamardy!
+ How many Triads have we got altogether in the Green Wood Lodge?
+ Enough to fight them ten to one?'
+ 'No need for you to worry, Master,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The reason the Mu Family is here now is not because they want to fight us Triads.
+ It's because the traitor Wu Sangui's son, Wu Yingxiong, is in town.'
+ Trinket nodded.
+ 'They've come to assassinate the Little Traitor, you mean?'
+ 'Right first time, Master, ' said the butcher.
+ 'I always said you were a smart one.
+ As long as the Old Traitor and the Little Traitor are in Yunnan, they can't touch them; but as soon as one of them leaves Yunnan, it gives them an opportunity.
+ The only thing is, the Little Traitor is taking no chances with his security: he's brought a whole lot of first-rate fighting-men to protect him, so they won't find it an easy job to kill him.
+ I found out that those Mu folk do have another place in the city, but when I went to have a look there, the menfolk all seemed to have gone out, and there wasn't any sign of Brother Xu there either.
+ The only people I found there were this girl and a couple of maids looking after her.
+ It seemed too good a chance to miss, so—'
+ 'So you went to catch a sheep, but while you were about it you thought you might as well take a pig,' said Trinket, slightly reconstructing the proverb.
+ Butcher Qian laughed.
+ 'That's about it.
+ Although she's only a young girl, she means all the world to the Mu folk.
+ As long as their Little Countess is in our hands, Brother Xu will be safe as houses.
+ There's absolutely no fear of their not looking after him properly.'
+ 'Brother Qian,' said Trinket admiringly, 'this is a major achievement.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Butcher Qian coyly.
+ 'Anyway, thank you, Master.'
+ 'So now we've got this Little Countess,' said Trinket, 'what are we going to do with her?'
+ While they were talking, he had been stealing glances at the recumbent figure on the floor.
+ She was very beautiful—though he phrased it to himself mentally in the debased language of the brothel.
+ 'It's a tricky business, this,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'I was thinking it was one for the Master himself to decide.'
+ 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ Trinket asked presently, as if he had been mulling the matter over in his mind.
+ He hadn't been with the Triads very long, but long enough by now to know the drill.
+ It was all 'Master this' and 'Master that' and respectfully waiting to be told by the Master what they should do; but invariably they had already decided what they wanted to do and only wanted the Master's approval for doing it, so that if there was any question about it later, the Master would have sole responsibility for what they had done.
+ And so his invariable response to the invariable question was to turn it back on them: 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ 'Well, for the present,' said Butcher Qian, 'we've got to hide her somewhere safe and somewhere where the Mu people can't find her.
+ There are a lot of them around in the Capital right now, and though it's to assassinate the Little Traitor that they're here, now that we've killed one of their people and they've kidnapped Brother Xu, you can be sure they're keeping a close watch on anywhere in the city where there are Triads.
+ From now on we shan't be able to take a piss or a shit without their knowing about it.'
+ Trinket laughed.
+ Here at last was someone who spoke his language.
+ 'Sit down, Brother Qian,' he said.
+ 'Let's take our time over this.'
+ 'Thank you, Master,' said Butcher Qian, seating himself in one of the chairs and continuing.
+ 'There were really two reasons why I hid the Little Countessinside this pig's carcass.
+ One was to get her past the Palace Guard: they always search everyone at the gate.
+ But it was also to get her past any of the Mu Family spies who might be out watching for us.
+ There are some really dangerous people among that Mu lot, you can't afford to take any chances.
+ If she's hidden anywhere other than in the Palace, there's no guaranteeing they wouldn't try to get her back.'
+ 'So you're proposing to hide her in the Palace?' said Trinket.
+ 'Well, that's not really for me to say,' said the butcher.
+ 'It's entirely up to you, Master.
+ Mind you, look anywhere you like, you'll never find a safer place than this.
+ However many of their ace fighters the Mu Family may have got in the city, they're not going to take on the Palace Guard.
+ Not that they'd ever guess she was in the Palace, anyway.
+ But even suppose—it's very unlikely, but just suppose—they did find out she was here, they'd never try getting in here to rescue her.
+ If they could get in to do that, they could just as well get in to carry off the Tartar Emperor, and they've never tried to do that yet because they know it's out of the question.
+ Of course, it was rather a nerve, taking it on myself to bring the Little Countess in here without consulting you.
+ It means a lot of danger for you, Master.
+ And trouble.
+ I deserve to be hung.'
+ 'You say yourself that you deserve to be hung,' thought Trinket, 'but you know damn well that you won't be.
+ Still, it does seem the best plan to hide her in here.
+ As he says, it's the one place they will never think of looking; and they'd never be able to get her out of here, even if they did.
+ Well, Mister Butcher Qian, if you had the nerve to kidnap her and smuggle her into the Palace, I suppose I ought to have the nerve to keep her here.'
+ He gave the man a smile.
+ 'It's a very good idea,' he said.
+ 'We'll hide her here then.'
+ 'If you think it's all right, I'm sure it will be,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'There's this to be said too, for hiding her here.
+ When this business is over and the Little Countess is back with her own people again, it won't be any disgrace to her if they know that she's been kept all the time in the Palace; whereas if I were to keep her in the basement of my slaughterhouse—well, what with the stink of blood and offal round her all the time, it wouldn't be very nice for a person of her quality.'
+ 'Unless you fed her on China-root and gave her Shaoxing wine to drink,' said Trinket mischievously.
+ Butcher Qian laughed at the interruption before continuing: 'Besides, although the Little Countess is only a girl, being a member of the fair sex it wouldn't do much for her good name if she was kept with a lot of rough men; whereas being kept with you, Master, it won't matter.'
+ 'Why's that?' said Trinket in some surprise.
+ 'Well,' said Butcher Qian, 'you're young too, and besides . . . besides . . . you work in the Palace, so of course ...
+ I mean . . . it's all right.'
+ The butcher was clearly embarrassed, and Trinket had to think for some moments before he saw why.
+ 'Oh, I see.
+ You mean because I'm a eunuch.
+ If I'm the one guarding her, it won't do any harm to her reputation.
+ But I'm only a pretend eunuch, you know.'
+ It was because he wasn't a real eunuch that he hadn't grasped sooner what the embarrassed butcher was getting at.
+ 'Is your bedroom in there, Master?' asked the butcher.
+ Trinket nodded.
+ Butcher Qian took up the Little Countess in his arms, carried her into the bedroom, and laid her down on the bed.
+ There was just the one large bed there.
+ Previously there had been a smaller one as well in which Trinket used to sleep, but after the death of Old Hai, he had had it moved out.
+ He had too many secrets to want a young eunuch attendant living with him in his apartment.
+ 'Before I brought her in, I closed the Holy Hall and Yang Cord points on her back and the Pillar of Heaven one on her neck so that she couldn't move or speak,' said the butcher.
+ 'If you want her to eat anything, you'll have to open them up again; but before you do that, I'd advise you to first close the Ring Jump points on her legs so that she can't run away.
+ The Mu people are all very skilled in the Martial Arts, and though a young girl like this isn't likely to know much about that sort of thing, it isn't worth taking any chances.'
+ Trinket wanted to ask him where the Holy Hall and Ring Jump vital points were and how you closed and opened them; but then he remembered that, as Master of the Green Wood Lodge and a disciple of the great Helmsman, he was probably expected to know about these things and felt sure his subordinates would despise him if they found out that he was totally ignorant of these matters; so he just nodded and said that he would.
+ 'Anyway, ' he thought, 'I shouldn't have any difficulty in handling her.
+ She's only a girl.'
+ 'Could you lend me a knife, Master?' said Butcher Qian.
+ Trinket wondered nervously what he wanted it for, but stooped down nevertheless and extracted the dagger from inside his boot.
+ Butcher Qian took it from him and made an incision in the back of the pig's carcass.
+ Unaware of the blade's incomparable sharpness, he was somewhat surprised at the ease with which it sank in, at once burying itself up to the hilt and slicing through fat and flesh as if it were bean curd.
+ 'This is a good weapon you've got here,' he said admiringly.
+ In no time at all he had cut off the two forelegs and two large collops from the back.
+ ''You can keep these to roast and eat yourself, Master, ' he said.
+ The rest you can give to the little Goong-goongs to carry back to the kitchens.
+ I'll take my leave now.
+ If there's any business in the Society to report, I'll let you know straight away, '
+ 'Right, ' said Trinket.
+ He glanced towards the Little Countess lying on the bed: 'This girl—she's sleeping very soundly.'
+ He'd wanted to say, 'This girl better not stay here long.
+ It's terribly dangerous having her here.
+ If anyone were to find out, I'd really be in the shit, '
+ But then he reflected that all members of the Triad Society were heroes who laughed at danger and would despise him if they heard him uttering such craven words.
+ As soon as Butcher Qian had gone back to the kitchens, Trinket barred the door and checked the window to make sure there were no chinks or slits in the paper through which anyone could peep into the room, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, he inspected the Little Countess.
+ She was staring fixedly at the top of the bedstead, and when she saw Trinket approach, she closed her eyes fast.
+ He laughed.
+ 'You can't talk and you can't move!
+ All you can do is just lie there like a good little girl!'
+ Her dress was still clean, and Trinket reflected that Butcher Qian must have done a good job of cleaning out the inside of the carcass.
+ He threw a coverlet over her.
+ From the snowy pallor of her cheeks, drained of all their colour, and the fluttering of her long eyelashes, he could tell that she was very frightened.
+ 'Don't be afraid,' he said.
+ 'I'm not going to kill you.
+ Just wait a few days and I'll be setting you free again.'
+ The Little Countess opened her eyes wide, looked at him for a moment, and then quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket thought of the great awe in which the Mu Family were held by all the Brotherhood of River and Lake; of their stuck-up henchman the elder Bo—now dead, fortunately, struck down by one of his Triads—and his younger brother who had raged at him and nearly broken his wrist.
+ (The bruise was still there, he saw on inspecting it, and only slightly fainter.)
+ 'And now their Little Countess is in my hands,' he thought.
+ 'I can beat her and curse her as much as I want to, and she won't be able to move a muscle.'
+ The thought was so gratifying that it made him laugh out loud, causing the Little Countess to open her eyes to see what he was laughing at.
+ 'Call yourself a countess, do you?' said Trinket.
+ 'I suppose you think you're very superior.
+ Well, to me you're nobody.'
+ He grasped her right ear and gave it a few pulls, then he pinched her nose between finger and thumb and twisted it a couple of times, laughing as he did so.
+ The Little Countess had shut her eyes again, but two fat tears escaped from under their lids and coursed down her cheeks.
+ 'Don't cry!'
+ Trinket shouted at her.
+ 'I forbid you to cry.'
+ But the Little Countess's tears ran even faster.
+ 'Hot-piece momma!' said Trinket exasperatedly.
+ 'Being stubborn, are we?
+ Open your eyes and look at me, you smelly little tart!'
+ But the Little Countess closed her eyes even tighter.
+ 'Huh!
+ Think you're on your Mu Family estate still, do you?' said Trinket.
+ Think you've got your tamardy Paladins to look after you?
+ Grandmother's!
+ What's so tamardy wonderful about them?
+ I tell you this: if they ever come my way, I'll chop them into little bits, each one of them.'
+ No response.
+ 'Open your eyes!' he hollered at the top of his voice.
+ But all the Little Countess's strength seemed to go into closing them tighter.
+ 'All right,' he said.
+ 'If you won't open your lousy eyes, you won't be needing them any more.
+ I might as well cut them out.
+ They'll make a nice little snack for me next time I'm having a drink.'
+ He took out his dagger and slid the flat of the blade a couple of times over her eyelids.
+ A shudder ran through her whole body, but she still would not open her eyes.
+ Trinket was at his wit's end to know what to do with her.
+ 'You don't want to open your eyes but I want you to open them,' he said.
+ 'All right, we'll play a little game and see who comes out best, the high and mighty Little Countess or the nasty little beggar-boy.
+ For the time being I'm not going to cut your eyes out.
+ I'll cut a little turtle on your left cheek and a cow-pat on the right one.
+ Then, when the cuts have scarred over and you go out into the street, people will come crowding round in thousands to gaze at the sight.
+ "Oh, look!" they'll say.
+ "How beautiful!
+ The beautiful Mu Countess with a turtle on one cheek and a cow-pat on the other!"
+ Now will you open your eyes?'
+ The poor Little Countess, mistress of herself only in the ability to open or close her eyes, now closed them even tighter.
+ 'I see,' said Trinket, pretending to be talking to himself.
+ The little tart knows she's not good-looking.
+ She's decided she wants a bit of decoration on her face to improve her looks.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.'
+ He took the lid off an inkstone that was on the table, ground some ink in it, and dabbled the tip of a writing-brush in it until it was well soaked.
+ The brush, the inkstone, and the ink-stick had all been the property of Old Hai.
+ Trinket had never had a writing-brush in his hand before and held it like a chopstick.
+ Carrying it over to the bed, he proceeded to draw a small turtle with it on the Little Countess's left cheek.
+ Her tears continued to flow, turning the drawing into an inky streak.
+ 'I'm doing the pattern with the brush first,' he said.
+ 'I'll be going over it with a knife afterwards.
+ That's what they do when they make seals, isn't it?
+ Ah, yes, Little Countess, I know what.
+ When the carving's ready, I'll be able to take you out into Changan Street and set up there as a print-seller.
+ "Roll up, roll up!"
+ I'll say.
+ "Buy a nice turtle print, three cash a sheet!"
+ I'll have your face ready painted over with black ink, then as soon as a customer gives me his three cash: sheet of white paper, rub it over, peel it off, and there's a little turtle!
+ Won't take a moment.
+ I ought to be able to do a hundred in a day.
+ That's three hundred cash.
+ Quite a tidy little sum!'
+ All the time he was gabbling this nonsense, her eyelids never ceased to flutter.
+ He could tell that she was both very angry and very frightened.
+ This gave him great satisfaction and inspired him to further idiocy.
+ 'Hm, a cow-pat on the right cheek—no, I don't think anyone's going to pay good money for that.
+ A fat pig would be better—a great big, fat, stupid-looking pig.
+ That would sell.'
+ He moved round to the other side with his brush and executed a crude drawing on her right cheek: a creature with four legs and a tail which could perhaps have been a pig but might equally well have been a cat or a dog.
+ Then he laid the brush down and took up a pair of silver-shears, the point of which he applied lightly to her left cheek.
+ 'Now, if you don't open your eyes, I'll start cutting.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.
+ The pig can wait till later.'
+ The Little Countess's tears were now welling through the closed lids in streams, but still she wouldn't open her eyes.
+ And since Trinket was unwilling to admit defeat, there was nothing for it but to begin moving the point around on her cheek.
+ Although she had the most delicate complexion imaginable, the point was so blunt that it made not the slightest mark on her skin; but so great was her fear, that she imagined this horrible boy really was cutting patterns on her face and, from excess of emotion, she fainted clean away.
+ Trinket got a shock when he saw the change that had come over her and wondered for a moment if she really had died of fright; but when he held his hand against her nostrils, he was relieved to find that she was still breathing.
+ 'Little tart!' he said.
+ 'You're only shamming dead.'
+ It was by now obvious that she would die sooner than open her eyes for him, but he was damned if he was going to admit defeat.
+ 'As the man reading the songbook while he rode his mule said, "We'll work something out as we go along,"' he thought: 'Old Trink's not going to be beaten by a smelly little girl like you.'
+ He took a wet cloth and wiped the ink-marks from her cheeks.
+ They came off fairly easily, revealing once more the beauty of her delicate, rather aristocratic features.
+ She had fine eyebrows, long lashes, a small mouth and a slightly aquiline nose.
+ But Trinket was unimpressed.
+ 'Little Countess Lah-di-dah,' he said.
+ 'I expect you look down on a little eunuch like me.
+ Well, I don't think much of you either, so that makes us quits.'
+ After a while the Little Countess began to regain consciousness and presently opened her eyes.
+ Startled to see Trinket bending over her, staring, with far from friendly eyes, from barely a foot away, she quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket laughed gleefully.
+ 'Ha ha!
+ You've opened your eyes now and looked at me.
+ I've won, admit it!'
+ It was agreeable to have won, but it rather took the gloss off his victory that she couldn't speak.
+ He would have liked to open the vital points that would enable her to do so, but he didn't know how.
+ 'Now that your vital points are closed, you can't eat,' he said.
+ 'If they're not opened, you'll just starve to death.
+ I was thinking of opening them for you, but though I did once learn the method, it's such a long while ago that I can't remember it.
+ Do you know how it's done?
+ If you don't know, just lie there perfectly still.
+ If you do know, blink your eyes three times.'
+ He watched her intently as she lay there, inert and unblinking.
+ After a long pause, very slowly and deliberately, she blinked her eyes three times.
+ 'Thank heavens for that!' said Trinket delightedly.
+ 'I was beginning to think all of you Mu people were dead from the neck up.'
+ He lifted her up in his arms and sat her down in a chair.
+ 'Now look,' he said, 'I'm going to start pointing to places on your body.
+ If I point to the right place, blink three times; if it isn't right, just keep your eyes open and don't move.
+ When I've found the right vital point, I'll open it up for you.
+ Understand?'
+ The Little Countess blinked three times.
+
+ 韦小宝从上书房侍候了康熙下来，又到御膳房去。
+ 过不多时，钱老板带着四名伙计，抬了两口洗剥得干干净净的大肥猪到来，每一口净肉便有三百来斤，向韦小宝道：“桂公公，你老人家一早起身，吃这茯苓花雕猪最有补益，最好是现割现烤。
+ 小人将一口猪送到你老人家房中，明儿一早，你老人家就可割来烤了吃，吃不完的，再命厨房里做成咸肉。”
+ 韦小宝知他必有深意，便道：“你倒想得周到。
+ 那就跟我来。”
+ 钱老板将一口光猪留在厨房，另一口抬到韦小宝屋中。
+ 尚膳监管事太监的住处和御厨相近，那肥猪抬入房中之后，韦小宝命小太监带领抬猪的伙计到厨房中等候，待三人走后，便掩上了门。
+ 钱老板低声问道：“韦香主，屋中没旁人吗？”
+ 韦小宝摇了摇头。
+ 钱老板俯身轻轻将光猪翻了过来，只见猪肚上开膛之处，横贴着几条猪皮，封住了割缝。
+ 韦小宝心想：“这肥猪肚中定是藏着什么古怪物事，莫非是兵器之类，天地会想在皇宫中杀人大闹？”
+ 不由得心中怦怦而跳。
+ 果见钱老板撕下猪皮，双手拉开猪肚，轻轻抱了一团物事出来。
+ 韦小宝“咦”的一声惊呼，见他抱出来的竟是一个人。
+ 钱老板将那人横放在地下。
+ 只见这人身体瘦小，一头长发，却是个十四五岁的少女，身上穿了薄薄的单衫，双目紧闭，一动也不动，只是胸口微微起伏。
+ 韦小宝大奇，低声问道：“这小姑娘是谁？
+ 你带她来干什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“这是沐王府的郡主。”
+ 韦小宝更是惊奇，睁大了眼睛，道：“沐王府的郡主？”
+ 钱老板道：“正是。
+ 沐王府小公爷的嫡亲妹子。
+ 他们掳了徐三哥去，我们就捉了这位郡主娘娘来抵押，教他们不敢动徐三哥一根寒毛。”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，说道：“妙计，妙计！
+ 怎地捉她来的？”
+ 钱老板道：“昨天徐天川徐三哥给人绑了去，韦香主带同众位哥哥，二次去杨柳胡同评理，属下便出去打探消息，想知道沐王府那些人，除了杨柳胡同之外，是不是还有别的落脚所在，徐三哥是不是给他们囚禁在那里，想知道他们在京城里还有哪些人，当真要动手，咱们心里可也得先有个底子。
+ 这一打探，嘿，沐王府来得人可还当真不少，沐家小公爷带头，率领了王府的大批好手。”
+ 韦小宝皱起了眉头，说道：“他妈的！
+ 咱们青木堂在京里有多少兄弟？
+ 能不能十个打他们一个？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主不用担心。
+ 沐王府这次来到北京，不是为跟咱们天地会打架。
+ 原来大汉奸吴三桂的大儿子吴应熊，来到了京城。”
+ 韦小宝点头道：“沐王府要行刺这姓吴的小汉奸？”
+ 钱老板道：“是啊。
+ 韦香主料事如神。
+ 大汉奸、小汉奸在云南，动不了他们的手，一离云南，便有机可乘了。
+ 但这小汉奸自然防备周密，身边有不少武功高手保护，要杀他可也不是易事。
+ 沐王府那些人果然另有住处，属下过去查看，那些人都不在家，屋里却也没徐三哥的踪迹，只有这小丫头和两个服侍她的女人留在屋里，那可是难得的良机……”
+ 韦小宝道：“于是你就顺手牵羊，反手牵猪，将她捉了来？”
+ 钱老板微笑道：“正是。
+ 这小姑娘年纪虽小，沐王府却当她是凤凰一般，只要这小郡主在咱们手里，徐三哥便稳如泰山，不怕他们不好好服侍。”
+ 韦小宝道：“钱大哥这件功劳倒大得紧呢。”
+ 钱老板道：“多谢韦香主夸奖。”
+ 韦小宝道：“咱们拿到了小郡主，却又怎样？”
+ 说着向躺在地下的那少女瞧了几眼，心道：“这小娘皮长得可挺美啊。”
+ 钱老板道：“这件事说大不大，说小不小，要听韦香主的意思办理。”
+ 韦小宝沉吟道：“你说怎么办？”
+ 他跟天地会的人相处的时候虽暂，却已摸到了他们的脾气。
+ 这些人嘴里尊称自己是香主，满口什么静候香主吩咐云云，其实各人肚里早就有了主意，只盼得到自己赞同，于是一切便推在韦香主头上，日后他们就不会担当重大干系。
+ 他对付的法子是反问一句：“你说怎么办？”
+ 钱老板道：“眼下只有将这个郡主藏在一个稳妥所在，让沐王府的人找不到。
+ 这次沐家来到京城的着实不少，虽说是为了杀小汉奸吴应熊，但咱们杀了他们的人，徐大哥又给他们拿了去，这会儿咱们天地会每一处落脚之地，一定能给他们钉得紧紧的。
+ 我们便拉一泡尿，放一个屁，只怕沐王府的人也都知道了。”
+ 韦小宝嗤的一笑，觉得这钱老板谈吐可喜，很合自己脾胃，笑道：“钱大哥，咱们坐下来慢慢商量。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，多谢香主。”
+ 在一张椅上坐了，续道：“属下将小郡主藏在猪肚里带进宫来，一来是为瞒过宫门侍卫的重重搜检，二来是要瞒过沐王府众人的耳目。
+ 他奶奶的，沐公爷手下，只怕真有几个厉害人物，不可不防。
+ 小郡主若不是藏在宫里，难保不给他们抢了回去。”
+ 韦小宝道：“你说要将小郡主藏在宫里？”
+ 钱老板道：“属下可不敢这么说，一切全凭韦香主作主。
+ 藏在宫里，当然是普天下最稳妥的所在。
+ 沐王府的高手再多，总敌不过大内侍卫。
+ 小郡主竟会在皇宫之中，别说他们决计想不到，查不出，就算知道了，又怎有能耐冲进皇宫来救人？
+ 他们如能进宫来将小郡主救出去，那么连鞑子皇帝也能绑架去了。
+ 天下决没这个道理。
+ 不过属下胆大妄为，事先没向韦香主请示，擅自将小郡主带进宫来，给韦香主增添不少危险，不少麻烦，实在该死之极。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“你将人带都带进来了，自己说该死，却也没死。
+ 把小郡主藏在宫里，果然是好计，沐王府的人一来想不到，二来救不出。
+ 你胆大妄为，难道我胆子就小了？”
+ 笑道：“你这计策很好，我将小郡主藏在这里好了。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，韦香主说这件事行得，那定然行得。
+ 属下又想，将来事情了结之后，小郡主总是要放还给他们的。
+ 他们得知郡主娘娘这些日子是住在宫里，也不辱没了她身份，倘若老是关在小号屠宰房的地窖之中，闻那牛血猪血的腥气，未免太对不起人。”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“每天喂她吃些茯苓、党参、花雕、鸡蛋，也就是了。”
+ 钱老板嘿嘿一笑，说道：“再说，小郡主年纪虽然幼小，总是女子，跟我们这些臭男人住在一起，于名声未免有碍，跟韦香主在一起，就不要紧了。”
+ 韦小宝一怔，问道：“为什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主年纪也轻，何况又是…… 又是在宫里办事的，自然…… 自然没什么。”
+ 言语吞吞吐吐，有些不便出口。
+ 韦小宝见他神色忸怩，想了一想，这才明白：“原来你说我是太监，因此小郡主交我看管，于她声名无碍。
+ 你可不知我这太监是冒牌货。”
+ 只因他并不是真的太监，这才要想了一想之后方能明白，否则钱老板第一句话他就懂了。
+ 钱老板问道：“韦香主的卧室在里进罢？”
+ 韦小宝点点头。
+ 钱老板俯身抱起小郡主，走到后进，放在床上。
+ 房中本来有大床、小床各一，海大富死后，韦小宝已叫人将小床抬了出去。
+ 他隐秘之事甚多，没要小太监住在屋里服侍。
+ 钱老板道：“属下带小郡主进宫来时，已点了她背心上的神堂穴、阳纲穴，还点了她后颈的天柱穴，让她不能动弹，说不出话。
+ 韦香主要放她吃饭，就可解开她穴道，不过最好先点她腿上环跳穴，免得她逃跑。
+ 沐王府的人武功甚高，这小姑娘倒不会多少武功，却也不可不防。”
+ 韦小宝想问他什么叫神堂穴、环跳穴，如何点穴、解穴，但转念一想，自己是青木堂香主，又是总舵主的弟子，连点穴、解穴也不会，岂不是让下属们太也瞧不起？
+ 反正对付一个小姑娘总不是什么难事，点头道：“知道了。”
+ 钱老板道：“请韦香主借一把刀使。”
+ 韦小宝心想：“你要刀干什么？”
+ 从靴桶中取出匕首，递了给他。
+ 钱老板接了过来，在猪背上一划，没料到这匕首锋利无匹，割猪肉如切豆腐，一剑下去，直没至柄。
+ 钱老板吃了一惊，赞道：“好剑！”
+ 割下两片脊肉，两只前腿，道：“韦香主留着烧烤来吃，余下的吩咐小公公们抬回厨房去罢。
+ 属下这就告辞，会里的事情，属下随时来向韦香主禀告。”
+ 韦小宝接过匕首，说道：“好！”
+ 向卧在床上的小郡主瞧了一眼，道：“这小娘皮睡得倒挺安稳。”
+ 他本来想说：“这小姑娘在宫里耽得久了，太过危险，倘若给人发觉，那可糟糕之极。”
+ 但想天地会的英雄好汉岂有怕危险的？
+ 这等话说出口来，不免给人小觑了。
+ 待钱老板回去厨房，韦小宝忙闩上了门，又查看窗户，一无缝隙，这才坐到床边，去看那小郡主，只见她正睁着圆圆的眼睛，望着床顶，见韦小宝过来，忙闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你不会说话，不会动弹，安安静静的躺在这里，最乖不过。”
+ 见她身上衣衫也不污秽，想是钱老板将那口肥猪的肚里洗得十分干净，不留丝毫血渍，于是拉过被来，盖在她身上。
+ 只见她脸颊雪白，没半分血色，长长的睫毛不住颤动，想是心中十分害怕，笑道：“你不用怕，我不会杀了你的。
+ 过得几天，就放你出去。”
+ 小郡主睁开眼来，瞧了他一眼，忙又闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“你沐王府在江湖上好大威风，那日苏北道上，你家那白寒松好大架子，丝毫没将老子瞧在眼里，这当儿还不是让我手下的人打死了。
+ 他奶奶的……”
+ 想到此处，伸起手来，见手腕上黑黑一圈乌青兀自未退，隐隐还感疼痛，心道：“那白寒枫死了哥哥，没处出气，捏得老子骨头也险些断了。
+ 想不到沐王府的郡主娘娘却落在我手里，老子要打便打，要骂便骂，你半分动弹不得，哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 想到得意处，不禁笑出声来。
+ 小郡主听到笑声，睁开眼来，要看他为什么发笑。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你是郡主娘娘，很了不起，是不是？
+ 你奶奶的，老子才不将你放在眼里呢！”
+ 走上前去，抓住她右耳，提了三下，又捏住她鼻子，扭了两下，哈哈大笑。
+ 小郡主闭着的双眼中流出眼泪，两行珠泪从腮边滚了下来。
+ 韦小宝喝道：“不许哭！
+ 老子叫你不许哭，就不许哭！”
+ 小郡主的眼泪却流得更加多了。
+ 韦小宝骂道：“辣块妈妈，臭小娘皮，你还倔强！
+ 睁开眼睛来，瞧着我！”
+ 小郡主双眼闭得更紧。
+ 韦小宝道：“哈，你还道这里是你沐王府，你奶奶的，你家里刘白方苏四大家将，有他妈的什么了不起，终有一日撞在老子手里，一个个都斩成了肉酱。”
+ 大声吆喝：“你睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主又用力闭了闭眼睛。
+ 韦小宝道：“好，你不肯睁眼，要这一对臭眼珠子有什么用？
+ 不如挖了出来，让老子下酒。”
+ 提起匕首，平放刃锋，在她眼皮上拖了几拖。
+ 小郡主全身打个冷战，仍不睁开眼睛。
+ 韦小宝倒拿她没有法子，说道：“你不睁眼，我偏偏要你睁眼，咱哥儿俩耗上了，倒要瞧瞧是你郡主娘娘厉害，还是我这小流氓、小叫化子厉害。
+ 我暂且不来挖你的眼珠，挖了眼珠，倒算是你赢了，永远不能瞧我。
+ 我要在你脸蛋上用尖刀子雕些花样，左边脸上刻只小乌龟，右边脸上刻一堆牛粪。
+ 等到将来结了疤，你到街上去之时，成千成万的人围拢来瞧西洋镜，大家都说：‘美啊，美啊，来看沐王府的小美人儿，左边脸上一只王八，右边脸上一堆牛粪。
+ ’你到底睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主全身难动，只有睁眼闭眼能自拿主意，听得韦小宝这么说，眼睛越闭越紧。
+ 韦小宝自言自语：“原来这臭花娘嫌自己脸蛋儿不美，想要我在她脸上装扮装扮，好，我先刻一只乌龟！”
+ 打开桌上砚台，磨了墨，用笔蘸了墨。
+ 这些笔墨砚台都是海老公之物，韦小宝一生从未抓过笔杆，这时拿笔便如拿筷子，提笔在小郡主左脸画了一只乌龟。
+ 小郡主的泪水直流下来，在乌龟的笔划上流出了一道墨痕。
+ 韦小宝道：“我先用笔打个样子，然后用刀子来刻，就好像人家刻图章。
+ 对，对，郡主娘娘，咱们刻好之后，我牵了你去长安门大街，大叫：‘哪一位客官要印乌龟？
+ 三文钱印一张！’
+ 我用黑墨涂了你脸，有人给三文钱，就用张白纸在你脸上一印，便是一只乌龟，快得很！
+ 一天准能印上一百张。
+ 三百文铜钱，够花的了。”
+ 他一面胡扯，一面偷看小郡主的脸色，见她睫毛不住颤动，显然又是愤怒，又是害怕。
+ 他甚是得意，说道：“嗯，右脸刻一堆牛粪，可没人出钱来买牛粪的，不如刻只猪，又肥又蠢，生意一定好。”
+ 提起笔来，在她右边脸颊上干划一通，画的东西有四只脚，一条尾巴就是了，也不知像猫还是像狗。
+ 他放下毛笔，取过一把剪银子的剪刀，将剪刀轻轻放在小郡主左颊，喝道：“你再不睁眼，我要刻花了！
+ 我先刻乌龟，肥猪可不忙刻。”
+ 小郡主泪如泉涌，偏偏就是不肯睁眼。
+ 韦小宝无可奈何，不肯认输，便将剪尖在她脸上轻轻划来划去。
+ 这剪尖其实甚钝，小郡主肌肤虽嫩，却也没伤到她丝毫，可是她惊惶之下，只道这小恶人真的用刀子在自己脸上雕花，一阵气急，便晕了过去。
+ 韦小宝见她神色有异，生怕是给自己吓死了，倒吃了一惊，忙伸手去探她鼻息，幸好尚有呼吸，便道：“臭小娘装死！”
+ 寻思：“你死也不肯睁眼，难道我便输了给你？
+ 咱们骑驴看唱本，走着瞧，韦小宝总不会折在你臭小娘手里。”
+ 拿了块湿布来，抹去她两颊上黑墨，直抹了三把，才抹得干净。
+ 但见她眉淡睫长，嘴小鼻挺，容颜着实秀丽，自言自语：“你是郡主娘娘，心中一定瞧不起我这小太监，我也瞧不起你，大家还不是扯直？”
+ 过了一会，小郡主慢慢醒转，一睁开眼，只见韦小宝一双眼睛和她双目相距不过一尺，正狠狠的瞪着她，不由得吃了一惊，急忙闭眼。
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“你终于睁开眼来，瞧见我了，是老子赢了，是不是？”
+ 他自觉得胜，心下高兴，只是小郡主不会说话，未免有些扫兴，要想去解她穴道，却又不知其法，说道：“你给人点了穴道，倘若解不开，不能吃饭，岂不饿死了？
+ 我本想给你解开，不过解穴的法门，从前学过，现下可忘了。
+ 你会不会？
+ 你如不会，那就躺着做僵尸，一动也别动，要是会的，眼睛眨三下。”
+ 他目不转睛的望着小郡主，只见她眼睛一动不动，过了好一会，突然双眼缓缓的连眨三下。
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“我只道沐王府中的人既然姓沐，一定个个是木头，呆头呆脑，什么都不会，原来你这小木头还会解穴。”
+ 将她抱起，坐在椅上，说道：“你瞧着，我在你身上各个部位指点，倘若指得对的，你就眨三下眼睛，指得不对，眼睛睁得大大的，一动也不能动。
+ 我找到解穴的部位，就给你解开穴道，懂不懂？
+ 懂的就眨眼。”
+ 小郡主眨了三下眼睛。
+
+ GENTLE READER, What, you may ask, was the origin of this book?
+ Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye.
+ Long ago, when the goddess Nǚ-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square.
+ She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned mountains.
+ Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers.
+ It could move about at will and could grow or shrink to any size it wanted.
+ Observing that all the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and lamentation.
+ One day, in the midst of its lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great distance, each of them remarkable for certain eccentricities of manner and appearance.
+ When they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat down on the ground and began to talk.
+ The monk, catching sight of a lustrous, translucent stone—it was in fact the rejected building block which had now shrunk itself to the size of a fan-pendant and looked very attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm of his hand and addressed it with a smile: 'Ha, I see you have magical properties!
+ But nothing to recommend you.
+ I shall have to cut a few words on you so that anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special.
+ After that I shall take you to a certain brilliant successful poetical cultivated aristocratic elegant delectable luxurious opulent locality on a little trip.'
+ The stone was delighted.
+ 'What words will you cut?
+ Where is this place you will take me to?
+ I beg to be enlightened.'
+ 'Do not ask,' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'You will know soon enough when the time comes.'
+ And with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off at a great pace with the Taoist.
+ But where they both went to I have no idea.
+ Countless aeons went by and a certain Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the secret of immortality chanced to be passing below that same Greensickness Peak in the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a large stone standing there, on which the characters of a long inscription were clearly discernible.
+ Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape and been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist illuminate Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out the life of a man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to the other shore.
+ The inscription named the country where it had been born, and went into considerable detail about its domestic life, youthful amours, and even the verses, mottoes and riddles it had written.
+ All it lacked was the authentication of a dynasty and date.
+ On the back of the stone was inscribed the following quatrain:
+ Found unfit to repair the azure sky Long years a foolish mortal man was I.
+ My life in both worlds on this stone is writ: Pray who will copy out and publish it?
+ From his reading of the inscription Vanitas realized that this was a stone of some consequence.
+ Accordingly he addressed himself to it in the following manner: 'Brother Stone, according to what you yourself seem to imply in these verses, this story of yours contains matter of sufficient interest to merit publication and has been carved here with that end in view.
+ But as far as I can see (a) it has no discoverable dynastic period, and (b) it contains no examples of moral grandeur among its characters—no statesmanship, no social message of any kind.
+ All I can find in it, in fact, are a number of females, conspicuous, if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling talent or insignificant virtue.
+ Even if I were to copy all this out, I cannot see that it would make a very remarkable book.'
+ 'Come, your reverence,' said the stone (for Vanitas had been correct in assuming that it could speak) 'must you be so obtuse?
+ All the romances ever written have an artificial period setting—Han or Tang for the most part.
+ In refusing to make use of that stale old convention and telling my Story of the Stone exactly as it occurred, it seems to me that, far from depriving it of anything, I have given it a freshness these other books do not have.
+ 'Your so-called "historical romances", consisting, as they do, of scandalous anecdotes about statesmen and emperors of bygone days and scabrous attacks on the reputations of long-dead gentlewomen, contain more wickedness and immorality than I care to mention.
+ Still worse is the "erotic novel", by whose filthy obscenities our young folk are all too easily corrupted.
+ And the "boudoir romances", those dreary stereotypes with their volume after volume all pitched on the same note and their different characters undistinguishable except by name (all those ideally beautiful young ladies and ideally eligible young bachelors)— even they seem unable to avoid descending sooner or later into indecency.
+ "The trouble with this last kind of romance is that it only gets written in the first place because the author requires a framework in which to show off his love-poems.
+ He goes about constructing this framework quite mechanically, beginning with the names of his pair of young lovers and invariably adding a third character, a servant or the like, to make mischief between them, like the chou in a comedy.
+ 'What makes these romances even more detestable is the stilted, bombastic language— inanities dressed in pompous rhetoric, remote alike from nature and common sense and teeming with the grossest absurdities.
+ 'Surely my "number of females", whom I spent half a lifetime studying with my own eyes and ears, are preferable to this kind of stuff?
+ I do not claim that they are better people than the ones who appear in books written before my time; I am only saying that the contemplation of their actions and motives may prove a more effective antidote to boredom and melancholy.
+ And even the inelegant verses with which my story is interlarded could serve to entertain and amuse on those convivial occasions when rhymes and riddles are in demand.
+ 'All that my story narrates, the meetings and partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded exactly as they happened.
+ I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture.
+ 'My only wish is that men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business worries or a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental refreshment but even perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon their vain and frivolous pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration of their vital forces.
+ What does your reverence say to that?'
+ For a long time Vanitas stood lost in thought, pondering this speech.
+ He then subjected the Story of the stone to a careful second reading.
+ He could see that its main theme was love; that it consisted quite simply of a true record of real events; and that it was entirely free from any tendency to deprave and corrupt.
+ He therefore copied it all out from beginning to end and took it back with him to look for a publisher.
+ As a consequence of all this, Vanitas, starting off in the Void (which is Truth) came to the contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and from Form engendered Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again into Form; and from Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth).
+ He therefore changed his name from Vanitas to Brother Amor, or the Passionate Monk, (because he had approached Truth by way of Passion), and changed the title of the book from The Story of the S tone to The Tale of Brother Amor.
+ Old Kong Mei-xi from the homeland of Confucius called the book A Mirror for the Romantic.
+ Wu Yu-feng called it A Dream of Golden Days.
+ Cao Xueqin in his Nostalgia Studio worked on it for ten years, in the course of which he rewrote it no less than five times, dividing it into chapters, composing chapter headings, renaming it The Twelve Beauties of Jinling, and adding an introductory quatrain.
+ Red Inkstone restored the original title when he recopied the book and added his second set of annotations to it.
+ This, then, is a true account of how The Story of the Stone came to be written.
+ Pages full of idle words Penned with hot and bitter tears:
+ All men call the author fool; None his secret message hears.
+ The origin of The Story of the Stone has now been made clear.
+ The same cannot, however, be said of the characters and events which it recorded.
+ Gentle reader, have patience!
+ This is how the inscription began: Long, long ago the world was tilted downwards towards the south-east; and in that lower-lying south-easterly part of the earth there is a city called Soochow; and in Soochow the district around the Chang-men Gate is reckoned one of the two or three wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men.
+ Outside the Chang-men Gate is a wide thorough-fare called Worldly Way; and somewhere off Worldly Way is an area called Carnal Lane.
+ There is an old temple in the Carnal Lane area which, because of the way it is bottled up inside a narrow cul-de-sac, is referred to locally as Bottle-gourd Temple.
+ Next door to Bottle-gourd Temple lived a gentleman of private means called Zhen Shi-yin and his wife Feng-shi, a kind, good woman with a profound sense of decency and decorum.
+ The household was not a particularly wealthy one, but they were nevertheless looked up to by all and sundry as the leading family in the neighbourhood.
+ Zhen Shi-yin himself was by nature a quiet and totality unambitious person.
+ He devoted his time to his garden and to the pleasures of wine and poetry.
+ Except for a single flaw, his existence could, indeed, have been described as an idyllic one.
+ The flaw was that, although already past fifty, he had no son, only a little girl, just two years old, whose name was Ying-lian.
+ Once, during the tedium of a burning summer's day, Shi-yin was sitting idly in his study.
+ The book had slipped from his nerveless grasp and his head had nodded down onto the desk in a doze.
+ While in this drowsy state he seemed to drift off to some place he could not identify, where he became aware of a monk and a Taoist walking along and talking as they went.
+ 'Where do you intend to take that thing you are carrying?' the Taoist was asking.
+ 'Don't you worry about him!' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'There is a batch of lovesick souls awaiting incarnation in the world below whose fate is due to be decided this very day.
+ I intend to take advantage of this opportunity to slip our little friend in amongst them and let him have a taste of human life along with the rest.'
+ 'Well, well, so another lot of these amorous wretches is about to enter the vale of tears,' said the Taoist.
+ 'How did all this begin?
+ And where are the souls to be reborn?'
+ 'You will laugh when I tell you,' said the monk.
+ 'When this stone was left unused by the goddess, he found himself at a loose end and took to wandering about all over the place for want of better to do, until one day his wanderings took him to the place where the fairy Disenchantment lives.
+ 'Now Disenchantment could tell that there was something unusual about this stone, so she kept him there in her Sunset Glow Palace and gave him the honorary title of Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow.
+ 'But most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the banks of the Magic River.
+ There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful Crimson Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to watering her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of life.
+ 'Crimson Pearl's substance was composed of the purest cosmic essences, so she was already half-divine; and now, thanks to the vitalizing effect of the sweet dew, she was able to shed her vegetable shape and assume the form of a girl.
+ 'This fairy girl wandered about outside the Realm of Separation, eating the Secret Passion Fruit when she was hungry and drinking from the Pool of Sadness when she was thirsty.
+ The consciousness that she owed the stone something for his kindness in watering her began to prey on her mind and ended by becoming an obsession.
+ '"I have no sweet dew here that I can repay him with," she would say to herself.
+ "The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in the world below."
+ 'Because of this strange affair, Disenchantment has got together a group of amorous young souls, of which Crimson Pearl is one, and intends to send them down into the world to take part in the great illusion of human life.
+ And as today happens to be the day on which this stone is fated to go into the world too, I am taking him with me to Disenchantment's tribunal for the purpose of getting him registered and sent down to earth with the rest of these romantic creatures.'
+ 'How very amusing!' said the Taoist.
+ 'I have certainly never heard of a debt of tears before.
+ Why shouldn't the two of us take advantage of this opportunity to go down into the world ourselves and save a few souls?
+ It would be a work of merit.'
+ 'That is exactly what I was thinking,' said the monk.
+ 'Come with me to Disenchantment's palace to get this absurd creature cleared.
+ Then, when this last batch of romantic idiots goes down, you and I can go down with them.
+ At present about half have already been born.
+ They await this last batch to make up the number.'
+ 'Very good, I will go with you then,' said the Taoist.
+ Shi-yin heard all this conversation quite clearly, and curiosity impelled him to go forward and greet the two reverend gentlemen.
+ They returned his greeting and asked him what he wanted.
+ 'It is not often that one has the opportunity of listening to a discussion of the operations of karma such as the one I have just been privileged to overhear,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'Unfortunately I am a man of very limited understanding and have not been able to derive the full benefit from your conversation.
+ If you would have the very great kindness to enlighten my benighted understanding with a somewhat fuller account of what you were discussing, I can promise you the most devout attention.
+ I feel sure that your teaching would have a salutary effect on me and—who knows—might save me from the pains of hell.'
+ The reverend gentlemen laughed.
+ 'These are heavenly mysteries and may not be divulged.
+ But if you wish to escape from the fiery pit, you have only to remember us when the time comes, and all will be well.'
+ Shi-yin saw that it would be useless to press them.
+ 'Heavenly mysteries must not, of course, be revealed.
+ But might one perhaps inquire what the "absurd creature" is that you were talking about?
+ Is it possible that I might be allowed to see it?'
+ 'Oh, as for that,' said the monk: 'I think it is on the cards for you to have a look at him,' and he took the object from his sleeve and handed it to Shi-yin.
+ Shi-yin took the object from him and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one side of which were carved the words 'Magic Jade'.
+ There were several columns of smaller characters on the back, which Shi-yin was just going to examine more closely when the monk, with a cry of 'Here we are, at the frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him and disappeared, with the Taoist, through a big stone archway above which THE LAND OF ILLUSION was written in large characters.
+ A couplet in smaller characters was inscribed vertically on either side of the arch:
+ Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-teal where the unreal's real.
+ Shi-yin was on the point of following them through the archway when suddenly a great clap of thunder seemed to shake the earth to its very foundations, making him cry out in alarm.
+ And there he was sitting in his study, the contents of his dream already half forgotten, with the sun still blazing on the ever-rustling plantains outside, and the wet-nurse at the door with his little daughter Ying-lian in her arms.
+ Her delicate little pink-and-white face seemed dearer to him than ever at that moment, and he stretched out his arms to take her and hugged her to him.
+ After playing with her for a while at his desk, he carried her out to the front of the house to watch the bustle in the street.
+ He was about to go in again when he saw a monk and a Taoist approaching, the monk scabby-headed and barefoot, the Taoist tousle-haired and limping.
+ They were behaving like madmen, shouting with laughter and gesticulating wildly as they walked along.
+ When this strange pair reached Shi-yin's door and saw him standing there holding Ying-lian, the monk burst into loud sobs.
+ 'Patron,' he said, addressing Shi-yin, 'what are you doing, holding in your arms that ill-fated creature who is destined to involve both her parents in her own misfortune?'
+ Shi-yin realized that he was listening to the words of a madman and took no notice.
+ But the monk persisted: 'Give her to me!
+ Give her to me!'
+ Shi-yin was beginning to lose patience and clasping his little girl tightly to him, turned on his heel and was about to re-enter the house when the monk pointed his finger at him, roared with laughter, and then proceeded to intone the following verses:
+ 'Fond man, your pampered child to cherish so— That caltrop-glass which shines on melting snow!
+ Beware the high feast of the fifteenth day, When all in smoke and fire shall pass away!'
+ Shi-yin heard all this quite plainly and was a little worried by it.
+ He was thinking or asking the monk what lay behind these puzzling words when he heard the Taoist say, 'We don't need to stay tether.
+ Why don't we part company here and each go about his own business?
+ Three kalpas from now I shall wait far you on Bei-mang Hill.
+ Having joined forces again there, we can go together to the Land of Illusion to sign off.'
+ 'Excellent!' said the other.
+ And the two if them went off and soon were both lost to sight.
+ 'There must have been something behind all this,' thought Shi-yin to himself. 'I really ought to have asked him what he meant, but now it is too late.'
+ He was still standing outside his door brooding when Jia Yu-cun, the poor student who lodged at the Bottle-gourd Temple next door, came up to him.
+ Yu-cun was a native of Hu-zhou and came from a family of scholars and bureaucrats which had, however, fallen on bad times when Yu-cun was born.
+ The family fortunes on both his father's and mother's side had all been spent, and the members of the family had themselves gradually died off until only Yu-cun was left.
+ There were no prospects for him in his home town, so he had set off for the capital, in search of fame and fortune.
+ Unfortunately he had got no further than Soochow when his funds ran out, and he had now been living there in poverty for a year, lodging in this temple and keeping himself alive by working as a copyist.
+ For this reason Shi-yin saw a great deal of his company.
+ As soon as he caught sight of Shi-yin, Yu-cun clasped his hands in greeting and smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I could see you standing there gazing, sir.
+ Has anything been happening in the street?'
+ 'No, no,' said Shi-yin.
+ 'It just happened that my little girl was crying, so I brought her out here to amuse her.
+ Your coming is most opportune, dear boy.
+ I was beginning to feel most dreadfully bored.
+ Won't you come into my little den, and we can help each other to while away this tedious hot day?'
+ So saying, he called for a servant to take the child indoors, while he himself took Yu-cun by the hand and led him into his study, where his boy served them both with tea.
+ But they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words before one of the servants rushed in to say that 'Mr Yan had come to pay a call.'
+ Shi-yin hurriedly rose up and excused himself: 'I seem to have brought you here under false pretences.
+ I do hope you will forgive me.
+ If you don't mind sitting on your own here for a moment, I shall be with you directly.'
+ Yu-cun rose to his feet too.
+ 'Please do not distress yourself on my account, sir.
+ I am a regular visitor here and can easily wait a bit.'
+ But by the time he had finished saying this, Shi-yin was already out of the study and on his way to the guest-room.
+ Left to himself, Yu-cun was flicking through some of Shi-yin's books of poetry in order to pass the time, when he heard a woman's cough outside the window.
+ Immediately he jumped up and peered out to see who it was.
+ The cough appeared to have come from a maid who was picking flowers in the garden.
+ She was an unusually good-looking girl with a rather refined face: not a great beauty, by any means, but with something striking about her.
+ Yu-cun gazed at her spellbound.
+ Having now finished picking her flowers, this anonymous member of the Zhen household was about to go in again when, on some sudden impulse, she raised her head and caught sight of a man standing in the window.
+ His hat was frayed and his clothing threadbare; yet, though obviously poor, he had a fine, manly physique and handsome, well-proportioned features.
+ The maid hastened to remove herself from this male presence; but as she went she thought to herself, 'What a fine-looking man!
+ But so shabby!
+ The family hasn't got any friends or relations as poor as that.
+ It must be that Jia Yu-cun the master is always on about.
+ No wonder he says that he won't stay poor long.
+ I remember hearing him say that he's often wanted to help him but hasn't yet found an opportunity.'
+ And thinking these thoughts she could not forbear to turn back for another peep or two.
+ Yu-cun saw her turn back and, at once assuming that she had taken a fancy to him, was beside himself with delight.
+ What a perceptive young woman she must be, he thought, to have seen the genius underneath the rags!
+ A real friend in trouble!
+ After a while the boy came in again and Yu-cun elicited from him that the visitor in the front room was now staying to dinner.
+ It was obviously out of the question to wait much longer, so he slipped down the passage-way at the side of the house and let himself out by the back gate.
+ Nor did Shi-yin invite him round again when, having at last seen off his visitor, he learned that Yu-cun had already left.
+ But then the Mid Autumn festival arrived and, after the family convivialities were over, Shi-yin had a little dinner for two laid out in his study and went in person to invite Yu-cun, walking to his temple lodgings in the moonlight.
+ Ever since the day the Zhens' maid had, by looking back twice over her shoulder, convinced him that she was a friend, Yu-cun had had the girl very much on his mind, and now that it was festival time, the full moon of Mid Autumn lent an inspiration to his romantic impulses which finally resulted in the following octet:
+ 'Ere on ambition's path my feet are set, Sorrow comes often this poor heart to fret.
+ Yet, as my brow contracted with new care, Was there not one who, parting, turned to stare?
+ Dare I, that grasp at windows in the wind, Hope, underneath the moon, a friend to find?
+ Bright orb, if with my plight you sympathize, Shine first upon the chamber where she lies.'
+ Having delivered himself of this masterpiece, Yu-cun's thoughts began to run on his unrealized ambitions and, after much head-scratching and many heavenward glances accompanied by heavy sighs, he produced the following couplet, reciting it in a loud, ringing voice which caught the ear of Shi-yin, who chanced at that moment to be arriving:
+ 'The jewel in the casket bides till one shall come to buy.
+ The jade pin in the drawer hides, waiting its time to fly.'
+ Shi-yin smiled.
+ 'You are a man of no mean ambition, Yu-cun.'
+ 'Oh no!'Yu-cun smiled back deprecatingly.
+ 'You are too flattering.
+ I was merely reciting at random from the lines of some old poet.
+ But what brings you here, sir?'
+ 'Tonight is Mid Autumn night,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'People call it the Festival of Reunion.
+ It occurred to me that you might be feeling rather lonely here in your monkery, so I have arranged for the two of us to take a little wine together in my study.
+ I hope you will not refuse to join me.'
+ Yu-cun made no polite pretence of declining.
+ 'Your kindness is more than I deserve,' he said.
+ 'I accept gratefully.'
+ And he accompanied Shi-yin back to the study next door.
+ Soon they had finished their tea.
+ Wine and various choice dishes were brought in and placed on the table, already laid out with cups, plates, and so forth, and the two men took their places and began to drink.
+ At first they were rather slow and ceremonious; but gradually, as the conversation grew more animated, their potations too became more reckless and uninhibited.
+ The sounds of music and singing which could now be heard from every house in the neighbourhood and the full moon which shone with cold brilliance overhead seemed to increase their elation, so that the cups were emptied almost as soon as they touched their lips, and Yu-cun, who was already a sheet or so in the wind, was seized with an irrepressible excitement to which he presently gave expression in the form of a quatrain, ostensibly on the subject of the moon, but really about the ambition he had hitherto been at some pains to conceal:
+ 'In thrice five nights her perfect O is made, Whose cold light bathes each marble balustrade.
+ As her bright wheel starts on its starry ways, On earth ten thousand heads look up and gaze.'
+ 'Bravo!' said Shi-yin loudly.
+ 'I have always insisted that you were a young fellow who would go up in the world, and now, in these verses you have just recited, I see an augury of your ascent.
+ In no time at all we shall see you up among the clouds!
+ This calls for a drink!'
+ And, saying this, he poured Yu-cun a large cup of wine.
+ Yu-cun drained the cup, then, surprisingly, sighed: 'Don't imagine the drink is making me boastful, but I really do believe that if it were just a question of having the sort of qualifications now in demand, I should stand as good a chance as any of getting myself on to the list of candidates.
+ The trouble is that I simply have no means of laying my hands on the money that would be needed for lodgings and travel expenses.
+ The journey to the capital is a long one, and the sort of money I can earn from my copying is not enough—'
+ 'Why ever didn't you say this before?' said Shi-yin interrupting him.
+ 'I have long wanted to do something about this, but on all the occasions I have met you previously, the conversation has never got round to this subject, and I haven't liked to broach it for fear of offending you.
+ Well, now we know where we are.
+ I am not a very clever man, but at least I know the right thing to do when I see it.
+ Luckily, the next Triennial is only a few months ahead.
+ You must go to the capital without delay.
+ A spring examination triumph will make you feel that all your studying has been worth while.
+ I shall take care of all your expenses.
+ It is the least return I can make for your friendship.'
+ And there and then he instructed his boy to go with all speed and make up a parcel of fifty tales of the best refined silver and two suits of winter clothes.
+ 'The almanac gives the nineteenth as a good day for travelling,' he went on, addressing Yu-cun again.
+ 'You can set about hiring a boat for the journey straight away.
+ How delightful it will be to meet again next winter when you have distinguished yourself by soaring to the top over all the other candidates!'
+ Yu-cun accepted the silver and the clothes with only the most perfunctory word of thanks and without, apparently, giving them a further moment's thought, for he continued to drink and laugh and talk as if nothing had happened.
+ It was well after midnight before they broke up.
+ After seeing Yu-cun off, Shi-yin went to bed and slept without a break until the sun was high in the sky next morning.
+ When he awoke, his mind was still running on the conversation of the previous night.
+ He thought he would write a couple of introductory letters for Yu-cun to take with him to the capital, and arrange for him to call on the family of an official he was acquainted with who might be able to put him up; but when he sent a servant to invite him over, the servant brought back word from the temple as follows:
+ 'The monk says that Mr Jia set out for the capital at five o'clock this morning, sir.
+ He says he left a message to pass on to you.
+ He said to tell you, "A scholar should not concern himself with almanacs, but should act as the situation demands," and he said there wasn't time to say good-bye.'
+ So Shi-yin was obliged to let the matter drop.
+ It is a true saying that 'time in idleness is quickly spent'.
+ In no time at all it was Fifteenth Night, and Shi-yin sent little Ying-lian out, in the charge of one of the servants called Calamity, to see the mummers and the coloured lanterns.
+ It was near midnight when Calamity, feeling an urgent need to relieve his bladder, put Ying-lian down on someone's doorstep while he went about his business, only to find, on his return, that the child was nowhere to be seen.
+ Frantically he searched for her throughout the rest of the night; but when day dawned and he had still not found her, he took to his heels, not daring to face his master and mistress, and made off for another part of the country.
+ Shi-yin and his wife knew that something must be wrong when their little girl failed to return home all night.
+ Then a search was made; but all those sent out were obliged in the end to report that no trace of her could be found.
+ The shock of so sudden a loss to a middle-aged couple who had only ever had the one daughter can be imagined.
+ In tears every day and most of the night, they almost lost the will to go on living, and after about a month like this first Shi-yin and then his wife fell ill, so that doctors and diviners were in daily attendance on them.
+ Then, on the fifteenth of the third month, while frying cakes for an offering, the monk of Bottle-gourd Temple carelessly allowed the oil to catch alight, which set fire to the paper window.
+ And, since the houses in this area all had wooden walls and bamboo fences—though also, doubtless, because they were doomed to destruction anyway-the fire leaped from house to house until the whole street was blazing away like a regular Fiery Mountain; and though the firemen came to put it out, by the time they arrived the fire was well under way and long past controlling, and roared away all night long until it had burnt itself out, rendering heaven knows how many families homeless in the process.
+ Poor Zhens!
+ Though they and their handful of domestics escaped unhurt, their house, which was only next door to the temple, was soon reduced to a heap of rubble, while Shi-yin stood by helpless, groaning and stamping in despair.
+ After some discussion with his wife, Shi-yin decided that they should move to their farm in the country; but a series of crop failures due to flooding and drought had led to widespread brigandage in those parts, and government troops were out everywhere hunting down the mutinous peasants and making arrests.
+ In such conditions it was impossible to settle on the farm, so Shi-yin sold the land and, taking only two of the maids with them, went with his wife to seek refuge with his father-in-law, Feng Su.
+
+ 看官：你道此书从何而起?
+ ——说来虽近荒唐，细玩颇有趣味。
+ 却说那女娲氏炼石补天之时，于大荒山无稽崖炼成高十二丈、见方二十四丈大的顽石三万六千五百零一块， 那娲皇只用了三万六千五百块，单单剩下一块未用，弃在青埂峰下。
+ 谁知此石自经锻炼之后，灵性已通，自去自来，可大可小。
+ 因见众石俱得补天，独自己无才不得入选，遂自怨自愧，日夜悲哀。
+ 一日正当嗟悼之际，俄见一僧一道远远而来，生得骨格不凡，丰神迥异，来到这青埂峰下，席地坐谈。
+ 见着这块鲜莹明洁的石头，且又缩成扇坠一般，甚属可爱； 那僧托于掌上，笑道：“形体倒也是个灵物了！
+ 只是没有实在的好处， 须得再镌上几个字，使人人见了便知你是件奇物，然后携你到那昌明隆盛之邦、诗礼簪缨之族、花柳繁华地、温柔富贵乡那里去走一遭。”
+ 石头听了大喜，因问：“不知可镌何字?
+ 携到何方?
+ 望乞明示。”
+ 那僧笑道：“你且莫问，日后自然明白。”
+ 说毕，便袖了，同那道人飘然而去，竟不知投向何方。
+ 又不知过了几世几劫，因有个空空道人访道求仙，从这大荒山无稽崖青埂峰下经过， 忽见一块大石，上面字迹分明，编述历历。
+ 空空道人乃从头一看，原来是无才补天、幻形入世，被那茫茫大士、渺渺真人携入红尘、引登彼岸的一块顽石；上面叙着堕落之乡、投胎之处，以及家庭琐事、闺阁闲情、诗词谜语，倒还全备。
+ 只是朝代年纪，失落无考。
+ 后面又有一偈云：
+ 无才可去补苍天，枉入红尘若许年；
+ 此系身前身后事，倩谁记去作奇传?
+ 空空道人看了一回，晓得这石头有些来历，遂向石头说道：“石兄，你这一段故事，据你自己说来，有些趣味，故镌写在此，意欲闻世传奇。
+ 据我看来：第一件，无朝代年纪可考， 第二件，并无大贤大忠、理朝廷、治风俗的善政，其中只不过几个异样女子，或情或痴，或小才微善，我纵然抄去，也算不得一种奇书。”
+ 石头果然答道：“我师何必太痴!
+ 我想历来野史的朝代，无非假借汉、唐的名色；莫如我这石头所记，不借此套，只按自己的事体情理，反倒新鲜别致。
+ 况且那野史中，或讪谤君相，或贬人妻女，奸淫凶恶，不可胜数；
+ 更有一种风月笔墨，其淫秽污臭最易坏人子弟。
+ 至于才子佳人等书，则又开口‘文君’，满篇‘子建’，千部一腔，千人一面，且终不能不涉淫滥。
+ ——在作者不过要写出自己的两首情诗艳赋来，故假捏出男女二人名姓， 又必旁添一小人拨乱其间，如戏中的小丑一般。
+ 更可厌者，‘之乎者也’，非理即文，大不近情，自相矛盾。
+ 竟不如我这半世亲见亲闻的几个女子，虽不敢说强似前代书中所有之人，但观其事迹原委，亦可消愁破闷；至于几首歪诗，也可以喷饭供酒。
+ 其间离合悲欢，兴衰际遇，俱是按迹循踪，不敢稍加穿凿，至失其真。
+ 只愿世人当那醉余睡醒之时，或避事消愁之际，把此一玩，不但是洗旧翻新，却也省了些寿命筋力，不更去谋虚逐妄了。
+ 我师意为如何？”
+ 空空道人听如此说，思忖半晌，将这《石头记》再检阅一遍。
+ 因见上面大旨不过谈情，亦只是实录其事，绝无伤时诲淫之病，方从头至尾抄写回来，闻世传奇。
+ 从此空空道人因空见色，由色生情，传情入色，自色悟空，遂改名情僧，改《石头记》为《情僧录》。
+ 东鲁孔梅溪题曰《风月宝鉴》。
+ 至吴玉峰题曰《红楼梦》。
+ 后因曹雪芹于悼红轩中，披阅十载，增删五次，纂成目录，分出章回，又题曰《金陵十二钗》，并题一绝。
+ 至脂砚斋抄阅再评，仍用《石头记》。
+ 即此便是《石头记》的缘起。
+ 诗云：满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪。
+ 都云作者痴，谁解其中味!
+ 《石头记》缘起既明，正不知那石头上面记着何人何事， 看官请听——
+ 按那石上书云：当日地陷东南，这东南有个姑苏城，城中阊门，最是红尘中一二等富贵风流之地。
+ 这阊门外有个十里街，街内有个仁清巷，巷内有个古庙，因地方狭窄，人皆呼作“葫芦庙”。
+ 庙旁住着一家乡宦，姓甄名费，字士隐；嫡妻封氏，性情贤淑，深明礼义。
+ 家中虽不甚富贵，然本地也推他为望族了。
+ 因这甄士隐禀性恬淡，不以功名为念，每日只以观花种竹、酌酒吟诗为乐，倒是神仙一流人物。
+ 只是一件不足：年过半百，膝下无儿，只有一女乳名英莲，年方三岁。
+ 一日炎夏永昼，士隐于书房闲坐，手倦抛书，伏几盹睡，不觉朦胧中走至一处，不辨是何地方。
+ 忽见那厢来了一僧一道，且行且谈。
+ 只听道人问道：“你携了此物，意欲何往？”
+ 那僧笑道：“你放心！
+ 如今现有一段风流公案，正该了结，这一干风流冤家尚未投胎入世， 趁此机会，就将此物夹带于中，使他去经历经历。”
+ 那道人道：“原来近日风流冤家又将造劫历世，但不知起于何处？
+ 落于何方？”
+ 那僧道：“此事说来好笑。
+ 只因当年这个石头，娲皇未用，自己却也落得逍遥自在，各处去游玩， 一日来到警幻仙子处，那仙子知他有些来历，因留他在赤霞宫中，名他为赤霞宫神瑛侍者。
+ 他却常在西方灵河岸上行走，看见那灵河岸上三生石畔有棵‘绛珠仙草’，十分娇娜可爱，遂日以甘露灌溉，这‘绛珠草’始得久延岁月。
+ 后来既受天地精华，复得甘露滋养，遂脱了草木之胎，幻化人形，仅仅修成女体，终日游于‘离恨天’外，饥餐‘秘情果’，渴饮‘灌愁水’。
+ 只因尚未酬报灌溉之德，故甚至五内郁结着一段缠绵不尽之意， 常说：‘自己受了他雨露之惠，我并无此水可还。
+ 他若下世为人，我也同去走一遭，但把我一生所有的眼泪还他，也还得过了。’
+ 因此一事，就勾出多少风流冤家都要下凡，造历幻缘，那绛珠仙草也在其中。
+ 今日这石正该下世，我来特地将他仍带到警幻仙子案前，给他挂了号，同这些情鬼下凡，一了此案。”
+ 那道人道：“果是好笑，从来不闻有‘还泪’之说！
+ 趁此你我何不也下世度脱几个，岂不是一场功德？”
+ 那僧道：“正合吾意。
+ 你且同我到警幻仙子宫中将这‘蠢物’交割清楚，待这一干风流孽鬼下世，你我再去。
+ ——如今有一半落尘，然犹未全集。”
+ 道人道：“既如此，便随你去来。”
+ 却说甄士隐俱听得明白，遂不禁上前施礼，笑问道：“二位仙师请了。”
+ 那僧道也忙答礼相问。
+ 士隐因说道：“适闻仙师所谈因果，实人世罕闻者；但弟子愚拙，不能洞悉明白。
+ 若蒙大开痴顽，备细一闻，弟子洗耳谛听，稍能警省，亦可免沉沦之苦了。”
+ 二仙笑道：“此乃玄机，不可预泄。
+ 到那时只不要忘了我二人，便可跳出火坑矣。”
+ 士隐听了，不便再问，因笑道：“玄机固不可泄露，但适云‘蠢物’，不知为何？
+ 或可得见否？”
+ 那僧说：“若问此物，倒有一面之缘。”
+ 说着取出递与士隐。
+ 士隐接了看时，原来是块鲜明美玉，上面字迹分明，镌着“通灵宝玉”四字。
+ 后面还有几行小字， 正欲细看时，那僧便说“已到幻境”，就强从手中夺了去，和那道人竟过了一座大石牌坊，——上面大书四字，乃是“太虚幻境”。
+ 两边又有一副对联道：
+ 假作真时真亦假，无为有处有还无。
+ 士隐意欲也跟着过去，方举步时，忽听一声霹雳若山崩地陷，士隐大叫一声，定睛看时，只见烈日炎炎，芭蕉冉冉，梦中之事，便忘了一半。
+ 又见奶母抱了英莲走来。
+ 士隐见女儿越发生得粉装玉琢，乖觉可喜，便伸手接来抱在怀中斗他玩耍一回， 又带至街前，看那过会的热闹。
+ 方欲进来时，只见从那边来了一僧一道： 那僧癞头跣足，那道跛足蓬头，疯疯癫癫，挥霍谈笑而至。
+ 及到了他门前，看见士隐抱着英莲，那僧便大哭起来，又向士隐道：“施主，你把这有命无运、累及爹娘之物抱在怀内作甚？”
+ 士隐听了，知是疯话，也不睬他。
+ 那僧还说：“舍我罢!
+ 舍我罢！”
+ 士隐不耐烦，便抱着女儿转身， 才要进去，那僧乃指着他大笑，口内念了四句言词，道是：
+ 惯养娇生笑你痴，菱花空对雪澌澌。
+ 好防佳节元宵后，便是烟消火灭时。
+ 士隐听得明白，心下犹豫，意欲问他来历。
+ 只听道人说道：“你我不必同行，就此分手，各干营生去罢。
+ 三劫后我在北邙山等你，会齐了，同往太虚幻境销号。”
+ 那僧道：“最妙，最妙！”
+ 说毕，二人一去，再不见个踪影了。
+ 士隐心中此时自忖：这两个人必有来历，很该问他一问，如今后悔却已晚了。
+ 这士隐正在痴想，忽见隔壁葫芦庙内寄居的一个穷儒，姓贾名化、表字时飞、别号雨村的走来。
+ 这贾雨村原系湖州人氏，也是诗书仕宦之族， 因他生于末世，父母祖宗根基已尽，人口衰丧，只剩得他一身一口， 在家乡无益，因进京求取功名，再整基业。
+ 自前岁来此，又淹蹇住了，暂寄庙中安身，每日卖文作字为生，故士隐常与他交接。
+ 当下雨村见了士隐，忙施礼陪笑道：“老先生倚门伫望，敢街市上有甚新闻么？”
+ 士隐笑道：“非也。
+ 适因小女啼哭，引他出来作耍。
+ ——正是无聊的很， 贾兄来得正好，请入小斋，彼此俱可消此永昼。”
+ 说着便令人送女儿进去，自携了雨村来至书房中，小童献茶。
+ 方谈得三五句话，忽家人飞报：“严老爷来拜。”
+ 士隐慌忙起身谢道：“恕诓驾之罪，且请略坐，弟即来奉陪。”
+ 雨村起身也让道：“老先生请便。
+ 晚生乃常造之客，稍候何妨。”
+ 说着士隐已出前厅去了。
+ 这里雨村且翻弄诗籍解闷，忽听得窗外有女子嗽声。
+ 雨村遂起身往外一看，原来是一个丫鬟在那里掐花儿：生的仪容不俗，眉目清秀，虽无十分姿色，却也有动人之处。
+ 雨村不觉看得呆了。
+ 那甄家丫鬟掐了花儿方欲走时，猛抬头见窗内有人：敝巾旧服，虽是贫窘，然生得腰圆背厚，面阔口方，更兼剑眉星眼，直鼻方腮。
+ 这丫鬟忙转身回避，心下自想：“这人生的这样雄壮，却又这样褴褛，我家并无这样贫窘亲友。
+ 想他定是主人常说的什么贾雨村了，怪道又说他必非久困之人，每每有意帮助周济他，只是没什么机会。”
+ 如此一想，不免又回头一两次。
+ 雨村见他回头，便以为这女子心中有意于他，遂狂喜不禁，自谓此女子必是个巨眼英豪、风尘中之知己。
+ 一时小童进来，雨村打听得前面留饭，不可久待，遂从夹道中自便门出去了。
+ 士隐待客既散，知雨村已去，便也不去再邀。
+ 一日到了中秋佳节，士隐家宴已毕，又另具一席于书房，自己步月至庙中来邀雨村。
+ 原来雨村自那日见了甄家丫鬟曾回顾他两次，自谓是个知己，便时刻放在心上。
+ 今又正值中秋，不免对月有怀，因而口占五言一律云：
+ 未卜三生愿，频添一段愁；
+ 闷来时敛额，行去几回眸。
+ 自顾风前影，谁堪月下俦?
+ 蟾光如有意，先上玉人头。
+ 雨村吟罢，因又思及平生抱负，苦未逢时，乃又搔首对天长叹，复高吟一联云：
+ 玉在椟中求善价，钗于奁内待时飞。
+ 恰值士隐走来听见，笑道：“雨村兄真抱负不凡也！”
+ 雨村忙笑道：“不敢，不过偶吟前人之句，何期过誉如此。”
+ 因问：“老先生何兴至此？”
+ 士隐笑道：“今夜中秋，俗谓团圆之节，想尊兄旅寄僧房，不无寂寥之感， 故特具小酌邀兄到敝斋一饮，不知可纳芹意否？”
+ 雨村听了，并不推辞，便笑道：“既蒙谬爱，何敢拂此盛情。”
+ 说着便同士隐复过这边书院中来了。
+ 须臾茶毕，早已设下杯盘，那美酒佳肴，自不必说。
+ 二人归坐，先是款酌慢饮，渐次谈至兴浓，不觉飞觥献斝起来。
+ 当时街坊上家家箫管，户户笙歌，当头一轮明月，飞彩凝辉， 二人愈添豪兴，酒到杯干。
+ 雨村此时已有七八分酒意，狂兴不禁，乃对月寓怀，口占一绝云：
+ 时逢三五便团圆，满把清光护玉栏。
+ 天上一轮才捧出，人间万姓仰头看。
+ 士隐听了大叫：“妙极!
+ 弟每谓兄必非久居人下者，今所吟之句，飞腾之兆已见，不日可接履于云霄之上了。
+ 可贺，可贺！”
+ 乃亲斟一斗为贺。
+ 雨村饮干，忽叹道：“非晚生酒后狂言，若论时尚之学，晚生也或可去充数挂名。
+ 只是如今行李路费一概无措，神京路远，非赖卖字撰文即能到得——”
+ 士隐不待说完，便道：“兄何不早言!
+ 弟已久有此意，但每遇兄时，并未谈及，故未敢唐突。
+ 今既如此，弟虽不才：‘义利’二字却还识得；且喜明岁正当大比，兄宜作速入都，春闱一捷，方不负兄之所学。
+ 其盘费余事，弟自代为处置，亦不枉兄之谬识矣。”
+ 当下即命小童进去速封五十两白银并两套冬衣，又云：“十九日乃黄道之期，兄可即买舟西上。
+ 待雄飞高举，明冬再晤，岂非大快之事！”
+ 雨村收了银衣，不过略谢一语，并不介意，仍是吃酒谈笑。
+ 那天已交三鼓，二人方散。
+ 士隐送雨村去后，回房一觉，直至红日三竿方醒。
+ 因思昨夜之事，意欲写荐书两封与雨村带至都中去，使雨村投谒个仕宦之家为寄身之地，因使人过去请时，那家人回来说：
+ “和尚说，贾爷今日五鼓已进京去了，也曾留下话与和尚转达老爷，说：‘读书人不在黄道黑道，总以事理为要，不及面辞了。’”
+ 士隐听了，也只得罢了。
+ 真是闲处光阴易过，倏忽又是元宵佳节。
+ 士隐令家人霍启抱了英莲，去看社火花灯。
+ 半夜中霍启因要小解，便将英莲放在一家门槛上坐着， 待他小解完了来抱时，那有英莲的踪影?
+ 急的霍启直寻了半夜， 至天明不见，那霍启也不敢回来见主人，便逃往他乡去了。
+ 那士隐夫妇见女儿一夜不归，便知有些不好；再使几人去找寻，回来皆云影响全无。
+ 夫妻二人半世只生此女，一旦失去，何等烦恼，因此昼夜啼哭，几乎不顾性命。
+ 看看一月，士隐已先得病，夫人封氏也因思女构疾，日日请医问卦。
+ 不想这日三月十五，葫芦庙中炸供，那和尚不小心，油锅火逸，便烧着窗纸。
+ 此方人家俱用竹篱木壁，也是劫数应当如此，于是接二连三牵五挂四，将一条街烧得如火焰山一般；彼时虽有军民来救，那火已成了势了，如何救得下?
+ 直烧了一夜方息，也不知烧了多少人家。
+ 只可怜甄家在隔壁，早成了一堆瓦砾场了，只有他夫妇并几个家人的性命不曾伤了，急的士隐惟跌足长叹而已。
+ 与妻子商议，且到田庄上去住，偏值近年水旱不收，贼盗蜂起，官兵剿捕，田庄上又难以安身，只得将田地都折变了，携了妻子与两个丫鬟投他岳丈家去。
+
+ Jia Rui's arrival was announced while Xi-feng and Patience were still talking about him.
+ 'Ask him in,' said Xi-feng.
+ Hearing that he was to be received, Jia Rui rejoiced inwardly.
+ He came into the room wreathed in smiles and overwhelmed Xi-feng with civilities.
+ With feigned solicitude she pressed him to be seated and to take tea.
+ He became quite ecstatic at the sight of her informal dress.
+ 'Why isn't Cousin Lian back yet?' he asked, staring with fascinated eyes.
+ 'I don't know what the reason can be,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Could it be,' Jia Rui inquired archly, 'that Someone has detained him on his way home and that he can't tear himself away?'
+ 'Men are all the same!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'They have only to set eyes on a woman to begin another affair.'
+ 'Ah, there you are wrong!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'I am not that sort of man.'
+ 'But how many men are there like you?' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I doubt you could find one in ten.'
+ At this last remark Jia Rui positively scratched his ears with pleasure.
+ 'You must find it very dull here on your own every day,' he said.
+ 'Yes, indeed!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'If only there were someone who could come and talk to me and help me to pass the time!'
+ 'Well,' said Jia Rui, 'I am always free.
+ How would it be if I were to come every day to help you pass the time?'
+ 'You must be joking!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'What would you want to come here for?'
+ 'I mean every word I say,' said Jia Rui.
+ 'May I be struck by lightning if I don't!
+ True, there was a time when I should have been scared to come, because people always told me what a holy terror you were and how dangerous it was to cross you; but now I know that in reality you are all gentleness and fun, there is nothing that could stop me coming.
+ I would come now if it cost me my life.'
+ 'It's true then,' said Xi-feng, smiling delightedly.
+ 'You really are an understanding sort of person --- so much more so than Rong or Qiang!
+ I used to think that since they were such handsome and cultured-looking young men they must be understanding as well, but they turned out to be stupid brutes without the least consideration for other people's feelings.'
+ This little speech went straight to Jia Rui's heart, and unconsciously he began edging his seat nearer to Xi-feng's.
+ He peered closely at an embroidered purse that she was wearing and expressed a strong interest in one of her rings.
+ 'Take care!' said Xi-feng in a low tone.
+ 'The servants might see you!'
+ Obedient to his goddess's command, Jia Rui quickly drew back again.
+ Xi-feng laughed.
+ 'You had better go!'
+ 'Ah no, cruel cousin!
+ Let me stay a little longer!'
+ 'Even if you stay, it's not very convenient here in broad daylight, with people coming and going all the time.
+ Go away now and come hack later when it's dark, at the beginning of the first watch.
+ You can slip into the gallery west of this apartment and wait for me there.'
+ Jia Rui received these words like someone being presented with a rare and costly jewel.
+ 'Are you sure you're not joking?' he asked hurriedly.
+ 'A lot of people must go through that way.
+ How should we avoid being seen?'
+ 'Don't worry!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I'll give the watchmen a night off.
+ When the side gates are closed, no one else can get through.'
+ Jia Rui was beside himself with delight and hurriedly took his leave, confident that the fulfilment of all he wished for was now in sight.
+ Having waited impatiently for nightfall, he groped his way into the Rong-guo mansion just before they closed the gates and slipped into the gallery, now totally deserted—as Xi-feng had promised it would be—and black as pitch.
+ The gate at the end of the alley-way opening on to Grandmother Jia's quarters had already been barred on the outer side; only the gate at the east end remained open.
+ For a long time Jia Rui listened intently, but no one came.
+ Suddenly there was a loud slam and the gate at the east end, too, banged shut.
+ Alarmed, but not daring to make a sound, Jia Rui stealthily crept out and tried it.
+ It was locked—as tight as a bucket.
+ Now even if he wanted to get out he could not, for the walls on either side of the alley-way were too high to scale.
+ Moreover the gallery was bare and draughty and this was the midwinter season when the nights are long and the bitter north wind seems to pierce into the very marrow of the bones.
+ By the end of the night he was almost dead with cold.
+ When at last morning came, Jia Rui saw the gate at the east end open and an old woman pass through to the gate opposite and call for someone to open up.
+ Still hugging himself against the cold, he sprinted out of the other gate while her back was towards him.
+ Fortunately no one was about at that early hour, and he was able to slip out of the rear entrance of the mansion and run back home unseen.
+ Jia Rui had lost both of his parents in infancy and had been brought up under the sole guardianship of his grandfather Jia Dai-ru.
+ Obsessed by the fear that once outside the house his grandson might indulge in drinking and gambling to the detriment of his studies, Dai-ru had subjected him since early youth to an iron discipline from which not the slightest deviation was tolerated.
+ Seeing him now suddenly absent himself a whole night from home, and being incapable, in his wildest imaginings, of guessing what had really happened, he took it as a foregone conclusion that he had been either drinking or gaming and had probably passed the night in some house of prostitution --- a supposition which caused the old gentleman to spend the whole night in a state of extreme choler.
+ The prospect of facing his grandfather on arrival made Jia Rui sweat.
+ A lie of some sort was indispensable.
+ 'I went to see Uncle yesterday,' he managed to say, 'and as it was getting dark, he asked me to stay the night.'
+ 'I have always told you that you are not to go out of that gate without first informing me,' said his grandfather.
+ 'Why then did you presume to go off on your own yesterday without saying a word to anybody?
+ That in itself would constitute sufficient grounds for chastisement.
+ But in addition to that you are lying!'
+ Thereupon he, forced him to the ground, and, with the utmost savagery, dealt him thirty or forty whacks with the bamboo, after which he forbade him to eat and made him kneel in the open courtyard with a book in his hand until he had prepared the equivalent of ten days' homework.
+ The exquisite torments suffered by Jia Rui, as he knelt with an empty stomach in the draughty courtyard reciting his homework after having already been frozen all night long and then beaten, can be imagined.
+ Yet even now his infatuation remained unaltered.
+ It never entered his mind that he had been made a fool of.
+ And so two days later, as soon as he had some free time, he was back once more looking for Xi-feng.
+ She deliberately reproached him for having failed her, thereby so exasperating him that he swore by the most terrible oaths that he had been faithful.
+ Seeing him hurl himself so willingly into the net, Xi-feng decided that a further lesson would be needed to cure him of his folly and proposed another assignation.
+ 'Only tonight,' she said, 'don't wait for me in that place again.
+ Wait in the empty room in the little passage-way behind this apartment.
+ But mind you don't run into anybody.'
+ 'Do you really mean this?' said Jia Rui.
+ 'If you don't believe me, don't come!'
+ 'I'll come!
+ I'll come!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'Whatever happens, I shall be there.'
+ 'Now I think you had better go.'
+ Confident of seeing her again in the evening, Jia Rui went off uncomplainingly, leaving Xi-feng time to muster her forces, brief her officers, and prepare the trap in which the luckless man was to be caught.
+ Jia Rui waited for the evening with great impatience.
+ By a stroke of bad luck some relations came on a visit and stayed to supper.
+ It was already lamplight when they left, and Jia Rui then had to wait for his grandfather to settle down for the night before he could scuttle off to the Rong mansion and make his way to the room in the little passage-way where Xi-feng had told him to go.
+ He waited there for her arrival with the frenzied agitation of an ant on a hot saucepan.
+ Yet, though he waited and waited, not a human shape appeared nor a human sound was heard, and he began to be frightened and a little suspicious: 'Surely she won't fail me?
+ Surely I shan't be made to spend another night in the cold...?'
+ As he was in the midst of these gloomy imaginings, a dark figure glided into the room.
+ Certain that it must be Xi-feng, Jia Rui cast all caution to the winds and, when the figure approached him, threw himself upon it like a hungry tiger seizing its prey or a cat pouncing on a harmless mouse.
+ 'My darling, how I have waited for you!" he exclaimed, enfolding his beloved in his arms; and carrying her to the kang, he laid her down and began kissing her and tugging at her trousers, murmuring 'my sweetest darling' and 'my honey love' and other such endearments in between kisses.
+ Throughout all of this not a single sound was uttered by his partner.
+ Jia Rui now tore down his own trousers and prepared to thrust home his hard and throbbing member.
+ Suddenly a light flashed --- and there was Jia Qiang holding aloft a candle in a candlestick which he shone around: 'Who is in this room?'
+ At this the person on the kang gave a giggle: 'Uncle Rui is trying to bugger me!'
+ Horrors!
+ The sight he saw when he looked down made Jia Rui want to sink into the ground.
+ It was Jia Rong!
+ He turned to bolt, but Jia Qiang held him fast.
+ 'Oh no you don't!
+ Auntie Lian has already told Lady Wang that you have been pestering her.
+ She asked us to keep you here while she went to tell.
+ When Lady Wang first heard, she was so angry that she fainted, but now she's come round again and is asking for you to be brought to her.
+ Come along, then!
+ Off we go!'
+ At these words Jia Rui's soul almost left its seat in his body.
+ 'My dear nephew, just tell her that you didn't find me here!' he said.
+ 'Tomorrow I will reward you handsomely.'
+ 'I suppose I could let you go easily enough,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'The question is, how big would this reward be?
+ In any case, just saying that you will give me a reward is no good.
+ I should want a written guarantee.'
+ 'But I can't put a thing like this down in writing!'
+ 'No problem there,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'Just say that you've lost money gambling and have borrowed such and such an amount to cover your losses.
+ That's all you need do.'
+ 'I could do that, certainly,' said Jia Rui.
+ Jia Qiang at once disappeared and reappeared only a moment later with paper and a writing-brush which had evidently been made ready in advance.
+ Writing at his dictation Jia Rui was compelled, in spite of protests, to put down fifty taels of silver as the amount on the IOU.
+ The document, having been duly signed, was at once pocketed by Jia Qiang, who then pretended to seek the connivance of Jia Rong.
+ But Jia Rong feigned the most obdurate incorruptibility and insisted that he would lay the matter next day before a council of the whole clan and see that justice was done.
+ Jia Rui became quite frantic and kotowed to him.
+ Finally, under pressure from Jia Qiang and in return for another IOU for fifty taels of silver made out in his favour, he allowed his scruples to be overcome.
+ 'You realize, don't you,' said Jia Qiang, 'that I'm going to get into trouble for this?
+ Now let's see.
+ The gate leading to Lady Jia's courtyard was bolted some time ago, and Sir Zheng is at the moment in the main reception room looking at some stuff that has just arrived from Nanking, so you can't go through that way.
+ The only way left would be through the back gate.
+ The trouble is, though, that if you leave now, you might run into someone on the way, and then I should get into even worse trouble.
+ You'd better let me scout around a bit first and come for you when the coast is clear.
+ In the meantime you can t hide here, though, because they will shortly be coming in to store the stuff from Nanking here.
+ I'll find somewhere else for you.'
+ He took Jia Rui by the arm, and having first blown the candle out, led him into the courtyard and groped his way round to the underside of the steps which led up to the terrace of the central building.
+ 'This hollow under the steps will do.
+ Crouch down there, and don't make a sound!
+ You can go when I come for you.'
+ Jia Qiang and Jia Rong then went off leaving him to himself.
+ Jia Rui, by now a mere automaton in the hands of his captors, obediently crouched down beneath the steps and was just beginning a series of calculations respecting his present financial predicament when a sudden slosh! signalled the discharge of a slop-pail's stinking contents immediately above his head, drenching him from top to toe with liquid filth and causing him to cry out in dismay --- but only momentarily, for the excrement covered his face and head and caused him to close his mouth again in a hurry and crouch silent and shivering in the icy cold.
+ Just then Jia Qiang came running up: 'Hurry! hurry!
+ You can go now.'
+ At the word of command Jia Rui bounded out of his hole and sprinted for dear life through the rear gate and back to his own home.
+ It was now past midnight, and he had to shout for someone to let him in.
+ When the servant who answered the gate saw the state he was in and asked him how it had happened, he had to pretend that he had been out in the darkness to ease himself and had fallen into the jakes.
+ Then rushing into his own room he stripped off his clothes and washed, his mind running all the time on how Xi-feng had tricked him.
+ The thought of her trickery provoked a surge of hatred in his soul; yet even as he hated her, the vision of her loveliness made him long to clasp her to his breast.
+ Torn by these violent and conflicting emotions, he passed the whole night without a single wink of sleep.
+ From that time on, though he longed for Xi-feng with unabated passion, he never dared to visit the Rong-guo mansion again.
+ Jia Rong and Jia Qiang, on the other hand, came frequently to his house to ask for their money, so that he was in constant dread of his grandfather finding out about the IOUs.
+ Unable, even now, to overcome his longing for Xi-feng, saddled with a heavy burden of debt, harassed during the day time by the schoolwork set him by his exacting grandfather, worn-out during the nights by the excessive hand-pumping inevitable in an unmarried man of twenty whose mistress was both unattainable and constantly in his thoughts, twice frozen, tormented and forced to flee --- what constitution could withstand so many shocks and strains without succumbing in the end to illness?
+ The symptoms of Jia Rui's illness—a palpitation in the heart, a loss of taste in the mouth, a weakness in the hams, a smarting in the eyes, feverishness by night and lassitude by day, albumen in the urine and blood-flecks in the phlegm—had all manifested themselves within less than a year.
+ By that time they had produced a complete breakdown and driven him to his bed, where he lay, with eyes tight shut, babbling deliriously and inspiring terror in all who saw him.
+ Physicians were called in to treat him and some bushels of cinnamon bark, autumn root, turtle-shell, black leek and Solomon's seal must at one time and another have been infused and taken without the least observable effect.
+ Winter went and spring came and Jia Rui's sickness grew even worse.
+ His grandfather Dai-ru was in despair.
+ Medical advice from every quarter had been taken and none of it had proved effective.
+ The most recent advice was that the patient should be given a pure decoction of ginseng without admixture of other ingredients.
+ So costly a remedy was far beyond Dai-ru's resources and he was obliged to go to the Rong-guo mansion to beg.
+ Lady Wang ordered Wang Xi-feng to weigh out two ounces for him from their own supplies.
+ 'The other day when we were making up a new lot of pills for Grandmother,' said Xi-feng, 'you told me to keep any of the remaining whole roots for a medicine you were sending to General Yang's wife.
+ I sent her the medicine yesterday, so I am afraid we haven't any left.'
+ 'Well, even if we haven't got any,' said Lady Wang, 'you can send to your mother-in-law's for some; and probably they will have some at your Cousin Zhen's.
+ Between you you ought somehow or other to be able to raise enough to give him.
+ If you can save a man's life by doing so, you will have performed a work of merit.'
+ But though Xi-feng pretended to do as Lady Wang suggested, in fact she made no such inquiries.
+ She merely scraped a few drams of broken bits together and sent them to Dai-ru with a message that 'Lady Wang had instructed her to send this, and it was all they had.'
+ To Lady Wang, however, she reported that she had asked the others and altogether obtained more than two ounces of ginseng which she had sent to Dai-ru.
+ Jia Rui now wanted desperately to live and eagerly swallowed every medicine that they offered him; but all was a waste of money, for nothing seemed to do him any good.
+ One day a lame Taoist appeared at the door asking for alms and claiming to be able to cure retributory illnesses.
+ Jia Rui, who chanced to overhear him, called out from his bed: 'Quick, tell the holy man to come in and save me!' and as he called, he kotowed with his head on the pillow.
+ The servants were obliged to bring the Taoist into the bedroom.
+ Jia Rui clung to him tenaciously.
+ 'Holy one, save me!' he cried out again and again.
+ The Taoist sighed.
+ 'No medicine will cure your sickness.
+ However, I have a precious thing here that I can lend you which, if you will look at it every day, can be guaranteed to save your life.'
+ So saying, he took from his satchel a mirror which had reflecting surfaces on both its sides.
+ The words A MIRROR FOR THE ROMANTIC were inscribed on the back.
+ He handed it to Jia Rui.
+ 'This object comes from the Hall of Emptiness in the Land of Illusion.
+ It was fashioned by the fairy Disenchantment as an antidote to the ill effects of impure mental activity.
+ It has life-giving and restorative properties and has been brought into the world for the contemplation of those intelligent and handsome young gentlemen whose hearts are too susceptible to the charms of beauty.
+ I lend it to you on one important condition: you must only look into the back of the mirror.
+ Never, never under any circumstances look into the front.
+ Three days hence I shall come again to reclaim it, by which time I guarantee that your illness will have gone.'
+ With that he left, at a surprising speed, ignoring the earnest entreaties of those present that he should stay longer.
+ 'This is intriguing!'
+ Jia Rui thought to himself when the Taoist gave him the mirror.
+ 'Let me try looking into it as he says,' and holding it up to his face he looked into the back as instructed and saw a grinning skull, which he covered up hastily with a curse:
+ 'Silly old fool, to scare me like that! ---
+ But let me see what happens when I look into the other side!'
+ He turned the mirror round and looked, and there inside was Xi-feng beckoning to him to enter, and his ravished soul floated into the mirror after her.
+ There they performed the act of love together, after which she saw him out again.
+ But when he found himself once more back in his bed he stared and cried out in horror: for the mirror, of its own accord, had turned itself round in his hand and the same grinning skull faced him that he had seen before.
+ He could feel the sweat trickling all over his body and lower down in the bed a little pool of semen that he had just ejaculated.
+ Yet still he was not satisfied, and turned the face of the mirror once more towards him.
+ Xi-feng was there beckoning to him again and calling, and again he went in after her.
+ He did this three or four times.
+ But the last time, just as he was going to return from the mirror, two figures approached him holding iron chains which they fastened round him and by which they proceeded to drag him away.
+ He cried out as they dragged him: 'Wait!
+ Let me take the mirror with me . . .!'
+ Those were the last words he ever uttered.
+ To those who stood around the bed and watched him while this was happening he appeared first to be holding up the mirror and looking into it, then to let it drop; then to open his eyes in a ghastly stare and pick it up again; then, as it once more fell from his grasp, he finally ceased to move.
+ When they examined him more closely they found that his breathing had already stopped and that underneath his body there was a large, wet, icy patch of recently ejaculated semen.
+ At once they lifted him from the bed and busied themselves with the laying-out, while old Dai-ru and his wife abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of grief.
+ They cursed the Taoist for a necromancer and ordered the servants to heap up a fire and cast the mirror upon the flames.
+ But just at that moment a voice was heard in the air saying, 'Who told him to look in the front?
+ It is you who are to blame, for confusing the unreal with the real!
+ Why then should you burn my mirror?'
+ Suddenly the mirror was seen to rise up and fly out of the room, and when Dai-ru went outside to look, there was the lame Taoist asking for it back.
+ He snatched it as it flew towards him and disappeared before Dai-ru's very eyes.
+ Seeing that there was to be no redress, Dai-yu was obliged to set about preparing for the funeral and began by announcing his grandson's death to everybody concerned.
+ Reading of the sutras began on the third day and on the seventh the coffin was drawn in procession to temporary lodging in the Temple of the Iron Threshold to await future reburial.
+ The various members of the Jia family all came in due course to offer their condolences.
+ From the Rong-guo side Jia She and Jia Zheng each gave twenty taels of silver and from the Ning-guo side Cousin Zhen also gave twenty taels.
+ The other members of the clan gave amounts varying from one to four taels according to their means.
+ A collection made among the parents of the dead man's fellow-students raised an additional twenty or thirty taels.
+ Although Dai-ru's means were slender, with so much monetary help coming in he was able to perform the whole business in considerable style.
+ Towards the end of the year in which Jia Rui's troubles started Lin Ru-hai fell seriously ill and wrote a letter asking to see Dai-yu again.
+ Though Grandmother Jia was plunged into deepest gloom by the letter, she was obliged to prepare with all possible expedition for her granddaughter's departure.
+ And Bao-yu, though he too was distressed at the prospect of Dai-yu's leaving him, could scarcely seek to interfere in a matter affecting the natural feelings of a father and his child.
+ Grandmother Jia insisted that Jia Lian should accompany Dai-yu and see her safely there and back.
+ The various gifts to be taken and the journey-money were, it goes without saying, duly prepared.
+ A suitable day on which to commence the journey was quickly determined and Jia Lian and Dai-yu took leave of all the rest and, embarking with their attendants, set sail for Yangchow.
+ If you wish for further details, you may learn them in the following chapter.
+
+ 话说凤姐正与平儿说话，只见有人回说：“瑞大爷来了。”
+ 凤姐命：“请进来罢。”
+ 贾瑞见请，心中暗喜。
+ 见了凤姐，满面陪笑，连连问好。
+ 凤姐儿也假意殷勤让坐让茶。
+ 贾瑞见凤姐如此打扮，越发酥倒，因饧了眼问道：“二哥哥怎么还不回来？”
+ 凤姐道：“不知什么缘故。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“别是路上有人绊住了脚，舍不得回来了罢？”
+ 凤姐道：“可知男人家见一个爱一个也是有的。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“嫂子这话错了，我就不是这样人。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“像你这样的人能有几个呢，十个里也挑不出一个来！”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜的抓耳挠腮。
+ 又道：“嫂子天天也闷的很。”
+ 凤姐道：“正是呢。
+ 只盼个人来说话解解闷儿。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“我倒天天闲着。
+ 若天天过来替嫂子解解闷儿，可好么？”
+ 凤姐笑道：“你哄我呢!
+ 你那里肯往我这里来？”
+ 贾瑞道：“我在嫂子面前，若有一句谎话，天打雷劈!
+ 只因素日闻得人说，嫂子是个利害人，在你跟前一点也错不得，所以唬住我了。
+ 我如今见嫂子是个有说有笑极疼人的，我怎么不来?
+ ——死了也情愿。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“果然你是个明白人，比蓉儿兄弟两个强远了。
+ 我看他那样清秀，只当他们心里明白，谁知竟是两个糊涂虫，一点不知人心。”
+ 贾瑞听这话，越发撞在心坎上，由不得又往前凑一凑，觑着眼看凤姐的荷包，又问：“戴着什么戒指？”
+ 凤姐悄悄的道：“放尊重些，别叫丫头们看见了。”
+ 贾瑞如听纶音佛语一般，忙往后退。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你该去了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“我再坐一坐儿，好狠心的嫂子！”
+ 凤姐儿又悄悄的道：“大天白日人来人往，你就在这里也不方便。
+ 你且去，等到晚上起了更你来，悄悄的在西边穿堂儿等我。”
+ 贾瑞听了，如得珍宝，忙问道：“你别哄我。
+ 但是那里人过的多，怎么好躲呢？”
+ 凤姐道：“你只放心，我把上夜的小厮们都放了假，两边门一关，再没别人了。”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜之不尽，忙忙的告辞而去，心内以为得手。
+ 盼到晚上，果然黑地里摸入荣府，趁掩门时，钻入穿堂。
+ 果见漆黑无一人来往，贾母那边去的门已倒锁了，只有向东的门未关。
+ 贾瑞侧耳听着，半日不见人来。
+ 忽听‘咯噔’一声，东边的门也关上了。
+ 贾瑞急的也不敢则声，只得悄悄出来，将门撼了撼，关得铁桶一般。
+ 此时要出去亦不能了，南北俱是大墙，要跳也无攀援。
+ 这屋内又是过堂风，空落落的，现是腊月天气，夜又长，朔风凛凛，侵肌裂骨，一夜几乎不曾冻死！
+ 好容易盼到早晨，只见一个老婆子先将东门开了进来，去叫西门，贾瑞瞅他背着脸，一溜烟抱了肩跑出来。
+ 幸而天气尚早，人都未起，从后门一径跑回家去。
+ 原来贾瑞父母早亡，只有他祖父代儒教养。
+ 那代儒素日教训最严，不许贾瑞多走一步，生怕他在外吃酒赌钱，有误学业。
+ 今忽见他一夜不归，只料定他在外非饮即赌，嫖娼宿妓，那里想到这段公案?
+ 因此也气了一夜。
+ 贾瑞也捻着一把汗，少不得回来撒谎，只说：“往舅舅家去了，天黑了，留我住了一夜。”
+ 代儒道：“自来出门非禀我不敢擅出，如何昨日私自去了?
+ 据此也该打，何况是撒谎！”
+ 因此发狠，按倒打了三四十板，还不许他吃饭，叫他跪在院内读文章，定要补出十天工课来方罢。
+ 贾瑞先冻了一夜，又挨了打，又饿着肚子，跪在风地里念文章，其苦万状。
+ 此时贾瑞邪心未改，再不想到凤姐捉弄他。
+ 过了两日，得了空儿，仍找寻凤姐。
+ 凤姐故意抱怨他失信，贾瑞急的起誓。
+ 凤姐因他自投罗网，少不的再寻别计令他知改，故又约他道：“今日晚上，你别在那里了，你在我这房后小过道儿里头那间空屋子里等我。
+ ——可别冒撞了！”
+ 贾瑞道：“果真么？”
+ 凤姐道：“你不信就别来！”
+ 贾瑞道：“必来，必来!
+ 死也要来的。”
+ 凤姐道：“这会子你先去罢。”
+ 贾瑞料定晚间必妥，此时先去了。
+ 凤姐在这里便点兵派将，设下圈套。
+ 那贾瑞只盼不到晚，偏偏家里亲戚又来了，吃了晚饭才去，那天已有掌灯时候；又等他祖父安歇，方溜进荣府，往那夹道中屋子里来等着，热锅上蚂蚁一般。
+ 只是左等不见人影，右听也没声响，心中害怕，不住猜疑道：“别是不来了，又冻我一夜不成？”
+ 正自胡猜，只见黑魆魆的进来一个人。
+ 贾瑞便打定是凤姐，不管青红皂白，那人刚到面前，便如饿虎扑食、猫儿捕鼠的一般抱住，叫道：“亲嫂子，等死我了！”
+ 说着，抱到屋里炕上就亲嘴扯裤子，满口里“亲爹”“亲娘”的乱叫起来。
+ 那人只不做声，贾瑞便扯下自己的裤子来，硬帮帮就想顶入。
+ 忽然灯光一闪，只见贾蔷举着个蜡台，照道：“谁在这屋里呢？”
+ 只见炕上那人笑道：“瑞大叔要肏我呢！”
+ 贾瑞不看则已，看了时真臊的无地可入。
+ 你道是谁?
+ 却是贾蓉。
+ 贾瑞回身要跑，被贾蔷一把揪住道：“别走!
+ 如今琏二婶子已经告到太太跟前，说你调戏他，他暂时稳住你在这里。
+ 太太听见气死过去了，这会子叫我来拿你。
+ 快跟我走罢！”
+ 贾瑞听了，魂不附体，只说：“好侄儿!
+ 你只说没有我，我明日重重的谢你！”
+ 贾蔷道：“放你不值什么，只不知你谢我多少?
+ 况且口说无凭，写一张文契才算。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这怎么落纸呢？”
+ 贾蔷道：“这也不妨，写个赌钱输了，借银若干两，就完了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这也容易。”
+ 贾蔷翻身出来，纸笔现成，拿来叫贾瑞写。
+ 他两个做好做歹，只写了五十两银子，画了押，贾蔷收起来。
+ 然后撕掳贾蓉。
+ 贾蓉先咬定牙不依，只说：“明日告诉族中的人评评理。”
+ 贾瑞急的至于磕头。
+ 贾蔷做好做歹的，也写了一张五十两欠契才罢。
+ 贾蔷又道：“如今要放你，我就担着不是。
+ 老太太那边的门早已关了。
+ 老爷正在厅上看南京来的东西，那一条路定难过去。
+ 如今只好走后门。
+ 要这一走，倘或遇见了人，连我也不好。
+ 等我先去探探，再来领你。
+ 这屋里你还藏不住，少时就来堆东西，等我寻个地方。”
+ 说毕，拉着贾瑞，仍息了灯，出至院外，摸着大台阶底下，说道：“这窝儿里好。
+ 只蹲着，别哼一声。
+ 等我来再走。”
+ 说毕，二人去了。
+ 贾瑞此时身不由己，只得蹲在那台阶下。
+ 正要盘算，只听头顶上一声响，哗喇喇一净桶尿粪从上面直泼下来，可巧浇了他一身一头。
+ 贾瑞掌不住“嗳哟”一声，忙又掩住口，不敢声张，满头满脸皆是尿屎，浑身冰冷打战。
+ 只见贾蔷跑来叫：“快走，快走！”
+ 贾瑞方得了命，三步两步从后门跑到家中，天已三更，只得叫开了门。
+ 家人见他这般光景，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 少不得撒谎说：“天黑了，失脚掉在茅厕里了。”
+ 一面即到自己房中更衣洗濯。
+ 心下方想到凤姐玩他，因此发一回狠；再想想凤姐的模样儿标致，又恨不得一时搂在怀里。
+ 胡思乱想，一夜也不曾合眼。
+ 自此虽想凤姐，只不敢往荣府去了。
+ 贾蓉等两个常常来要银子，他又怕祖父知道。
+ 正是相思尚且难禁，况又添了债务，日间工课又紧；他二十来岁的人，尚未娶亲，想着凤姐不得到手，自不免有些“指头儿告了消乏”；更兼两回冻恼奔波：因此三五下里夹攻，不觉就得了一病：
+ 心内发膨胀，口内无滋味，脚下如绵，眼中似醋，黑夜作烧，白日常倦，下溺遗精，嗽痰带血，诸如此症，不上一年都添全了。
+ 于是不能支持，一头躺倒，合上眼还只梦魂颠倒，满口胡话，惊怖异常。
+ 百般请医疗治，诸如肉桂、附子、鳖甲、麦冬、玉竹等药吃了有几十斤下去，也不见个动静。
+ 倏又腊尽春回，这病更加沉重。
+ 代儒也着了忙，各处请医疗治，皆不见效。
+ 因后来吃“独参汤”，代儒如何有这力量，只得往荣府里来寻。
+ 王夫人命凤姐秤二两给他。
+ 凤姐回说：“前儿新近替老太太配了药，那整的太太又说留着送杨提督的太太配药，偏偏昨儿我已经叫人送了去了。”
+ 王夫人道：“就是咱们这边没了，你叫个人往你婆婆那里问问，或是你珍大哥哥那里有，寻些来，凑着给人家， 吃好了，救人一命，也是你们的好处。”
+ 凤姐应了，也不遣人去寻。
+ 只将些渣末凑了几钱，命人送去，只说：“太太叫送来的，再也没了。”
+ 然后向王夫人说：“都寻了来了，共凑了二两多，送去了。”
+ 那贾瑞此时要命心急，无药不吃，只是白花钱，不见效。
+ 忽然这日有个跛足道人来化斋，口称专治冤孽之症。
+ 贾瑞偏偏在内听见了，直着声叫喊，说：“快去请进那位菩萨来救命！”
+ 一面在枕头上磕头。
+ 众人只得带进那道士来。
+ 贾瑞一把拉住，连叫“菩萨救我！”
+ 那道士叹道：“你这病非药可医。
+ 我有个宝贝与你，你天天看时，此命可保矣。”
+ 说毕，从搭裢中取出个正面反面皆可照人的镜子来，——背上錾着“风月宝鉴”四字，——递与贾瑞道：
+ “这物出自太虚幻境空灵殿上，警幻仙子所制，专治邪思妄动之症，有济世保生之功。
+ 所以带他到世上来，单与那些聪明俊秀、风雅王孙等照看。
+ 千万不可照正面，只照背面，要紧，要紧!
+ 三日后我来收取，管叫你病好。”
+ 说毕，徉长而去。
+ 众人苦留不住。
+ 贾瑞接了镜子，想道：“这道士倒有意思，我何不照一照试试？”
+ 想毕，拿起那“宝鉴”来，向反面一照， 只见一个骷髅儿，立在里面。
+ 贾瑞忙掩了，骂那道士：
+ “混帐!
+ 如何吓我!
+ 我倒再照照正面是什么？”
+ 想着，便将正面一照，只见凤姐站在里面点手儿叫他。
+ 贾瑞心中一喜，荡悠悠觉得进了镜子，与凤姐云雨一番，凤姐仍送他出来。
+ 到了床上，“嗳哟”了一声，一睁眼，镜子从新又掉过来，仍是反面立着一个骷髅。
+ 贾瑞自觉汗津津的，底下已遗了一滩精。
+ 心中到底不足，又翻过正面来，只见凤姐还招手叫他，他又进去：如此三四次。
+ 到了这次，刚要出镜子来，只见两个人走来，拿铁锁把他套住，拉了就走。
+ 贾瑞叫道：“让我拿了镜子再走——”
+ 只说这句就再不能说话了。
+ 旁边伏侍的人只见他先还拿着镜子照，落下来，仍睁开眼拾在手内，末后镜子掉下来，便不动了。
+ 众人上来看时，已经咽了气了，身子底下冰凉精湿遗下了一大滩精。
+ 这才忙着穿衣抬床， 代儒夫妇哭的死去活来，大骂道士：“是何妖道！”
+ 遂命人架起火来烧那镜子。
+ 只听空中叫道：“谁叫他自己照了正面呢!
+ 你们自己以假为真，为何烧我此镜？”
+ 忽见那镜从房中飞出。
+ 代儒出门看时，却还是那个跛足道人，喊道：“还我的‘风月宝鉴’来！”
+ 说着，抢了镜子，眼看着他飘然去了。
+ 当下代儒没法，只得料理丧事，各处去报。
+ 三日起经，七日发引，寄灵铁槛寺后。
+ 一时贾家众人齐来吊问。
+ 荣府贾赦赠银二十两，贾政也是二十两，宁府贾珍亦有二十两，其馀族中人贫富不一，或一二两、三四两不等。
+ 外又有各同窗家中分资，也凑了二三十两。
+ 代儒家道虽然淡薄，得此帮助，倒也丰丰富富完了此事。
+ 谁知这年冬底，林如海因为身染重疾，写书来特接黛玉回去。
+ 贾母听了，未免又加忧闷，只得忙忙的打点黛玉起身。
+ 宝玉大不自在，争奈父女之情，也不好拦阻。
+ 于是贾母定要贾琏送他去，仍叫带回来。
+ 一应土仪盘费，不消絮说，自然要妥贴的。
+ 作速择了日期，贾琏同着黛玉辞别了众人，带领仆从，登舟往扬州去了。
+ 要知端的，且听下回分解。
+
+ We have shown how Bao-yu was in Dai-yu's room telling her the story of the magic mice; how Bao-chai burst in on them and twitted Bao-yu with his failure to remember the 'green wax' allusion on the night of the Lantern Festival; and how the three of them sat teasing each other with good-humoured banter.
+ Bao-yu had been afraid that by sleeping after her meal Dai-yu would give herself indigestion or suffer from insomnia through being insufficiently tired when she went to bed at night, but Bao-chai's arrival and the lively conversation that followed it banished all Dai-yu's desire to sleep and enabled him to lay aside his anxiety on her behalf.
+ Just then a sudden commotion arose from the direction of Bao-yu's room, and the three of them stopped talking and turned their heads to listen.
+ Dai-yu was the first to speak: 'That's your Nannie quarrelling with Aroma,' she said.
+ 'To think how that poor girl goes out of her way to be nice to the old woman, yet still she manages to find fault with her!
+ She really must be getting senile.'
+ Bao-yu was for rushing over straight away, but Bao-chai restrained him: 'Don't go quarrelling with your Nannie, whatever you do!
+ She's only a silly old woman.
+ You have to indulge her a bit.'
+ 'Of course,' said Bao-yu and ran off.
+ He found Nannie Li leaning on her stick in the middle of the room abusing Aroma: 'Ungrateful little baggage!
+ After all I've done for you – and now when I come to call on you, you lie back there on the kang like a young madam and haven't even the grace to look up and take notice of me!
+ You and your airs and graces!
+ All you ever think about is how to win Bao-yu over to you.
+ Thanks to you he won't listen to me any more.
+ He only does what you say.
+ To think that a cheap bit of goods like you that they only paid a few taels of silver for should come along here and turn the whole place upside down!
+ The best thing they could do with you would be to marry you off to one of the boys and send you packing.
+ Then we'd see how you managed to play the siren and lead young gentlemen astray!'
+ Aroma at first thought that Nannie Li's anger arose solely on account of her failure to get up and welcome her, and had started to excuse herself on that supposition: 'I'm ill, Mrs Li.
+ I've just been sweating.
+ I didn't see you because I had my head under the clothes.'
+ But when the old woman proceeded to go on about leading young men astray and marrying her off to a servant and what not, she felt wronged and humiliated, and in spite of her efforts to restrain them, burst into tears of sheer helplessness.
+ Bao-yu had heard all this, and though too embarrassed to argue, could scarcely refrain from saying a word or two in Aroma's defence:
+ 'She's ill.
+ She's having to take medicine,' he said.
+ 'If you don't believe me, ask any of the maids.'
+ This made the old woman even angrier.
+ 'Oh yes!
+ You stick up for the little hussies!
+ You don't care about me any more!
+ And which of them am I supposed to ask, pray?
+ They will all take your side against me.
+ You are all under Aroma's thumb, every one of you.
+ I know what goes on here, don't think I don't!
+ Well, you can come along with me to see Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship about this.
+ Let them hear how you have cast me off – me that reared you at my own breast – now that you don't need my milk any more, and how you encourage a pack of snotty-nosed little maidservants to amuse themselves at my expense!'
+ She was in tears herself by now, and wept as she cursed.
+ By this time Dai-yu and Bao-chai had also arrived on the scene and did their best to calm her: 'Come, Nannie!
+ Be a bit more forbearing with them!
+ Try to forget about it!'
+ Nannie Li turned towards this new audience and proceeded to pour out her troubles in an interminable gabble in which tea and Snowpink and drinking koumiss mingled incoherently.
+ Xi-feng happened to be in Grandmother Jia's room totting up the day's scores for the final settlement when she heard this hubbub in the rear apartment.
+ She identified it immediately as Nannie Li on the rampage once more, taking out on Bao-yu's unfortunate maids some of the spleen occasioned by her recent gambling losses.
+ At once she hurried over, seized Nannie Li by the hand, and admonished her with smiling briskness: 'Now, Nannie, we mustn't lose our tempers!
+ This is the New Year holiday and Her Old Ladyship has been enjoying herself all day.
+ A person of your years ought to be stopping other people from quarrelling, not upsetting Her Old Ladyship by quarrelling yourself.
+ Surely you know better than that?
+ If anyone has been misbehaving, you have only to tell me and I'll have them beaten for you.
+ Now I've got a nice hot pheasant stew in my room.
+ You just come along with me and you shall have some of that and a drink to go with it!'
+ She proceeded to haul her off the premises, addressing a few words over her shoulder to her maid Felicity as she went: 'Felicity, bring Nannie's stick for her, there's a good girl!
+ And for goodness' sake give her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes with!'
+ Unable to hold her ground, the old Nannie was borne off in Xi-feng's wake, muttering plaintively as she went:
+ 'I wish I was dead, I really do!
+ But I'd sooner forget meself and make a scene like I have today and be shamed in front of you all than put up with the insolence of those shameless little baggages!'
+ Watching this sudden exit, Bao-chai and Dai-yu laughed and clapped their hands: 'How splendid!
+ Just the sort of wind we needed to blow the old woman away!'
+ But Bao-yu shook his head and sighed: 'I wonder what had really upset her.
+ Obviously she only picked on Aroma because she is weak and can't defend herself.
+ I wonder which of the girls had offended her to make her so...'
+ He was interrupted by Skybright: 'Why should any of us want to upset her?
+ Do you think we're mad ?
+ And even if we had offended her, we should be perfectly capable of owning up to it and not letting someone else take the blame!'
+ Aroma grasped Bao-yu's hand and wept: 'Because I offended one old nurse, you have to go offending a whole roomful of people.
+ Don't you think there's been enough trouble already without dragging other people into it?'
+ Seeing how ill she looked and realizing that distress of mind could only aggravate her condition, Bao-yu stifled his indignation and did his best to comfort her so that she might be able to settle down once more and continue sweating out the fever.
+ Her skin was burning to the touch.
+ He decided to stay with her for a while, and lying down beside her, spoke to her soothingly: 'Just try to get better, now!
+ Never mind all that other nonsense!
+ It's of no importance.'
+ Aroma smiled bitterly.
+ 'If I had allowed myself to get upset about things like that, I shouldn't have lasted in this room for five minutes!
+ Still, if we're always going to have this sort of trouble, I think in the long run I just shan't be able to stand any more.
+ You don't seem to realize.
+ You offend people on my account and the next moment you've forgotten all about it.
+ But they haven't.
+ It's all scored up against me; and as soon as something goes a bit wrong, they come out with all these horrible things about me.
+ It makes it so unpleasant for all of us.'
+ She cried weakly as she said this, but presently checked herself for fear of upsetting Bao-yu.
+ Soon the odd-job woman came in with the second infusion of Aroma's medicine.
+ Bao-yu could see that she had started sweating again and told her not to get up, holding the medicine for her himself and supporting her while she drank it.
+ Then he told one of the junior maids to make up a bed for her on the kang.
+ 'Whether you're going to eat there or not,' Aroma said to him, 'you'd better go and sit with Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship for a bit and play a while with the young ladies before you come back here again.
+ I shall be all right if I lie here quietly on my own.'
+ Bao-yu thought he had better do as she said, and after waiting until she had taken off her ornaments and was lying tucked up in bed, he went to the front apartment and took his dinner with Grandmother Jia.
+ After dinner Grandmother Jia wanted to go on playing cards with some of the old stewardesses.
+ Bao-yu, still worrying about Aroma, returned to his own room, where he found her sleeping fitfully.
+ He thought of going to bed himself, but it was still too early.
+ Skybright, Mackerel, Ripple and Emerald had gone off in quest of livelier entertainment, hoping to persuade Grandmother Jia's maids, Faithful and Amber, to join them in a game.
+ Only Musk was left in the outer room, playing Patience under the lamp with a set of dominoes.
+ Bao-yu smiled at her.
+ 'Why don't you go off to join the others?'
+ 'I haven't got any money.'
+ 'There's a great pile of money under the bed.
+ Isn't that enough for you to lose?'
+ 'If we all went off to play,' said Musk, 'who would look after this room?
+ There's her sick inside.
+ And lamps and stoves burning everywhere.
+ The old women were practically dead on their feet after waiting on you all day; I had to let them go and rest.
+ And the girls have been on duty all day, too.
+ You could scarcely grudge them some time off now for amusement.
+ -Which leaves only me to look after the place.'
+ 'Another Aroma,' thought Bao-yu to himself and gave her another smile.
+ 'I'll sit here while you're away.
+ There's nothing to worry about here if you'd like to go.'
+ 'There's even less excuse for going if you are here,' said Musk.
+ 'Why can't we both sit here and talk?'
+ 'What can we do?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Just sitting here talking is going to be rather dull.
+ I know!
+ You were saying this morning that your head was itchy.
+ As you haven't got anything else to do now, I'll comb it for you.'
+ 'All right,' said Musk, and fetching her toilet-box with the mirror on top she proceeded to take off her ornaments and shake her hair out.
+ Bao-yu took a comb and began to comb it for her.
+ But he had not drawn it more than four or five times through her hair, when Skybright came bursting in to get some more money.
+ Seeing the two of them together, she smiled sarcastically: 'Fancy!
+ Doing her hair already – before you've even drunk the marriage-cup!'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'Come here!
+ I'll do yours for you too, if you like!'
+ 'I wouldn't presume, thanks all the same!'
+ She took the money, and with a swish of the door-blind was gone.
+ Bao-yu was standing behind Musk as she sat looking at herself in the mirror.
+ Their eyes met in the glass and they both laughed.
+ 'Of all the girls in this room she has the sharpest tongue,' said Bao-yu.
+ Musk signalled to him agitatedly in the glass with her hand.
+ Bao-yu took her meaning; but it was too late.
+ With another swish of the door-blind, Skybright had already darted in again.
+ 'Oh!
+ Sharp-tongued, am I?
+ Perhaps you'd like to say a bit more on that subject?'
+ 'Get along with you!' laughed Musk.
+ 'Don't go starting any more arguments!'
+ 'And don't you go sticking up for him!' said Skybright gaily.
+ 'I know what you're up to, you two.
+ You don't deceive me with your goings-on.
+ I'll have something to say to you about this when I get back later.
+ Just wait until I've won some of my money back!'
+ With that she darted off once more.
+ When Bao-yu had finished combing her hair, he asked Musk to help him get to bed – very quietly, so as not to disturb Aroma.
+ And that ends our account of that day.
+ First thing next morning Aroma awoke to find that she had sweated heavily during the night and that her body felt very much lighter; but she would take only a little congee for breakfast in order not to tax her system too soon.
+ Bao-yu saw that there was no further cause for concern, and after his meal drifted off to Aunt Xue's apartment in search of amusement.
+ Now this was the prime of the year, when the schoolroom is closed for the New Year holiday and the use of the needle is forbidden to maidenly fingers throughout the whole of the Lucky Month, so that boys and girls alike are all agreeably unemployed, and Bao-yu's half-brother Jia Huan, on holiday like all the rest, had also drifted over to Aunt Xue's place in search of amusement.
+ He found Bao-chai, Caltrop and Oriole there playing a game of Racing Go, and after watching them for a bit, wanted to play too.
+ Bao-chai had always behaved towards Jia Huan in exactly the same way as she did towards Bao-yu and made no distinctions between them.
+ Consequently, when he asked to play, she at once made a place for him and invited him to join them on the kang.
+ They played for stakes of ten cash each a game.
+ Jia Huan won the first game and felt very pleased.
+ But then, as luck would have it, he lost several times in a row and began to get somewhat rattled.
+ It was now his turn to throw the dice.
+ He needed seven to win, and if he threw anything less than seven, the dice would go next to Oriole, who needed only three.
+ He hurled them from the pot with all his might.
+ One of them rested at two.
+ The other continued rather erratically to roll about.
+ 'Ace!
+ Ace!
+ Ace!' cried Oriole, clapping her hands.
+ 'Six!
+ Seven!
+ Eight!' shouted Jia Huan glaring at Oriole and commanding the die to perform the impossible.
+ But the perverse wanderer finally came to rest with the ace uppermost, making a grand total of three.
+ With the speed of desperation Jia Huan reached out and snatched it up, claiming, as he did so, that it was a six.
+ 'It was an ace,' said Oriole, 'as plain as anything!'
+ Bao-chai could see that Jia Huan was rattled, and darting a sharp look at Oriole, commanded her to yield.
+ 'You grow more unmannerly every day,' she told her.
+ 'Surely you don't think one of the masters would cheat you?
+ Come on!
+ Put your money down!'
+ Oriole smarted with the injustice of this, but her mistress had ordered it, so she had to pay up without arguing.
+ She could not, however, forbear a few rebellious mutterings: 'Huh!
+ One of the masters!
+ Cheating a maid out of a few coppers!
+ Even I should be ashamed!
+ Look how much money Bao-yu lost when he was playing with us the other day, yet he didn't mind.
+ Even when some of the maids took all he had left, he only laughed...'
+ She would have gone on, but Bao-chai checked her angrily.
+ 'How can I hope to compete with Bao-yu?' said Jia Huan, beginning to blubber.
+ 'You're all afraid of him.
+ You all take his part against me because I'm only a concubine's son.'
+ Bao-chai was shocked: 'Please don't say things like that, Cousin!
+ You'll make yourself ridiculous.'
+ Once more she rebuked Oriole.
+ Just at that moment Bao-yu walked in, and seeing the state that Jia Huan was in, asked him what was the matter.
+ But Jia Huan dared not say anything.
+ Bao-chai, familiar with the state of affairs, normal in other families, which places the younger brother in fearful subjection to the elder, assumed that Jia Huan was afraid of Bao-yu.
+ She was unaware that Bao-yu positively disliked anyone being afraid of him.
+ 'We are both equally subject to our parents' control,' he would say of himself and Jia Huan.
+ 'Why should I create a greater distance between us by trying to control him myself – especially when I am the wife's son and he is the concubine's?
+ People already talk behind our backs, even when I do nothing.
+ It would be ten times worse if I were to start bossing him about.'
+ But there was another, zanier, notion which contributed to this attitude.
+ Let us try to explain it.
+ Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls.
+ There were his sisters Yuan-chun and Tan-chun, his cousins of the same surname Ying-chun and Xi-chun, and his distaff-cousins Shi Xiang-yun, Lin Dai-yu and Xue Bao-chai.
+ As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings.
+ To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well not have existed.
+ Only in the case of his father, uncles and brother, where rudeness and disobedience were expressly forbidden by the teachings of Confucius, did he make an exception – and even then the allowances he made in respect of the fraternal bond were extremely perfunctory.
+ It certainly never occurred to him that his own maleness placed him under any obligation to set an example to the younger males in his clan.
+ The latter – Jia Huan included – reciprocated with a healthy disrespect only slightly tempered by their fear of his doting grandmother.
+ But Bao-chai was ignorant of all this; and fearing that Bao-yu might embarrass them all by delivering a big brother's telling-off, she hastened to Jia Huan's defence.
+ 'What are you crying about in the middle of the New Year holidays?' said Bao-yu to Jia Huan, ignoring Bao-chai's excuses.
+ 'If you don't like it here, why don't you go somewhere else?
+ I think your brains must have been addled by too much study.
+ Can't you see that if there is something you don't like, there must be something else you do like, and that all you've got to do is leave the one and go after the other?
+ Not hang on to it and cry.
+ Crying won't make it any better.
+ You came here to enjoy yourself, didn't you?
+ And now you're here you're miserable, right?
+ Then the thing to do is to go somewhere else, isn't it?'
+ In the face of such an argument Jia Huan could not very well remain.
+ When he got back to his own apartment, his real mother, 'Aunt' Zhao (Lady Wang was his mother only in name) observed the dejected state he was in.
+ 'Who's been making a doormat of you this time?' she asked him, and, obtaining no immediate reply, asked again.
+ 'I've just been playing at Bao-chai's.
+ Oriole cheated me and Bao-yu turned me out.'
+ Aunt Zhao spat contemptuously: 'Nasty little brat!
+ That's what comes of getting above yourself.
+ Who asked you to go playing with that lot?
+ You could have gone anywhere else to play.
+ Asking for trouble!'
+ Just at that moment Xi-feng happened to be passing by outside, and hearing what she said, shouted back at her through the window: 'What sort of language is that to be using in the middle of the New Year holiday?
+ He's only a child.
+ He hasn't done anything terrible.
+ What do you want to go carrying on at him like that for?
+ No matter where he's been, Sir Zheng and Lady Wang are quite capable of looking after him themselves.
+ There's no cause for you to go biting his head off!
+ After all, he is one of the masters.
+ If he's misbehaved himself, you should leave the telling-off to those whose job it is.
+ It's no business of yours.
+ Huan!
+ Come out here!
+ Come and play with me!'
+ Jia Huan had always been afraid of Xi-feng – more even than he was of Lady Wang – and hearing her call him, came running out immediately.
+ Aunt Zhao dared not say a word.
+ 'You're a poor-spirited creature!'
+ Xi-feng said to him.
+ 'How many times have I told you that you can eat and drink and play with any of the boys and girls you like?
+ But instead of doing as I say, you hang about with these other people and let them warp your mind for you and fill it up with mischief.
+ You've no self-respect, that's your trouble.
+ Can't keep away from the gutter.
+ You insist on making yourself disagreeable and then you complain that people are prejudiced against you!
+ Fancy making a fuss like that about losing a few coppers!
+ How much did you lose?'
+ 'One or two hundred,' Jia Huan muttered abjectly.
+ 'All this fuss about one or two hundred cash!
+ And you one of the masters!'
+ She turned to Felicity.
+ 'Go and get a string of cash for him, Felicity, and take him round to the back where Miss Ying and the girls are playing!
+ And if I have any more of this nonsense from you in future, young man,' she went on to Jia Huan, 'I'll first give you a good hiding myself and then send someone to tell the school about you and see if they can knock a bit of sense into you!
+ It sets your Cousin Lian's teeth on edge to see you so wanting in self-respect.
+ He'd have disembowelled you by now I shouldn't wonder, if I hadn't kept his hands off you!
+ Now be off with you!'
+ 'Yes,' said Jia Huan meekly and went off with Felicity.
+ When he had got his money, he took himself off to play with Ying-chun and the girls.
+ And there we must leave him.
+ While Bao-yu was enjoying himself with Bao-chai, a servant announced that Miss Shi had arrived, and he hurriedly got up to go.
+ 'Wait!' said Bao-chai.
+ 'Let's go and see her together!'
+ She got down from the kang as she said this, and accompanied him round to Grandmother Jia's apartment.
+ Shi Xiang-yun was already there, laughing and chattering away nineteen to the dozen, but rose to greet them as they entered.
+ Dai-yu was there too.
+ 'Where have you been?' she asked Bao-yu.
+ 'Bao-chai's.'
+ 'I see' (very frostily).
+ 'I thought something must have been detaining you.
+ Otherwise you would have come flying here long since.'
+ 'Is one only allowed to play with you,' said Bao-yu, 'and keep you amused?
+ I just happened to be visiting her.
+ Why should you start making remarks like that?'
+ 'How thoroughly disagreeable you are!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'What do I care whether you go to see her or not?
+ And I'm sure I never asked to be kept amused.
+ From now on you can ignore me completely, as far as I'm concerned.'
+ With that she went back to her own room in a temper.
+ Bao-yu came running after.
+ 'What on earth are you upset about this time?
+ Even if I've said anything wrong, you ought, out of simple courtesy, to sit and talk with the others for a bit!'
+ 'Are you telling me how to behave?'
+ 'Of course not.
+ It's just that you destroy your health by carrying on in this way.'
+ 'That's my affair.
+ If I choose to die, I don't see that it's any concern of yours.'
+ 'Oh, really, really!
+ Here we are in the middle of the New Year holiday, and you have to start talking about death!'
+ 'I don't care.
+ I'll talk about death if I like, Death!
+ Death!
+ Death!
+ I'm going to die this minute.
+ If you're so afraid of death, I wish you long life.
+ A hundred years, will that satisfy you?'
+ 'Do you think I'm afraid of dying when all you will do is quarrel?
+ I wish I were dead.
+ It would be a relief.'
+ 'Exactly!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If I were to die, it would be a relief from all this quarrelling!'
+ 'I said if I were to die,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Don't twist my words.
+ It isn't fair.'
+ Just then Bao-chai came hurrying in.
+ 'Cousin Shi's waiting for you!'
+ She took hold of Bao-yu's hand and pulled him after her, to the great mortification of Dai-yu, who sat with her face to the window and shed tears of pure rage.
+ After about as long as it would take to drink two cups of tea, Bao-yu came back again.
+ During his absence Dai-yu's sobs seemed to have redoubled in intensity.
+ Seeing the state she was in he realized that it would need careful handling and began turning over in his mind all kinds of soft and soothing things to coax her with.
+ But before he could get his mouth open, she had anticipated him:
+ 'What have you come for this time?
+ Why can't you just leave me here to die in peace?
+ After all, you've got a new playmate now – one who can read and write and compose and laugh and talk to you much better than I can.
+ Oh yes, and drag you off to be amused if there's any danger of your getting upset!
+ I really can't imagine what you have come back here for!'
+ '"Old friends are best friends and close kin are kindest,"'said Bao-yu, coming over to where she sat and speaking very quietly.
+ 'You're too intelligent not to know that.
+ Even a simpleton like me knows that much!
+ Take kinship first: you are my cousin on Father's side; Cousin Bao is only a mother-cousin.
+ That makes you much the closer kin.
+ And as for length of acquaintance: it was you who came here first.
+ You and I have practically grown up together – eaten at the same table, even slept in the same bed.
+ Compared with you she's practially a new arrival.
+ Why should I ever be any less close to you because of her?'
+ 'Whatever do you take me for?
+ Do you think I want you to be any less close to her because of me?
+ It's the way I feel that makes me the way I am.'
+ 'And it's the way I feel,' said Bao-yu, 'that makes me the way I am!
+ Do you mean to tell me that you know your own feelings about me but still don't know what my feelings are about you?'
+ Dai-yu lowered her head and made no reply.
+ After a pause she said:
+ 'You complain that whatever you do people are always getting angry with you.
+ You don't seem to realize how much you provoke them by what you do.
+ Take today, for instance.
+ It's obviously colder today than it was yesterday.
+ Then why of all days should you choose today to leave your blue cape off?'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'I didn't.
+ I was wearing it this morning the same as usual; but when you started quarrelling just now, I got into such a sweat that I had to take it off.'
+ 'Next thing you'll be catching a cold,' said Dai-yu with a sigh, 'and then Heaven knows what grumblings and scoldings there will be!'
+ Just then Xiang-yun burst in on them and reproved them smilingly for abandoning her: 'Couthin Bao, Couthin Lin: you can thee each other every day.
+ It'th not often I get a chanthe to come here; yet now I have come, you both ignore me!'
+ Dai-yu burst out laughing: 'Lisping doesn't seem to make you any less talkative!
+ Listen to you: "Couthin!"
+ "Couthin!"
+ Presently, when you're playing Racing Go, you'll be all "thicktheth" and "theventh" !'
+ 'You'd better not imitate her,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'It'll get to be a habit.
+ You'll be lisping yourself before you know where you are.'
+ 'How you do pick on one!' said Xiang-yun.
+ 'Always finding fault.
+ Even if you are tho perfect yourthelf, I don't thee why you have to go making fun of everyone elthe.
+ But I can show you thomeone you won't dare to find fault with.
+ I shall certainly think you a wonder if you do.'
+ 'Who's that?' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If you can find any shortcomings in Cousin Bao-chai', said Xiang-yun, 'you must be very good indeed.'
+ 'Oh her,' said Dai-yu coldly.
+ 'I wondered whom you could mean.
+ I should never dare to find fault with her.'
+ But before she could say any more, Bao-yu cut in and hurriedly changed the subject.
+ 'I shall never be a match for you as long as I live,' Xiang-yun said to Dai-yu with a disarming smile.
+ 'All I can thay ith that I hope you marry a lithping huthband, tho that you have "ithee-withee" "ithee-withee" in your earth every minute of the day.
+ Ah, Holy Name!
+ I think I can thee that blethed day already before my eyeth!'
+ Bao-yu could not help laughing; but Xiang-yun had already turned and fled.
+ If you wish to know the conclusion of this scene, you must read the following chapter.
+
+ 话说宝玉在黛玉房中说“耗子精”，宝钗撞来，讽刺宝玉元宵不知“绿蜡”之典，三人正在房中互相取笑。
+ 那宝玉恐黛玉饭后贪眠，一时存了食，或夜间走了困，身体不好；幸而宝钗走来，大家谈笑，那黛玉方不欲睡，自己才放了心。
+ 忽听他房中嚷起来，大家侧耳听了一听，黛玉先笑道：“这是你妈妈和袭人叫唤呢。
+ 那袭人待他也罢了，你妈妈再要认真排揎他，可见老背晦了。”
+ 宝玉忙欲赶过去，宝钗一把拉住道：“你别和你妈妈吵才是呢!
+ 他是老糊涂了，倒要让他一步儿的是。”
+ 宝玉道：“我知道了。”
+ 说毕走来。
+ 只见李嬷嬷拄着拐杖，在当地骂袭人：“忘了本的小娼妇儿!
+ 我抬举起你来，这会子我来了，你大模厮样儿的躺在炕上，见了我也不理一理儿。
+ 一心只想妆狐媚子哄宝玉，哄的宝玉不理我，只听你的话。
+ 你不过是几两银子买了来的小丫头子罢咧，这屋里你就作起耗来了!
+ 好不好的，拉出去配一个小子，看你还妖精似的哄人不哄！”
+ 袭人先只道李嬷嬷不过因他躺着生气，少不得分辩说：“病了，才出汗，蒙着头，原没看见你老人家。”
+ 后来听见他说“哄宝玉”，又说“配小子”，由不得又羞又委屈，禁不住哭起来了。
+ 宝玉虽听了这些话，也不好怎样，少不得替他分辩，说“病了，吃药”，又说：“你不信，只问别的丫头。”
+ 李嬷嬷听了这话，越发气起来了，说道：“你只护着那起狐狸，那里还认得我了呢?
+ 叫我问谁去?
+ 谁不帮着你呢?
+ 谁不是袭人拿下马来的?
+ 我都知道那些事!
+ 我只和你到老太太、太太跟前去讲讲：把你奶了这么大，到如今吃不着奶了，把我扔在一边儿，逞着丫头们要我的强！”
+ 一面说，一面哭。
+ 彼时黛玉宝钗等也过来劝道：“妈妈，你老人家担待他们些就完了。”
+ 李嬷嬷见他二人来了，便诉委屈，将当日吃茶，茜雪出去，和昨日酥酪等事，唠唠叨叨说个不了。
+ 可巧凤姐正在上房算了输赢帐，听见后面一片声嚷，便知是李嬷嬷老病发了，又值他今儿输了钱，迁怒于人，排揎宝玉的丫头。
+ 便连忙赶过来拉了李嬷嬷，笑道：“妈妈别生气。
+ 大节下，老太太刚喜欢了一日。
+ 你是个老人家，别人吵，你还要管他们才是；难道你倒不知规矩，在这里嚷起来，叫老太太生气不成?
+ 你说谁不好，我替你打他。
+ 我屋里烧的滚热的野鸡，快跟了我喝酒去罢。”
+ 一面说，一面拉着走，又叫：“丰儿，替你李奶奶拿着拐棍子、擦眼泪的绢子。”
+ 那李嬷嬷脚不沾地，跟了凤姐儿走了，一面还说：“我也不要这老命了，索性今儿没了规矩，闹一场子，讨了没脸，强似受那些娼妇的气！”
+ 后面宝钗黛玉见凤姐儿这般，都拍手笑道：“亏他这一阵风来，把个老婆子撮了去了。”
+ 宝玉点头叹道：“这又不知是那里的帐，只拣软的欺负!
+ 又不知是那个姑娘得罪了，上在他帐上了。”
+ 一句未完，晴雯在旁说道：“谁又没疯了，得罪他做什么?
+ 既得罪了他，就有本事承任，犯不着带累别人！”
+ 袭人一面哭，一面拉着宝玉道：“为我得罪了一个老奶奶，你这会子又为我得罪这些人，这还不够我受的，还只是拉扯人！”
+ 宝玉见他这般病势，又添了这些烦恼，连忙忍气吞声，安慰他仍旧睡下出汗。
+ 又见他汤烧火热，自己守着他，歪在旁边劝他：“只养病，别想那些没要紧的事。”
+ 袭人冷笑道：“要为这些事生气，这屋里一刻还住得了?
+ 但只是天长日久，尽着这么闹，可叫人怎么过呢!
+ 你只顾一时为我得罪了人，他们都记在心里，遇着坎儿，说的好说不好听的，大家什么意思呢？”
+ 一面说，一面禁不住流泪，又怕宝玉烦恼，只得又勉强忍着。
+ 一时杂使的老婆子端了二和药来。
+ 宝玉见他才有点汗儿，便不叫他起来，自己端着给他就枕上吃了，即令小丫鬟们铺炕。
+ 袭人道：“你吃饭不吃饭，到底老太太、太太跟前坐一会子，和姑娘们玩一会子，再回来。
+ 我就静静的躺一躺也好啊。”
+ 宝玉听说，只得依他，看着他去了簪环躺下，才去上屋里跟着贾母吃饭。
+ 饭毕，贾母犹欲和那几个老管家的嬷嬷斗牌。
+ 宝玉惦记袭人，便回至房中，见袭人朦胧睡去。
+ 自己要睡，天气尚早。
+ 彼时晴雯、绮霞、秋纹、碧痕都寻热闹，找鸳鸯、琥珀等耍戏去了。
+ 见麝月一人在外间屋里灯下抹骨牌。
+ 宝玉笑道：“你怎么不和他们去？”
+ 麝月道：“没有钱。”
+ 宝玉道：“床底下堆着钱，还不够你输的？”
+ 麝月道：“都乐去了，这屋子交给谁呢?
+ 那一个又病了，满屋里上头是灯，下头是火，那些老婆子们都‘老天拔地’，伏侍了一天，也该叫他们歇歇儿了。
+ 小丫头们也伏侍了一天，这会子还不叫玩玩儿去吗?
+ 所以我在这里看着。”
+ 宝玉听了这话，公然又是一个袭人了。
+ 因笑道：“我在这里坐着，你放心去罢。”
+ 麝月道：“你既在这里，越发不用去了。
+ 咱们两个说话儿不好？”
+ 宝玉道：“咱们两个做什么呢?
+ 怪没意思的。
+ 也罢了，早起你说头上痒痒，这会子没什么事，我替你篦头罢。”
+ 麝月听了道：“使得。”
+ 说着，将文具镜匣搬来，卸去钗镮，打开头发，宝玉拿了篦子替他篦。
+ 只篦了三五下儿，见晴雯忙忙走进来取钱，一见他两个，便冷笑道：“哦!
+ 交杯盏儿还没吃，就上了头了！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你来，我也替你篦篦。”
+ 晴雯道：“我没这么大造化。”
+ 说着，拿了钱，摔了帘子，就出去了。
+ 宝玉在麝月身后，麝月对镜，二人在镜内相视而笑。
+ 宝玉笑着道：“满屋里就只是他磨牙。”
+ 麝月听说，忙向镜中摆手儿。
+ 宝玉会意，忽听“唿”一声帘子响，晴雯又跑进来问道：“我怎么磨牙了?
+ 咱们倒得说说！”
+ 麝月笑道：“你去你的罢，又来拌嘴儿了。”
+ 晴雯也笑道：“你又护着他了!
+ 你们瞒神弄鬼的，打量我都不知道呢!
+ 等我捞回本儿来再说。”
+ 说着，一径去了。
+ 这里宝玉通了头，命麝月悄悄的伏侍他睡下，不肯惊动袭人。
+ 一宿无话。
+ 次日清晨，袭人已是夜间出了汗，觉得轻松了些，只吃些米汤静养。
+ 宝玉才放了心，因饭后走到薛姨妈这边来闲逛。
+ 彼时正月内，学房中放年学，闺阁中忌针黹，都是闲时，因贾环也过来玩。
+ 正遇见宝钗、香菱、莺儿三个赶围棋作耍，贾环见了也要玩。
+ 宝钗素日看他也如宝玉，并没他意，今儿听他要玩，让他上来，坐在一处玩。
+ 一注十个钱。
+ 头一回，自己赢了，心中十分喜欢。
+ 谁知后来接连输了几盘，就有些着急。
+ 赶着这盘正该自己掷骰子，若掷个七点便赢了，若掷个六点，下该莺儿掷个三点就赢了。
+ 因拿起骰子来狠命一掷，一个坐定了二，那一个乱转。
+ 莺儿拍着手儿叫“么！”
+ 贾环便瞪着眼，“六！” “七！” “八！” 混叫。
+ 那骰子偏生转出么来。
+ 贾环急了，伸手便抓起骰子来，就要拿钱，说是个六点。
+ 莺儿便说：“明明是个么！”
+ 宝钗见贾环急了，便瞅了莺儿一眼，说道：“越大越没规矩!
+ 难道爷们还赖你?
+ 还不放下钱来呢。”
+ 莺儿满心委屈，见姑娘说，不敢出声，只得放下钱来，口内嘟囔说：“一个做爷的，还赖我们这几个钱，连我也瞧不起!
+ 前儿和宝二爷玩，他输了那些也没着急，下剩的钱还是几个小丫头子们一抢，他一笑就罢了。”
+ 宝钗不等说完，连忙喝住了。
+ 贾环道：“我拿什么比宝玉?
+ 你们怕他，都和他好，都欺负我不是太太养的！”
+ 说着便哭。
+ 宝钗忙劝他：“好兄弟，快别说这话，人家笑话。”
+ 又骂莺儿。
+ 正值宝玉走来，见了这般景况，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 贾环不敢则声。
+ 宝钗素知他家规矩，凡做兄弟的怕哥哥。
+ 却不知那宝玉是不要人怕他的。
+ 他想着：“兄弟们一并都有父母教训，何必我多事，反生疏了。
+ 况且我是正出，他是庶出，饶这样看待，还有人背后谈论，还禁得辖治了他？”
+ 更有个呆意思存在心里。
+ 你道是何呆意?
+ 因他自幼姐妹丛中长大，亲姊妹有元春探春，叔伯的有迎春惜春，亲戚中又有湘云、黛玉、宝钗等人，他便料定天地间灵淑之气，只钟于女子，男儿们不过是些渣滓浊沫而已。
+ 因此把一切男子都看成浊物，可有可无。
+ 只是父亲、伯叔、兄弟之伦，因是圣人遗训，不敢违忤，所以弟兄间亦不过尽其大概就罢了，并不想自己是男子，须要为子弟之表率。
+ 是以贾环等都不甚怕他，只因怕贾母不依，才只得让他三分。
+ 现今宝钗生怕宝玉教训他，倒没意思，便连忙替贾环掩饰。
+ 宝玉道：“大正月里，哭什么?
+ 这里不好，到别处玩去。
+ 你天天念书，倒念糊涂了。
+ 譬如这件东西不好，横竖那一件好，就舍了这件取那件。
+ 难道你守着这件东西哭会子就好了不成?
+ 你原是要取乐儿，倒招的自己烦恼。
+ 还不快去呢！”
+ 贾环听了，只得回来。
+ 赵姨娘见他这般，因问：“是那里垫了踹窝来了？”
+ 一问不答，再问时，贾环便说：“同宝姐姐玩来着。
+ 莺儿欺负我，赖我的钱； 宝玉哥哥撵了我来了。”
+ 赵姨娘啐道：“谁叫你上高台盘了?
+ 下流没脸的东西!
+ 那里玩不得?
+ 谁叫你跑了去讨这没意思？”
+ 正说着，可巧凤姐在窗外过，都听到耳内，便隔着窗户说道：“大正月里，怎么了?
+ 兄弟们小孩子家，一半点儿错了，你只教导他，说这样话做什么?
+ 凭他怎么着，还有老爷太太管他呢，就大口家啐他?
+ 他现是主子，不好，横竖有教导他的人，与你什么相干?
+ 环兄弟，出来!
+ 跟我玩去。”
+ 贾环素日怕凤姐比怕王夫人更甚，听见叫他，便赶忙出来。
+ 赵姨娘也不敢出声。
+ 凤姐向贾环道：“你也是个没性气的东西呦!
+ 时常说给你：要吃，要喝，要玩，你爱和那个姐姐妹妹哥哥嫂子玩，就和那个玩。
+ 你总不听我的话，倒叫这些人教的你歪心邪意、狐媚魇道的。
+ 自己又不尊重，要往下流里走，安着坏心，还只怨人家偏心呢。
+ 输了几个钱，就这么个样儿！”
+ 因问贾环：“你输了多少钱？”
+ 贾环见问，只得诺诺的说道：“输了一二百钱。”
+ 凤姐啐道：“亏了你还是个爷，输了一二百钱就这么着！”
+ 回头叫：“丰儿，去取一吊钱来； 姑娘们都在后头玩呢，把他送了去。
+ 你明儿再这么狐媚子，我先打了你，再叫人告诉学里，皮不揭了你的!
+ 为你这不尊贵，你哥哥恨得牙痒痒，不是我拦着，窝心脚把你的肠子还窝出来呢！”
+ 喝令：“去罢！”
+ 贾环诺诺的，跟了丰儿得了钱，自去和迎春等玩去，不在话下。
+ 且说宝玉正和宝钗玩笑，忽见人说：“史大姑娘来了。”
+ 宝玉听了，连忙就走。
+ 宝钗笑道：“等着，咱们两个一齐儿走，瞧瞧他去。”
+ 说着，下了炕，和宝玉来至贾母这边。
+ 只见史湘云大说大笑的，见了他两个，忙站起来问好。
+ 正值黛玉在旁，因问宝玉：“打那里来？”
+ 宝玉便说：“打宝姐姐那里来。”
+ 黛玉冷笑道：“我说呢!
+ 亏了绊住，不然，早就飞了来了。”
+ 宝玉道：“只许和你玩，替你解闷儿；不过偶然到他那里，就说这些闲话。”
+ 黛玉道：“好没意思的话!
+ 去不去，管我什么事?
+ 又没叫你替我解闷儿!
+ 还许你从此不理我呢！”
+ 说着，便赌气回房去了。
+ 宝玉忙跟了来，问道：“好好儿的又生气了!
+ 就是我说错了，你到底也还坐坐儿，合别人说笑一会子啊？”
+ 黛玉道：“你管我呢！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我自然不敢管你，只是你自己遭塌坏了身子呢。”
+ 黛玉道：“我作践了我的身子，我死我的，与你何干？”
+ 宝玉道：“何苦来?
+ 大正月里，‘死’了‘活’了的。”
+ 黛玉道：“偏说‘死’!
+ 我这会子就死!
+ 你怕死，你长命百岁的活着，好不好？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“要像只管这么闹，我还怕死吗?
+ 倒不如死了干净。”
+ 黛玉忙道：“正是了，要是这样闹，不如死了干净！”
+ 宝玉道：“我说自家死了干净，别错听了话，又赖人。”
+ 正说着，宝钗走来，说：“史大妹妹等你呢。”
+ 说着，便拉宝玉走了。
+ 这黛玉越发气闷，只向窗前流泪。
+ 没两盏茶时，宝玉仍来了。
+ 黛玉见了，越发抽抽搭搭的哭个不住。
+ 宝玉见了这样，知难挽回，打叠起百样的款语温言来劝慰。
+ 不料自己没张口，只听黛玉先说道：“你又来作什么?
+ 死活凭我去罢了!
+ 横竖如今有人和你玩：比我又会念，又会作，又会写，又会说会笑，又怕你生气，拉了你去哄着你。
+ 你又来作什么呢？”
+ 宝玉听了，忙上前悄悄的说道：“你这么个明白人，难道连‘亲不隔疏，后不僭先’也不知道?
+ 我虽糊涂，却明白这两句话。
+ 头一件，咱们是姑舅姐妹，宝姐姐是两姨姐妹，论亲戚也比你远。
+ 第二件，你先来，咱们两个一桌吃，一床睡，从小儿一处长大的，他是才来的，岂有个为他远你的呢？”
+ 黛玉啐道：“我难道叫你远他?
+ 我成了什么人了呢?
+ 我为的是我的心！”
+ 宝玉道：“我也为的是我的心。
+ 你难道就知道你的心，不知道我的心不成？”
+ 黛玉听了，低头不语，半日说道：“你只怨人行动嗔怪你，你再不知道你怄的人难受。
+ 就拿今日天气比，分明冷些，怎么你倒脱了青肷披风呢？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“何尝没穿?
+ 见你一恼，我一暴燥，就脱了。”
+ 黛玉叹道：“回来伤了风，又该讹着吵吃的了。”
+ 二人正说着，只见湘云走来，笑道：“爱哥哥，林姐姐，你们天天一处玩，我好容易来了，也不理我理儿。”
+ 黛玉笑道：“偏是咬舌子爱说话，连个‘二’哥哥也叫不上来，只是‘爱’哥哥‘爱’哥哥的。
+ 回来赶围棋儿，又该你闹‘么爱三’了。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你学惯了，明儿连你还咬起来呢。”
+ 湘云道：“他再不放人一点儿，专会挑人。
+ 就算你比世人好，也不犯见一个打趣一个。
+ 我指出个人来，你敢挑他，我就服你。”
+ 黛玉便问：“是谁？”
+ 湘云道：“你敢挑宝姐姐的短处，就算你是个好的。”
+ 黛玉听了冷笑道：“我当是谁，原来是他。
+ 我可那里敢挑他呢？”
+ 宝玉不等说完，忙用话分开。
+ 湘云笑道：“这一辈子我自然比不上你。
+ 我只保佑着明儿得一个咬舌儿林姐夫，时时刻刻你可听‘爱’呀‘厄’的去!
+ 阿弥陀佛，那时才现在我眼里呢！”
+ 说的宝玉一笑，湘云忙回身跑了。
+ 要知端详，且听下回分解。
+
+ By the time the thirty-three days' convalescence had ended, not only were Bao-yu's health and strength completely restored, but even the burn-marks on his face had vanished, and he was allowed to move back into the Garden.
+ It may be recalled that when Bao-yu's sickness was at its height, it had been found necessary to call in Jia Yun with a number of pages under his command to take turns in watching over him.
+ Crimson was there too at that time, having been brought in with the other maids from his apartment.
+ During those few days she and Jia Yun therefore had ample opportunity of seeing each other, and a certain familiarity began to grow up between them.
+ Crimson noticed that Jia Yun was often to be seen sporting a handkerchief very much like the one she had lost.
+ She nearly asked him about it, but in the end was too shy.
+ Then, after the monk's visit, the presence of the menfolk was no longer required and Jia Yun went back to his tree-planting.
+ Though Crimson could still not dismiss the matter entirely from her mind, she did not ask anyone about it for fear of arousing their suspicions.
+ A day or two after their return to Green Delights, Crimson was sitting in her room, still brooding over this handkerchief business, when a voice outside the window inquired whether she was in.
+ Peeping through an eyelet in the casement she recognized Melilot, a little maid who belonged to the same apartment as herself.
+ 'Yes, I'm in,' she said.
+ 'Come inside!'
+ Little Melilot came bounding in and sat down on the bed with a giggle.
+ 'I'm in luck!' she said.
+ 'I was washing some things in the yard when Bao-yu asked for some tea to be taken round to Miss Lin's for him and Miss Aroma gave me the job of taking it.
+ When I got there, Miss Lin had just been given some money by Her Old Ladyship and was sharing it out among her maids, so when she saw me she just said "Here you are!" and gave me two big handfuls of it.
+ I've no idea how much it is.
+ Will you look after it for me, please?'
+ She undid her handkerchief and poured out a shower of coins.
+ Crimson carefully counted them for her and put them away in a safe place.
+ 'What's been the matter with you lately?' said Melilot.
+ 'If you ask me, I think you ought to go home for a day or two and call in a doctor.
+ I expect you need some medicine.'
+ 'Silly!' said Crimson.
+ 'I'm perfectly all right.
+ What should I want to go home for?'
+ 'I know what, then,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Lin's very weakly.
+ She's always taking medicine.
+ Why don't you ask her to give you some of hers?
+ It would probably do just as well.'
+ 'Oh, nonsense!' said Crimson.
+ 'You can't take other people's medicines just like that!'
+ 'Well, you can't go on in this way,' said Melilot, 'never eating or drinking properly.
+ What will become of you?
+ 'Who cares?' said Crimson.
+ 'The sooner I'm dead the better!'
+ 'You shouldn't say such things,' said Melilot, 'It isn't right.'
+ 'Why not?' said Crimson.
+ 'How do you know what is on my mind?'
+ Melilot shook her head sympathetically.
+ 'I can't say I really blame you,' she said.
+ 'Things are very difficult here at times.
+ Take yesterday, for example.
+ Her Old Ladyship said that as Bao-yu was better now and there was to be a thanksgiving for his recovery, all those who had the trouble of nursing him during his illness were to be rewarded according to their grades.
+ Well now, I can understand the very young ones like me not being included, but why should they leave you out?
+ I felt really sorry for you when I heard that they'd left you out.
+ Aroma, of course, you'd expect to get more than anyone else.
+ I don't blame her at all.
+ In fact, I think it's owing to her.
+ Let's be honest: none of us can compare with Aroma.
+ I mean, even if she didn't always take so much trouble over everything, no one would want to quarrel about her having a bigger share.
+ What makes me so angry is that people like Skybright and Mackerel should count as top grade when everyone knows they're only put there to curry favour with Bao-yu.
+ Doesn't it make you angry?'
+ 'I don't see much point in getting angry,' said Crimson.
+ 'You know what they said about the mile-wide marquee: "Even the longest party must have an end"?
+ Well, none of us is here for ever, you know.
+ Another four or five years from now when we've each gone our different ways it won't matter any longer what all the rest of us are doing.'
+ Little Melilot found this talk of parting and impermanence vaguely affecting and a slight moisture was to be observed about her eyes.
+ She thought shame to cry without good cause, however, and masked her emotion with a smile: 'That's perfectly true.
+ Only yesterday Bao-yu was going on about all the things he's going to do to his rooms and the clothes he's going to have made and everything, just as if he had a hundred or two years ahead of him with nothing to do but kill time in.'
+ Crimson laughed scornfully, though whether at Melilot's simplicity or at Bao-yu's improvidence is unclear, since just as she was about to comment, a little maid came running in, so young that her hair was still done up in two little girl's horns.
+ She was carrying some patterns and sheets of paper.
+ 'You're to copy out these two patterns.'
+ She threw them in Crimson's direction and straightway darted out again.
+ Crimson shouted after her: 'Who are they for, then?
+ You might at least finish your message before rushing off.
+ What are you in such a tearing hurry about?
+ Is someone steaming wheatcakes for you and you're afraid they'll get cold?'
+ 'They're for Mackerel.'
+ The little maid paused long enough to bawl an answer through the window, then picking up her heels, went pounding off, plim-plam, plim-plam, plim-plam, as fast as she had come.
+ Crimson threw the patterns crossly to one side and went to hunt in her drawer for a brush to trace them with.
+ After rummaging for several minutes she had only succeeded in finding a few worn-out ones, too moulted for use.
+ 'Funny!' she said.
+ 'I could have sworn I put a new one in there the other day ...'
+ She thought a bit, then laughed at herself as she remembered: 'Of course.
+ Oriole took it, the evening before last.'
+ She turned to Melilot.
+ 'Would you go and get it for me, then?'
+ 'I'm afraid I can't,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Aroma's waiting for me to fetch some boxes for her.
+ You'll have to get it yourself.'
+ 'If Aroma's waiting for you, why have you been sitting here gossiping all this time?' said Crimson.
+ 'If I hadn't asked you to go and get it, she wouldn't have been waiting, would she?
+ Lazy little beast!'
+ She left the room and walked out of the gate of Green Delights and in the direction of Bao-chai's courtyard.
+ She was just passing by Drenched Blossoms Pavilion when she caught sight of Bao-yu's old wet-nurse, Nannie Li, coming from the opposite direction and stood respectfully aside to wait for her.
+ 'Where have you been, Mrs Li?' she asked her.
+ 'I didn't expect to see you here.'
+ Nannie Li made a flapping gesture with her hand: 'What do you think, my dear: His Nibs has taken a fancy to the young fellow who does the tree-planting — "Yin" or "Yun" or whatever his name is — so Nannie has to go and ask him in.
+ Let's hope Their Ladyships don't find out about it.
+ There'll be trouble if they do.'
+ 'Are you really going to ask him in?'
+ 'Yes.
+ Why?'
+ Crimson laughed: 'If your Mr Yun knows what's good for him, he won't agree to come.'
+ 'He's no fool,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'Why shouldn't he?'
+ 'Any way, if he does come in,' said Crimson, ignoring her question, 'you can't just bring him in and then leave him, Mrs Li.
+ You'll have to take him back again yourself afterwards.
+ You don't want him wandering off on his own.
+ There's no knowing who he might bump into.'
+ (Crimson herself, was the secret hope.)
+ 'Gracious me!
+ I haven't got that much spare time,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'All I've done is just to tell him that he's got to come.
+ I'll send someone else to fetch him in when I get back presently - one of the girls, or one of the older women, maybe.'
+ She hobbled off on her stick, leaving Crimson standing there in a muse, her mission to fetch the tracing-brush momentarily forgotten.
+ She was still standing there a minute or two later when a little maid came along, who, seeing that it was Crimson, asked her what she was doing there.
+ Crimson looked up.
+ It was Trinket, another of the maids from Green Delights.
+ 'Where are you going?'
+ Crimson asked her.
+ 'I've been sent to fetch Mr Yun,' said Trinket.
+ 'I have to bring him inside to meet Master Bao.'
+ She ran off on her way.
+ At the gate to Wasp Waist Bridge Crimson ran into Trinket again, this time with Jia Yun in tow.
+ His eyes sought Crimson's; and hers, as she made pretence of conversing with Trinket, sought his.
+ Their two pairs of eyes met and briefly skirmished; then Crimson felt herself blushing, and turning away abruptly, she made off for Allspice Court.
+ Our narrative now follows Jia Yun and Trinket along the winding pathway to the House of Green Delights.
+ Soon they were at the courtyard gate and Jia Yun waited outside while she went in to announce his arrival.
+ She returned presently to lead him inside.
+ There were a few scattered rocks in the courtyard and some clumps of jade-green plantain.
+ Two storks stood in the shadow of a pine-tree, preening themselves with their long bills.
+ The gallery surrounding the courtyard was hung with cages of unusual design in which perched or fluttered a wide variety of birds, some of them gay-plumaged exotic ones.
+ Above the steps was a little five-frame penthouse building with a glimpse of delicately-carved partitions visible through the open doorway, above which a horizontal board hung, inscribed with the words CRIMSON JOYS AND GREEN DELIGHTS
+ 'So that's why it's called "The House of Green Delights"' Jia Yun told himself.
+ 'The name is taken from the inscription.'
+ A laughing voice addressed him from behind one of the silk gauze casements: 'Come on in!
+ It must be two or three months since I first forgot our appointment!'
+ Jia Yun recognized the voice as Bao-yu's and hurried up the steps inside.
+ He looked about him, dazzled by the brilliance of gold and semi-precious inlay-work and the richness of the ornaments and furnishings, but unable to see Bao-yu in the midst of it all.
+ To the left of him was a full-length mirror from behind which two girls now emerged, both about fifteen or sixteen years old and of much the same build and height.
+ They addressed him by name and asked him to come inside.
+ Slightly overawed, he muttered something in reply and hurried after them, not daring to take more than a furtive glance at them from the corner of his eye.
+ They ushered him into a tent-like summer 'cabinet' of green net, whose principal furniture was a tiny lacquered bed with crimson hangings heavily patterned in gold.
+ On this Bao-yu, wearing everyday clothes and a pair of bedroom slippers, was reclining, book in hand.
+ He threw the book down as Jia Yun entered and rose to his feet with a welcoming smile.
+ Jia Yun swiftly dropped knee and hand to floor in greeting.
+ Bidden to sit, he modestly placed himself on a bedside chair.
+ 'After I invited you round to my study that day,' said Bao-yu, 'a whole lot of things seemed to happen one after the other, and I'm afraid I quite forgot about your visit.'
+ Jia Yun returned his smile: 'Let's just say that it wasn't my luck to see you then.
+ But you have been ill since then, Uncle Bao.
+ Are you quite better now?'
+ 'Quite better, thank you.
+ I hear you've been very busy these last few days.'
+ 'That's as it should be,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But I'm glad you are better, Uncle.
+ That's a piece of good fortune for all of us.'
+ As they chatted, a maid came in with some tea.
+ Jia Yun was talking to Bao-yu as she approached, but his eyes were on her.
+ She was tall and rather thin with a long oval face, and she was wearing a rose-pink dress over a closely pleated white satin skirt and a black satin sleeveless jacket over the dress.
+ In the course of his brief sojourn among them in the early days of Bao-yu's illness, Jia Yun had got by heart the names of most of the principal females of Bao-yu's establishment.
+ He knew at a glance that the maid now serving him tea was Aroma.
+ He was also aware that she was in some way more important than the other maids and that to be waited on by her in the seated presence of her master was an honour.
+ Jumping hastily to his feet he addressed her with a modest smile: 'You shouldn't pour tea for me, Miss!
+ I'm not like a visitor here.
+ You should let me pour for myself!'
+ 'Oh do sit down!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'You don't have to be like that in front of the maids!'
+ 'I know,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But a body-servant!
+ I don't like to presume.'
+ He sat down, nevertheless, and sipped his tea while Bao-yu made conversation on a number of unimportant topics.
+ He told him which household kept the best troupe of players, which had the finest gardens, whose maids were the prettiest, who gave the best parties, and who had the best collection of curiosities or the strangest pets.
+ Jia Yun did his best to keep up with him.
+ After a while Bao-yu showed signs of flagging, and when Jia Yun, observing what appeared to be fatigue, rose to take his leave, he did not very strongly press him to stay.
+ 'You must come again when you can spare the time,' said Bao-yu, and ordered Trinket to see him out of the Garden.
+ Once outside the gateway of Green Delights, Jia Yun looked around him on all sides, and having ascertained that there was no one else about, slowed down to a more dawdling pace so that he could ask Trinket a few questions.
+ Indeed, the little maid was subjected to quite a catechism: How old was she?
+ What was her name?
+ What did her father and mother do?
+ How many years had she been working for his Uncle Bao?
+ How much pay did she get a month?
+ How many girls were there working for him altogether?
+ Trinket seemed to have no objection, however, and answered each question as it came.
+ 'That girl you were talking to on the way in,' he said, 'isn't her name "Crimson"?'
+ Trinket laughed: 'Yes.
+ Why do you ask?'
+ 'I heard her asking you about a handkerchief.
+ Only it just so happens that I picked one up.'
+ Trinket showed interest.
+ 'She's asked me about that handkerchief of hers a number of times.
+ I told her, I've got better things to do with my time than go looking for people's handkerchiefs.
+ But when she asked me about it again today, she said that if I could find it for her, she'd give me a reward.
+ Come to think of it, you were there when she said that, weren't you?
+ It was when we were outside the gate of Allspice Court.
+ So you can bear me out.
+ Oh Mr Jia, please let me have it if you've picked it up and I'll be able to see what she will give me for it!'
+ Jia Yun had picked up a silk handkerchief a month previously at the time when his tree-planting activities had just started.
+ He knew that it must have been dropped by one or another of the female inmates of the Garden, but not knowing which, had not so far ventured to do anything about his discovery.
+ When earlier on he had heard Crimson question Trinket about her loss, he had realized, with a thrill of pleasure, that the handkerchief he had picked up must have been hers.
+ Trinket's request now gave him just the opening he required.
+ He drew a handkerchief of his own from inside his sleeve and held it up in front of her with a smile: 'I'll give it to you on one condition.
+ If she lets you have this reward you were speaking of; you've got to let me know.
+ No cheating, mind!'
+ Trinket received the handkerchief with eager assurances that he would be informed of the outcome, and having seen him out of the Garden, went back again to look for Crimson.
+ Our narrative returns now to Bao-yu.
+ After disposing of Jia Yun, Bao-yu continued to feel extremely lethargic and lay back on the bed with every appearance of being about to doze off to sleep.
+ Aroma hurried over to him and, sitting on the edge of the bed, roused him with a shake: 'Come on!
+ Surely you are not going to sleep again?
+ You need some fresh air.
+ Why don't you go outside and walk around for a bit?'
+ Bao-yu took her by the hand and smiled at her.
+ 'I'd like to go,' he said, 'but I don't want to leave you.'
+ 'Silly!' said Aroma with a laugh.
+ 'Don't say what you don't mean!'
+ She hoicked him to his feet.
+ 'Well, where am I going to go then?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'I just feel so bored.'
+ 'Never mind where, just go out!' said Aroma.
+ 'If you stay moping indoors like this, you'll get even more bored.'
+ Bao-yu followed her advice, albeit half-heartedly, and went out into the courtyard.
+ After visiting the cages in the gallery and playing for a bit with the birds, he ambled out of the courtyard into the Garden and along the batik of Drenched Blossoms Stream, pausing for a while to look at the goldfish in the water.
+ As he did so, a pair of fawns came running like the wind from the hillside opposite.
+ Bao-yu was puzzled.
+ There seemed to be no reason for their mysterious terror.
+ But just then little Jia Lan came running down the same slope after them, a tiny bow clutched in his hand.
+ Seeing his uncle ahead of him, he stood politely to attention and greeted him cheerfully: 'Hello, Uncle.
+ I didn't know you were at home.
+ I thought you'd gone out.'
+ 'Mischievous little blighter, aren't you?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'What do you want to go shooting them for, poor little things?'
+ 'I've got no reading to do today,' said Jia Lan, 'and I don't like to hang about doing nothing, so I thought I'd practise my archery and equitation.'
+ 'Goodness!
+ You'd better not waste time jawing, then,' said Bao-yu, and left the young toxophilite to his pursuits.
+ Moving on, without much thinking where he was going, he came presently to the gate of a courtyard.
+ Denser than feathers on the phoenix' tail The stirred leaves murmured with a pent dragon's moan.
+ The multitudinous bamboos and the board above the gate confirmed that his feet had, without conscious direction, carried him to the Naiad's House.
+ Of their own accord they now carried him through the gateway and into the courtyard.
+ The House seemed silent and deserted, its bamboo door-blind hanging unrolled to the ground; but as he approached the window, he detected a faint sweetness in the air, traceable to a thin curl of incense smoke which drifted out through the green gauze of the casement.
+ He pressed his face to the gauze; but before his eyes could distinguish anything, his ear became aware of a long, languorous sigh and the sound of a voice speaking: 'Each day in a drowsy waking dream of love.'
+ Bao-yu felt a sudden yearning for the speaker.
+ He could see her now.
+ It was Dai-yu, of course, lying on her bed, stretching herself and yawning luxuriously.
+ He laughed: 'Why "each day in a drowsy waking dream of love"?' he asked through the window (the words were from his beloved Western Chamber); then going to the doorway he lifted up the door-blind and walked into the room.
+ Dai-yu realized that she had been caught off her guard.
+ She covered her burning face with her sleeve, and turning over towards the wall, pretended to be asleep.
+ Bao-yu went over intending to turn her back again, but just at that moment Dai-yu's old wet-nurse came hurrying in with two other old women at her heels: 'Miss Lin's asleep, sir.
+ Would you mind coming back again after she's woken up?'
+ Dai-yu at once turned over and sat up with a laugh: 'Who's asleep?'
+ The three old women laughed apologetically.
+ 'Sorry, miss.
+ We thought you were asleep.
+ Nightingale!
+ Come inside now!
+ Your mistress is awake.'
+ Having shouted for Nightingale, the three guardians of morality retired.
+ 'What do you mean by coming into people's rooms when they're asleep?' said Dai-yu, smiling up at Bao-yu as she sat on the bed's edge patting her hair into shape.
+ At the sight of those soft cheeks so adorably flushed and the starry eyes a little misted with sleep a wave of emotion passed over him.
+ He sank into a chair and smiled back at her: 'What was that you were saying just now before I came in?'
+ 'I didn't say anything,' said Dai-yu.
+ Bao-yu laughed and snapped his fingers at her: 'Put that on your tongue, girl!
+ I heard you say it.'
+ While they were talking to one another, Nightingale came in.
+ 'Nightingale,' said Bao-yu, 'what about a cup of that excellent tea of yours?'
+ 'Excellent tea?' said Nightingale.
+ 'There's nothing very special about the tea we drink here.
+ If nothing but the best will do, you'd better wait for Aroma to come.'
+ 'Never mind about him!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'First go and get me some water!'
+ 'He is our guest,' said Nightingale.
+ 'I can't fetch you any water until I've given him his tea.'
+ And she went to pour him a cup.
+ 'Good girl!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'If with your amorous mistress I should wed, 'Tis you, sweet maid, must make our bridal bed.'
+ The words, like Dai-yu's languorous line, were from Western Chamber, but in somewhat dubious taste.
+ Dai-yu was dreadfully offended by them.
+ In an instant the smile had vanished from her face.
+ 'What was that you said?'
+ He laughed: 'I didn't say anything.'
+ Dai-yu began to cry.
+ 'This is your latest amusement, I suppose.
+ Every time you hear some coarse expression outside or read some crude, disgusting book, you have to come back here and give me the benefit of it.
+ I am to become a source of entertainment for the menfolk now, it seems.'
+ She rose, weeping, from the bed and went outside.
+ Bao-yu followed her in alarm.
+ 'Dearest coz, it was very wrong of me to say that, but it just slipped out without thinking.
+ Please don't go and tell!
+ I promise never to say anything like that again.
+ May my mouth rot and my tongue decay if I do!'
+ Just at that moment Aroma came hurrying up: 'Quick!' she said.
+ 'You must come back and change.
+ The Master wants to see you.'
+ The descent of this thunderbolt drove all else from his mind and he rushed off in a panic.
+ As soon as he had changed, he hurried out of the Garden.
+ Tealeaf was waiting for him outside the inner gate.
+ 'I suppose you don't know what he wants to see me about?'
+ Bao-yu asked him.
+ 'I should hurry up, if I were you,' said Tealeaf.
+ 'All I know is that he wants to see you.
+ You'll find out why soon enough when you get there.'
+ He hustled him along as he spoke.
+ They had passed round the main hall, Bao-yu still in a state of fluttering apprehensiveness when there was a loud guffaw from a corner of the wall.
+ It was Xue Pan, clapping his hands and stamping his feet in mirth.
+ 'Ho! Ho! Ho! You'd never have come this quickly if you hadn't been told that Uncle wanted you!'
+ Tealeaf, also laughing, fell on his knees.
+ Bao-yu stood there looking puzzled.
+ It was some moments before it dawned on him that he had been hoaxed.
+ Xue Pan was by this time being apologetic — bowing repeatedly and pumping his hands to show how sorry he was: 'Don't blame the lad!' he said.
+ 'It wasn't his fault.
+ I talked him into it.'
+ Bao-yu saw that he could do nothing, and might as well accept with a good grace.
+ 'I don't mind being made a fool of,' he said, 'but I think it was going a bit far to bring my father into it.
+ I think perhaps I'd better tell Aunt Xue and see what she thinks about it all.'
+ 'Now look here, old chap,' said Xue Pan, getting agitated, 'it was only because I wanted to fetch you out a bit quicker.
+ I admit it was very wrong of me to make free with your Parent, but after all, you've only got to mention my father next time you want to fool me and we'll be quits!'
+ 'Aiyo!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Worse and worse!'
+ He turned to Tealeaf: 'Treacherous little beast!
+ What are you still kneeling for?'
+ Tealeaf kotowed and rose to his feet.
+ 'Look,' said Xue Pan.
+ 'I wouldn't have troubled you otherwise, only it's my birthday on the third of next month and old Hu and old Cheng and a couple of the others, I don't know where they got them from but they've given me: a piece of fresh lotus root, ever so crisp and crunchy, as thick as that, look, and as long as that; a huge great melon, look, as big as that; a freshly-caught sturgeon as big as that; and a cypress-smoked Siamese sucking-pig as big as that that came in the tribute from Siam.
+ Don't you think it was clever of them to get me those things?
+ Maybe not so much the sturgeon and the sucking-pig.
+ They're just expensive.
+ But where would you go to get a piece of lotus root or a melon like that?
+ However did they get them to grow so big?
+ I've given some of the stuff to Mother, and while I was about it I sent some round to your grandmother and Auntie Wang, but I've still got a lot left over.
+ I can't eat it all myself: it would be unlucky.
+ But apart from me, the only person I can think of who is worthy to eat a present like this is you.
+ That's why I came over specially to invite you.
+ And we're lucky, because we've got a little chap who sings coming round as well.
+ So you and I will be able to sit down and make a day of it, eh?
+ Really enjoy ourselves.'
+
+ 话说宝玉养过了三十三天之后，不但身体强壮，亦且连脸上疮痕平复，仍回大观园去。
+ 这也不在话下。
+ 且说近日宝玉病的时节，贾芸带着家下小厮坐更看守，昼夜在这里；那小红同众丫鬟也在这里守着宝玉。
+ 彼此相见日多，渐渐的混熟了。
+ 小红见贾芸手里拿着块绢子，倒像是自己从前掉的，待要问他，又不好问。
+ 不料那和尚道士来过，用不着一切男人，贾芸仍种树去了。
+ 这件事待放下又放不下，待要问去又怕人猜疑。
+ 正是犹豫不决、神魂不定之际，忽听窗外问道：“姐姐在屋里没有？”
+ 小红闻听，在窗眼内望外一看，原来是本院的个小丫头佳蕙，因答说：“在家里呢，你进来罢。”
+ 佳蕙听了跑进来，就坐在床上，笑道：“我好造化!
+ 才在院子里洗东西，宝玉叫往林姑娘那里送茶叶，花大姐姐交给我送去。
+ 可巧老太太给林姑娘送钱来，正分给他们的丫头们呢，见我去了，林姑娘就抓了两把给我。
+ 也不知是多少，你替我收着。”
+ 便把手绢子打开，把钱倒出来交给小红。
+ 小红就替他一五一十的数了收起。
+ 佳蕙道：“你这两日心里到底觉着怎么样?
+ 依我说，你竟家去住两日，请一个大夫来瞧瞧，吃两剂药，就好了。”
+ 小红道：“那里的话?
+ 好好儿的，家去做什么？”
+ 佳蕙道：“我想起来了。
+ 林姑娘生的弱，时常他吃药，你就和他要些来吃，也是一样。”
+ 小红道：“胡说！
+ 药也是混吃的？”
+ 佳蕙道：“你这也不是个长法儿，又懒吃懒喝的，终久怎么样？”
+ 小红道：“怕什么?
+ 还不如早些死了倒干净。”
+ 佳蕙道：“好好儿的，怎么说这些话？”
+ 小红道：“你那里知道我心里的事！”
+ 佳蕙点头，想了一会道：“可也怨不得你。
+ 这个地方，本也难站。
+ 就像昨儿老太太因宝玉病了这些日子，说伏侍的人都辛苦了，如今身上好了，各处还香了愿，叫把跟着的人都按着等儿赏他们。
+ 我们算年纪小，上不去，我也不抱怨；像你怎么也不算在里头?
+ 我心里就不服。
+ 袭人那怕他得十分儿，也不恼他，原该的。
+ 说句良心话，谁还能比他呢?
+ 别说他素日殷勤小心，就是不殷勤小心，也拼不得。
+ 只可气晴雯绮霞他们这几个都算在上等里去，伏着宝玉疼他们，众人就都捧着他们。
+ 你说可气不可气？”
+ 小红道：“也犯不着气他们。
+ 俗语说的：‘千里搭长棚——没有个不散的筵席。’
+ 谁守一辈子呢?
+ 不过三年五载，各人干各人的去了，那时谁还管谁呢？”
+ 这两句话不觉感动了佳蕙心肠，由不得眼圈儿红了，又不好意思无端的哭，只得勉强笑道：“你这话说的是。
+ 昨儿宝玉还说：明儿怎么收拾房子，怎么做衣裳。
+ 倒像有几百年熬煎似的。”
+ 小红听了，冷笑两声，方要说话，只见一个未留头的小丫头走进来，手里拿着些花样子并两张纸，说道：“这两个花样子叫你描出来呢。”
+ 说着，向小红撂下，回转身就跑了。
+ 小红向外问道：“到底是谁的?
+ 也等不的说完就跑。
+ ‘谁蒸下馒头等着你——怕冷了不成？’”
+ 那小丫头在窗外只说得一声：“是绮大姐姐的。”
+ 抬起脚来，咕咚咕咚又跑了。
+ 小红便赌气把那样子撂在一边，向抽屉内找笔。
+ 找了半天，都是秃的，因说道：“前儿一枝新笔放在那里了?
+ 怎么想不起来？”
+ 一面说，一面出神，想了一回，方笑道：“是了，前儿晚上莺儿拿了去了。”
+ 因向佳蕙道：“你替我取了来。”
+ 佳蕙道：“花大姐姐还等着我替他拿箱子，你自己取去罢。”
+ 小红道：“他等着你，你还坐着闲磕牙儿?
+ 我不叫你取去，他也不‘等’你了。
+ 坏透了的小蹄子！”
+ 说着自己便出房来。
+ 出了怡红院，一径往宝钗院内来。
+ 刚至沁芳亭畔，只见宝玉的奶娘李嬷嬷从那边来。
+ 小红立住，笑问道：“李奶奶，你老人家那里去了?
+ 怎么打这里来？”
+ 李嬷嬷站住，将手一拍，道：“你说，好好儿的，又看上了那个什么‘云哥儿’‘雨哥儿’的，这会子逼着我叫了他来。
+ 明儿叫上屋里听见，可又是不好。”
+ 小红笑道：“你老人家当真的就信着他去叫么？”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“可怎么样呢？”
+ 小红笑道：“那一个要是知好歹，就不进来才是。”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“他又不傻，为什么不进来？”
+ 小红道：“既是进来，你老人家该别和他一块儿来；回来叫他一个人混碰，看他怎么样！”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“我有那样大工夫和他走!
+ 不过告诉了他，回来打发个小丫头子，或是老婆子，带进他来就完了。”
+ 说着拄着拐一径去了。
+ 小红听说，便站着出神，且不去取笔。
+ 不多时，只见一个小丫头跑来，见小红站在那里，便问道：“红姐姐，你在这里作什么呢？”
+ 小红抬头见是小丫头子坠儿。
+ 小红道：“那里去？”
+ 坠儿道：“叫我带进芸二爷来。”
+ 说着，一径跑了。
+ 这里小红刚走至蜂腰桥门前，只见那边坠儿引着贾芸来了。
+ 那贾芸一面走，一面拿眼把小红一溜；那小红只装着和坠儿说话，也把眼去一溜贾芸：四目恰好相对。
+ 小红不觉把脸一红，一扭身往蘅芜院去了。
+ 不在话下。
+ 这里贾芸随着坠儿逶迤来至怡红院中，坠儿先进去回明了，然后方领贾芸进去。
+ 贾芸看时，只见院内略略有几点山石，种着芭蕉，那边有两只仙鹤，在松树下剔翎。
+ 一溜回廊上吊着各色笼子，笼着仙禽异鸟。
+ 上面小小五间抱厦，一色雕镂新鲜花样槅扇，上面悬着一个匾，四个大字，题道是：“怡红快绿。”
+ 贾芸想道：“怪道叫‘怡红院’，原来匾上是这四个字。”
+ 正想着，只听里面隔着纱窗子笑说道：“快进来罢！
+ 我怎么就忘了你两三个月！”
+ 贾芸听见是宝玉的声音，连忙进入房内，抬头一看，只见金碧辉煌，文章熌烁，却看不见宝玉在那里。
+ 一回头，只见左边立着一架大穿衣镜，从镜后转出两个一对儿十五六岁的丫头来，说：“请二爷里头屋里坐。”
+ 贾芸连正眼也不敢看，连忙答应了。
+ 又进一道碧纱厨，只见小小一张填漆床上，悬着大红销金撒花帐子。
+ 宝玉穿着家常衣服，靸着鞋，倚在床上，拿着本书；看见他进来，将书掷下，早带笑立起身来。
+ 贾芸忙上前请了安，宝玉让坐，便在下面一张椅子上坐了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“只从那个月见了你，我叫你往书房里来，谁知接接连连许多事情，就把你忘了。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“总是我没造化，偏又遇着叔叔欠安。
+ 叔叔如今可大安了？”
+ 宝玉道：“大好了。
+ 我倒听见说你辛苦了好几天。”
+ 贾芸道：“辛苦也是该当的。
+ 叔叔大安了，也是我们一家子的造化。”
+ 说着，只见有个丫鬟端了茶来与他。
+ 那贾芸嘴里和宝玉说话，眼睛却瞅那丫鬟：
+ 细挑身子，容长脸儿，穿着银红袄儿，青缎子坎肩，白绫细褶儿裙子。
+ 那贾芸自从宝玉病了，他在里头混了两天，都把有名人口记了一半；他看见这丫鬟，知道是袭人。
+ 他在宝玉房中比别人不同，如今端了茶来，宝玉又在旁边坐着，便忙站起来，笑道：“姐姐怎么给我倒起茶来?
+ 我来到叔叔这里，又不是客，等我自己倒罢了。”
+ 宝玉道：“你只管坐着罢。
+ 丫头们跟前也是这么着。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“虽那么说，叔叔屋里的姐姐们，我怎么敢放肆呢。”
+ 一面说，一面坐下吃茶。
+ 那宝玉便和他说些没要紧的散话：
+ 又说道谁家的戏子好，谁家的花园好，又告诉他谁家的丫头标致，谁家的酒席丰盛，又是谁家有奇货，又是谁家有异物。
+ 那贾芸口里只得顺着他说。
+ 说了一回，见宝玉有些懒懒的了，便起身告辞。
+ 宝玉也不甚留，只说：“你明儿闲了只管来。”
+ 仍命小丫头子坠儿送出去了。
+ 贾芸出了怡红院，见四顾无人，便慢慢的停着些走，口里一长一短和坠儿说话。
+ 先问他：“几岁了?
+ 名字叫什么?
+ 你父母在那行上?
+ 在宝叔屋里几年了?
+ 一个月多少钱?
+ 共总宝叔屋内有几个女孩子？”
+ 那坠儿见问，便一桩桩的都告诉他了。
+ 贾芸又道：“刚才那个和你说话的，他可是叫小红？”
+ 坠儿笑道：“他就叫小红。
+ 你问他作什么？”
+ 贾芸道：“方才他问你什么绢子，我倒拣了一块。”
+ 坠儿听了笑道：“他问了我好几遍：可有看见他的绢子的。
+ 我那里那么大工夫管这些事?
+ 今儿他又问我，他说我替他找着了他还谢我呢。
+ 才在蘅芜院门口儿说的，二爷也听见了，不是我撒谎。
+ 好二爷，你既拣了，给我罢，我看他拿什么谢我。”
+ 原来上月贾芸进来种树之时，便拣了一块罗帕，知是这园内的人失落的，但不知是那一个人的，故不敢造次。
+ 今听见小红问坠儿，知是他的，心内不胜喜幸。
+ 又见坠儿追索，心中早得了主意，便向袖内将自己的一块取出来，向坠儿笑道：“我给是给你，你要得了他的谢礼，可不许瞒着我。”
+ 坠儿满口里答应了，接了绢子，送出贾芸，回来找小红，不在话下。
+ 如今且说宝玉打发贾芸去后，意思懒懒的，歪在床上，似有朦胧之态。
+ 袭人便走上来，坐在床沿上推他，说道：“怎么又要睡觉?
+ 你闷的很，出去逛逛不好？”
+ 宝玉见说，携着他的手笑道：“我要去，只是舍不得你。”
+ 袭人笑道：“你没别的说了！”
+ 一面说，一面拉起他来。
+ 宝玉道：“可往那里去呢?
+ 怪腻腻烦烦的。”
+ 袭人道：“你出去了就好了。
+ 只管这么委琐，越发心里腻烦了。”
+ 宝玉无精打彩，只得依他。
+ 晃出了房门，在回廊上调弄了一回雀儿，出至院外，顺着沁芳溪，看了一回金鱼。
+ 只见那边山坡上两只小鹿儿箭也似的跑来。
+ 宝玉不解何意，正自纳闷，只见贾兰在后面，拿着一张小弓儿赶来。
+ 一见宝玉在前，便站住了，笑道：“二叔叔在家里呢，我只当出门去了呢。”
+ 宝玉道：“你又淘气了。
+ 好好儿的，射他做什么？”
+ 贾兰笑道：“这会子不念书，闲着做什么?
+ 所以演习演习骑射。”
+ 宝玉道：“磕了牙，那时候儿才不演呢。”
+ 说着，便顺脚一径来至一个院门前，看那凤尾森森，龙吟细细：正是潇湘馆。
+ 宝玉信步走入，只见湘帘垂地，悄无人声。
+ 走至窗前，觉得一缕幽香从碧纱窗中暗暗透出。
+ 宝玉便将脸贴在纱窗上看时，耳内忽听得细细的长叹了一声，道：“‘每日家，情思睡昏昏！’”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉心内痒将起来。
+ 再看时，只见黛玉在床上伸懒腰。
+ 宝玉在窗外笑道：“为什么‘每日家情思睡昏昏’的？”
+ 一面说，一面掀帘子进来了。
+ 黛玉自觉忘情，不觉红了脸，拿袖子遮了脸，翻身向里装睡着了。
+ 宝玉才走上来，要扳他的身子，只见黛玉的奶娘并两个婆子却跟进来了，说：“妹妹睡觉呢，等醒来再请罢。”
+ 刚说着，黛玉便翻身坐起来，笑道：“谁睡觉呢？”
+ 那两三个婆子见黛玉起来，便笑道：“我们只当姑娘睡着了。”
+ 说着，便叫紫鹃说：“姑娘醒了，进来伺候。”
+ 一面说，一面都去了。
+ 黛玉坐在床上，一面抬手整理鬓发，一面笑向宝玉道：“人家睡觉，你进来做什么？”
+ 宝玉见他星眼微饧，香腮带赤，不觉神魂早荡，一歪身坐在椅子上，笑道：“你才说什么？”
+ 黛玉道：“我没说什么。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“给你个榧子吃呢!
+ 我都听见了。”
+ 二人正说话，只见紫鹃进来，宝玉笑道：“紫鹃，把你们的好茶沏碗我喝。”
+ 紫鹃道：“我们那里有好的?
+ 要好的只好等袭人来。”
+ 黛玉道：“别理他。
+ 你先给我舀水去罢。”
+ 紫鹃道：“他是客，自然先沏了茶来再舀水去。”
+ 说着，倒茶去了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“好丫头!
+ ‘若共你多情小姐同鸳帐，怎舍得叫你叠被铺床？’”
+ 黛玉登时急了，撂下脸来说道：“你说什么？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我何尝说什么？”
+ 黛玉便哭道：“如今新兴的，外头听了村话来，也说给我听；看了混帐书，也拿我取笑儿。
+ 我成了替爷们解闷儿的了。”
+ 一面哭，一面下床来，往外就走。
+ 宝玉心下慌了，忙赶上来说：“好妹妹，我一时该死，你好歹别告诉去!
+ 我再敢说这些话，嘴上就长个疔，烂了舌头。”
+ 正说着，只见袭人走来，说道：“快回去穿衣裳去罢，老爷叫你呢。”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉打了个焦雷一般，也顾不得别的，疾忙回来穿衣服。
+ 出园来，只见焙茗在二门前等着。
+ 宝玉问道：“你可知道老爷叫我是为什么？”
+ 焙茗道：“爷快出来罢，横竖是见去的，到那里就知道了。”
+ 一面说，一面催着宝玉。
+ 转过大厅，宝玉心里还自狐疑，只听墙角边一阵呵呵大笑，回头见薛蟠拍着手跳出来，笑道：“要不说姨夫叫你，你那里肯出来的这么快！”
+ 焙茗也笑着跪下了。
+ 宝玉怔了半天，方想过来，是薛蟠哄出他来。
+ 薛蟠连忙打恭作揖赔不是，又求：“别难为了小子，都是我央及他去的。”
+ 宝玉也无法了，只好笑问道：“你哄我也罢了，怎么说是老爷呢?
+ 我告诉姨娘去，评评这个理，可使得么？”
+ 薛蟠忙道：“好兄弟，我原为求你快些出来，就忘了忌讳这句话，改日你要哄我，也说我父亲，就完了。”
+ 宝玉道：“嗳哟！
+ 越发的该死了。”
+ 又向焙茗道：“反叛杂种，还跪着做什么？”
+ 焙茗连忙叩头起来。
+ 薛蟠道：“要不是，我也不敢惊动：只因下月初三日，是我的生日，谁知老胡和老程他们，不知那里寻了来的：这么粗，这么长，粉脆的鲜藕；这么大的西瓜；这么长，这么大的暹罗国进贡的灵柏香熏的暹罗猪、鱼。
+ 你说这四样礼物，可难得不难得?
+ 那鱼、猪不过贵而难得，这藕和瓜亏他怎么种出来的!
+ 我先孝敬了母亲，赶着就给你们老太太、姨母送了些去。
+ 如今留了些，我要自己吃恐怕折福，左思右想除我之外惟你还配吃。
+ 所以特请你来。
+ 可巧唱曲儿的一个小子又来了，我和你乐一天何如？”
+
+ THE NINTH DAY of the eighth lunar month, 1939.
+ My father, a bandit's offspring who had passed his fifteenth birthday, was joining the forces of Commander Yu Zhan'ao, a man destined to become a legendary hero, to ambush a Japanese convoy on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Grandma, a padded jacket over her shoulders, saw them to the edge of the village.
+ 'Stop here,' Commander Yu ordered her.
+ She stopped.
+ 'Douguan, mind your foster-dad,' she told my father.
+ The sight of her large frame and the warm fragrance of her lined jacket chilled him.
+ He shivered.
+ His stomach growled.
+ Commander Yu patted him on the head and said, 'Let's go, foster-son.'
+ Heaven and earth were in turmoil, the view was blurred.
+ By then the soldiers' muffled footsteps had moved far down the road.
+ Father could still hear them, but a curtain of blue mist obscured the men themselves.
+ Gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat, he nearly flew down the path on churning legs.
+ Grandma receded like a distant shore as the approaching sea of mist grew more tempestuous; holding on to Commander Yu was like clinging to the railing of a boat.
+ That was how Father rushed towards the uncarved granite marker that would rise above his grave in the bright-red sorghum fields of his hometown.
+ A bare-assed little boy once led a white billy goat up to the weed-covered grave, and as it grazed in unhurried contentment, the boy pissed furiously on the grave and sang out: 'The sorghum is red – the Japanese are coming – compatriots, get ready – fire your rifles and cannons –'
+ Someone said that the little goatherd was me, but I don't know.
+ I had learned to love Northeast Gaomi Township with all my heart, and to hate it with unbridled fury.
+ I didn't realise until I'd grown up that Northeast Gaomi Township is easily the most beautiful and most repulsive, most unusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly, hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world.
+ The people of my father's generation who lived there ate sorghum out of preference, planting as much of it as they could.
+ In late autumn, during the eighth lunar month, vast stretches of red sorghum shimmered like a sea of blood.
+ Tall and dense, it reeked of glory; cold and graceful, it promised enchantment; passionate and loving, it was tumultuous.
+ The autumn winds are cold and bleak, the sun's rays intense.
+ White clouds, full and round, float in the tile-blue sky, casting full round purple shadows onto the sorghum fields below.
+ Over decades that seem but a moment in time, lines of scarlet figures shuttled among the sorghum stalks to weave a vast human tapestry.
+ They killed, they looted, and they defended their country in a valiant, stirring ballet that makes us unfilial descendants who now occupy the land pale by comparison.
+ Surrounded by progress, I feel a nagging sense of our species' regression.
+ After leaving the village, the troops marched down a narrow dirt path, the tramping of their feet merging with the rustling of weeds.
+ The heavy mist was strangely animated, kaleidoscopic.
+ Tiny droplets of water pooled into large drops on Father's face, clumps of hair stuck to his forehead.
+ He was used to the delicate peppermint aroma and the slightly sweet yet pungent odour of ripe sorghum wafting over from the sides of the path – nothing new there.
+ But as they marched through the heavy mist, his nose detected a new, sickly-sweet odour, neither yellow nor red, blending with the smells of peppermint and sorghum to call up memories hidden deep in his soul.
+ Six days later, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
+ A bright round moon climbed slowly in the sky above the solemn, silent sorghum fields, bathing the tassels in its light until they shimmered like mercury.
+ Among the chiselled flecks of moonlight Father caught a whiff of the same sickly odour, far stronger than anything you might smell today.
+ Commander Yu was leading him by the hand through the sorghum, where three hundred fellow villagers, heads pillowed on their arms, were strewn across the ground, their fresh blood turning the black earth into a sticky muck that made walking slow and difficult.
+ The smell took their breath away.
+ A pack of corpse-eating dogs sat in the field staring at Father and Commander Yu with glinting eyes.
+ Commander Yu drew his pistol and fired – a pair of eyes was extinguished.
+ Another shot, another pair of eyes gone.
+ The howling dogs scattered, then sat on their haunches once they were out of range, setting up a deafening chorus of angry barks as they gazed greedily, longingly at the corpses.
+ The odour grew stronger.
+ 'Jap dogs!'
+ Commander Yu screamed.
+ 'Jap sons of bitches!'
+ He emptied his pistol, scattering the dogs without a trace.
+ 'Let's go, son,' he said.
+ The two of them, one old and one young, threaded their way through the sorghum field, guided by the moon's rays.
+ The odour saturating the field drenched Father's soul and would be his constant companion during the cruel months and years ahead.
+ Sorghum stems and leaves sizzled fiercely in the mist.
+ The Black Water River, which flowed slowly through the swampy lowland, sang in the spreading mist, now loud, now soft, now far, now near.
+ As they caught up with the troops, Father heard the tramping of feet and some coarse breathing fore and aft.
+ The butt of a rifle noisily bumped someone else's.
+ A foot crushed what sounded like a human bone.
+ The man in front of Father coughed loudly.
+ It was a familiar cough, calling to mind large ears that turned red with excitement.
+ Large transparent ears covered with tiny blood vessels were the trademark of Wang Wenyi, a small man whose enlarged head was tucked down between his shoulders.
+ Father strained and squinted until his gaze bored through the mist: there was Wang Wenyi's head, jerking with each cough.
+ Father thought back to when Wang was whipped on the parade ground, and how pitiful he had looked.
+ He had just joined up with Commander Yu.
+ Adjutant Ren ordered the recruits: Right face!
+ Wang Wenyi stomped down joyfully, but where he intended to 'face' was anyone's guess.
+ Adjutant Ren smacked him across the backside with his whip, forcing a yelp from between his parted lips.
+ Ouch, mother of my children!
+ The expression on his face could have been a cry, or could have been a laugh.
+ Some kids sprawled atop the wall hooted gleefully.
+ Now Commander Yu kicked Wang Wenyi in the backside.
+ 'Who said you could cough?'
+ 'Commander Yu . . .'
+ Wang Wenyi stifled a cough.
+ 'My throat itches. . . .'
+ 'So what?
+ If you give away our position, it's your head!'
+ 'Yes, sir,' Wang replied, as another coughing spell erupted.
+ Father sensed Commander Yu lurching forward to grab Wang Wenyi around the neck with both hands.
+ Wang wheezed and gasped, but the coughing stopped.
+ Father also sensed Commander Yu's hands release Wang's neck; he even sensed the purple welts, like ripe grapes, left behind.
+ Aggrieved gratitude filled Wang's deep-blue, frightened eyes.
+ The troops turned quickly into the sorghum, and Father knew instinctively that they were heading southeast.
+ The dirt path was the only direct link between the Black Water River and the village.
+ During the day it had a pale cast; the original black earth, the colour of ebony, had been covered by the passage of countless animals: cloven hoofprints of oxen and goats, semicircular hoofprints of mules, horses, and donkeys; dried road apples left by horses, mules, and donkeys; wormy cow chips; and scattered goat pellets like little black beans.
+ Father had taken this path so often that later on, as he suffered in the Japanese cinder pit, its image often flashed before his eyes.
+ He never knew how many sexual comedies my grandma had performed on this dirt path, but I knew.
+ And he never knew that her naked body, pure as glossy white jade, had lain on the black soil beneath the shadows of sorghum stalks, but I knew.
+ The surrounding mist grew more sluggish once they were in the sorghum field.
+ The stalks screeched in secret resentment when the men and equipment bumped against them, sending large, mournful beads of water splashing to the ground.
+ The water was ice-cold, clear and sparkling, and deliciously refreshing.
+ Father looked up, and a large drop fell into his mouth.
+ As the heavy curtain of mist parted gently, he watched the heads of sorghum stalks bend slowly down.
+ The tough, pliable leaves, weighted down by the dew, sawed at his clothes and face.
+ A breeze set the stalks above him rustling briefly; the gurgling of the Black Water River grew louder.
+ Father had gone swimming so often in the Black Water River that he seemed born to it.
+ Grandma said that the sight of the river excited him more than the sight of his own mother.
+ At the age of five, he could dive like a duckling, his little pink asshole bobbing above the surface, his feet sticking straight up.
+ He knew that the muddy riverbed was black and shiny, and as spongy as soft tallow, and that the banks were covered with pale-green reeds and plantain the colour of goose-down; coiling vines and stiff bone grass hugged the muddy ground, which was crisscrossed with the tracks of skittering crabs.
+ Autumn winds brought cool air, and wild geese flew through the sky heading south, their formation changing from a straight line one minute to a V the next.
+ When the sorghum turned red, hordes of crabs the size of horse hooves scrambled onto the bank at night to search for food – fresh cow dung and the rotting carcasses of dead animals – among the clumps of river grass.
+ The sound of the river reminded Father of an autumn night during his childhood, when the foreman of our family business, Arhat Liu, named after Buddhist saints, took him crabbing on the riverbank.
+ On that grey-purple night a golden breeze followed the course of the river.
+ The sapphire-blue sky was deep and boundless, green-tinted stars shone brightly in the sky: the ladle of Ursa Major (signifying death), the basket of Sagittarius (representing life); Octans, the glass well, missing one of its tiles; the anxious Herd Boy (Altair), about to hang himself; the mournful Weaving Girl (Vega), about to drown herself in the river. . . .
+ Uncle Arhat had been overseeing the work of the family distillery for decades, and Father scrambled to keep up with him as he would his own grandfather.
+ The weak light of the kerosene lamp bored a five-yard hole in the darkness.
+ When water flowed into the halo of light, it was the cordial yellow of an overripe apricot.
+ But cordial for only a fleeting moment, before it flowed on.
+ In the surrounding darkness the water reflected a starry sky.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat, rain capes over their shoulders, sat around the shaded lamp listening to the low gurgling of the river.
+ Every so often they heard the excited screech of a fox calling to its mate in the sorghum fields beside the river.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat sat quietly, listening with rapt respect to the whispered secrets of the land, as the smell of stinking river mud drifted over on the wind.
+ Hordes of crabs attracted by the light skittered towards the lamp, where they formed a shifting, restless cloister.
+ Father was so eager he nearly sprang to his feet, but Uncle Arhat held him by the shoulders.
+ 'Take it easy!
+ Greedy eaters never get the hot gruel.'
+ Holding his excitement in check, Father sat still.
+ The crabs stopped as soon as they entered the ring of lamplight, and lined up head to tail, blotting out the ground.
+ A greenish glint issued from their shells, as countless pairs of button eyes popped from deep sockets on little stems.
+ Mouths hidden beneath sloping faces released frothy strings of brazenly colourful bubbles.
+ The long fibres on Father's straw rain cape stood up.
+ 'Now!'
+ Uncle Arhat shouted.
+ Father sprang into action before the shout died out, snatching two corners of the tightly woven net they'd spread on the ground beforehand; they raised it in the air, scooping up a layer of crabs and revealing a clear spot of riverbank beneath them.
+ Quickly tying the ends together and tossing the net to one side, they rushed back and lifted up another piece of netting with the same speed and skill.
+ The heavy bundles seemed to hold hundreds, even thousands of crabs.
+ As Father followed the troops into the sorghum field, he moved sideways, crablike, overshooting the spaces between the stalks and bumping them hard, which caused them to sway and bend violently.
+ Still gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat-tail, he was pulled along, his feet barely touching the ground.
+ But he was getting sleepy.
+ His neck felt stiff, his eyes were growing dull and listless, and his only thought was that as long as he could tag along behind Uncle Arhat to the Black Water River he'd never come back empty-handed.
+ Father ate crab until he was sick of it, and so did Grandma.
+ But even though they lost their appetite for it, they couldn't bear to throw the uneaten ones away.
+ So Uncle Arhat minced the leftovers and ground them under the bean-curd millstone, then salted the crab paste, which they ate daily, until it finally went bad and became mulch for the poppies.
+ Apparently Grandma was an opium smoker, but wasn't addicted, which was why she had the complexion of a peach, a sunny disposition, and a clear mind.
+ The crab-nourished poppies grew huge and fleshy, a mixture of pinks, reds, and whites that assailed your nostrils with their fragrance.
+ The black soil of my hometown, always fertile, was especially productive, and the people who tilled it were especially decent, strong-willed, and ambitious.
+ The white eels of the Black Water River, like plump sausages with tapered ends, foolishly swallowed every hook in sight.
+ Uncle Arhat had died the year before on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ His corpse, after being hacked to pieces, had been scattered around the area.
+ As the skin was being stripped from his body, his flesh jumped and quivered, as if he were a huge skinned frog.
+ Images of that corpse sent shivers up Father's spine.
+ Then he thought back to a night some seven or eight years earlier, when Grandma, drunk at the time, had stood in the distillery yard beside a pile of sorghum leaves, her arms around Uncle Arhat's shoulders.
+ 'Uncle . . . don't leave,' she pleaded.
+ 'If not for the sake of the monk, stay for the Buddha.
+ If not for the sake of the fish, stay for the water.
+ If not for my sake, stay for little Douguan.
+ You can have me, if you want. . . .
+ You're like my own father. . . .'
+ Father watched him push her away and swagger into the shed to mix fodder for the two large black mules who, when we opened our distillery, made us the richest family in the village.
+ Uncle Arhat didn't leave after all.
+ Instead he became our foreman, right up to the day the Japanese confiscated our mules to work on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Now Father and the others could hear long-drawn-out brays from the mules they had left behind in the village.
+ Wide-eyed with excitement, he could see nothing but the congealed yet nearly transparent mist that surrounded him.
+ Erect stalks of sorghum formed dense barriers behind a wall of vapour.
+ Each barrier led to another, seemingly endless.
+ He had no idea how long they'd been in the field, for his mind was focused on the fertile river roaring in the distance, and on his memories.
+ He wondered why they were in such a hurry to squeeze through this packed, dreamy ocean of sorghum.
+ Suddenly he lost his bearings.
+ He listened carefully for a sign from the river, and quickly determined that they were heading east-southeast, towards the river.
+ Once he had a fix on their direction, he understood that they would be setting an ambush for the Japanese, that they would be killing people, just as they had killed the dogs.
+ By heading east-southeast, they would soon reach the Jiao-Ping highway, which cut through the swampy lowland from north to south and linked the two counties of Jiao and Pingdu.
+ Japanese and their running dogs, Chinese collaborators, had built the highway with the forced labour of local conscripts.
+ The sorghum was set in motion by the exhausted troops, whose heads and necks were soaked by the settling dew.
+ Wang Wenyi was still coughing, even though he'd been the target of Commander Yu's continuing angry outbursts.
+ Father sensed that the highway was just up ahead, its pale-yellow outline swaying in front of him.
+ Imperceptibly tiny openings began to appear in the thick curtain of mist, and one dew-soaked ear of sorghum after another stared sadly at Father, who returned their devout gaze.
+ It dawned on him that they were living spirits: their roots buried in the dark earth, they soaked up the energy of the sun and the essence of the moon; moistened by the rain and dew, they understood the ways of the heavens and the logic of the earth.
+ The colour of the sorghum suggested that the sun had already turned the obscured horizon a pathetic red.
+ Then something unexpected occurred.
+ Father heard a shrill whistle, followed by a loud burst from up ahead.
+ 'Who fired his weapon?'
+ Commander Yu bellowed.
+ 'Who's the prick who did it?'
+ Father heard the bullet pierce the thick mist and pass through sorghum leaves and stalks, lopping off one of the heads.
+ Everyone held his breath as the bullet screamed through the air and thudded to the ground.
+ The sweet smell of gunpowder dissipated in the mist.
+ Wang Wenyi screamed pitifully, 'Commander – my head's gone – Commander – my head's gone –'
+ Commander Yu froze momentarily, then kicked Wang Wenyi.
+ 'You dumb fuck!' he growled.
+ 'How could you talk without a head?'
+ Commander Yu left my father standing there and went up to the head of the column.
+ Wang Wenyi was still howling.
+ Father pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the strange look on Wang's face.
+ A dark-blue substance was flowing on his cheek.
+ Father reached out to touch it; hot and sticky, it smelled a lot like the mud of the Black Water River, but fresher.
+ It overwhelmed the smell of peppermint and the pungent sweetness of sorghum and awakened in Father's mind a memory that drew ever nearer: like beads, it strung together the mud of the Black Water River, the black earth beneath the sorghum, the eternally living past, and the unstoppable present.
+ There are times when everything on earth spits out the stench of human blood.
+ 'Uncle,' Father said, 'you're wounded.'
+ 'Douguan, is that you?
+ Tell your old uncle if his head's still on his neck.'
+ 'It's there, Uncle, right where it's supposed to be.
+ Except your ear's bleeding.'
+ Wang Wenyi reached up to touch his ear and pulled back a bloody hand, yelping in alarm.
+ Then he froze as if paralysed.
+ 'Commander, I'm wounded!
+ I'm wounded!'
+ Commander Yu came back to Wang, knelt down, and put his hands around Wang's neck.
+ 'Stop screaming or I'll throttle you!'
+ Wang Wenyi didn't dare make a sound.
+ 'Where were you hit?'
+ Commander Yu asked him.
+ 'My ear . . .'
+ Wang was weeping.
+ Commander Yu took a piece of white cloth from his waistband and tore it in two, then handed it to him.
+ 'Hold this over it, and no more noise.
+ Stay in rank.
+ You can bandage it when we reach the highway.'
+ Commander Yu turned to Father.
+ 'Douguan,' he barked.
+ Father answered, and Commander Yu walked off holding him by the hand, followed by the whimpering Wang Wenyi.
+ The offending discharge had been the result of carelessness by the big fellow they called Mute, who was up front carrying a rake on his shoulder.
+ The rifle slung over his back had gone off when he stumbled.
+ Mute was one of Commander Yu's old bandit friends, a greenwood hero who had eaten fistcakes in the sorghum fields.
+ One of his legs was shorter than the other – a prenatal injury – and he limped when he walked, but that didn't slow him down.
+ Father was a little afraid of him.
+ At about dawn, the massive curtain of mist finally lifted, just as Commander Yu and his troops emerged onto the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ In my hometown, August is the misty season, possibly because there's so much swampy lowland.
+ Once he stepped onto the highway, Father felt suddenly light and nimble; with extra spring in his step, he let go of Commander Yu's coat.
+ Wang Wenyi, on the other hand, wore a crestfallen look as he held the cloth to his injured ear.
+ Commander Yu crudely wrapped it for him, covering up half his head.
+ Wang gnashed his teeth in pain.
+ 'The heavens have smiled on you,' Commander Yu said.
+ 'My blood's all gone,' Wang whimpered, 'I can't go on!'
+ 'Bullshit!'
+ Commander Yu exclaimed.
+ 'It's no worse than a mosquito bite.
+ You haven't forgotten your three sons, have you?'
+ Wang hung his head and mumbled, 'No, I haven't forgotten.'
+ The butt of the long-barrelled fowling piece over his shoulder was the colour of blood.
+ A flat metal gunpowder pouch rested against his hip.
+ Remnants of the dissipating mist were scattered throughout the sorghum field.
+ There were neither animal nor human footprints in the gravel, and the dense walls of sorghum on the deserted highway made the men feel that something ominous was in the air.
+ Father knew all along that Commander Yu's troops numbered no more than forty – deaf, mute, and crippled included.
+ But when they were quartered in the village, they had stirred things up so much, with chickens squawking and dogs yelping, that you'd have thought it was a garrison command.
+ Out on the highway, the soldiers huddled so closely together they looked like an inert snake.
+ Their motley assortment of weapons included shotguns, fowling pieces, ageing Hanyang rifles, plus a cannon that fired scale weights and was carried by two brothers, Fang Six and Fang Seven.
+ Mute was toting a rake with twenty-six metal tines, as were three other soldiers.
+ Father still didn't know what an ambush was, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known why anyone would take four rakes to the event.
+
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九，我父亲这个土匪种十四岁多一点。
+ 他跟着后来名满天下的传奇英雄余占鳌司令的队伍去胶平公路伏击敌人的汽车队。
+ 奶奶披着夹袄，送他们到村头。
+ 余司令说：“立住吧。”
+ 奶奶就立住了。
+ 奶奶对我父亲说：“豆官，听你干爹的话。”
+ 父亲没吱声，他看着奶奶高大的身躯，嗅着从奶奶的夹袄里散出的热烘烘的香味，突然感到凉气逼人。
+ 他打了一个战，肚子咕噜噜响一阵。
+ 余司令拍了一下父亲的头，说：“走，干儿。”
+ 天地混沌，景物影影绰绰，队伍的杂沓脚步声已响出很远。
+ 父亲眼前挂着蓝白色的雾幔，挡住了他的视线，只闻队伍脚步声，不见队伍形和影。
+ 父亲紧紧扯住余司令的衣角，双腿快速挪动。
+ 奶奶像岸愈离愈远，雾像海水愈近愈汹涌，父亲抓住余司令，就像抓住一条船舷。
+ 父亲就这样奔向了耸立在故乡通红的高粱地里属于他的那块无字的青石墓碑。
+ 他的坟头上已经枯草瑟瑟，曾经有一个光屁股的男孩牵着一只雪白的山羊来到这里，山羊不紧不慢地啃着坟头上的草，男孩站在墓碑上，怒气冲冲地撒上一泡尿，然后放声高唱：高粱红了——日本来了——同胞们准备好——开枪开炮——
+ 有人说这个放羊的男孩就是我，我不知道是不是我。
+ 我曾对高密东北乡极端热爱，曾经对高密东北乡极端仇恨，长大后努力学习马克思主义，我终于悟到：高密东北乡无疑是地球上最美丽最丑陋、最超脱最世俗、最圣洁最龌龊、最英雄好汉最王八蛋、最能喝酒最能爱的地方。
+ 生存在这块土地上的我的父老乡亲们，喜食高粱，每年都大量种植。
+ 八月深秋，无边无际的高粱红成洸洋的血海，高粱高密辉煌，高粱凄婉可人，高粱爱情激荡。
+ 秋风苍凉，阳光很旺，瓦蓝的天上游荡着一朵朵丰满的白云，高粱上滑动着一朵朵丰满白云的紫红色影子。
+ 一队队暗红色的人在高粱棵子里穿梭拉网，几十年如一日。
+ 他们杀人越货，精忠报国，他们演出过一幕幕英勇悲壮的舞剧，使我们这些活着的不肖子孙相形见绌，在进步的同时，我真切地感到种的退化。
+ 出村之后，队伍在一条狭窄的土路上行进，人的脚步声中夹着路边碎草的窸窣声响。
+ 雾奇浓，活泼多变。
+ 我父亲的脸上，无数密集的小水点凝成大颗粒的水珠，他的一撮头发，粘在头皮上。
+ 从路两边高粱地里飘来的幽淡的薄荷气息和成熟高粱苦涩微甘的气味，我父亲早已闻惯，不新不奇。
+ 在这次雾中行军里，我父亲闻到了那种新奇的、黄红相间的腥甜气息。
+ 那味道从薄荷和高粱的味道中隐隐约约地透过来，唤起父亲心灵深处一种非常遥远的记忆。
+ 七天之后，八月十五日，中秋节。
+ 一轮明月冉冉升起，遍地高粱肃然默立，高粱穗子浸在月光里，像蘸过水银，汩汩生辉，我父亲在剪破的月影下闻到了比现在强烈无数倍的腥甜气息。
+ 那时候，余司令牵着他的手在高粱地里行走，三百多个乡亲叠股枕臂，陈尸狼藉，流出的鲜血灌溉了一大片高粱，把高粱下的黑土地浸泡成稀泥，使他们拔脚迟缓。
+ 腥甜的气味令人窒息，一群前来吃人肉的狗，坐在高粱地里，目光炯炯地盯着父亲和余司令。
+ 余司令掏出自来得手枪，甩手一响，两只狗眼灭了；又一甩手，灭了两只狗眼。
+ 群狗一哄而散，坐得远远的，呜呜地咆哮着，贪婪地望着死尸。
+ 腥甜味愈加强烈，余司令大喊一声：“日本狗！
+ 狗娘养的日本！”
+ 他对着那群狗打完了所有的子弹，狗跑得无影无踪。
+ 余司令对我父亲说：“走吧，儿子！”
+ 一老一小，便迎着月光，向高粱深处走去。
+ 那股弥漫着田野的腥甜味浸透了我父亲的灵魂，在以后更加激烈更加残忍的岁月里，这股腥甜昧一直伴随着他。
+ 高粱的茎叶在雾中滋滋乱叫，雾中缓慢地流淌着在这块低洼平原上穿行的墨河水明亮的喧哗，一阵强一阵弱，一阵远一阵近。
+ 赶上队伍了，父亲的身前身后响着踢踢踏踏的脚步声和粗重的呼吸。
+ 不知谁的枪托撞到另一个谁的枪托上了。
+ 不知谁的脚踩破了一个死人的骷髅什么的。
+ 父亲前边那个人吭吭地咳嗽起来，这个人的咳嗽声非常熟悉。
+ 父亲听到他咳嗽就想起他那两扇一激动就充血的大耳朵。
+ 透明单薄布满血管的大耳朵是王文义头上引人注目的器官。
+ 他个子很小，一颗大头缩在耸起的双肩中。
+ 父亲努力看去，目光刺破浓雾，看到了王文义那颗一边咳一边颠动的大头。
+ 父亲想起王文义在演练场上挨打时，那颗大头颠成那般可怜模样。
+ 那时他刚参加余司令的队伍，任副官在演练场上对他也对其他队员喊：向右转——，王文义欢欢喜喜地跺着脚，不知转到哪里去了。
+ 任副官在他腚上打了一鞭子，他嘴咧开叫一声：孩子他娘！
+ 脸上表情不知是哭还是笑。
+ 围在短墙外看光景的孩子们都哈哈大笑。
+ 余司令飞起一脚，踢到王文义的屁股上。
+ “咳什么？”
+ “司令……”
+ 王文义忍着咳嗽说，“嗓子眼儿发痒……”
+ “痒也别咳！
+ 暴露了目标我要你的脑袋！”
+ “是，司令。”
+ 王文义答应着，又有一阵咳嗽冲口而出。
+ 父亲觉出余司令前跨了一大步，只手捺住了王文义的后颈皮。
+ 王文义口里咝咝地响着，随即不咳了。
+ 父亲觉出余司令的手从王文义的后颈皮上松开了，父亲还觉得王文义的脖子上留下两个熟葡萄一样的紫手印，王文义幽蓝色的惊惧不安的眼睛里，飞迸出几点感激与委屈。
+ 很快，队伍钻进了高粱地。
+ 我父亲本能地感觉到队伍是向着东南方向开进的。
+ 适才走过的这段土路是由村庄直接通向墨水河边的唯一的道路。
+ 这条狭窄的土路在白天颜色青白。
+ 路原是由乌油油的黑土筑成，但久经践踏，黑色都沉淀到底层，路上叠印过多少牛羊的花瓣蹄印和骡马毛驴的半圆蹄印，马骡驴粪像干萎的苹果，牛粪像虫蛀过的薄饼，羊粪稀拉拉像震落的黑豆。
+ 父亲常走这条路，后来他在日本炭窑中苦熬岁月时，眼前常常闪过这条路。
+ 父亲不知道我的奶奶在这条土路上主演过多少风流悲喜剧，我知道。
+ 父亲也不知道在高粱阴影遮掩着的黑土上，曾经躺过奶奶洁白如玉的光滑肉体，我也知道。
+ 拐进高粱地后，雾更显凝滞，质量更大，流动感少，在人的身体与人负载的物体碰撞高粱秸秆后，随着高粱嚓嚓啦啦的幽怨鸣声，一大滴一大滴的沉重水珠扑簌簌落下。
+ 水珠冰凉清爽，味道鲜美，我父亲仰脸时，一滴大水珠准确地打进他的嘴里。
+ 父亲看到舒缓的雾团里，晃动着高粱沉甸甸的头颅。
+ 高粱沾满了露水的柔韧叶片，锯着父亲的衣衫和面颊。
+ 高粱晃动激起的小风在父亲头顶上短促出击，墨水河的流水声愈来愈响。
+ 父亲在墨水河里玩过水，他的水性好像是天生的，奶奶说他见了水比见了亲娘还急。
+ 父亲五岁时，就像小鸭子一样潜水，粉红的屁股眼儿朝着天，双脚高举。
+ 父亲知道，墨水河底的淤泥乌黑发亮，柔软得像油脂一样。
+ 河边潮湿的滩涂上，丛生着灰绿色的芦苇和鹅绿色车前草，还有贴地生的野葛蔓，支支直立的接骨草。
+ 滩涂的淤泥上，印满螃蟹纤细的爪迹。
+ 秋风起，天气凉，一群群大雁往南飞，一会儿排成个“一”字，一会儿排成个“人”字，等等。
+ 高粱红了，西风响，蟹脚痒，成群结队的、马蹄大小的螃蟹都在夜间爬上河滩，到草丛中觅食。
+ 螃蟹喜食新鲜牛屎和腐烂的动物的尸体。
+ 父亲听着河声，想着从前的秋天夜晚，跟着我家的老伙计刘罗汉大爷去河边捉螃蟹的情景。
+ 夜色灰葡萄，金风串河道，宝蓝色的天空深邃无边，绿色的星辰格外明亮。
+ 北斗勺子星——北斗主死，南斗簸箕星——南斗司生、八角玻璃井——缺了一块砖，焦灼的牛郎要上吊，忧愁的织女要跳河……
+ 都在头上悬着。
+ 刘罗汉大爷在我家工作了几十年，负责我家烧酒作坊的全面工作，父亲跟着罗汉大爷脚前脚后地跑，就像跟着自己的爷爷一样。
+ 父亲被迷雾扰乱的心头亮起了一盏四块玻璃插成的罩子灯，洋油烟子从罩子灯上盖的铁皮、钻眼的铁皮上钻出来。
+ 灯光微弱，只能照亮五六米方圆的黑暗。
+ 河里的水流到灯影里，黄得像熟透的杏子一样可爱，但可爱一霎霎，就流过去了，黑暗中的河水倒映着一天星斗。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷披着蓑衣，坐在罩子灯旁，听着河水的低沉呜咽——非常低沉的呜咽。
+ 河道两边无穷的高粱地不时响起寻偶狐狸的兴奋鸣叫。
+ 螃蟹趋光，正向灯影聚拢。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷静坐着，恭听着天下的窃窃秘语，河底下淤泥的腥味，一股股泛上来。
+ 成群结队的螃蟹团团围上来，形成一个躁动不安的圆圈。
+ 父亲心里惶惶，跃跃欲起，被罗汉大爷按住了肩头。
+ “别急！”
+ 大爷说，“心急喝不得热粘粥。”
+ 父亲强压住激动，不动。
+ 螃蟹爬到灯光里就停下来，首尾相衔，把地皮都盖住了。
+ 一片青色的蟹壳闪亮，一对对圆杆状的眼睛从凹陷的眼窝里打出来。
+ 隐在倾斜的脸面下的嘴里，吐出一串一串的五彩泡沫。
+ 螃蟹吐着彩沫向人挑战，父亲身上披着大蓑衣长毛奓起。
+ 罗汉大爷说：“抓！”
+ 父亲应声弹起，与罗汉大爷抢过去，每人抓住一面早就铺在地上的密眼罗网的两角，把一堆螃蟹抬起来，露出了螃蟹下的河滩地。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷把两角系起扔在一边，又用同样的迅速和熟练抬起网片。
+ 每一网都是那么沉重，不知网住了几百几千只螃蟹。
+ 父亲跟着队伍进了高粱地后，由于心随螃蟹横行斜走，脚与腿不择空隙，撞得高粱棵子东倒西歪。
+ 他的手始终紧扯着余司令的衣角，一半是自己行走，一半是余司令牵着前进，他竟觉得有些瞌睡上来，脖子僵硬，眼珠子生涩呆板。
+ 父亲想，只要跟着罗汉大爷去墨水河，就没有空手回来的道理。
+ 父亲吃螃蟹吃腻了，奶奶也吃腻了。
+ 食之无味，弃之可惜，罗汉大爷就用快刀把螃蟹斩成碎块，放到豆腐磨里研碎，加盐，装缸，制成蟹酱，成年累月地吃，吃不完就臭，臭了就喂罂粟。
+ 我听说奶奶会吸大烟但不上瘾，所以始终面如桃花，神清气爽，用螃蟹喂过的罂粟花朵肥硕壮大，粉、红、白三色交杂，香气扑鼻。
+ 故乡的黑土本来就是出奇的肥沃，所以物产丰饶，人种优良。
+ 民心高拔健迈，本是我故乡心态。
+ 墨水河盛产的白鳝鱼肥得像肉棍一样，从头至尾一根刺。
+ 它们呆头呆脑，见钩就吞。
+ 父亲想着的罗汉大爷去年就死了，死在胶平公路上。
+ 他的尸体被割得零零碎碎，扔得东一块西一块。
+ 躯干上的皮被剥了，肉跳，肉蹦，像只褪皮后的大青蛙。
+ 父亲一想起罗汉大爷的尸体，脊梁沟就发凉。
+ 父亲又想起大约七八年前的一个晚上，我奶奶喝醉了酒，在我家烧酒作坊的院子里，有一个高粱叶子垛，奶奶倚在草垛上，搂住罗汉大爷的肩，呢呢喃喃地说：“大叔…… 你别走。
+ 不看僧面看佛面，不看鱼面看水面，不看我的面子也要看豆官的面子上，留下吧，你要我…… 我也给你…… 你就像我的爹一样……”
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷把奶奶推到一边，晃晃荡荡走进骡棚，给骡子拌料去了。
+ 我家养着两头大黑骡子，开着烧高粱酒的作坊，是村子里的首富。
+ 罗汉大爷没走，一直在我家担任业务领导，直到我家那两头大黑骡子被日本人拉到胶平公路修筑工地上去使役为止。
+ 这时，从被父亲他们甩在身后的村子里，传来悠长的毛驴叫声。
+ 父亲精神一振，眼睛睁开，然而看到的，依然是半凝固半透明的雾气。
+ 高粱挺拔的秆子，排成密集的栅栏，模模糊糊地隐藏在气体的背后，穿过一排又一排，排排无尽头。
+ 走进高粱地多久了，父亲已经忘记，他的神思长久地滞留在远处那条喧响着的丰饶河流里，长久地滞留在往事的回忆里，竟不知这样匆匆忙忙拥拥挤挤地在如梦如海的高粱地里躜进是为了什么。
+ 父亲迷失了方位。
+ 他在前年有一次迷途高粱地的经验，但最后还是走出来了，是河声给他指引了方向。
+ 现在，父亲又谛听着河的启示，很快明白，队伍是向正东偏南开进，对着河的方向开进。
+ 方向辨清，父亲也就明白，这是去打伏击，打日本人，要杀人，像杀狗一样。
+ 他知道队伍一直往东南走，很快就要走到那条南北贯通，把偌大个低洼平原分成两半，把胶县平度县两座县城连在一起的胶平公路。
+ 这条公路，是日本人和他们的走狗用皮鞭和刺刀催逼着老百姓修成的。
+ 高粱的骚动因为人们的疲惫困乏而频繁激烈起来，积露连续落下，淋湿了每个人的头皮和脖颈。
+ 王文义咳嗽不断，虽连遭余司令辱骂也不改正。
+ 父亲感到公路就要到了，他的眼前昏昏黄黄地晃动着路的影子。
+ 不知不觉，连成一体的雾海中竟有些空洞出现，一穗一穗被露水打得精湿的高粱在雾洞里忧悒地注视着我父亲，父亲也虔诚地望着它们。
+ 父亲恍然大悟，明白了它们都是活生生的灵物。
+ 它们扎根黑土，受日精月华，得雨露滋润，上知天文下知地理。
+ 父亲从高粱的颜色上，猜到了太阳已经被高粱遮挡着的地平线烧成一片可怜的艳红。
+ 忽然发生变故，父亲先是听到耳边一声尖利呼啸，接着听到前边发出什么东西被迸裂的声响。
+ 余司令大声吼叫：“谁开枪？
+ 小舅子，谁开的枪？”
+ 父亲听到子弹钻破浓雾，穿过高粱叶子高粱秆，一颗高粱头颅落地。
+ 一时间众人都屏气息声。
+ 那粒子弹一路尖叫着，不知落到哪里去了。
+ 芳香的硝烟迷散进雾。
+ 王文义惨叫一声：“司令——我没有头啦——司令——我没有头啦——”
+ 余司令一愣神，踢了王文义一脚，说：“你娘个蛋！
+ 没有头还会说话！”
+ 余司令撇下我父亲，到队伍前头去了。
+ 王文义还在哀嚎。
+ 父亲凑上前去，看清了王文义奇形怪状的脸。
+ 他的腮上，有一股深蓝色的东西在流动。
+ 父亲伸手摸去，触了一手粘腻发烫的液体。
+ 父亲闻到了跟墨水河淤泥差不多、但比墨水河淤泥要新鲜得多的腥气。
+ 它压倒了薄荷的幽香，压倒了高粱的甘苦，它唤醒了父亲那越来越迫近的记忆，一线穿珠般地把墨水河淤泥、把高粱下黑土、把永远死不了的过去和永远留不住的现在联系在一起，有时候，万物都会吐出人血的味道。
+ “大叔，”父亲说，“大叔，你挂彩了。”
+ “豆官，你是豆官吧，你看看大叔的头还在脖子上长着吗？”
+ “在，大叔，长得好好的，就是耳朵流血啦。”
+ 王文义伸手摸耳朵，摸到一手血，一阵尖叫后，他就瘫了：“司令，我挂彩啦！
+ 我挂彩啦，我挂彩啦。”
+ 余司令从前边回来，蹲下，捏着王文义的脖子，压低嗓门说：“别叫，再叫我就毙了你！”
+ 王文义不敢叫了。
+ “伤着哪儿啦？”
+ 余司令问。
+ “耳朵……”
+ 王文义哭着说。
+ 余司令从腰里抽出一块包袱皮样的白布，嚓一声撕成两半，递给王文义，说：“先捂着，别出声，跟着走，到了路上再包扎。”
+ 余司令又叫：“豆官。”
+ 父亲应了，余司令就牵着他的手走。
+ 王文义哼哼唧唧地跟在后边。
+ 适才那一枪，是扛着一盘耙在头前开路的大个子哑巴不慎摔倒，背上的长枪走了火。
+ 哑巴是余司令的老朋友，一同在高粱地里吃过“拤饼”的草莽英雄，他的一只脚因在母腹中受过伤，走起来一颠一颠，但非常快，父亲有些怕他。
+ 黎明前后这场大雾，终于在余司令的队伍跨上胶平公路时漶散下去。
+ 故乡八月，是多雾的季节，也许是地势低洼土壤潮湿所致吧。
+ 走上公路后，父亲顿时感到身体灵巧轻便，脚步利索有劲，他松开了抓住余司令衣角的手。
+ 王文义用白布捂着血耳朵，满脸哭相。
+ 余司令给他粗手粗脚包扎耳朵，连半个头也包住了。
+ 王文义痛得龇牙咧嘴。
+ 余司令说：“你好大的命！”
+ 王文义说：“我的血流光了，我不能去啦！”
+ 余司令说：“屁，蚊子咬了一口也不过这样，忘了你那三个儿子啦吧！”
+ 王文义垂下头，嘟嘟哝哝说：“没忘，没忘。”
+ 他背着一支长筒子鸟枪，枪托儿血红色。
+ 装火药的扁铁盒斜吊在他的屁股上。
+ 那些残存的雾都退到高粱地里去了。
+ 大路上铺着一层粗沙，没有牛马脚踪，更无人的脚印。
+ 相对着路两侧茂密的高粱，公路荒凉，荒唐，令人感到不祥。
+ 父亲早就知道余司令的队伍连聋带哑连瘸带拐不过四十人，但这些人住在村里时，搅得鸡飞狗跳，仿佛满村是兵。
+ 队伍摆在大路上，三十多人缩成一团，像一条冻僵了的蛇。
+ 枪支七长八短，土炮、鸟枪、老汉阳，方六方七兄弟俩抬着一门能把小秤砣打出去的大抬杆子。
+ 哑巴扛着一盘长方形的平整土地用的、周遭二十六根铁尖齿的耙，另有三个队员各扛着一盘。
+ 父亲当时还不知道打伏击是怎么一回事，更不知道打伏击为什么还要扛上四盘铁齿耙。
+
+ FATHER FINISHED HIS fistcake as he stood on the withered grass, turned blood-red by the setting sun.
+ Then he walked gingerly up to the edge of the water.
+ There on the stone bridge across the Black Water River the lead truck, its tyres flattened by the barrier of linked rakes, crouched in front of the other three.
+ Its railings and fenders were stained by splotches of gore.
+ The upper half of a Japanese soldier was draped over one of the railings, his steel helmet hanging upturned by a strap from his neck.
+ Dark blood dripped into it from the tip of his nose.
+ The water sobbed as it flowed down the riverbed.
+ The heavy, dull rays of sunlight were pulverised by tiny ripples on its surface.
+ Autumn insects hidden in the damp mud beneath the water plants set up a mournful chirping.
+ Sorghum in the fields sizzled as it matured.
+ The fires were nearly out in the third and fourth trucks; their blackened hulks crackled and split, adding to the discordant symphony.
+ Father's attention was riveted by the sight and sound of blood dripping from the Japanese soldier's nose into the steel helmet, each drop splashing crisply and sending out rings of concentric circles in the deepening pool.
+ Father had barely passed his fifteenth birthday.
+ The sun had nearly set on this ninth day of the eighth lunar month of the year 1939, and the dying embers of its rays cast a red pall over the world below.
+ Father's face, turned unusually gaunt by the fierce daylong battle, was covered by a layer of purplish mud.
+ He squatted down upriver from the corpse of Wang Wenyi's wife and scooped up some water in his hands; the sticky water oozed through the cracks between his fingers and dropped noiselessly to the ground.
+ Sharp pains racked his cracked, swollen lips, and the brackish taste of blood seeped between his teeth and slid down his throat, moistening the parched membranes.
+ He experienced a satisfying pain, and even though the taste of blood made his stomach churn, he scooped up handful after handful of water, drinking it down until it soaked up the dry, cracked fistcake in his stomach.
+ He stood up straight and took a deep breath of relief.
+ Night was definitely about to fall; the ridge of the sky's dome was tinged with the final sliver of red.
+ The scorched smell from the burned-out hulks of the trucks had faded.
+ A loud bang made Father jump.
+ He looked up, just in time to see exploded bits of truck tyres settling slowly into the river like black butterflies, and countless kernels of Japanese rice – some black, some white – soaring upward, then raining down on the still surface of the river.
+ As he spun around, his eyes settled on the tiny figure of Wang Wenyi's wife lying at the edge of the river, the blood from her wounds staining the water around her.
+ He scrambled to the top of the dike and yelled: 'Dad!'
+ Granddad was standing on the dike, the flesh on his face wasted away by the day's battle, the bones jutting out beneath his dark, weathered skin.
+ In the dying sunlight Father noticed that Granddad's short-cropped hair was turning white.
+ With fear in his aching heart, Father nudged him timidly.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'Dad!
+ What's wrong with you?'
+ Tears were running down Granddad's face.
+ He was sobbing.
+ The Japanese machine gun that Detachment Leader Leng had so magnanimously left behind sat at his feet like a crouching wolf, its muzzle gaping.
+ 'Say something, Dad.
+ Eat that fistcake, then drink some water.
+ You'll die if you don't eat or drink.'
+ Granddad's head drooped until it rested on his chest.
+ He seemed to lack the strength to support its weight.
+ He knelt at the top of the dike, holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
+ After a moment, or two, he looked up and cried out: 'Douguan, my son!
+ Is it all over for us?'
+ Father stared wide-eyed and fearfully at Granddad.
+ The glare in his diamondlike pupils embodied the heroic, unrestrained spirit of Grandma, a flicker of hope that shone and lit up Granddad's heart.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'don't give up.
+ I'll work hard on my shooting, like when you shot fish at the inlet to perfect your seven-plum-blossom skill.
+ Then we'll go settle accounts with that rotten son of a bitch Pocky Leng!'
+ Granddad sprang to his feet and bellowed three times – half wail, half crazed laughter.
+ A line of dark-purple blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
+ 'That's it, son, that's the way to talk!'
+ He picked up one of Grandma's fistcakes from the dark earth, bit off a chunk, and swallowed it.
+ Cake crumbs and flecks of bubbly blood stuck to his stained teeth.
+ Father heard Granddad's painful cries as the dry cake stuck in his throat and saw the rough edges make their way down his neck.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'go drink some water to soak up the cake in your belly.'
+ Granddad stumbled along the dike to the river's edge, where he knelt among the water plants and lapped up the water like a draught animal.
+ When he'd had his fill, he drew his hands back and buried his head in the river, holding it under the water for about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful of tobacco.
+ Father started getting nervous as he gazed at his dad, frozen like a bronze frog at the river's edge.
+ Finally, Granddad jerked his dripping head out of the water and gasped for breath.
+ Then he walked back up the dike to stand in front of Father, whose eyes were glued to the cascading drops of water.
+ Granddad shook his head, sending forty-nine drops, large and small, flying like so many pearls.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'come with Dad.
+ Let's go see the men.'
+ Granddad staggered down the road, weaving in and out of the sorghum field on the western edge, Father right on his heels.
+ They stepped on broken, twisted stalks of sorghum and spent cartridges that gave off a faint yellow glint.
+ Frequently they bent down to look at the bodies of their fallen comrades, who lay amid the sorghum, deathly grimaces frozen on their faces.
+ Granddad and Father shook them in hope of finding one who was alive; but they were dead, all of them.
+ Father's and Granddad's hands were covered with sticky blood.
+ Father looked down at two soldiers on the westernmost edge of the field: one lay with the muzzle of his shotgun in his mouth, the back of his neck a gory mess, like a rotten wasps' nest; the other lay across a bayonet buried in his chest.
+ When Granddad turned them over, Father saw that their legs had been broken and their bellies slit open.
+ Granddad sighed as he withdrew the shotgun from the one soldier's mouth and pulled the bayonet from the other's chest.
+ Father followed Granddad across the road, into the sorghum field to the east, which had also been swept by machine-gun fire.
+ They turned over the bodies of more soldiers lying strewn across the ground.
+ Bugler Liu was on his knees, bugle in hand, as though he were blowing it.
+ 'Bugler Liu!'
+ Granddad called out excitedly.
+ No response.
+ Father ran up and nudged him.
+ 'Uncle Liu!' he shouted, as the bugle dropped to the ground.
+ When Father looked more closely, he discovered that the bugler's face was already as hard as a rock.
+ In the lightly scarred section of field some few dozen paces from the dike, Granddad and Father came upon Fang Seven, whose guts had spilled out of his belly, and another soldier, named Consumptive Four, who, after taking a bullet in the leg, had fainted from blood loss.
+ Holding his bloodstained hand above the man's mouth, Granddad detected a faint sign of dry, hot breath from his nostrils.
+ Fang Seven had stuffed his own intestines back into his abdomen and covered the gaping wound with sorghum leaves.
+ He was still conscious.
+ When he spotted Granddad and Father, his lips twitched and he said haltingly, 'Commander . . . done for . . .
+ When you see my old lady . . . give some money. . . .
+ Don't let her remarry. . . .
+ My brother . . . no sons . . .
+ If she leaves . . .
+ Fang family line ended. . . .'
+ Father knew that Fang Seven had a year-old son, and that there was so much milk in his mother's gourdlike breasts that he was growing up fair and plump.
+ 'I'll carry you back, little brother,' Granddad said.
+ He bent over and pulled Fang Seven onto his back.
+ As Fang screeched in pain, Father saw the leaves fall away and his white, speckled intestines slither out of his belly, releasing a breath of foul hot air.
+ Granddad laid him back down on the ground.
+ 'Elder brother,' Fang pleaded, 'put me out of my misery. . . .
+ Don't torture me. . . .
+ Shoot me, please. . . .'
+ Granddad squatted down and held Fang Seven's hand.
+ 'Little brother, I can carry you over to see Zhang Xinyi, Dr Zhang.
+ He'll patch you up.'
+ 'Elder brother . . . do it now. . . .
+ Don't make me suffer. . . .
+ Past saving . . .'
+ Granddad squinted into the murky, late-afternoon August sky, in which a dozen or so stars shone brightly, and let out a long howl before turning to Father.
+ 'Are there bullets in your gun, Douguan?'
+ 'Yes.'
+ Father handed his pistol to Granddad, who released the safety catch, took another look into the darkening sky, and spun the cylinder.
+ 'Rest easy, brother.
+ As long as Yu Zhan'ao has food to eat, your wife and child will never go hungry.'
+ Fang Seven nodded and closed his eyes.
+ Granddad raised the revolver as though he were lifting a huge boulder.
+ The pressure of the moment made him quake.
+ Fang Seven's eyes snapped open.
+ 'Elder brother . . .'
+ Granddad spun his face away, and a burst of flame leaped out of the muzzle, lighting up Fang Seven's greenish scalp.
+ The kneeling man shot forward and fell on top of his own exposed guts.
+ Father found it hard to believe that a man's belly could hold such a pile of intestines.
+ 'Consumptive Four, you'd better be on your way, too.
+ Then you can get an early start on your next life and come back to seek revenge on those Jap bastards!'
+ He pumped the last cartridge into the heart of the dying Consumptive Four.
+ Though killing had become a way of life for Granddad, he dropped his arm to his side and let it hang there like a dead snake; the pistol fell to the ground.
+ Father bent over and picked it up, stuck it into his belt, and tugged on Granddad, who stood as though drunk or paralysed.
+ 'Let's go home, Dad, let's go home. . . .'
+ 'Home?
+ Go home?
+ Yes, go home!
+ Go home . . .'
+ Father pulled him up onto the dike and began walking awkwardly towards the west.
+ The cold rays of the half-moon on that August 9 evening filled the sky, falling lightly on the backs of Granddad and Father and illuminating the heavy Black Water River, which was like the great but clumsy Chinese race.
+ White eels, thrown into a frenzy by the bloody water, writhed and sparkled on the surface.
+ The blue chill of the water merged with the red warmth of the sorghum bordering the dikes to form an airy, transparent mist that reminded Father of the heavy, spongy fog that had accompanied them as they set out for battle that morning.
+ Only one day, but it seemed like ten years.
+ Yet it also seemed like the blink of an eye.
+ Father thought back to how his mother had walked him to the edge of the fog-enshrouded village.
+ The scene seemed so far away, though it was right there in front of his eyes.
+ He recalled how difficult the march through the sorghum field had been, how Wang Wenyi had been wounded in the ear by a stray bullet, how the fifty or so soldiers had approached the bridge looking like the droppings of a goat.
+ Then there was Mute's razor-sharp sabre knife, the sinister eyes, the Jap head sailing through the air, the shrivelled ass of the old Jap officer . . .
+ Mother soaring to the top of the dike as though on the wings of a phoenix . . . the fistcakes . . . fistcakes rolling on the ground . . . stalks of sorghum falling all around . . . red sorghum crumpling like fallen heroes. . . .
+ Granddad hoisted Father, who was asleep on his feet, onto his back and wrapped his arms – one healthy, the other injured – around Father's legs.
+ The pistol in Father's belt banged against Granddad's back, sending sharp pains straight to his heart.
+ It had belonged to the dark, skinny, handsome, and well-educated Adjutant Ren.
+ Granddad was thinking about how this pistol had ended the lives of Adjutant Ren, Fang Seven, and Consumptive Four.
+ He wanted nothing more than to heave the execrable thing into the Black Water River.
+ But it was only a thought.
+ Bending over, he shifted his sleeping son higher up on his back, partly to relieve the excruciating pain in his heart.
+ All that kept Granddad moving was a powerful drive to push on and continue the bitter struggle against wave after murky wave of obdurate air.
+ In his dazed state he heard a loud clamour rushing towards him like a tidal wave.
+ When he raised his head he spotted a long fiery dragon wriggling its way along the top of the dike.
+ His eyes froze, as the image slipped in and out of focus.
+ When it was blurred he could see the dragon's fangs and claws as it rode the clouds and sailed through the mist, the vigorous motions making its golden scales jangle; wind howled, clouds hissed, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, the sounds merging to form a masculine wind that swept across a huddled feminine world.
+ When it was clear he could see it was ninety-nine torches hoisted above the heads of hundreds of people hastening towards him.
+ The dancing flames lit up the sorghum on both banks of the river.
+ Granddad lifted Father down off his back and shook him hard.
+ 'Douguan,' he shouted in his ear, 'Douguan!
+ Wake up!
+ Wake up!
+ The villagers are coming for us, they're coming. . . .'
+ Father heard the hoarseness in Granddad's voice and saw two remarkable tears leap out of his eyes.
+ GRANDDAD WAS ONLY twenty-four when he murdered Shan Tingxiu and his son.
+ Even though by then he and Grandma had already done the phoenix dance in the sorghum field, and even though, in the solemn course of suffering and joy, she had conceived my father, whose life was a mixture of achievements and sin (in the final analysis, he gained distinction among his generation of citizens of Northeast Gaomi Township), she had nonetheless been legally married into the Shan family.
+ So she and Granddad were adulterers, their relationship marked by measures of spontaneity, chance, and uncertainty.
+ And since Father wasn't born while they were together, accuracy demands that I refer to Granddad as Yu Zhan'ao in writing about this period.
+ When, in agony and desperation, Grandma told Yu Zhan'ao that her legal husband, Shan Bianlang, was a leper, he decapitated two sorghum plants with his short sword.
+ Urging her not to worry, he told her to return three days hence.
+ She was too overwhelmed by the tide of passionate love to concern herself with the implications of his comment.
+ But murderous thoughts had already entered his mind.
+ He watched her thread her way out of the sorghum field and, through the spaces between stalks, saw her summon her shrewd little donkey and nudge Great-Granddad with her foot, waking the mud-caked heap from his drunken stupor.
+ He heard Great-Granddad, whose tongue had grown thick in his mouth, say: 'Daughter . . . you . . . what took you so long to take a piss? . . .
+ Your father-in-law . . . going to give me a big black mule . . .
+ Ignoring his mumbling, she swung her leg over the donkey's back and turned her face, brushed by the winds of spring, towards the sorghum field south of the road.
+ She knew that the young sedan bearer was watching her.
+ Struggling to wrench free of this unknown passion, she had a dim vision of a new and unfamiliar broad road stretching out ahead of her, covered with sorghum seeds as red as rubies, the ditches on either side filled with crystal-clear sorghum wine.
+ As she moved down the road, her imagination coloured the genuine article until she could not distinguish between reality and illusion.
+ Yu Zhan'ao followed her with his eyes until she rounded a bend.
+ Feeling suddenly weary, he pushed his way through the sorghum and returned to the sacred altar, where he collapsed like a toppled wall and fell into a sound sleep.
+ Later, as the red sun was disappearing in the west, his eyes snapped open, and the first things he saw were sorghum leaves, stems, and ears of grain that formed a thick blanket of purplish red above him.
+ He draped his rain cape over his shoulders and walked out of the field as a rapid breeze on the road caused the sorghum to rustle noisily.
+ He wrapped the cape tightly around him to ward off the chill, and as his hand brushed against his belly he realised how hungry he was.
+ He dimly recalled the three shacks at the head of the village where he had carried the woman in the sedan chair three days ago, and the tattered tavern flag snapping and fluttering in the raging winds of the rainstorm.
+ So hungry he could neither sit still nor stand straight, he strode towards the tavern.
+ Since he had been hiring out for the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company for less than two years, the people around here wouldn't recognise him.
+ He'd get something to eat and drink, find a way to do what he'd come to do, then slip into the sorghum fields, like a fish in the ocean, and swim far away.
+ At this point in his ruminations, he headed west, where bilious red clouds turned the setting sun into a blooming peony with a luminous, fearfully bright golden border.
+ After walking west for a while, he turned north, heading straight for the village where Grandma's nominal husband lived.
+ The fields were still and deserted.
+ During those years, any farmer who had food at home left his field before nightfall, turning the sorghum fields into a haven for bandits.
+ Village chimneys were smoking by the time he arrived, and a handsome young man was walking down the street with two crocks of fresh well water over his shoulder, the shifting water splashing over the sides.
+ Yu Zhan'ao darted into the doorway beneath the tattered tavern flag.
+ No inner walls separated the shacks, and a bar made of adobe bricks divided the room in two, the inner half of which was furnished with a brick kang, a stove, and a large vat.
+ Two rickety tables with scarred tops and a few scattered narrow benches constituted the furnishings in the outer half of the room.
+ A glazed wine crock rested on the bar, its ladle hanging from the rim.
+ A fat old man was sprawled on the kang.
+ Yu Zhan'ao recognised him as the Korean dog butcher they called Gook.
+ He had seen Gook once at the market in Ma Hamlet.
+ The man could slaughter a dog in less than a minute, and the hundreds of dogs that lived in Ma Hamlet growled viciously when they saw him, their fur standing straight up, though they kept their distance.
+
+ 我父亲吃完了一根拤饼，脚踏着被夕阳照得血淋淋的衰草，走下河堤，又踩着生满茵茵水草的松软的河滩，小心翼翼地走到河水边站定。
+ 墨水河大石桥上那四辆汽车，头辆被连环耙扎破了轮胎，呆呆地伏在那儿，车栏杆上、挡板上，涂着一摊摊蓝汪汪的血和嫩绿的脑浆。
+ 一个日本兵的上半身趴在车栏杆上，头上的钢盔脱落，挂在脖子上。
+ 从他的鼻尖上流下的黑血滴滴答答地落在钢盔里。
+ 河水在呜呜咽咽地悲泣。
+ 高粱在滋滋咝咝地成熟。
+ 沉重凝滞的阳光被河流上的细小波涌颠扑破碎。
+ 秋虫在水草根下的潮湿泥土中哀鸣。
+ 第三第四辆汽车燃烧将尽的乌黑框架在焦焦地嘶叫皱裂。
+ 父亲在这些杂乱的音响和纷繁的色彩中谛视着，看到了也听到了日本兵鼻尖上的血滴在钢盔里激起的层层涟漪和清脆如敲石磬的响声。
+ 父亲十四岁多一点了。
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九的太阳消耗殆尽，死灰余烬染红天下万物，父亲经过一天激战更显干瘦的小脸上凝着一层紫红的泥土。
+ 父亲在王文义妻子的尸体上游蹲下，双手掬起水来喝，粘稠的水滴从他的指缝里摇曳下落，落水无声。
+ 父亲焦裂的嘴唇接触到水时，泡酥了的嘴唇一阵刺痛，一股血腥味顺着牙缝直扑进喉咙，在一瞬间他的喉管痉得笔直坚硬，连连嗝呃几声后，喉管才缓解成正常状态。
+ 温暖的墨水河河水进入父亲的喉管，滋润着干燥，使父亲产生了一种痛苦的快感，尽管血腥味使他肠胃翻腾，但他还是连连掬水进喉，一直喝到河水泡透了腹中那张干渣裂纹的拤饼时，他才直起腰来舒了一口气。
+ 天确凿地要黑了，红日只剩下一刃嫣红在超旷的穹隆下缘画着，大石桥上，第三辆和第四辆车上发散的焦糊味儿也有些淡薄。
+ 咕咚一声巨响，使父亲大吃一惊，抬头看，见爆炸后破碎的汽车轮胎像黑蝴蝶一样在河道上飘飘下落，被震扬起的黑黑白白的东洋大米也唰唰啦啦地洒在板块般的河面上。
+ 父亲转身时看到了趴在河水边，用鲜血流红了一片河的王文义的小个女人。
+ 爬上河堤，父亲大声喊： “爹！”
+ 爷爷直立在河堤上，他脸上的肉在一天内消耗得干干净净，骨骼的轮廓从焦黑的皮肤下棱岸地凸现出来。
+ 父亲看到在苍翠的暮色中，爷爷半寸长的卓然上指的头发在一点点地清晰地变白，父亲心中惊惧痛苦，怯生生地靠了前，轻轻地推推爷爷，说：“爹！
+ 爹！
+ 你怎么啦？”
+ 两行泪水在爷爷脸上流，一串喀噜喀噜地响声在爷爷喉咙里滚。
+ 冷支队长开恩扔下的那挺日本机枪像一匹老狼，踞伏在爷爷脚前，喇叭状的枪口，像放大了的狗眼。
+ “爹，你说话呀，爹，你吃饼呀，吃了饼你去喝点水，你不吃不喝会渴死饿死的。”
+ 爷爷的脖子往前一折，脑袋耷拉到胸前。
+ 他的身体仿佛承受不住脑袋的重压，慢慢地、慢慢地矮。
+ 爷爷蹲在河堤上，双手抱头，唏嘘片刻，忽而扬头大叫：“豆官！
+ 我的儿，咱爷们，就这样完了吗？”
+ 父亲怔怔地看着爷爷。
+ 父亲的双眼大睁，从那两粒钻石一样的瞳孔里，散射出本来属于我奶奶的那种英勇无畏、狂放不羁的响马精神，那种黑暗王国里的希望之光，照亮了我爷爷的心头。
+ “爹，”父亲说，“你别愁，我好好练枪，像你当年绕着水湾子打鱼那样练，练出七点梅花枪，就去找冷麻子这个狗娘养的王八蛋算帐！”
+ 爷爷腾地跳起，咆哮三声，半像恸哭半像狂笑。
+ 从他的嘴唇正中，流出一线乌紫的血。
+ “说得是！
+ 儿子，说得好！”
+ 爷爷从黑土大地上捡起我奶奶亲手制造的拤饼，大口吞吃，焦黄的牙齿上，沾着饼屑和一个个血泡沫。
+ 父亲听到爷爷被饼噎得哦哦地叫，看到那些棱角分明的饼块从爷爷的喉咙里缓慢地往下蠕动。
+ 父亲说： “爹，你下河喝点水把肚子里的饼泡泡吧。”
+ 爷爷趔趔趄趄走下河堤，双膝跪在水草上，伸出长长的颈，像骡马一样饮着水。
+ 喝完水，父亲见爷爷双手撑开，把整个头颅和半截脖子扎进河水里，河水碰到障碍，激起一簇簇鲜艳的浪花。
+ 爷爷把头放在水里泡了足有半袋烟的工夫——
+ 父亲在堤上看着像一个铜铸蛤蟆一样的他的爹，心里一阵阵发紧——
+ 爷爷呼拉拉扬起了浸透了的头，呼哧呼哧地喘着粗气，站起来，上了河堤，站在父亲面前。
+ 父亲看到爷爷的头上往下滚动着水珠。
+ 爷爷甩甩头，把四十九颗大小不一的水珠甩出去，如扬撒了一片珍珠。
+ “豆官，”爷爷说，“跟爹一起，去看看弟兄们吧！”
+ 爷爷踉踉跄跄地在路西边的高粱地里穿行着，父亲紧跟着爷爷走。
+ 他们脚踩着残断曲折的高粱和发出微弱黄光的铜弹壳，不时弯腰俯头，看着那些横卧竖躺、龇牙咧嘴的队员们。
+ 他们都死了，爷爷和父亲扳动着他们，希望能碰上个活的，但他们都死了。
+ 父亲和爷爷手上，沾满了粘乎乎的血。
+ 父亲看到最西边两个队员，一个含着土枪口，后颈窝那儿，烂乎乎一大片，像一个捅烂的蜂窝；另一个则俯在地上，胸口上扎进了一把尖刀。
+ 爷爷翻看着他们，父亲看到他们被打断了的腿和打破了的小腹。
+ 爷爷叹了一口气，把土枪从那个队员口里拔出来，把尖刀从那个队员胸口里撕出来。
+ 父亲跟着爷爷走过因天空的灰暗而变得明亮起来的公路，在路东边那片同样被扫射得七零八落的高粱地里，翻看着那些东一个西一个的弟兄们。
+ 刘大号还跪在那里，双手端着大喇叭，保持着吹奏的姿式。
+ 爷爷兴奋地大叫：“刘大号！”
+ 大号一声不吭。
+ 父亲上去推了他一把，喊一声：“大叔！”
+ 那根大喇叭掉在地上，低头看时，吹号人的脸已经像石头般僵硬了。
+ 在离开河堤几十步远，伤损不太严重的高粱地里，爷爷和父亲找到了被打出了肠子的方七和另一个叫“痨痨四”的队员（他排行四，小时得过肺痨病），痨痨四大腿上中了一枪，因流血过多，已昏迷过去。
+ 爷爷把沾满人血的手放在他的唇边。
+ 还能感到从他的鼻孔里，喷出焦灼干燥的气息。
+ 方七的肠子已经塞进肚子，伤口处堵着一把高粱叶子。
+ 他还省人事，见到爷爷和父亲，抽搐着嘴唇说：“司令…… 我完了……
+ 你见了俺老婆…… 给她点钱……
+ 别让她改嫁……
+ 俺哥没有后……
+ 她要走了……
+ 方家就断了香火啦……”
+ 父亲知道方七有个一岁多的儿子，方七的老婆有一对葫芦那么大的奶子，奶汁旺盛，灌得个孩子又鲜又嫩。
+ 爷爷说：“兄弟，我背你回去。”
+ 爷爷蹲下，拉着方七的胳膊往背上一拖，方七惨叫一声，父亲看到那团堵住方七伤口的高粱叶子掉了，一嘟噜白花花的肠子，夹带着热乎乎的腥臭气，从伤口里蹿出来。
+ 爷爷把方七放下，方七连声哀鸣着：“大哥…… 行行好……
+ 别折腾我啦……
+ 补我一枪吧……”
+ 爷爷蹲下去，握着方七的手，说：“兄弟，我背你去找张辛一，张先生，他能治红伤。”
+ “大哥…… 快点吧……
+ 别让我受啦……
+ 我不中用啦……”
+ 爷爷眯着眼，仰望着缀着十几颗璀璨星辰的混沌渺茫的八月的黄昏的天空，长啸一声，对我父亲说：“豆官，你那枪里，还有火吗？”
+ 父亲说：“还有。”
+ 爷爷接过父亲递给他的左轮手枪，扳开机关，对着焦黄的天光，看了一眼，把枪轮子一转。
+ 爷爷说：“七弟，你放心走吧，有我余占鳌吃的，就饿不着弟媳和大侄子。”
+ 方七点点头，闭上眼睛。
+ 爷爷举着左轮手枪，像举着一块千斤巨石，整个儿人，都在重压下颤栗。
+ 方七睁开眼，说：“大哥……”
+ 爷爷猛一别脸，枪口迸出一团火光，照明了方七青溜溜的头皮。
+ 半跪着的方七迅速前栽，上身伏在自己流出来的肠子上。
+ 父亲无法相信，一个人的肚子里竟然能盛得下那么多肠子。
+ “‘痨痨四’，你也一路去了吧，早死早投生，回来再跟这帮东洋杂种们干！”
+ 爷爷把左轮手枪里仅存的一颗子弹，打进了命悬一线的“痨痨四”的心窝。
+ 杀人如麻的爷爷，打死“痨痨四”之后，左轮手枪掉在地上，他的胳膊像死蛇一样垂着，再也无力抬起来了。
+ 父亲从地上捡起手枪，插进腰里，扯扯如醉如痴的爷爷，说：“爹，回家去吧。
+ 爹，回家去吧……”
+ “回家，回家？
+ 回家！
+ 回家……” 爷爷说。
+ 父亲拉着爷爷，爬上河堤，笨拙地往西走去。
+ 八月初九的大半个新月亮已经挂上了天，冰凉的月光照着爷爷和父亲的背，照着沉重如伟大笨拙的汉文化的墨水河。
+ 被血水撩拨得精神亢奋的白鳝鱼在河里飞腾打旋，一道道银色的弧光在河面上跃来跃去。
+ 河里泛上来的蓝蓝的凉气和高粱地里弥散开来的红红的暖气在河堤上交锋汇合，化合成轻清透明的薄雾。
+ 父亲想起凌晨出征时那场像胶皮一样富有弹性的大雾，这一天过得像十年那么长，又像一眨么眼皮那么短。
+ 父亲想起在弥漫的大雾中他的娘站在村头上为他送行，那情景远在天边，近在眼前。
+ 他想起行军高粱地中的艰难，想起王文义被流弹击中耳朵，想起五十几个队员在公路上像羊拉屎一样往大桥开进，还有哑巴那锋利的腰刀，阴鸷的眼睛，在空中飞行的鬼子头颅，老鬼子干瘪的屁股……
+ 像凤凰展翅一样扑倒在河堤上的娘…… 拤饼…… 遍地打滚的拤饼…… 纷纷落地的红高粱…… 像英雄一样纷纷倒下的红高粱……
+ 爷爷把睡着走的我父亲背起来，用一只受伤的胳膊，一只没受伤的胳膊，揽住我父亲的两条腿弯子。
+ 父亲腰里的左轮手枪硌着爷爷的背，爷爷心里一阵巨痛。
+ 这是又黑又瘦又英俊又有大学问的任副官的左轮手枪。
+ 爷爷想到这支枪打死了任副官，又打死了方七、“痨痨四”，爷爷恨不得把它扔到黑水河里，这个不祥的家伙。
+ 他只是想着扔，身体却弓一弓，把睡在背上的儿子往上颠颠，也是为了减缓那种锥心的痛疼。
+ 爷爷走着，他已经感觉不到自己的腿在何处，只是凭着一种走的强烈意念，在僵硬的空气的浊浪中，困难地挣扎。
+ 爷爷在昏昏沉沉中，听到从前方传来了浪潮一样的喧嚷。
+ 抬头看时，见远处的河堤上，蜿蜒着一条火的长龙。
+ 爷爷凝眸片刻，眼前一阵迷蒙一阵清晰，迷蒙时见那长龙张牙舞爪，腾云驾雾，抖搂的满身金鳞索落落地响，并且风吼云嘶，电闪雷鸣，万声集合，似雄风横扫着雌伏的世界；
+ 清晰时则辨出那是九十九支火把，由数百的人簇拥着跑过来。
+ 火光起伏跳荡，照亮了河南河北的高粱。
+ 前边的火把照着后边的人，后边的火把照着前边的人。
+ 爷爷把父亲从背上放下，用力摇晃着，喊叫着： “豆官！ 豆官！
+ 醒醒！
+ 醒醒！
+ 乡亲们接应我们来了，乡亲们来了……”
+ 父亲听到爷爷嗓音沙哑；父亲看到两颗相当出色的眼泪，蹦出了爷爷的眼睛。
+ 爷爷刺杀单廷秀父子时，年方二十四岁。
+ 虽然我奶奶与他已经在高粱地里凤凰和谐，在那个半是痛苦半是幸福的庄严过程中，我奶奶虽然也怀上了我的功罪参半但毕竟是高密东北乡一代风流的父亲，但那时奶奶是单家的明媒正娶的媳妇，爷爷与她总归是桑间濮上之合，带着相当程度的随意性偶然性不稳定性，况且我父亲也没落土，所以，写到那时候的事，我还是称呼他余占鳌更为准确。
+ 当时，我奶奶痛苦欲绝对余占鳌说，她的法定的丈夫单扁郎是个麻风病人，余占鳌用那柄锋利的小剑斩断了两棵高粱，要我奶奶三天后只管放心回去，他的言外之意我奶奶不及细想，奶奶被爱的浪潮给灌迷糊了。
+ 他那时就起了杀人之心。
+ 他目送着我奶奶钻出高粱地，从高粱缝隙里看到我奶奶唤来聪明伶俐的小毛驴，踢醒了醉成一摊泥巴的曾外祖父。
+ 他听到我曾外祖父舌头僵硬地说：“闺女…… 你…… 一泡尿尿了这半天……
+ 你公公…… 要送咱家一头大黑骡子……”
+ 奶奶不管她的胡言乱语的爹，骗腿上了驴，把一张春风漫卷过的粉脸对着道路南侧的高粱地。
+ 她知道那年轻轿夫正在注视着自己。
+ 奶奶从撕肝裂胆的兴奋中挣扎出来，模模糊糊地看到了自己的眼前出现了一条崭新的、同时是陌生的、铺满了红高粱钻石般籽粒的宽广大道，道路两侧的沟渠里，蓄留着澄澈如气的高粱酒浆。
+ 路两边依旧是坦坦荡荡、大智若愚的红高粱集体，现实中的红高粱与奶奶幻觉中的红高粱融成一体，难辨真假。
+ 奶奶满载着空灵踏实、清晰模糊的感觉，一程程走远了。
+ 余占鳌手扶着高粱，目送我奶奶拐过弯去。
+ 一阵倦意上来，他推推搡搡地回到方才的圣坛，像一堵墙壁样囫囵个儿倒下，呼呼噜噜地睡过去。
+ 直睡到红日西沉，睁眼先见到高粱叶茎上、高粱穗子上，都涂了一层厚厚的紫红。
+ 他披上蓑衣，走出高粱地，路上小风疾驰，高粱嚓嚓作声。
+ 他感到有些凉意上来，用力把衰衣裹紧。
+ 手不慎碰到肚皮，又觉腹中饥饿难忍。
+ 他恍惚记起，三天前抬着那女子进村时，见村头三间草屋檐下，有一面破烂酒旗儿在狂风暴雨中招飐，腹中的饥饿使他坐不住，站不稳，一壮胆，出了高粱地，大踏步向那酒店走去。
+ 他想，自己来到东北乡“婚丧嫁娶服务公司”当雇工不到两年，附近的人不会认识。
+ 去那村头酒店吃饱喝足，瞅个机会，干完了那事，撒腿就走，进了高粱地，就如鱼儿入了海，逍遥游。
+ 想到此，迎着那阳光，徜徉西行，见落日上方彤云膨胀，如牡丹芍药开放，云团上俱镶着灼目金边，鲜明得可怕。
+ 西走一阵，又往北走，直奔我奶奶的名义丈夫单扁郎的村庄。
+ 田野里早已清静无人，在那个年头里，凡能吃上口饭的庄稼人都是早早地回家，不敢恋晚，一到夜间，高粱地就成了绿林响马的世界。
+ 余占鳌那些天运气还不错，没碰上草莽英雄找他的麻烦。
+ 村子里已经炊烟升腾，街上有一个轻俏的汉子挑着两瓦罐清水从井台上走来，水罐淅淅沥沥地滴着水。
+ 余占鳌闪进那挂着破酒旗的草屋，屋子里一贯通，没有隔墙，一道泥坯垒成的柜台把房子分成两半，里边一铺大炕，一个锅灶，一口大缸。
+ 外边有两张腿歪面裂的八仙桌子，桌旁胡乱搡着几条狭窄的木凳。
+ 泥巴柜台上放着一只青釉酒坛，酒提儿挂在坛沿上。
+ 大炕上半仰着一个胖大的老头。
+ 余占鳌看他一眼，立即认出，老头人称“高丽棒子”，以杀狗为业。
+ 余占鳌记得有一次在马店集上见他只用半分钟就要了一条狗命，马店集上成百条狗见了他都戗毛直立，咆哮不止，但绝对不敢近前。
+
+ WHEN THE JAPANESE troops withdrew, the full moon, thin as a paper cutout, rose in the sky above the tips of the sorghum stalks, which had undergone such suffering.
+ Grain fell sporadically like glistening tears.
+ A sweet odour grew heavy in the air; the dark soil of the southern edge of our village had been thoroughly soaked by human blood.
+ Lights from fires in the village curled like foxtails, as occasional pops, like the crackling of dry wood, momentarily filled the air with a charred odour that merged with the stifling stench of blood.
+ The wound on Granddad's arm had turned worse, the scabs cracking and releasing a rotting, oozing mixture of dark blood and white pus.
+ He told Father to squeeze the area around the wound.
+ Fearfully, Father placed his icy fingers on the discoloured skin around the suppurating wound and squeezed, forcing out a string of air bubbles that released the putrid smell of pickled vegetables.
+ Granddad picked up a piece of yellow spirit currency that had been weighted down by a clod of earth at the head of a nearby gravesite and told Father to smear some of the salty white powder from the sorghum stalks on it.
+ Then he removed the head of a cartridge with his teeth and poured the greenish gunpowder onto the paper, mixed it with the white sorghum powder, and took a pinch with his fingers to daub on the open wound.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'shall I mix some soil into it?'
+ Granddad thought for a moment.
+ 'Sure, why not?'
+ Father bent down and picked up a clod of dark earth near the roots of a sorghum stalk, crumbled it in his fingers, and spread it on the paper.
+ After Granddad mixed the three substances together and covered the wound with them, paper and all, Father wrapped a filthy strip of bandage cloth around it and tied it tight.
+ 'Does that make it feel better, Dad?'
+ Granddad moved his arm back and forth.
+ 'Much better, Douguan.
+ An elixir like this will work on any wound, no matter how serious.'
+ 'Dad, if we'd had something like that for Mother, she wouldn't have died, would she?'
+ 'No, she wouldn't have. . . .'
+ Granddad's face clouded.
+ 'Dad, wouldn't it've been great if you'd told me about this before?
+ Mother was bleeding so much I kept packing earth on the wounds, but that only stopped it for a while.
+ If I'd known to add some white sorghum powder and gunpowder, everything would have been fine. . . .'
+ All the while Father was rambling, Granddad was loading his pistol.
+ Japanese mortar fire raised puffs of hot yellow smoke all up and down the village wall.
+ Since Father's Browning pistol lay under the belly of the fallen horse, during the final battle of the afternoon he used a Japanese rifle nearly as tall as he was; Granddad used his German automatic, firing it so rapidly it spent its youth and was ready for the trash heap.
+ Although battle fires still lit up the sky above the village, an aura of peace and quiet had settled over the sorghum fields.
+ Father followed Granddad, dragging his rifle behind him as they circled the site of the massacre.
+ The blood-soaked earth had the consistency of liquid clay under the weight of their footsteps; bodies of the dead merged with the wreckage of sorghum stalks.
+ Moonlight danced on pools of blood, and hideous scenes of dismemberment swept away the final moments of Father's youth.
+ Tortured moans emerged from the field of sorghum, and here and there among the bodies some movement appeared.
+ Father was burning to ask Granddad to save those fellow villagers who were still alive, but when he saw the pale, expressionless look on his father's bronze face, the words stuck in his throat.
+ During the most critical moments, Father was always slightly more alert than Granddad, perhaps because he concentrated on surface phenomena; superficial thought seems ideally suited to guerrilla fighting.
+ At that moment, Granddad looked benumbed; his thoughts were riveted on a single point, which might have been a twisted face, or a shattered rifle, or a single spent bullet.
+ He was blind to all other sights, deaf to all other sounds.
+ This problem – or characteristic – of his would grow more pronounced over the coming decade.
+ He returned to China from the mountains of Hokkaido with an unfathomable depth in his eyes, gazing at things as though he could will them to combust spontaneously.
+ Father never achieved this degree of philosophical depth.
+ In 1957, after untold hardships, when he finally emerged from the burrow Mother had dug for him, his eyes had the same look as in his youth: lively, perplexed, capricious.
+ He never did figure out the relationship between men and politics or society or war, even though he had been spun so violently on the wheel of battle.
+ He was forever trying to squeeze the light of his nature through the chinks in his body armour.
+ Granddad and Father circled the site of the massacre a dozen times, until Father said tearfully, 'Dad . . . I can't walk any more. . . .'
+ Granddad's robot movements stopped; taking Father's hand, he backed up ten paces and sat down on a patch of solid, dry earth.
+ The cheerless and lonely sorghum field was highlighted by the crackle of fires in the village.
+ Weak golden flames danced fitfully beneath the silvery moonlight.
+ After sitting there for a moment, Granddad fell backward like a capsized wall, and Father laid his head on Granddad's belly, where he fell into a hazy sleep.
+ He could feel Granddad's feverish hand stroking his head, which sent his thoughts back nearly a dozen years, to when he was suckling at Grandma's breast.
+ He was four at the time, and growing tired of the yellowed nipple that was always thrust into his mouth.
+ Having begun to hate its sour hardness, he gazed up into the look of rapture in Grandma's face with a murderous glint in his eyes and bit down as hard as he could.
+ He felt the contraction in Grandma's breast as her body jerked backward.
+ Trickles of a sweet liquid warmed the corners of his mouth, until Grandma gave him a swat on the bottom and pushed him away.
+ He fell to the ground, his eyes on the drops of fresh red blood dripping from the tip of Grandma's pendulous breast.
+ He whimpered, but his eyes were dry.
+ Grandma, on the other hand, was crying bitterly, her shoulders heaving, her face bathed in tears.
+ She lashed out at him, calling him a wolf cub, as mean as his wolf of a father.
+ Later on he learned that that was the year Granddad, who loved Grandma dearly, had fallen in love with the hired girl, Passion, who had grown into a bright-eyed young woman.
+ At the moment when Father bit Grandma, Granddad, who had grown tired of her jealousy, was living with Passion in a house he'd bought in a neighbouring village.
+ Everyone said that this second grandma of mine was no economy lantern, and that Grandma was afraid of her, but this is something I'll clear up later.
+ Second Grandma eventually had a girl by Granddad.
+ In 1938, Japanese soldiers murdered this young aunt of mine with a bayonet, then gang-raped Second Grandma – this, too, I'll clear up later.
+ Granddad and Father were exhausted.
+ The wound throbbed in Granddad's arm, which seemed to be on fire.
+ Father's feet had swollen until his cloth shoes nearly split their seams, and he fantasised about the exquisite pleasure of airing the rotting skin of his feet in the moonlight.
+ But he didn't have the strength to sit up and take off his shoes.
+ Instead, he rolled over and rested his head on Granddad's hard stomach so he could look up into the starry night and let the moon's rays light up his face.
+ He could hear the murmuring flow of the Black Water River and see black clouds gather in the sky above him.
+ He remembered Uncle Arhat's saying once that, when the Milky Way lay horizontally across the sky, autumn rains would fall.
+ He had only really seen autumn water once in his life.
+ The sorghum was ready for harvest when the Black Water River rose and burst its banks, flooding both the fields and the village.
+ The stalks strained to keep their heads above water; rats and snakes scurried and slithered up them to escape drowning.
+ Father had gone with Uncle Arhat to the wall, which the villagers were reinforcing, and gazed uneasily at the yellow water rushing towards him.
+ The villagers made rafts from kindling and paddled out to the fields to hack off the ears of grain, which were already sprouting new green buds.
+ Bundles of soaked deep-red and emerald-green ears of sorghum weighted down the rafts so much it's a wonder they didn't sink.
+ The dark, gaunt men, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing conical straw hats, stood with their legs akimbo on the rafts, poling with all their strength as they rocked from side to side.
+ The water in the village was knee-high, covering the legs of livestock, whose waste floated on the surface.
+ In the dying rays of the autumn sun, the water shone like liquefied metal; tips of sorghum stalks too far away to be harvested formed a canopy of golden red just above the rippling surface, over which flocks of wild geese flew.
+ Father could see a bright, broad body of water flowing slowly through the densest patch of red sorghum, in sharp contrast to the muddy, stagnant water around him; it was, he knew, the Black Water River.
+ On one of the rafts lay a silver-bellied, green-backed grass carp, a long, thin sorghum stalk stuck through its gills.
+ The farmer proudly held it up to show the people on the wall; it was nearly half as tall as he was.
+ Blood oozed from its gills, and its mouth was open as it looked at my father with dull, sorrowful eyes.
+ Father was thinking about how Uncle Arhat had bought a fish from a farmer once, and how Grandma had scraped the scales from its belly, then made soup out of it; just thinking about that delicious soup gave him an appetite.
+ He sat up.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'aren't you hungry?
+ I am.
+ Can you find me something to eat?
+ I'm starving. . . .'
+ Granddad sat up and fished around in his belt until he found a bullet, which he inserted into the cylinder; then he snapped it shut, sending the bullet into the chamber.
+ He pulled the trigger, and there was a loud crack.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'let's go find your mother. . . .'
+ 'No, Dad,' Father replied in a high-pitched, frightened voice, 'Mother's dead.
+ But we're still alive, and I'm hungry.
+ Let's get something to eat.'
+ Father pulled Granddad to his feet.
+ 'Where?'
+ Granddad mumbled.
+ 'Where can we go?'
+ So Father led him by the hand into the sorghum field, where they walked in a crooked line, as though their objective was the moon, hanging high and icy in the sky.
+ A growl emerged from the field of corpses.
+ Granddad and Father stopped in their tracks and turned to see a dozen pairs of green eyes, like will-o'-the-wisps, and several indigo shadows tumbling on the ground.
+ Granddad took out his pistol and fired at two of the green eyes; the howl of a dying dog accompanied the extinguishing of those eyes.
+ Granddad fired seven shots in all, and several wounded dogs writhed in agony among the corpses.
+ While he was emptying his pistol into the pack, the uninjured dogs fled into the sorghum field, out of range, where they howled furiously at the two humans.
+ The last couple of bullets from Granddad's pistol had travelled only thirty paces or so before thudding to the ground.
+ Father watched them tumble in the moonlight, so slowly he could have reached out and caught them.
+ And the once crisp crack of the pistol sounded more like the phlegmatic cough of a doddering old man.
+ A tortured, sympathetic expression spread across Granddad's face as he looked down at the weapon in his hand.
+ 'Out of bullets, Dad?'
+ The five hundred bullets they'd brought back from town in the goat's belly had been used up in a matter of hours.
+ The pistol had aged overnight, and Granddad came to the painful realisation that it was no longer capable of carrying out his wishes; time for them to part ways.
+ Holding the gun out in front of him, he carefully studied the muted reflection of the moonlight on the barrel, then loosened his grip and let the gun fall heavily to the ground.
+ The green-eyed dogs returned to the corpses, timidly at first.
+ But their eyes quickly disappeared, and the moonlight was reflected off rolling waves of bluish fur; Granddad and Father could hear the sounds of dogs tearing human bodies with their fangs.
+ 'Let's go into the village, Dad,' Father said.
+ Granddad wavered for a moment, so Father tugged on him, and they fell into step.
+ By then most of the fires in the village had gone out, leaving red-hot cinders that gave off an acrid heat amid the crumbling walls and shattered buildings.
+ Hot winds whirled above the village roads.
+ The murky air was stifling.
+ Roofs of houses, their supports burned out beneath them, had collapsed in mountains of smoke, dust, and cinders.
+ Bodies were strewn atop the village wall and on the roads.
+ A page in the history of our village had been turned.
+ At one time the site had been a wasteland covered with brambles, underbrush, and reeds, a paradise for foxes and wild rabbits.
+ Then a few huts appeared, and it became a haven for escaped murderers, drunks, gamblers, who built homes, cultivated the land, and turned it into a paradise for humans, forcing out the foxes and wild rabbits, who set up howls of protest on the eve of their departure.
+ Now the village lay in ruins; man had created it, and man had destroyed it.
+ It was now a sorrowful paradise, a monument to both grief and joy, built upon ruins.
+ In 1960, when the dark cloud of famine settled over the Shandong Peninsula, even though I was only four years old I could dimly sense that Northeast Gaomi Township had never been anything but a pile of ruins, and that its people had never been able to rid their hearts of the shattered buildings, nor would they ever be able to.
+ That night, after the smoke and sparks from the other houses had died out, our buildings were still burning, sending skyward green-tinged tongues of flame and the intoxicating aroma of strong wine, released in an instant after all those years.
+ Blue roof tiles, deformed by the intense heat, turned scarlet, then leaped into the air through a wall of flames that illuminated Granddad's hair, which had turned three-quarters grey in the space of a week.
+ A roof came crashing down, momentarily blotting out the flames, which then roared out of the rubble, stronger than ever.
+ The loud crash nearly crushed the breath out of Father and Granddad.
+ Our house, which had sheltered the father and son of the Shan family as they grew rich, then had sheltered Granddad after his murderous deed, then had sheltered Grandma, Granddad, Father, Uncle Arhat, and all the men who worked for them, a sanctuary for their kindnesses and their grievances, had now completed its historical mission.
+ I hated that sanctuary: though it had sheltered decent emotions, it had also sheltered heinous crimes.
+ Father, when you were hiding in the burrow we dug for you in the floor of my home back in 1957, you recalled those days of your past in the unrelenting darkness.
+ On no fewer than 365 occasions, in your mind you saw the roof of your house crash down amid the flames, and wondered what was going through the mind of your father, my granddad.
+ So my fantasies were chasing yours while yours were chasing Granddad's.
+ As he watched the roof collapse, Granddad became as angry as he'd been the day he abandoned Grandma and moved to another village to be with his new love, Passion.
+ He had learned then that Grandma had shamelessly taken up with Black Eye, the leader of an organisation called the Iron Society, and at the time he wasn't sure what filled his heart – loathing or love, pain or anger.
+ When he later returned to Grandma's arms, his feelings for her were so confused he couldn't sort them out.
+ In the beginning, his emotional warfare scarred only his own heart, and Grandma's scarred only her own.
+ Finally, they hurt each other.
+ Only when Grandma smiled up at him as she lay dead in the sorghum field did he realise the grievous punishment life had meted out to him.
+ He loved my father as a magpie loves the last remaining egg in its nest.
+ But by then it was too late, for fate, cold and calculating, had sentenced him to a cruel end that was waiting for him down the road.
+ 'Dad, our house is gone. . . .'
+ Father said.
+ Granddad rubbed Father's head as he stared at the ruins of his home, then took Father's hand and began stumbling aimlessly down the road under the waning light of the flames and the waxing light of the moon.
+ At the head of the village they heard an old man's voice: 'Is that you, Number Three?
+ Why didn't you bring the oxcart?'
+ The sound of that voice gave Granddad and Father such a warm feeling they forgot how tired they were and rushed over to see who it was.
+ A hunched-over elderly man rose to greet them, carefully sizing up Granddad with his ancient eyes, nearly touching his face.
+ Granddad didn't like his watchful look and was repulsed by the greedy stench that came from his mouth.
+ 'You're not my Number Three,' the old man said unhappily, his head wobbling as he sat down on a pile of loot.
+ There were trunks, cupboards, dining tables, farm tools, harnesses, ripped comforters, cooking pots, earthenware bowls.
+ He was sitting on a small mountain of stuff and guarding it as a wolf guards its kill.
+ Behind him, two calves, three goats, and a mule were tied to a willow tree.
+ 'You old dog!'
+ Granddad growled through clenched teeth.
+ 'Get the hell out of here!'
+ The old man rose up on his haunches and said amiably, 'Ah, my brother, let's not be envious.
+ I risked my life to drag this stuff out of the flames!'
+ 'I'll fuck your living mother!
+ Climb down from there!'
+ Granddad lashed out angrily.
+ 'You have no right to talk to me like that.
+ I didn't do anything to you.
+ You're the one who's asking for trouble.
+ What gives you the right to curse me like that?' he complained.
+ 'Curse you?
+ I'll goddamn kill you!
+ We're not in a desperate struggle with Japan just so you can go on a looting binge!
+ You bastard, you old bastard!
+ Douguan, where's your gun?'
+ 'It's under the horse's belly,' Father said.
+ Granddad jumped up onto the mountain of stuff and, with a single kick, sent the old man sprawling onto the ground.
+ He rose to his knees and begged, 'Spare me, Eighth Route Master, spare me!'
+ 'I'm not with the Eighth Route Army,' Granddad said, 'or the Ninth Route.
+ I'm Yu Zhan'ao the bandit!'
+ 'Spare me, Commander Yu, spare me!
+ What good would it do to let all this stuff burn?
+ I'm not the only "potato picker" from the village.
+ Those thieves got all the good stuff.
+ I'm too old and too slow, and all I could find was this junk.'
+ Granddad picked up a wooden table and threw it at the old man's bald head.
+ He screamed and held his bleeding scalp as he rolled in the dirt.
+ Granddad reached down and picked him up by his collar.
+ Looking straight into those tortured eyes, he said, 'Our hero, the "potato picker", then raised his fist and drove it with a loud crack into the old man's face, sending him crumpling to the ground, face up.
+ Granddad walked up and kicked him in the face, hard.
+
+ 日本人撤走了。
+ 硕大的、单薄的像一片剪纸一样的圆月，在升上高粱梢头的过程中，面积凝缩变小，并渐渐放射出光辉。
+ 多灾多难的高粱们在月光中肃立不语，间或有一些高粱米坠落在黑土上，好像高粱们晶莹的泪珠。
+ 空气中腥甜的气息浓烈稠密，人血把我们村南这一片黑土地都给泡透了。
+ 村子里的火光像狐狸尾巴一样耸动着，时不时响起木头烧焦的爆裂声，焦糊味道从村子里弥散出来，与高粱地里的血腥味掺合一起，形成一种令人窒息的怪味。
+ 爷爷胳膊上的老伤口累发了，疮面迸裂，流了那么多乌黑的花白的腥臭脓血。
+ 爷爷要父亲帮助他挤压伤口。
+ 父亲用冰凉的小手指，胆颤心惊地挤压着爷爷胳膊上的伤口附近青紫色的皮肤，挤一下，噗噗冒出一串虹膜般的气泡，伤口里有一股酱菜般的腐败气息。
+ 爷爷从远处的一丘坟墓上，揭来一张用土坷垃压在坟尖上的黄表纸，他要父亲从高粱秸上刮下一些碱卤般的白色粉末放在纸上。
+ 父亲用双手托着放了一小堆高粱粉的黄表纸，献到爷爷面前。
+ 爷爷用牙齿拧开一颗手枪子弹，倒出一些灰绿色的火药，与白色的高粱粉末掺合在一起，捏起一撮，要往伤口上撒，父亲小声问： “爹，不掺点黑土？”
+ 爷爷想了一会，说：“掺吧。”
+ 父亲从高粱根下挖起一块黑土，用手搓得精细，撒在黄表纸上。
+ 爷爷把三种物质拌匀，连同那张黄表纸，拍在伤口上，父亲帮着爷爷把那根肮脏不堪的绷带扎好。
+ 父亲问：“爹，疼得轻点了吗？”
+ 爷爷活动了几下胳膊，说：“好多了，豆官，这样的灵丹妙药，什么样的重伤也能治好。”
+ “爹，俺娘那会儿要是也敷上这种药就不会死了吧？” 父亲问。
+ “是，是不会死……”
+ 爷爷面色阴沉地说。
+ “爹，你早把这个药方告诉我就好啦，俺娘伤口里的血咕嘟咕嘟往外冒，我就用黑土堵啊堵啊，堵住一会儿，血又冲出来。
+ 要是那会儿加上高粱白粉和枪子药就好啦……”
+ 爷爷在父亲的细声碎语中，用那只伤手往手枪里压子弹；日本人的迫击炮弹，在村子的围子上炸起了一团团焦黄的烟雾。
+ 父亲的勃朗宁手枪压在日本洋马肚子下边了。
+ 在下午最后的搏斗中，父亲拖着一杆比他矮不了多少的日本马枪，爷爷还用着那支德国造“自来得”手枪。
+ 连续不断地射击，使本来就过了青春年华的这支“自来得”迅速奔向废铁堆。
+ 父亲觉得爷爷的手枪筒子都弯弯曲曲的抻长了一节。
+ 尽管村子里火光冲天，但高粱地里，还是呈现出一派安恬的宁静夜色。
+ 更加凄清的皎皎月光洒在魅力渐渐衰退的高粱萎缩的头颅上。
+ 父亲拖着枪，跟着爷爷，绕着屠杀场走着，滋足了血的黑土像胶泥一样，陷没了他们的脚面。
+ 人的尸体与高粱的残躯混杂在一起。
+ 一汪汪的血在月下闪烁着。
+ 模糊的狰狞嘴脸纵横捭阖，扫荡着父亲最后的少年岁月。
+ 高粱棵子里似乎有痛苦的呻吟声，尸体堆中好像有活物的蠕动，父亲想唤住爷爷，去看看这些尚未死利索的乡亲。
+ 他仰起脸来，看到爷爷那副绿锈斑斑、丧失了人的表情的青铜面孔，把话儿压进了喉咙。
+ 在特别关键的时刻，父亲总是比爷爷要清醒一些，他的思想可能总是浮在现象的表面，深入不够，所以便于游击吧！
+ 爷爷的思想当时麻木地凝滞在一个点上，这一点或许是一张扭歪的脸，或许是一管断裂的枪、一颗飞躜着的尖头子弹。
+ 其他的景物他视而不见，其他的声音他听而不闻。
+ 爷爷这种毛病或特点，在十几年后，发展得更加严重。
+ 他从日本北海道的荒山僻岭中归国之后，双目深不可测，盯住什么就像要把什么烧焦似的。
+ 父亲却永远没达到这种哲学的思维深度。
+ 一九五七年，他历尽千难万苦，从母亲挖的地洞里跑出来时，双眼还像他少年时期一样，活泼、迷惘、瞬息万变。
+ 他一辈子都没弄清人与政治、人与社会、人与战争的关系，虽然他在战争的巨轮上飞速旋转着，虽然他的人性的光芒总是力图冲破冰冷的铁甲放射出来。
+ 但事实上，他的人性即使能在某一瞬间放射出璀璨的光芒，这光芒也是寒冷的、弯曲的，掺杂着某种深刻的兽性因素。
+ 后来，爷爷和父亲绕着屠杀场转了十几个圈子的时候，父亲悲泣着说：“爹…… 我走不动啦……”
+ 爷爷从机械运动中醒过来，他牵着父亲后退几十步，坐在没浸过人血的比较坚硬干燥的黑土上。
+ 村子里的火声加剧了高粱地里的寂寞清冷；金黄色的微弱火光在银白色的月光中颤抖。
+ 爷爷坐了片刻，像半堵墙样往后倒去。
+ 父亲把头伏在爷爷的肚子上，朦胧入睡。
+ 他感觉到爷爷那只滚烫的大手轻轻抚摸着自己的头，父亲想起十几年前在奶奶怀里吃奶的情景。
+ 那时候他四岁，对奶奶硬塞到他嘴里的淡黄色乳房产生了反感。
+ 他含着酸溜溜硬梆梆的乳头，心里涌起一股仇恨。
+ 他用小兽一样凶狠的眼睛上望着奶奶迷幻的脸，狠狠地咬了一口。
+ 他感到奶奶的乳房猛一收缩，奶奶的身体往上一耸。
+ 一丝甜味的液体温暖着他的口腔。
+ 奶奶在他屁股上用力打了一巴掌，然后把他推出去。
+ 他跌倒了，坐起来，看着奶奶那个像香瓜一样垂着的乳房上一滴滴下落的艳红的血珍珠，眼中无泪，干嚎了几声。
+ 奶奶痛苦地抽搐着，眼泪乱纷纷溢出。
+ 他听到奶奶骂他是个恶狼崽子，跟那个恶狼爹是一样的畜牲。
+ 父亲后来才知道，就是他四岁那一年，爷爷在爱着奶奶的同时，又爱上了奶奶雇来的小姑娘——已经长成了漆黑发亮的大姑娘恋儿。
+ 父亲咬伤奶奶时，爷爷因厌烦奶奶的醋劲，在邻村买了一排房屋，把恋儿接去住了。
+ 据说我这个二奶奶也不是盏省油的灯，奶奶惧她五分——这都是以后一定要完全彻底说清楚的事情——二奶奶为我生过一个小姑姑。
+ 一九三八年，日本兵用刺刀把我小姑姑挑了，一群日本兵把二奶奶给轮奸了——这也是以后要完全彻底说清楚的事情。
+ 爷爷和父亲都困乏极了，爷爷感到他臂上的枪伤在蹦蹦跳跳，整条胳膊火烫。
+ 爷爷和父亲都感到他们的脚胀满了布鞋，他们想象着让溃烂的脚晾在月光下的幸福，但都没有力气起身把鞋扒掉了。
+ 他们躺着，昏昏沉沉似睡非睡。
+ 父亲翻了一个身，后脑勺子搁在爷爷坚硬的肚子上，面对星空，一缕月色照着他的眼。
+ 墨水河的喑哑低语一波波传来，天河中出现了一道道蛇状黑云，仿佛在蜿蜒游动，又仿佛僵化不动。
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷说过，天河横缠，秋雨绵绵。
+ 父亲只见过一次真正的秋水，那时候高粱即将收割，墨水河水暴涨，堤坝决裂，洪水灌进了田地和村庄。
+ 在滉滉大水中，高粱努力抻着头，耗子和蛇在高粱穗子上缠绕盘踞着。
+ 父亲跟着罗汉大爷走在临时加高的土围子上，看着仿佛从天外涌来的黄色大水，心里惴惴不安。
+ 秋水经久不退，村里百姓捆扎起木筏子，划到高粱地里去，用镰刀割下生满绿色芽苗的高粱穗子。
+ 一捆捆湿漉漉的、暗红的、翠绿的高粱穗子，把木筏子压得随时都要沉底的样子。
+ 又黑又瘦赤脚光背戴着破烂斗笠的男人，十字劈叉站在筏子上，用长长的木杆子，一左一右地用力撑着，筏子缓慢地向土围子靠拢。
+ 村里街道上也水深及膝，骡马牛羊都泡在水里，水上漂着牲畜们稀薄的排泄物。
+ 如果秋阳夕照，水面上烁金熔铁，远处尚未割掉头颅的高粱们，凸出水面一层金红。
+ 大群的野鸭飞翔在高粱头上，众多的翅膀扇起阴凉的风，把高粱间的水面吹出一片细小的皱纹。
+ 父亲看到高粱板块之间，有一道明亮宽阔的大水在缓缓流动，与四周漶漫的黄水形成鲜明的界限，父亲知道那是墨水河。
+ 撑筏子的男人们大口喘着气，互相问讯着，慢慢地向土围子靠拢，慢慢地向爷爷靠拢。
+ 一个青年农夫的筏子上，躺着一条银腹青脊的大草鱼，一根柔韧的细高粱秸子穿住草鱼的腮。
+ 青年农夫把草鱼提起来向围子上的人炫耀。
+ 草鱼有半截人高，腮上流着血，圆张着嘴，用呆滞的眼睛悲哀地看着我父亲……
+ 父亲想到，那条大鱼怎样被罗汉大爷买回，奶奶怎样亲手把鱼剖肚刮鳞，烧成一大锅鱼汤，鱼汤的鲜美回忆勾起父亲的食欲。
+ 父亲坐起来，说：“爹，你不饿吗？
+ 爹，我饿了，你弄点东西给我吃吧，我要饿死啦……”
+ 爷爷坐起，在腰里摸索着，摸出三夹零六颗子弹。
+ 爷爷从身边找到那支手枪，拉开枪栓，压进一条子弹，一松栓子弹上膛，勾一下机，啪啦一声响，一粒子弹飞出膛。
+ 爷爷说：“豆官，咱们…… 找你娘去吧……”
+ 父亲一惊，尖利地说：“不，爹，俺娘死啦，咱还活着，我肚子饿，你带我去找点东西吃。”
+ 父亲把爷爷拖起来。
+ 爷爷自言自语地说着：“到哪里去？
+ 到哪里去？”
+ 父亲牵着爷爷的手，在高粱棵子里，一脚高一脚低，歪歪斜斜，仿佛是奔着挂得更高、更加寒如冰霜的月亮走。
+ 尸体堆里，响起一阵猛兽的咆哮。
+ 爷爷和父亲立即转身回头，看到十几对鬼火一样闪烁的绿眼睛和一团团遍地翻滚的钢蓝色的影子。
+ 爷爷掏出枪，对着两只绿眼一甩，一道火光飞去，那两只绿眼灭了，高粱棵子里传来垂死挣扎的狗叫。
+ 爷爷连射七枪，一群受伤的狗在高粱丛中、尸体堆里滚来滚去。
+ 爷爷对着狗群打完了所有的子弹，没受伤的狗逃窜出几箭远，对着爷爷和父亲发出愤怒的咆哮。
+ 爷爷的自来得手枪射出的最后几粒子弹飞行了三十几步远就掉在了地上。
+ 父亲看到弹头在月光中翻着筋斗飞行，缓慢得伸手就可抓住。
+ 枪声也失去了焦脆的青春喉咙，颇似一个耄耋之年的老头子在咳嗽吐痰。
+ 爷爷举起枪来看了一下子，脸上露出悲痛惋惜的表情。
+ “爹，没子弹啦？” 父亲问。
+ 爷爷和父亲从县城里用小山羊肚腹运载回来的五百发子弹，在十几个小时里已经发射完毕。
+ 好像人是在一天中突然衰老一样，枪也是在一天中突然衰老。
+ 爷爷痛感到这支枪越来越违背自己的意志，跟它告别的时候到了。
+ 爷爷把胳膊平伸出去，仔细地看着月光照在枪面上反射出的黯淡的光彩，然后一松手，匣子枪沉重落地。
+ 那些绿眼睛的狗又向尸体聚拢过来，起初还畏畏惧惧，绿眼睛里跳着惊惧的火花。
+ 很快，绿眼睛消失，月光照着一道道波浪般翻滚的蓝色狗毛，爷爷和父亲都听到了狗嘴的吧咂声和尸体的撕裂声。
+ “爹，咱到村里去吧。”父亲说。
+ 爷爷有点犹豫，父亲拉他一把，他就跟着父亲走了。
+ 村里的火堆多半熄灭，断壁残垣中，暗红的余烬发散着酷热，街上热风盘旋，浊气逼人，白烟和黑烟交织成团，在烧焦的、烘萎了的树梢间翻腾。
+ 木料在炭化过程中爆豆般响着，失去支撑的房屋顶盖塌下，砸起冲天的尘烟和灰烬。
+ 土围子上、街道上、尸体狼藉。
+ 我们村子的历史又翻开了新的一页。
+ 它原先是一片蛮荒地，荆榛苇茅丛生，狐狸野兔的乐园，后来有了几架牧人的草棚，后来逃来了杀人命犯、落魄酒徒、亡命赌棍……
+ 他们建造房屋，开垦荒地，拓扑出人的乐园，狐狸野兔迁徙他乡，临别时齐声发出控诉人类的鸣叫。
+ 现在它是一片废墟了，人创造的，又被人摧毁。
+ 真正的现在的它是在废墟上建立起来的悲喜参半的忧乐园。
+ 当一九六○年黑暗的饥馑笼罩山东大地时，我虽然年仅四岁，也隐隐约约地感觉到，高密东北乡从来就没有不是废墟过，高密东北乡人心灵里堆积着的断砖碎瓦从来就没有清理干净过，也不可能清理干净。
+ 那天晚上，所有的房屋都烟飞火灭之后，我家那几十间房屋还在燃烧。
+ 我家的房子燃烧时放出一些翠绿的火苗和一股醉人的酒味，潴留多年的酒气，都在火中升腾起来。
+ 蓝色的房瓦在大火中弯曲变形，呈现暗红色，疾速地、像弹片一样从火中飞出来。
+ 火光照着爷爷花白的头发，爷爷的满头黑发，在短短的七天里，白了四分之三。
+ 我家的房盖轰隆隆塌陷下去，火焰萎缩片刻，又疯蹿得更高。
+ 父亲和爷爷都被这一声巨响震荡得胸闷气噎。
+ 这几十间先庇护了单家父子发财致富后庇护了爷爷放火杀人又庇护着奶奶爷爷父亲罗汉大爷与众伙计们多少恩恩怨怨的房屋完成了它的所谓的“历史的使命”。
+ 我恨透了这个庇护所，因为它在庇护着善良、麻醉着真挚的情感的同时，也庇护着丑陋和罪恶。
+ 父亲，一九五七年，你躲在我家里间屋里那个地洞里时，你每日每夜，在永恒的黑暗中，追忆流水年月，你至少三百六十次想到了我们家那几十间房屋的屋盖在大火中塌落的情景。
+ 你想到你的父亲我的爷爷在那时刻想到了什么，我的幻想紧追着你的幻想，你的幻想紧追着爷爷的思维。
+ 爷爷看到这房屋的塌陷的感觉，就像当初爱上恋儿姑娘后，愤然抛弃我奶奶另村去住，但后来又听说奶奶在家放浪形骸与“铁板会”头子“黑眼”姘上一样，说不清是恨还是爱，说不清是痛苦还是愤怒。
+ 爷爷后来重返奶奶的怀抱，对奶奶的感情已经混浊得难辨颜色和味道。
+ 我们感情上的游击战首先把自己的心脏打得千疮百孔最后又把对方打得千疮百孔。
+ 只有当奶奶在高粱地里用死亡的面容对着爷爷微笑时，他才领会到生活对自己的惩罚是多么严酷。
+ 他像喜鹊珍爱覆巢中最后一个卵一样珍爱着我父亲，但是，已经晚一点了，命运为他安排的更残酷的结局，已在前面路口上，胸有成竹地对他冷笑着。
+ “爹，咱的家没了……” 父亲说。
+ 爷爷摸着父亲的头，看着残破的家园，牵着父亲的手，在火光渐弱月光渐强的街道上无目标地蹒跚着。
+ 村头上，一个苍老淳朴的声音问：“是小三吗？
+ 怎么没把牛车赶来？”
+ 爷爷和父亲听到人声，倍觉亲切，忘了疲乏，急匆匆赶过去。
+ 一个弓着腰的老头，迎着他们上来，把眼睛几乎贴到爷爷脸上打量着。
+ 爷爷对老头那两只警觉的眼睛不满意，老头嘴里喷出的铜臭气使爷爷反感。
+ “不是我家小三子。”
+ 老头子遗憾地晃晃脑袋，坐回去。
+ 他的屁股下边堆了一大堆杂物，有箱、柜、饭桌、农具、牲口套具、破棉絮、铁锅、瓦盆……
+ 老头坐在小山一样的货物上，像一只狼守护着自己的猎物。
+ 老头身后的柳树上，拴着两头牛犊子、三只山羊，一头小毛驴。
+ 爷爷咬牙切齿地骂道：“老狗！
+ 你给我滚下来！”
+ 老头子从货堆上蹲起，友善地说：“哎，兄弟，别眼红吆，俺这是不惧生死从火堆里抢出来的！”
+ “你给我下来，我操死你活妈！”
+ 爷爷怒骂。
+ “你这人好没道理，我一没招你，二没惹你，你凭什么骂人？”
+ 老头宽容地谴责着我爷爷。
+ “骂你？
+ 老子要宰了你！
+ 老子们抗日救国，与日本人拼死拼活，你们竟然趁火打劫！
+ 畜牲，老畜牲！
+ 豆官，你的枪呢？”
+ “扔到洋马肚子底下啦！”父亲说。
+ 爷爷纵身跳上货堆，飞起一脚，把那老头踢到货堆下。
+ 老头子跪在地上，哀求道：“八路老爷饶命，八路老爷饶命……”
+ 爷爷说：“老子不是八路，也不是九路。
+ 老子是土匪余占鳌！”
+ “余司令饶命，余司令，这些东西，放到火里也白白烧毁了……
+ 俺村来‘倒地瓜’的不光我一个，值钱的东西都被那些贼给抢光啦，俺老汉腿脚慢，拾掇了一点破烂……”
+ 爷爷搬起一张木桌子，对准老头那秃脑门砸下去。
+ 老头惨叫一声，抱住流血的头，在地上转着圈乱钻。
+ 爷爷抓着他的衣领，把他提起来，对着那张痛苦的老脸，说：“‘倒地瓜’的好汉子！”
+ 然后猛力捣了一拳，老头脸上腻腻地响了一声，仰面朝天摔在地上，爷爷又走上前去，对着老头的脸，狠命踹了一脚。
+
+ FULL PURPLE LIPS, like ripe grapes, gave Second Grandma – Passion – her extraordinary appeal.
+ The sands of time had long since interred her origins and background.
+ Her rich, youthful, resilient flesh, her plump bean-pod face, and her deep-blue, seemingly deathless eyes were buried in the wet yellow earth, extinguishing for all time her angry, defiant gaze, which challenged the world of filth, adored the world of beauty, and brimmed over with an intense consciousness.
+ Second Grandma had been buried in the black earth of her hometown.
+ Her body was enclosed in a coffin of thin willow covered with an uneven coat of reddish-brown varnish that failed to camouflage its wormy, beetle-holed surface.
+ The sight of her blackened, blood-shiny corpse being swallowed up by golden earth is etched forever on the screen of my mind.
+ In the warm red rays of the sun, I saw a mound in the shape of a human figure rising atop the heavy, deeply remorseful sandbar.
+ Second Grandma's shapely figure; Second Grandma's high-arching breasts; tiny grains of shifting sand on Second Grandma's furrowed brow; Second Grandma's sensual lips protruding through the golden-yellow sand . . .
+ I knew it was an illusion, that Second Grandma was buried beneath the black earth of her hometown, and that only red sorghum grew around her gravesite.
+ Standing at the head of her grave – as long as it isn't during the winter, when the plants are dead and frozen, or on a spring day, when cool southerly breezes blow – you can't even see the horizon for the nightmarishly dense screen of Northeast Gaomi sorghum.
+ Then you raise your gaunt face, like a sunflower, and through the gaps in the sorghum you can see the stunning brilliance of the sun hanging in the kingdom of heaven.
+ Amid the perennially mournful sobs of the Black Water River you listen for a lost soul drifting down from that kingdom.
+ THE SKY WAS a beautiful clear blue.
+ The sun hadn't yet made an appearance, but the chaotic horizon on that early-winter morning was infused with a blinding red light when Old Geng shot at a red fox with a fiery torch of a tail.
+ Old Geng had no peers among hunters in Saltwater Gap, where he bagged wild geese, hares, wild ducks, weasels, foxes, and, when there was nothing else around, sparrows.
+ In the late autumn and early winter, enormous flocks of sparrows flew over Northeast Gaomi Township, a shifting brown cloud that rolled and tumbled above the boundless land.
+ At dusk they returned to the village, where they settled on willows whose naked, yellowing limbs drooped earthward or arched skyward.
+ As the dying red rays of the evening sun burned through the clouds, the branches lit up with sparrows' black eyes shining like thousands of golden sparks.
+ Old Geng picked up his shotgun, squinted, and pulled the trigger.
+ Two sparrows crashed to the ground like hailstones as shotgun pellets tore noisily through the branches.
+ Uninjured sparrows saw their comrades hit the ground and flapped their wings, rising into the air like shrapnel sent flying high into a lethargic sky.
+ Father had eaten some of Old Geng's sparrows when he was young.
+ They were delicious.
+ Three decades later, my older brother and I went into the sorghum field and engaged some crafty sparrows in a heated battle.
+ Old Geng, who was already over seventy by then and lived alone as a pensioner, was one of our most revered villagers.
+ Asked to speak at meetings to air grievances against the old order, he invariably stripped to the waist onstage to show his scars.
+ 'The Japs bayoneted me eighteen times,' he'd say, 'until you couldn't see my skin for all the blood.
+ But I didn't die, and you know why?
+ Because I was protected by a fox fairy.
+ I don't know how long I lay there, but when I opened my eyes all I could see was a bright-red light.
+ The fox fairy was licking my wounds.'
+ In his home, Old Geng – Eighteen Stabs Geng – kept a fox-fairy memorial tablet, which some Red Guards decided to smash during the Cultural Revolution.
+ They changed their minds and got out of there fast when they saw him kneel in front of the tablet wielding a cleaver.
+ Old Geng drew a bead on the red fox, knowing exactly which way it would run; but he was reluctant to shoot.
+ He knew he could sell the beautiful, bushy pelt for a good price.
+ If he was going to shoot, it had to be now.
+ The fox had already enjoyed a full life, sneaking over nightly to steal a chicken.
+ No matter how strong the villagers made their chicken coops, the fox always found a way inside and no matter how many traps they set, it always got away.
+ That year the villagers' chicken coops seemed built solely to store its food.
+ Old Geng had walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time and gone straight to a low embankment alongside the swamp in front of the village, where he waited for the chicken thief to show up.
+ Dried-up marsh weeds stood waist-high in the swamp, where a thin sheet of nearly transparent ice, possibly thick enough to bear a man's weight, covered the stagnant water that had accumulated during the autumn rains.
+ Yellow tassels atop imprisoned reeds shivered in the freezing morning air, as powerful rays of light from far off in the eastern sky gradually illuminated the icy surface, which gave off a moist radiance, like the scales of a carp.
+ Then the eastern sky turned bright, staining the ice and reeds the colour of mottled blood.
+ Old Geng picked up the odour and saw a tight cluster of reeds part slowly like an undulating wave, then close up quickly.
+ He stuck his nearly frozen index finger into his mouth and breathed on it, then wrapped it around the frost-covered trigger.
+ The fox bounded out of the clump of reeds and stood on the ice, turning it a bright red, as though it had gone up in flames.
+ Congealed blood covered its pointy little snout; a chicken feather the colour of hemp was stuck in its whiskers.
+ It walked with stately grace across the ice.
+ Old Geng cried out, and it froze on the spot, squinting to get a good look at the embankment.
+ Old Geng shivered, closed his eyes, and fired.
+ Like a little fireball, the fox rolled into the reeds.
+ Old Geng, his shoulder numb from the recoil, stood up under a silvery sky, looking bigger and taller than usual.
+ He knew the fox was hiding amid the reeds and staring at him with loathing.
+ Something suspiciously like a guilty conscience began to stir in Old Geng.
+ He thought back over the past year and the trust the fox had shown in him: it always knew he was hiding behind the embankment, yet it sauntered across the ice as though putting his conscience to the test.
+ And Old Geng had always passed the test.
+ But now he had betrayed this friendship, and he hung his head, gazing into the clump of reeds that had swallowed the fox, not even turning back to look when he heard the clatter of footsteps behind him.
+ Suddenly he felt a stabbing pain, and stumbled forward, twisting his body, dropping his shotgun to the ice.
+ Something hot squirmed under his pants at the belt line.
+ Running towards him were a dozen uniformed figures armed with rifles and glinting bayonets.
+ Instinctively he yelled in fear, 'Japan!'
+ The Japanese soldiers pounced on him and bayoneted him in the chest and abdomen.
+ He screamed pitifully, like a fox howling for its mate.
+ The blood from his wounds pitted the ice beneath him with its heat.
+ He ripped off his tattered shirt with both hands.
+ In his semiconscious state he saw the furry red fox emerge from the clump of reeds and circle round him once, then crouch down and gaze sympathetically.
+ Its fur glowed brilliantly and its slightly slanted eyes shone like emeralds.
+ After a while, Old Geng felt warm fur rubbing against his body, and he lay there waiting for the razor-sharp teeth to begin ripping him apart.
+ If he were torn to shreds, he'd die with no complaints, for he knew that a man who betrays a trust is lower than an animal.
+ The fox began licking his wounds with its cold tongue.
+ Old Geng was adamant that the fox had repaid his betrayal by saving his life.
+ Where else could you find another man who had sustained eighteen bayonet wounds yet lived to tell the tale?
+ The fox's tongue must have been coated with a miraculous substance since Old Geng's wounds were instantly soothed, as though treated with peppermint oil – or so he said.
+ VILLAGERS WHO HAD gone to town to sell straw sandals announced upon their return: 'Gaomi has been occupied by the Japanese.
+ There's a Rising Sun at the entrance!'
+ The panic-stricken villagers could only wait for the calamity they knew was coming.
+ But not all of them suffered from racing hearts and crawling flesh: two among them went about their business totally unconcerned, never varying their routine.
+ Who were they?
+ One was Old Geng, the other a onetime musician who loved to sing Peking opera – Pocky Cheng.
+ 'What are you afraid of?'
+ Pocky Cheng asked everyone he met.
+ 'We're still common folk, no matter who's in charge.
+ We don't refuse to give the government its grain, and we always pay our taxes.
+ We lie down when we're told, and we kneel when they order us.
+ So who'd dare punish us?
+ Who, I ask you?'
+ His advice calmed many of the people, who began sleeping, eating, and working again.
+ But it didn't take long for the evil wind of Japanese savagery to blow their way: they fed human hearts to police dogs; they raped sixty-year-old women; they hung rows of human heads from electric poles in town.
+ Even with the unflappable examples of Pocky Cheng and Old Geng, rumours of brutality were hard for the people to put aside, especially in their dreams.
+ Pocky Cheng walked around happy all the time.
+ News that the Japanese were on their way to sack the village created a glut in dogshit in and around the village.
+ Apparently the farmers who normally fought over it had grown lazy, for now it lay there waiting for him to come and claim it.
+ He, too, walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time, running into Old Geng with his shotgun slung over his back.
+ They greeted each other and parted ways.
+ By the time the eastern sky had turned red, the pile of dogshit in Pocky Cheng's basket was like a little mountain peak.
+ He laid it down, stood on the southern edge of the village wall, and breathed in the cool, sweet morning air, until his throat itched.
+ He cleared it loudly, then raised his voice to the rosy morning clouds and began to sing: 'I am a thirsty grainstalk drinking up the morning dew –'
+ A shot rang out.
+ His battered, wingless felt hat sailed into the air.
+ Tucking in his neck, he jumped into the ditch beneath the wall like a shot, bumping his head with a resounding thud against the frozen ground.
+ Not sure if he was dead or alive, he tried moving his arms and legs.
+ They were working, but barely.
+ His crotch was all sticky.
+ Fear raced through his heart.
+ I've been hit, he thought.
+ He sat up and stuck his hand down his pants.
+ With his heart in his mouth, he pulled out his hand, expecting it to be all red.
+ But it was covered with something yellow, and his nostrils twitched from the odour of rotten seedlings.
+ He tried to rub the stuff off on the side of the ditch, but it stuck to his skin.
+ He heard a shout from beyond the ditch: 'Stand up!'
+ He looked up to see a man in his thirties with a flat, chiselled face, yellow skin, and a long, jutting chin.
+ He was wearing a chestnut-coloured wool cap and brandishing a black pistol!
+ A forest of yellow-clad legs was aligned behind him, the calves wrapped in wide, crisscrossed cloth leggings.
+ His eyes travelled slowly upward past protruding hips, stopping at dozens of alien faces, all adorned with the smug smile of a man taking a comfortable shit.
+ A Rising Sun flag drooped under the bright-red sunrise; onion-green rays glinted off a line of bayonets.
+ Pocky Cheng's stomach lurched, and his nervous guts relinquished their contents.
+ 'Get up here!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap barked out angrily.
+ Pocky Cheng climbed out of the ditch.
+ Not knowing what to say, he just bowed repeatedly.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap was twitching right under his nose.
+ 'Are there Nationalist troops in the village?' he asked.
+ Pocky Cheng looked at him blankly.
+ A Japanese soldier waved a bloodstained bayonet in front of Pocky Cheng's chest and face.
+ He heard his stomach growl and felt his intestines writhe and twist slowly; at any other moment, he would have welcomed the intensely pleasant sensation of a bowel movement.
+ The Japanese soldier shouted something and swung the bayonet, slicing Pocky Cheng's padded jacket down the middle and freeing the cotton wadding inside.
+ The sharp pain of parted skin and sliced muscles leaped from his rib cage.
+ He doubled over, all the foul liquids in his body seeming to pour out at once.
+ He looked imploringly into the enraged Japanese face and began to wail.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap drove the barrel of his pistol into his forehead.
+ 'Stop blubbering!
+ The commander asked you a question!
+ What village is this?
+ Is it Saltwater Gap?'
+ He nodded, trying hard to control his sobs.
+ 'Is there a man in the village who makes straw sandals?'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap softened his tone a little.
+ Ignoring his pain, he eagerly and ingratiatingly replied, 'Yes yes yes.'
+ 'Did he take his straw sandals to market day in Gaomi yesterday?'
+ 'Yes yes yes,' he jabbered.
+ Warm blood had slithered down from his chest to his belly.
+ 'How about pickles?'
+ 'I don't know . . . don't think so. . . .'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the mouth and shouted: 'Tell me!
+ I want to know about pickles!'
+ 'Yes yes yes, your honour,' he muttered obsequiously.
+ 'Commander, every family has pickles, you can find them in every pickle vat in the village.'
+ 'Stop acting like a fucking idiot.
+ I want to know if there's somebody called Pickles!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the face, over and over.
+ 'Yes . . . no . . . yes . . . no . . .
+ Your honour . . . don't hit me . . .
+ Please don't hit me . . . your honour . . .' he mumbled, reeling from the slaps.
+ The Japanese said something.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap swept the hat off his head and bowed, then turned back, the smile on his face gone in an instant.
+ He shoved Pocky Cheng and said with a scowl, 'We want to see all the sandal makers in the village.
+ You lead the way.'
+ Concerned about the dung basket he'd left on the wall, Pocky Cheng instinctively cocked his head in that direction.
+ A bayonet that shone like snow flashed past his cheek.
+ Quickly concluding that his life was worth more than a dung basket and spade, he turned his head back and set out for the village on his bandy legs.
+ Dozens of Japs fell in behind him, their leather boots crunching across the frost-covered grass.
+ A few grey dogs barked tentatively.
+ I'm really in a fix this time, Pocky Cheng was thinking.
+ No one else went out to collect dogshit, no one but me, and I ran into some real dogshit luck.
+ The fact that the Japanese didn't appreciate his good-citizen attitude frustrated him.
+ He led them quickly to each of the sandal makers' cellars.
+ Whoever Pickle was, he was sure in one now.
+ Pocky Cheng looked off into the distance towards his house, where green smoke curled into the sky from the solitary kitchen chimney.
+ It was the most intense longing for home he'd ever known.
+ As soon as he was finished he'd go there, change into clean pants, and have his wife rub some lime into the bayonet wound on his chest.
+ The great woodwind player of Northeast Gaomi Township had never been in such a mess.
+ Oh, how he longed for his lovely wife, who had grumbled about his pocked face at first, but, resigned at last, had decided that if you marry a chicken you share the coop; marry a dog and you share the kennel.
+ EARLY-MORNING GUNFIRE beyond the village startled Second Grandma out of a dream in which she was fighting Grandma tooth and nail.
+ She sat up, her heart thumping wildly, and, try as she might, she couldn't decide if the noise had just been part of the dream.
+ The window was coated with pale morning sunlight; a grotesque pattern of frost had formed on the pane.
+ Shuddering from the cold, she tilted her head so she could see her daughter, my aunt, who was lying beside her, snoring peacefully.
+ The sweet, even breathing of the five-year-old girl soothed Second Grandma's fears.
+ Maybe it was only Old Geng shooting at wild game, a mountain lion or something, she consoled herself.
+ She had no way of knowing how accurate her prediction was, nor could she have known that while she was sliding back under the covers the tips of Japanese bayonets were jabbing Old Geng's ribs.
+ Little Auntie rolled over and nestled up against Second Grandma, who wrapped her arms around her until she could feel the little girl's warm breath against her chest.
+ Eight years had passed since Grandma had kicked her out of the house.
+ During that time, Granddad had been tricked into going to the Jinan police station, where he nearly lost his life.
+ But he managed to escape and make his way home, where Grandma had taken Father to live with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society.
+ When Granddad fought Black Eye to a standstill at the Salty Water River, he touched Grandma so deeply she followed him home, where they ran the distillery with renewed vitality.
+ Granddad put his rifle away, bringing his bandit days to an end, and began life as a wealthy peasant, at least for the next few years.
+ They were troubling years, thanks to the rivalry between Grandma and Second Grandma.
+ In the end, they reached a 'tripartite agreement' in which Granddad would spend ten days with Grandma, then ten days with Second Grandma – ten days was the absolute limit.
+ He stuck to his bargain, since neither woman was an economy lantern, someone to be taken lightly.
+ Second Grandma was enjoying the sweetness of her sorrows as she hugged Little Auntie.
+ She was three months pregnant.
+ A period of increased tenderness, pregnancy is a time of weakness during which women need attention and protection, and Second Grandma was no exception.
+ Counting the days on her fingers, she longed for Granddad.
+ He would be there tomorrow.
+ Another crisp gunshot sounded outside the village,
+
+ 黑皮肤女人特有的像紫红色葡萄一样的丰满嘴唇使二奶奶恋儿魅力无穷。
+ 她的出身、来历已被岁月的沙尘深深掩埋。
+ 黄色的潮湿沙土埋住了她的弹性丰富的年轻肉体，埋住了她的豆荚一样饱满的脸庞和死不瞑目的瓦蓝色的眼睛，遮断了她愤怒的、癫狂的、无法无天的、向肮脏的世界挑战的、也眷恋美好世界的、洋溢着强烈性意识的目光。
+ 二奶奶其实是被埋葬在故乡的黑土地里的。
+ 盛殓她的散发着血腥味尸体的是一具浅薄的柳木板棺材，棺材上涂着深一片浅一片的酱红颜色，颜色也遮没不了天牛幼虫在柳木板上钻出的洞眼。
+ 但二奶奶乌黑发亮的肉体被金黄色沙土掩没住的景象，却牢牢地刻印在我的大脑的屏幕上，永远也不漶散地成象在我的意识的眼里。
+ 我看到好象在温暖的红色阳光照耀着的厚重而沉痛的沙滩上，隆起了一道人形的丘陵。
+ 二奶奶的曲线流畅；二奶奶的双乳高耸；二奶奶的崎岖不平的额头上流动着细小的沙流；二奶奶性感的双唇从金沙中凸出来，好象在召唤着一种被华丽的衣裳遮住了的奔放的实事求是精神……
+ 我知道这一切都是幻象，我知道二奶奶是被故乡的黑土掩埋的。
+ 在她的坟墓周围只有壁立的红色高粱，站在她的坟墓前——如果不是万木肃杀的冬天或熏风解愠的阳春——你连地平线也看不到，高密东北乡梦魇般的高粱遮挡着你，使你鼠目寸光。
+ 那么，你仰起你的葵花般的青黄脸盘，从高粱的缝隙里，去窥视蓝得令人心惊的天国光辉吧！
+ 你在墨水河永不欢乐的呜咽声中，去聆听天国传来的警悟执迷灵魂的音乐吧！
+ 那天早晨，天空是澄彻美丽的蔚蓝色，太阳尚未出头，初冬的混沌地平线被一线耀眼的深红镶着边。
+ 老耿向一匹尾巴像火炬般的红毛狐狸开了一土枪。
+ 老耿是咸水口子村独一无二的玩枪的人，他打雁、打野兔、打野鸭子、打黄鼠狼、打狐狸，万般无奈也打麻雀。
+ 初冬深秋，高密东北乡的麻雀都结成庞大的密集团体，成千只麻雀汇集成一团褐色的破云，贴着苍莽的大地疾速地翻滚。
+ 傍晚，它们飞回村，落在挂着孤单枯叶的柳树上，柳条青黄、赤裸裸下垂或上指，枝条上结满麻雀。
+ 一抹夕阳烧红了天边云霞，树上涂满亮色，麻雀漆黑的眼睛像金色的火星一样满树闪烁。
+ 它们不停地跳动着，树冠上翅羽翻卷。
+ 老耿端起枪，眯缝起一只三角眼，一搂扳机响了枪，冰雹般的金麻雀劈哩啪啦往下落，铁砂子在柳枝间飞迸着，嚓嚓有声。
+ 没受伤的麻雀思索片刻，看着自己的同伴们垂直落地后，才振翅逃窜——像弹片一样，射到暮气深沈的高天里去。
+ 父亲幼年时吃过老耿的麻雀。
+ 麻雀肉味鲜美，营养丰富。
+ 三十多年后，我跟着哥哥在杂种高粱试验田里，与狡猾的麻雀展开过激烈坚韧的斗争。
+ 老耿那时已七十多岁，孤身一人，享受“五保”待遇，是村里德高望重的人物，每逢诉苦大会，都要他上台诉苦。
+ 每次诉苦，他都要剥掉上衣，露出一片疤痕。
+ 他总是说：“日本鬼子捅了我十八刀、我全身泡在血里，没有死，为什么没有死呢？
+ 全仗着狐仙搭救。
+ 我躺了不知道多久，一睁眼，满眼红光，那个大恩大德的狐仙，正伸着舌头，呱唧呱唧地舔着我的刀伤……”
+ 老耿头——耿十八刀家里供着一个狐仙牌位，“文化大革命”初起，红卫兵去他家砸牌位，他握着一把切菜刀蹲在牌位前，红卫兵灰溜溜地退了。
+ 老耿早就侦察好了那条红毛老狐的行动路线，但一直没舍得打它。
+ 他看着它长起了一身好皮毛，又厚又绒，非常漂亮，肯定能卖好价钱。
+ 他知道打它的时候倒了，它在生的世界上已经享受够了。
+ 它每天夜里都要偷一只鸡吃。
+ 村里人无论把鸡窝插得多牢，它都能捣古开；无论设置多少陷阱圈套，它都能避开。
+ 村里人的鸡窝在那一年里，仿佛成了这只狐狸的食品储藏库。
+ 老耿在鸡叫三遍时出了村，埋伏在村前洼地边沿一道低矮的土堰后，等待着它偷鸡归来。
+ 洼地里丛生着半人高的枯瘦芦苇，秋天潴留的死水结成一层勉可行人的白色薄冰，黄褐色的小芦苇缨子在凌晨时分寒冽的空气中颤栗着，遥远的东方天际上渐渐强烈的光明投在冰上，泛起鲤鱼鳞片般的润泽光彩。
+ 后来东天边辉煌起来，冰上、芦苇上都染上了寒冷的死血光辉。
+ 老耿闻到了它的气味，看到密集的芦苇棵子像舒缓的波浪一样慢慢漾动着，很快又合拢。
+ 他把冻僵了的右手食指放到嘴边哈哈，按到沾满白色霜花的扳机上。
+ 它从芦苇丛中跳出来，站在白色的冰上。
+ 冰上通红一片，像着了火一样。
+ 它的瘦削的嘴巴上冻结着深红的鸡血，一片麻色的鸡羽沾在它嘴边的胡须上。
+ 它雍容大度地在冰上走。
+ 老耿喝了一声，它立正站住，眯着眼睛看着土壤。
+ 老耿浑身打起颤来，狐狸眼里那种隐隐约约的愤怒神情使他心里发虚。
+ 它大摇大摆地往冰那边的芦苇丛中走，它的巢穴就在那片芦苇里。
+ 老耿闭着眼开了枪。
+ 枪托子猛力后座，震得他半个肩膀麻酥酥的。
+ 狐狸像一团火，滚进了芦苇丛。
+ 他站起来，提着枪，看着深绿的硝烟在清清的空气中扩散着。
+ 他知道它正在芦苇丛里仇恨地盯着自己。
+ 他的身体立在银子般的天光下，显得又长又大。
+ 一种类似愧疚的心情在他心里漾起，他后悔了。
+ 他想到一年来狐狸对他表示的信任，狐狸明知道他就伏在土堰后，却依旧缓慢地在冰上走，就好象对他的良心进行考验一样。
+ 他开了枪，无疑是对这异类朋友的背叛。
+ 他对着狐狸消遁的芦苇丛垂下了头，连身后响起杂沓的脚步声，他都没有回头。
+ 后来，有一线扎人的寒冷从他的腰带上方刺进来，他身体往前一蹿，回转了身，土枪掉在冰上。
+ 一股热流在棉裤腰间蠕动着。
+ 迎着他的面，逼过来十几个身穿土黄色服装的人。
+ 他们手里托着大枪，枪刺明亮。
+ 他不由自主地惊叫一声：“日本！”
+ 十几个日本士兵走上前去，在他的胸膛上、肚腹上，每人刺了一刀。
+ 他发出一声狐狸求偶般的凄惨叫声，一头栽倒在冰上。
+ 额头撞得白冰开裂。
+ 他身上流出的血把身下的冰烫得坑坑洼洼。
+ 在昏迷中，他感到上半身像被火苗子燎烤着一样灼热，双手用力撕扯着破烂的棉衣。
+ 他在恍惚中，看到那只红毛狐狸从芦苇里走出来，围着他的身体转了一圈，然后蹲在他的身前，同情地看着他。
+ 狐狸的皮毛灿烂极了，狐狸的略微有点斜视的眼睛像两颗绿色的宝石。
+ 后来他感到了狐狸的温暖的皮毛凑近了自己的身体，他等待着它的尖利牙齿的撕咬。
+ 他知道人一旦背叛信义连畜牲也不如，即使被它咬死他也死而无怨。
+ 狐狸伸出凉森森的舌头舔着他的伤口。
+ 老耿坚定地认为，是这条以德报怨的狐狸救了他的命，世界上恐怕难以找出第二个挨了十八刺刀还能活下来的人了。
+ 狐狸的舌头上一定有灵丹妙药，凡是它舔到的地方，立即像涂了薄荷油一样舒服，老耿说。
+ 村里有人进县城卖草鞋，回来说：日本人占了高密城，城头上插着太阳旗。
+ 听到这消息，全村人几乎都坐卧不宁，等待着大祸降临。
+ 在众人惴惴不安、心惊肉跳的时候，却有两个人无忧无虑， 照旧干自己的营生。
+ 这两个人，一个是前面提到的自由猎手老耿；另一个是当过吹鼓手、喜欢唱京戏的成麻子。
+ 成麻子逢人便说：“你们怕什么？
+ 愁什么？
+ 谁当官咱也是为民。
+ 咱一不抗皇粮，二不抗国税，让躺着就躺着，让跪着就跪着，谁好意思治咱的罪？
+ 你说，谁好意思治咱的罪？”
+ 成麻子的劝导使不少人镇静下来，大家又开始睡觉、吃饭、干活。
+ 不久，日本人的暴行阴风般传来：杀人修炮楼，扒人心喂狼狗，奸淫六十岁的老太太，县城里的电线杆上挂着成串的人头。
+ 虽有成麻子和老耿做着无忧无虑的表率、人们也想仿效他们，但教的曲儿唱不得，人们即使在睡梦中，也难以忘掉流言中描绘出的残酷画面。
+ 成麻子一直很高兴，日本人即将前来洗劫的消息使村里村外的狗屎大增，往常早起抢捡狗屎的庄稼汉仿佛都懒惰了，遍地的狗屎没人捡，好象单为成麻子准备的。
+ 他也是鸡叫三遍时出的村，在村前碰到了背着土枪的老耿，打了个招呼，就各走各的道。
+ 东边一抹红时，成麻子的狗屎筐子起了尖。
+ 他把粪筐放下，提着铁铲，站在村南土围子上，呼吸着又甜又凉的空气，嗓子眼里痒痒的。
+ 他清清嗓子，顿喉高唱，对着天边的红霞：“我好比久旱的禾苗逢了哪甘霖——”
+ 一声枪响。
+ 成麻子头上的破毡帽不翼而飞，他脖子一缩，子弹般迅速地扎到围子沟里。
+ 脑袋撞得坚硬的冻土砰砰响他不痛也不痒。
+ 后来，他看到自己的嘴边是一堆煤灰渣子，一条磨秃了的苕帚疙瘩旁边躺着一只浑身煤灰的死耗子。
+ 他不知自己是死是活，活动了一下胳膊腿，能动弹，但似乎都不灵便。
+ 裤裆里粘糊糊的。
+ 一阵恐怖涌上心头，毁了，挂彩了，他想。
+ 他试探着坐起来，把手伸进裤裆间一摸。
+ 他心惊胆战地等待着摸出一手红来，举到眼前一看，却是满手焦黄。
+ 他的鼻子里充满了揉烂禾苗的味道。
+ 他把手掌放到沟底上蹭着，蹭不掉，又拿起那个破苕帚疙瘩来擦，正擦得起劲，就听到沟外一声吼：“站起来！”
+ 他抬头看到，吼叫的人三十岁出头，面孔像刀削的一样，皮肤焦黄，下巴漫长，头戴一顶香色呢礼帽，手里持着一只乌黑的短枪。
+ 在他的身后，是几十条劈开站着的土黄色的腿，腿肚子上绑扎着十字盘花的宽布条子，沿着腿往上看，是奓出来的腰胯和几十张异国情调的脸，那些脸上都带着蹲坑大便般的幸福表情。
+ 一面方方正正的太阳旗在通红的朝霞下耷拉着，一柄柄刺刀上汪着葱绿色的光彩。
+ 成麻子肚腹里一阵骚动，战战兢兢的排泄愉悦在他的腔肠里呼噜噜滚动。
+ “上来！”
+ 香色礼帽怒气冲冲地喊。
+ 成麻子扎好布腰带，哈着腰爬上沟堐，四肢拘谨得没处安放，大眼珠子灰白，不知说什么好，就直着劲点头哈腰。
+ 香色呢礼帽搐动着鼻子问：“村子里有国民党的队伍吗？”
+ 成麻子愣愣怔怔地望着他。
+ 一个日本兵端着滴血的刺刀，对着他的胸膛和他的脸晃动，刀尖上的寒气刺激着他的眼睛和肚腹，他听到自己的肚子里呼噜噜响着，肠子频频抽动，更加强烈的排泄快感使他手舞足蹈起来。
+ 日本兵叫了一声，把刺刀往下一摆，他的棉衣哗然一声裂开，破烂棉絮绽出，沿着棉衣的破缝，他的胸肋间爆发了一阵肌肉破裂的痛苦。
+ 他把身体紧缩成一团，眼泪、鼻涕、大便、小便几乎是一齐冒出来。
+ 日本兵又呜噜了一句话，很长，吐噜吐噜的，像葡萄一样。
+ 他痛苦地祈望着日本人怒冲冲的脸，大声哭起来。
+ 香色呢礼帽用手枪筒子戳了一下他的额头，说：“别哭！
+ 太君问你话呢！
+ 这是什么村？
+ 是咸水口子吗？”
+ 他强忍住抽泣，点了点头。
+ “这村里有编草鞋的吗？”
+ 香色呢礼帽用稍微和善一点的口气问。
+ 他顾不上伤痛，急忙地、讨好似的回答：“有，有，有。”
+ “昨天高密大集，有去赶集卖草鞋的没有？”香色呢礼帽又问。
+ “有有有”。他说。
+ 胸脯上流出的血已经热乎乎地淌到肚子上。
+ “有个叫咸菜疙瘩的吗？”
+ “不知道…… 没有……”
+ 香色呢礼帽熟练地搧了他一个耳光，叫道：“说！
+ 有没有咸菜疙瘩！”
+ “有有有，长官。”
+ 他又委屈地呜咽起来，“长官，家家都有咸菜疙瘩，家家户户的咸菜瓮里都有咸菜疙瘩。”
+ “他娘的，你装什么憨，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人！”
+ 呢礼帽劈劈啪啪地抽打着他的脸，骂着，“刁民，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人。”
+ “有…… 没有…… 有…… 没有……
+ 长官…… 别打我……
+ 别打我，长官……”
+ 他被大耳刮子搧昏了，颠三倒四地说。
+ 日本人说了一句什么，呢礼帽摘下礼帽，对鬼子鞠了一躬，转过身，他脸上的笑容急邃消失，搡了成麻子一把，横眉立目地说：“带路，进村，把编草鞋的都给我找出来。”
+ 他记挂着扔在围子上的粪筐和粪铲，不由自主地往后歪头，一柄雪亮的刺刀从他的腮帮子旁边欻啦顺过来。
+ 他想明白了，命比粪筐和粪铲值钱多了，便再也不回头，罗圈着腿往村里走。
+ 几十个鬼子在他身后走着，大皮靴踩得沾霜枯草咯崩咯崩响。
+ 几只灰溜溜的狗躺在墙犄角里小心翼翼地叫着。
+ 天空愈加晴朗，大半个太阳压着灰褐色的土地。
+ 村里的婴孩哭声衬出一个潜藏着巨大恐怖的宁静村庄。
+ 日本士兵整齐的踏步声像节奏分明的鼓声，震荡着他的耳膜，撞击着他的胸膛。
+ 他感到胸膛上的伤口像着火一样烫，裤子里的粪便又粘又冷。
+ 他想到自己倒霉透了，别人都不拣狗屎了，他偏要拣狗屎，于是撞上了狗屎运气。
+ 他为日本人不理解他的顺民态度感到委屈。
+ 赶快把他们带到那几个草鞋窨子里去，谁是咸菜疙瘩谁倒霉。
+ 远远地望见家门口了，被夏季的暴雨抽打得坑坑洼洼的房顶上生着几蓬白色的草，孤零零的烟筒里冒着青蓝色的炊烟，他从来没有感到对家有如此强烈的眷恋，他想完了事快回家，换条干净裤子，让老婆往胸膛的刀口上洒点石灰，血大概快流光了，眼前迸发着一簇簇的绿星星，双腿已经发软，一阵阵的恶心从肚里往喉咙里爬。
+ 他从来没这样狼狈过，高密东北乡吹唢吶的好手从来没这样狼狈过。
+ 他脚踩浮云，两汪冰冷的泪水盈满了眼泡。
+ 他思念着漂亮的、因为自己满脸麻子而抱屈、但也只好嫁鸡随鸡嫁狗随狗的妻子。
+ 凌晨时村外一声枪响，把正在梦中与我奶奶厮打的二奶奶惊醒了。
+ 她坐起来，心窝里噗噗通通乱跳一阵，想了好久，也没弄清楚是村外发生了什么事情了呢，还是梦中的幻觉。
+ 窗户上已布满淡薄的晨曦，那块巴掌大的窗玻璃上结着奇形怪状的霜花。
+ 二奶奶感到双肩冰凉，她斜了一下脸，看到躺在身侧的她的女儿、我的小姑姑正在鼾睡。
+ 五岁女孩甜蜜均匀的呼吸声把二奶奶心中的恐惧平息了。
+ 二奶奶想，也许是老耿又在打什么山猫野兽吧，她不知道这个推测十分正确，更不知道当她又痴坐片刻，拉开被子重新钻进被窝时，日本人锋利的刺刀正在穿插着老耿坚韧的肉体。
+ 小姑姑一翻身，滚进了二奶奶的怀里，二奶奶抱着她，感觉到女孩温暖的呼吸一缕缕地吹到自己的胸膛上。
+ 二奶奶被奶奶赶出家门已有八年，这期间爷爷曾被骗到济南府，险些送了性命。
+ 后来爷爷死里逃生，跑回家乡，奶奶那时带着父亲与铁板会头子黑眼住在一处。
+ 爷爷与黑眼在盐水河边决斗，虽然被打翻在地，但却唤起了奶奶心中难以泯灭的深情。
+ 奶奶追上爷爷，重返家乡，振兴烧酒买卖。
+ 爷爷洗手插枪，不干土匪生涯，当了几年富贵农民。
+ 在这几年里，使爷爷长久烦恼的，是奶奶与二奶奶的争风吃醋。
+ 争风吃醋的结果，是订了“三家条约”：爷爷在奶奶家住十天，就转移到二奶奶家住十天，不得逾约。
+ 爷爷向来是严守法则，因为这两个女人，哪个也不是省油的灯。
+ 二奶奶搂抱着小姑姑，心里泛滥着甜蜜忧愁。
+ 她又有了三个月的身孕。
+ 怀孕后的女人一般都变得善良温和，但也软弱，需要照顾和保护。
+ 二奶奶也不例外，她掐着指头数算日子，她盼望着爷爷，爷爷明天到来……
+ 村外又是一声尖锐的枪响。
+
+ Longtang
+ LOOKED DOWN UPON from the highest point in the city, Shanghai's longtang—her vast neighborhoods inside enclosed alleys—are a magnificent sight.
+ The longtang are the backdrop of this city.
+ Streets and buildings emerge around them in a series of dots and lines, like the subtle brushstrokes that bring life to the empty expanses of white paper in a traditional Chinese landscape painting.
+ As day turns into night and the city lights up, these dots and lines begin to glimmer.
+ However, underneath the glitter lies an immense blanket of darkness—these are the longtang of Shanghai.
+ The darkness looks almost to be a series of furious waves that threaten to wash away the glowing dots and lines.
+ It has volume, whereas all those lines and dots float on the surface—they are there only to differentiate the areas of this dark mass, like punctuation marks whose job it is to break up an essay into sentences and paragraphs.
+ The darkness is like an abyss—even a mountain falling in would be swallowed whole and sink silently to the bottom.
+ Countless reefs lurk beneath this swelling ocean of darkness, where one false move could capsize a ship.
+ The darkness buoys up Shanghai's handful of illuminated lines and dots, supporting them decade after decade.
+ Against this decades-old backdrop of darkness, the Paris of the Orient unfolds her splendor.
+ Today, everything looks worn out, exposing bit by bit what lies underneath.
+ One strand at a time, the first rays of the morning sun shine through just as, one by one, the city lights go out.
+ Everything begins from a cover of light fog, through which a horizontal ray of light crafts an outline as if drawing it out with a fine brush.
+ First to appear are the dormer windows protruding from the rooftop tingzijian of those traditional longtang buildings, showing themselves off with a certain self-conscious delicacy; the wooden shutters are carefully delineated, the handmade rooftop tiles are arranged with precision, even the potted roses on the windowsills have been cared for painstakingly.
+ Next to emerge are the balconies; here articles of clothing hung out to dry the night before cling motionless like a scene out of a painting.
+ The cement on the balustrade peels away to reveal the rusty red bricks beneath—this too looks as if painted in a picture, each brushstroke appearing clear and distinct.
+ After that come the cracked gable walls, lined with traces of green moss that look cold and clammy to the touch.
+ The first rays of light shining on the gable walls create a stunning picture, a gorgeous portrait, bearing just a hint of desolation, fresh and new yet not without a past.
+ At this moment the cement pavement of the longtang is still enveloped in fog, which lingers thick in the back alleys.
+ But on the iron-railed balconies of the newer longtang apartments the sunlight is already striking the glass panes on the French doors, which refract the light.
+ This stroke is a relatively sharp one, and seems to pull back the curtain that separates day from night.
+ The sunlight finally drives away the fog, washing everything in its path with a palette of strong color.
+ The moss turns out to be not green but a dark raven hue, the wooden window frames start to blacken, and the iron railing on the balcony becomes a rusted yellow.
+ One can see blades of green grass growing from between the cracks in the gables, and the white pigeons turn gray as they soar up into the sky.
+ Shanghai's longtang come in many different forms, each with colors and sounds of its own.
+ Unable to decide on any one appearance, they remain fickle, sometimes looking like this, sometimes looking like that.
+ Actually, despite their constant fluctuations, they always remain the same—the shape may shift but the spirit is unchanged.
+ Back and forth they go, but in the end it's the same old story, like an army of a thousand united by a single goal.
+ Those longtang that have entryways with stone gates emanate an aura of power.
+ They have inherited the style of Shanghai's glorious old mansions.
+ Sporting the facade of an official residence, they make it a point to have a grandiose entrance and high surrounding walls.
+ But, upon entering, one discovers that the courtyard is modest and the reception area narrow—two or three steps and you are already at the wooden staircase across the room.
+ The staircase is not curved, but leads straight up into the bedroom, where a window overlooking the street hints at romantic ardor.
+ The trendy longtang neighborhoods in the eastern district of Shanghai have done away with such haughty airs.
+ They greet you with low wrought-iron gates of floral design.
+ For them a small window overlooking a side street is not enough; they all have to have walk-out balconies, the better to enjoy the street scenery.
+ Fragrant oleanders reach out over the courtyard walls, as if no longer able to contain their springtime passion.
+ Deep down, however, those inside still have their guard up: the back doors are bolted shut with spring locks of German manufacture, the windows on the ground floor all have steel bars, the low front gates of wrought iron are crowned with ornamented spikes, and walls protect the courtyard on all sides.
+ One may enter at will, but escape seems virtually impossible.
+ On the western side of the city, the apartment-style longtang take an even stricter approach to security.
+ These structures are built in clusters, with doors that look as if not even an army of ten thousand could force their way inside.
+ The walls are soundproof so that people living even in close quarters cannot hear one another, and the buildings are widely spaced so that neighbors can avoid one another.
+ This is security of a democratic sort—trans-Atlantic style—to ensure and protect individual freedom.
+ Here people can do whatever their hearts desire, and there is no one to stop them.
+ The longtang in the slums are open-air.
+ The makeshift roofs leak in the rain, the thin plywood walls fail to keep out the wind, and the doors and windows never seem to close properly.
+ Apartment structures are built virtually on top of one another, cheek by jowl, breathing down upon each other's necks.
+ Their lights are like tiny glowing peas, not very bright, but dense as a pot of pea porridge.
+ Like a great river, these longtang have innumerable tributaries, and their countless branches resemble those of a tall tree.
+ Crisscrossing, they form a giant web.
+ On the surface they appear entirely exposed, but in reality they conceal a complex inner soul that remains mysterious, unfathomable.
+ As dusk approaches, flocks of pigeons hover about the Shanghai skyline in search of their nests.
+ The rooftop ridges rise and fall, extending into the distance; viewed from the side, they form an endless mountain range, and from the front, a series of vertical summits.
+ Viewed from the highest peak, they merge into one boundless vista that looks the same from all directions.
+ Like water flowing aimlessly, they seem to creep into every crevice and crack, but upon closer inspection they fall into an orderly pattern.
+ At once dense and wide-ranging, they resemble rye fields where the farmers, having scattered their seeds, are now harvesting a rich crop.
+ Then again, they are a little like a pristine forest, living and dying according to its own cycle.
+ Altogether they make for a scene of the utmost beauty and splendor.
+ The longtang of Shanghai exude a sensuality like the intimacy of flesh on flesh—cool and warm, tangible and knowable, a little self-centered.
+ The grease-stained rear kitchen window is where the amah gossips.
+ Beside the window is the back door; from this the eldest daughter goes out to school and holds her secret rendezvous with her boyfriend.
+ The front door, reserved for distinguished guests, opens only on important occasions.
+ On each side of the door hang couplets announcing marriages, funerals, and other family events.
+ The door seems always to be in a state of uncontrollable, even garrulous, excitement.
+ Echoes of secret whispers linger around the flat roof, the balcony, and the windows.
+ At night, the sounds of rapping on the doors rise and fall in the darkness.
+ To return to the highest point in the city and look down on it from another angle: clothes hanging out to dry on the cluttered bamboo poles hint at the private lives and loves that lie hidden beneath.
+ In the garden, potted balsams, ghost flowers, scallions, and garlic also breathe the faint air of a secret affair.
+ The empty pigeon cage up on the roof is an empty heart.
+ Broken roof tiles lying in disarray are symbols of the body and soul.
+ Some of the gullylike alleys are lined with cement, others with cobblestone.
+ The cement alleys make you feel cut off, while the cobblestone alleys give the sensation of a fleshy hand.
+ Footsteps sound different in these two types of longtang.
+ In the former the sound is crisp and bright, but in the latter it is something that you absorb and keep inside.
+ The former is a collection of polite pleasantries, the latter of words spoken from the bottom of one's heart.
+ Neither is like an official document; both belong to the necessary language of the everyday.
+ The back alleys of Shanghai try even harder to work their way into people's hearts.
+ The pavement is covered with a layer of cracks.
+ Gutters overflow; floating in the discolored water are fish scales and rotten vegetable leaves, as well as the greasy lampblack from the stovetop.
+ It is dirty and grimy, impure, here.
+ Here the most private secrets are exposed, and not always in the most conventional fashion.
+ Because of this a pall hangs over these back alleys.
+ The sunlight does not shine through until three o'clock in the afternoon and before long the sun begins to set in the west.
+ But this little bit of sunlight envelops the back alleys in a blanket of warm color.
+ The walls turn a brilliant yellow, highlighting the unevenness of the rough whetstone and giving it the texture of coarse sand.
+ The windows also turn a golden yellow, but they are scratched and stained.
+ By now the sun has been shining down for a long time and is beginning to show signs of fatigue.
+ Summoning up the last vestiges of radiance from the depths, the lingering rays of sunlight flicker with a sticky thickness of built-up residue, rather dirty.
+ As twilight encroaches, flocks of pigeons soar overhead, dust motes drift, and stray cats wander in and out of sight.
+ This is a feeling that, having penetrated the flesh, goes beyond closeness.
+ One begins to weary of it.
+ It breeds a secret fear, but hidden within that fear is an excitement that gnaws down to the bone.
+ What moves you about the longtang of Shanghai stems from the most mundane scenes: not the surging rush of clouds and rain, but something steadily accumulated over time.
+ It is the excitement of cooking smoke and human vitality.
+ Something is flowing through the longtang that is unpredictable yet entirely rational, small, not large, and trivial—but then even a castle can be made out of sand.
+ It has nothing to do with things like "history," not even "unofficial history": we can only call it gossip.
+ Gossip is yet another landscape in the Shanghai longtang—you can almost see it as it sneaks out through the rear windows and the back doors.
+ What emerges from the front doors and balconies is a bit more proper—but it is still gossip.
+ These rumors may not necessarily qualify as history, but they carry with them the shadows of time.
+ There is order in their progression, which follows the law of preordained consequences.
+ These rumors cling to the skin and stick to the flesh; they are not cold or stiff, like a pile of musty old books.
+ Though marred by untruths, these are falsehoods that have feeling.
+ When the city's streetlights are ablaze, its longtang remain in darkness, save the lonely street lamps hanging on the alley corners.
+ The lamps, enclosed in crude frames of rusty iron covered with dust, emit a murky yellow glow.
+ On the ground, a shroud of thick mist forms and begins to spread out—this is the time when rumors and gossip start to brew.
+ It is a gloomy hour, when nothing is clear, yet it is enough to break the heart.
+ Pigeons coo in their cages, talking their language of secret whispers.
+ The streetlights shine with a prim and proper light, but as soon as that light streams into the longtang alleys, it is overwhelmed by darkness.
+ The kind of gossip exchanged in the front rooms and adjoining wings belongs to the old school and smacks faintly of potpourri.
+ The gossip in the rooftop tingzijian and staircases is new school and smells of mothballs.
+ But, old school or new, gossip is always told in earnest—you could even say it is told in the spirit of truth.
+ This is like scooping water with one's hands: even though you might lose half the water along the way, with enough persistence you can still fill up a pond.
+ Or like the swallow that, though she may drop half the earth and twigs she is carrying in her beak, can still build a nest—there is no need for laziness or trickery.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are an unbearable sight.
+ The patches of green moss growing in the shade are, in truth, like scars growing over a wound; it takes time for the wound to heal.
+ It is because the moss lacks a proper place that it grows in the shade and shadows—years go by and it never sees the sun.
+ Now ivy grows out in the open, but it serves as Time's curtain and always has something to hide.
+ The pigeons gaze down at the outstretching billows of roof tiles as they take to the air, and their hearts are stabbed with pain.
+ Coming up over the longtang rooftops, the sun shoots out its belabored rays—a majestic sight pieced together from countless minute fragments, an immense power born of immeasurable patience.
+ Gossip
+ Gossip always carries with it an exhalation of gloom.
+ This murky air sometimes smells like lavender in a bedroom, sometimes like mothballs, and at other times like a kitchen chopping block.
+ It does not remind you of the smell of tobacco plugs or cigars, nor is it even faintly reminiscent of the smell of insecticides like Lindane or Dichlorvos.
+ It is not a strong masculine scent, but a soft feminine one—the scent of a woman.
+ It combines the smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, the smell of cosmetics and cooking oil, mixed in with a bit of sweat.
+ Gossip is always trailed by clouds and a screen of mist.
+ Shadowy and indistinct, it is a fogged-up window—a windowpane covered with a layer of dust.
+ Shanghai has as many rumors as longtang: too many to be counted, too many to be told.
+ There is something infectious about gossip; it can transform an official biography into a collection of dubious tales, so that truth becomes indistinguishable from gossip.
+ In the world of rumor, fact cannot be separated from fiction; there is truth within lies, and lies within the truth.
+ That gossip should put on an absurd face is unavoidable; this absurdity is the incredulity born of girlish inexperience, and is at least in part an illusion.
+ In places like the longtang, it travels from back door to back door, and in the blink of an eye the whole world knows all.
+ Gossip is like the silent electrical waves crisscrossing in the air above the city, like formless clouds that enshroud the whole city, slowly brewing into a shower, intermixing right and wrong.
+ The rain comes down not in a torrent but as a hazy springtime drizzle.
+ Although not violent, it drenches the air with an inescapable humidity.
+ Never underestimate these rumors: soft and fine as these raindrops may be, you will never struggle free of them.
+ Every longtang in Shanghai is steeped in an atmosphere of gossip, where right and wrong get twisted and confused.
+ In the elegant apartment-style longtang on the west side of town, this atmosphere is free of clouds, refreshing and transparent as a bright autumn day.
+ Moving down among the modern-style longtang neighborhoods, the atmosphere becomes a bit more turgid and turbulent, blowing to and fro like the wind.
+ Lower down still is the fractious atmosphere of the old-style longtang neighborhoods with the stone gates.
+ Here the wind has died, replaced by the vapor of a humid day.
+ By the time one gets to where the slum-dwellers live, all is enveloped in mist—not the roseate mists of dawn, but the thick fog that comes before a torrential downpour, when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
+ But regardless of the type of longtang, this atmosphere penetrates everywhere.
+ You could say that it is the genius loci of Shanghai's alleys.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could speak, they would undoubtedly speak in rumors.
+ They are the thoughts of Shanghai's longtang, disseminating themselves through day and night.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could dream, that dream would be gossip.
+ Gossip is base.
+ With this vulgar heart, it cannot help wallowing in self-degradation.
+ It is like sewer water, used, contaminated.
+ There is nothing aboveboard about it, nothing straight and narrow; it can only whisper secrets behind people's backs.
+ It feels no sense of responsibility, never takes the blame for the outcome—whatever that outcome may be.
+ Because of this, gossip has learned to do as it pleases, running wild like a flood out of control.
+ It never bothers to think things over—and no one ever bothers to think it over.
+ It is a bit like verbal garbage, but then again one can occasionally find small treasures in the garbage.
+ Gossip is made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice.
+ These bits and pieces have faces that are not quite decent; always up to something, they are spoiled merchandise.
+ They are actually made from the crudest materials.
+ However, even the girls in Shanghai's west-end apartments feel compelled to stockpile some of this lowly stuff, because buried deep inside this shamefully base material is where one can find a few genuine articles.
+ These articles lie outside the parameters of what is dignified; their nature is such that no one dares speak of them aloud—and so they are taken and molded into gossip.
+ If gossip has a positive side, it is the part of it that is genuine.
+ The genuine, however, has a false appearance; this is what is known as "making truth out of falsehood, fact from fiction"—it is always dishing itself up in a new form, making a feint to the east while attacking from the west.
+ This truth is what gives you the courage to go out into the world and not fear losing face, or the courage to become a ghost—to go against prevailing opinions.
+ But there is a kind of sorrow that comes with this courage—the sorrow that comes from being thwarted, from being kept from doing what one wishes.
+ However, there is a certain vital energy in this sorrow, because even in the midst of it one's heart surges with high-flying ambition; in fact, it is because of these surging ambitions that one feels such bafflement and loss.
+ This sorrow is not refined like Tang dynasty poetry and Song dynasty lyrics, but belongs to the world of vulgar grievances aired out in the streets.
+ One can feel the weight of this sorrow as it sinks to the bottom.
+ It has nothing of the airy-fairy—the wind, flowers, snow, and the moon dancing on the water—it is the sediment that accumulates at the bottom.
+ Gossip always sinks to the lowest place.
+ There is no need to go looking for it, it is already there—and it will always be there.
+ It cannot be purified by fire or washed clean with water.
+ It has the tenacity for holding onto life that keeps the muscles intact when the bones are shattered, that enables one to swallow the teeth broken in one's mouth—a brazen-faced tenacity.
+ Gossip cannot help but be swashbuckling and sensational.
+ It travels in the company of monsters and goblins; rising with the wind, its elusive tail can never be caught.
+ Only in gossip can the true heart of this city be found.
+ No matter how gorgeous and splendid the city may look on the outside, its heart is vulgar.
+ That heart is born of gossip, and gossip is born of the Shanghai longtang.
+ Magnificent tales of the Far East can be heard all over this Paris of the Orient; but peel away the outer shell and you will discover that gossip lies at its core.
+ Like the center of a pearl—which is actually a rough grain of sand—coarse sand is the material of which gossip is made.
+ Gossip always muddles the senses.
+ Starting with inconsequential things, it winds up trying to rewrite history.
+ Like woodworm, it slowly chews up the books and records, eating away magnificent buildings like an army of termites.
+ Its methods are chaotic, without rhyme, reason, or logic.
+ It goes wherever it wants, swaggering like a hooligan, and wastes no time on long-winded theories, nor does it go into too much detail.
+ It simply spreads across the city, launching surprise attacks; by the time you turn around to see what sneaked up on you from behind, it has already gone without a trace.
+ It leaves in its wake a chain of injustices with no one to take the blame and a string of scores with no one to settle with.
+ It makes no big, sudden movements but quietly works away without stopping.
+ In the end, "many a little makes a lot," and trickling water flows into a great river.
+ This is what is meant by the saying, "Rumors rise in swarms"; they indeed drone and buzz like a nest of hornets.
+ A bit contemptible, maybe, but they are also conscientious.
+ They pick up discarded matchsticks to make a fire.
+ If they see a lone piece of thread on the floor, they will take it up and begin to sew.
+ Though always making trouble, they are nevertheless earnest and sincere.
+ Gossip is never cynical; even if the thing in question is nothing but empty rumors, the utmost care is still put into their creation.
+ Baseless and unreliable as these rumors may be, they are not without a certain warmth of feeling.
+ They mind their own business: whatever others may say, they will stick to their version—to them even settled opinions are taken under advisement.
+ It is not that gossip takes a different political view, but that it does not take any political view; in fact, it lacks the most basic knowledge about politics.
+ Always going by back roads and entering through side doors, it does not stand in opposition to society—it forms its own society.
+ As far as society is concerned, these are small and inconsequential things, like twigs and knots on a tree.
+ And precisely because society never takes these things seriously, they are able to maneuver unseen through the darkness and have their way.
+ Combined together, they constitute a power that should not be underestimated, in the way that a butterfly beating its wings here can cause a hurricane in a faraway place.
+ Rumors deviate from traditional moral codes but never claim to be antifeudal.
+ Like a true bum, they chip away at the foundations of public decency.
+ They wouldn't hesitate to pull the emperor down off his horse—not in order to install a new republic, but merely as an act of defiance.
+ Despising revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, they themselves are consistently slighted and deserted by both sides.
+ Indeed, there is not a presentable one in the whole lot—if there were, they could be promoted to the level of "public opinion," where they could advance into the open.
+ Instead, they have to be content with making secret maneuvers under the cover of darkness.
+ They care not that they are mere whispers in people's ears; they'll make their home wherever their wanderings take them, having no conception of what it means to build an enterprise.
+ These are creatures without ambition, holding out no hopes; in fact, they do not even have the ability to think.
+ All they have is the natural capacity to cause trouble and make mischief; they grow and reproduce in complete ignorance.
+ They reproduce at quite startling rates, hatching all at once like spawn.
+ Their methods of reproduction are also varied; sometimes linear, like a chain of interlocking rings, at other times concentric, like a suite of riddles.
+ They spread through the city air like a pack of down-at-the-heel vagrants.
+ But the truth is, gossip is one of the things that make this city so romantic.
+ What makes gossip romantic is its unbridled imagination.
+ With the imagination completely free from all fetters, gossip can leap through the dragon's gate and squeeze through the dog's den.
+ No one is better at making up stories, telling lies, and wagging its tongue than gossip.
+ It also has boundless energy—nothing can kill it dead.
+ Wildfires burn but, come spring, the grass will grow again.
+ Like the lowliest of seeds, gossip is carried by the wind to sprout and bloom in between rocks.
+ It works its way into every crack, even getting behind the heavy curtains of ladies' boudoirs, where it floats amid the embroidery needles in the young mistress's pincushions; and lingers among the tear-stained pages of those heartwrenching novels the schoolgirl reads in her spare time.
+ As the clock on the table ticks, gossip stretches itself out, even filling the basin where milady washes her rouge away.
+ It thrives in the most secret of places: a clandestine atmosphere is particularly beneficial to its development.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are very good at protecting their privacy, allowing gossip to prosper and proliferate.
+ Deep in the night, after everyone has turned out their lights, there is a narrow patch of light peeking out through the crack under someone's door—that is gossip.
+ The pair of embroidered shoes in the moonlight beside the bed—that too is gossip.
+ When the old amah, carrying her box of toiletries, says she is going out to comb her hair, she is actually off to spread gossip.
+ The clatter of young wives shuffling mahjong tiles—that is the sound of gossip.
+ Sparrows hopping around deserted courtyards on winter afternoons chirp about gossip.
+ The word "self" is embedded into gossip; and within this word "self" there is an unmentionable pain.
+ This bottled-up pain is different from what the Tang emperor felt at the death of Yang Guifei or the King of Chu for his beloved concubine.
+ It is not the kind of grand and heroic suffering that moves heaven and earth, but base and lowly, like pebbles and dirt, or the tentacles of ivy creeping stealthily out of bounds.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are incapable of harboring the kind of suffering that inspires legends.
+ The pain is broken up and evenly allocated throughout the city, so that each person ends up with a small share.
+ Even when they suffer deep sorrow, its inhabitants keep it down inside their bellies; they do not put it on stage for people to admire, nor do they make it into lyrics to be sung by others.
+ Only they themselves know where it comes from and whither it goes.
+ They alone carry its burden.
+ This is also where the word "self" comes into play, and herein, incidentally, lies the true meaning of sorrow.
+ Therefore we can say that gossip is painful; even if the pain does not arise from proper causes, it is still excruciating.
+ The pain is suffered individually, eliciting no sympathy—a lonely pain.
+ This is also what is moving about gossip.
+ The moment that gossip is born is actually the moment that people are trying their hardest to conduct themselves properly.
+ The people in Shanghai's longtang neighborhoods conduct themselves with the utmost attention and care; all their energy is directed to the way they carry themselves.
+ Their eyes are focused exclusively on themselves, and they are never distracted by their surroundings.
+ They don't want to create a place for themselves in history: they want to create themselves.
+ Without being ambitious, they expend every ounce of what strength they have.
+ This strength, too, is evenly allocated.
+ Everyone has his fair share.
+
+ 1．弄堂
+ 站一个至高点看上海，上海的弄堂是壮观的景象。
+ 它是这城市背景一样的东西。
+ 街道和楼房凸现在它之上，是一些点和线，而它则是中国画中称为皴法的那类笔触，是将空白填满的。
+ 当天黑下来，灯亮起来的时分，这些点和线都是有光的，在那光后面，大片大片的暗，便是上海的弄堂了。
+ 那暗看上去几乎是波涛汹涌，几乎要将那几点几线的光推着走似的。
+ 它是有体积的，而点和线却是浮在面上的，是为划分这个体积而存在的，是文章里标点一类的东西，断行断句的。
+ 那暗是像深渊一样，扔一座山下去，也悄无声息地沉了底。
+ 那暗里还像是藏着许多礁石，一不小心就会翻了船的。
+ 上海的几点几线的光，全是叫那暗托住的，一托便是几十年。
+ 这东方巴黎的璀璨，是以那暗作底铺陈开，一铺便是几十年。
+ 如今，什么都好像旧了似的，一点一点露出了真迹。
+ 晨曦一点一点亮起，灯光一点一点熄灭。
+ 先是有薄薄的雾，光是平直的光，勾出轮廓，细工笔似的。
+ 最先跳出来的是老式弄堂房顶的老虎天窗，它们在晨雾里有一种精致乖巧的模样，那木框窗扇是细雕细作的；那屋披上的瓦是细工细排的；窗台上花盆里的月季花也是细心细养的。
+ 然后晒台也出来了，有隔夜的衣衫，滞着不动的，像画上的衣衫；晒台矮墙上的水泥脱落了，露出锈红色的砖，也像是画上的，一笔一划都清晰的。
+ 再接着，山墙上的裂纹也现出了，还有点点绿苔，有触手的凉意似的。
+ 第一缕阳光是在山墙上的，这是很美的图画，几乎是绚烂的，又有些荒凉；是新鲜的，又是有年头的。
+ 这时候，弄底的水泥地还在晨雾里头，后弄要比前弄的雾更重一些。
+ 新式里弄的铁栏杆的阳台上也有了阳光，在落地的长窗上折出了反光。
+ 这是比较锐利的一笔，带有揭开帷幕，划开夜与昼的意思。
+ 雾终被阳光驱散了，什么都加重了颜色，绿苔原来是黑的，窗框的木头也是发黑的，阳台的黑铁栏杆却是生了黄锈，山墙的裂缝里倒长出绿色的草，飞在天空里的白鸽成片灰鸽。
+ 上海的弄堂是形形种种，声色各异的。
+ 它们有时候是那样，有时候是这样，莫衷一是的模样。
+ 其实它们是万变不离其宗，形变神不变的，它们是倒过来倒过去最终说的还是那一桩事，千人手面，又万众一心的。
+ 那种石窟门弄堂是上海弄堂里最有权势之气的一种，它们带有一些深宅大院的遗传，有一副官邸的脸面．它们将森严壁垒全做在一扇门和一堵墙上。
+ 一已开进门去，院子是浅的，客堂也是浅的，三步两步便走穿过去，一道木楼梯挡在了头顶。
+ 木楼梯是不打弯的，直抵楼上的闺阁，那二楼的临了街的窗户便流露出了风情。
+ 上海东区的新式里弄是放下架子的，门是楼空雕花的矮铁门，楼上有探身的窗还不够，还要做出站脚的阳台，为的是好看街市的风景。
+ 院里的夹竹桃伸出墙外来，锁不住的春色的样子。
+ 但骨子里头却还是防范的，后门的锁是德国造的弹簧锁，底楼的窗是有铁栅栏的，矮铁门上有着尖锐的角，天井是围在房中央，一副进得来出不去的样子。
+ 西区的公寓弄堂是严加防范的，房间都是成套，一扇门关死，一夫当关万夫莫开的架势，墙是隔音的墙，鸡犬声不相闻的。
+ 房子和房子是隔着宽阔地，老死不相见的。
+ 但这防范也是民主的防范，欧美风的，保护的是做人的自由，其实是想做什么就做什么，谁也拦不住的。
+ 那种棚户的杂弄倒是全面敞开的样子，油毛毡的屋顶是漏雨的，板壁墙是不遮风的，门窗是关不严的。
+ 这种弄堂的房屋看上去是鳞次栉比，挤挤挨挨，灯光是如豆的一点一点，虽然微弱，却是稠密，一锅粥似的。
+ 它们还像是大河一般有着无数的支流，又像是大树一样，枝枝杈杈数也数不清。
+ 它们阡陌纵横，是一张大网。
+ 它们表面上是袒露的，实际上却神秘莫测，有着曲折的内心。
+ 黄昏时分，鸽群盘桓在上海的空中，寻找着各自的巢。
+ 屋脊连绵起伏，横看成岭竖成峰的样子。
+ 站在至高点上，它们全都连成一片，无边无际的，东南西北有些分不清。
+ 它们还是如水漫流，见缝就钻，看上去有些乱，实际上却是错落有致的。
+ 它们又辽阔又密实．有些像农人撒播然后丰收的麦田，还有些像原始森林，自生自灭的。
+ 它们实在是极其美丽的景象。
+ 上海的弄堂是性感的，有一股肌肤之亲似的。
+ 它有着触手的凉和暖，是可感可知，有一些私心的。
+ 积着油垢的厨房后窗．是专供老妈子一里一外扯闲篇的；窗边的后门，是供大小姐提著书包上学堂读书，和男先生幽会的；前边大门虽是不常开，开了就是有大事情，是专为贵客走动，贴了婚丧嫁娶的告示的。
+ 它总是有一点按捺不住的兴奋，跃跃然的，有点絮叨的。
+ 晒台和阳台，还有窗畔，都留着些窃窃私语，夜间的敲门声也是此起彼落。
+ 还是要站一个至高点，再找一个好角度：弄堂里横七竖八晾衣竹竿上的衣物，带有点私情的味道；花盆里栽的凤仙花、宝石花和青葱青蒜，也是私情的性质；屋顶上空着的鸽笼，是一颗空着的心；碎了和乱了的瓦片，也是心和身子的象征。
+ 那沟壑般的弄底，有的是水泥铺的，有的是石卵拼的。
+ 水泥铺的到底有些隔心隔肺，石卵路则手心手背都是肉的感觉。
+ 两种弄底的脚步声也是两种，前种是清脆响亮的，后种却是吃进去，闷在肚里的；前种说的是客套，后种是肺腑之言，两种都不是官面文章，都是每日里免不了要说的家常话。
+ 上海的后弄更是要钻进人心里去的样子，那里的路面是饰着裂纹的，阴沟是溢水的，水上浮着鱼鳞片和老菜叶的，还有灶间的油烟气的。
+ 这里是有些脏兮兮，不整洁的，最深最深的那种隐私也裸露出来的，有点不那么规矩的。
+ 因此，它便显得有些阴沉。
+ 太阳是在午后三点的时候才照进来，不一会儿就夕阳西下了。
+ 这一点阳光反给它罩上一层暧昧的色彩，墙是黄黄的，面上的粗砺都凸现起来，沙沙的一层。
+ 窗玻璃也是黄的，有着污迹，看上去有一些花的。
+ 这时候的阳光是照久了，有些压不住的疲累的，将最后一些沉底的光都迸出来照耀，那光里便有了许多沉积物似的，是粘稠滞重，也是有些不干净的。
+ 鸽群是在前边飞的，后弄里飞着的是夕照里的一些尘埃，野猫也是在这里出没的。
+ 这是深入肌肤，已经谈不上是亲是近，反有些起腻，暗底里生畏的，却是有一股噬骨的感动。
+ 上海弄堂的感动来自于最为日常的情景，这感动不是云水激荡的，而是一点一点累积起来。
+ 这是有烟火人气的感动。
+ 那一条条一排排的里巷，流动着一些意料之外又清理之中的东西，东西不是什么大东西，但琐琐细细，聚沙也能成塔的。
+ 那是和历史这类概念无关，连野史都难称上，只能叫做流言的那种。
+ 流言是上海弄堂的又一景观，它几乎是可视可见的，也是从后窗和后门里流露出来。
+ 前门和前阳台所流露的则要稍微严正一些，但也是流言。
+ 这些流言虽然算不上是历史，却也有着时间的形态，是循序渐进有因有果的。
+ 这些流言是贴肤贴肉的，不是故纸堆那样冷淡刻板的，虽然谬误百出，但谬误也是可感可知的谬误。
+ 在这城市的街道灯光辉煌的时候，弄堂里通常只在拐角上有一盏灯，带着最寻常的铁罩，罩上生着锈，蒙着灰尘，灯光是昏昏黄黄，下面有一些烟雾般的东西滋生和蔓延，这就是酝酿流言的时候。
+ 这是一个晦涩的时刻，有些不清不白的，却是伤人肺腑。
+ 鸽群在笼中叽叽哝哝的，好像也在说着私语。
+ 街上的光是名正言顺的，可惜刚要流进弄口，便被那暗吃掉了。
+ 那种有前客堂和左右厢房里的流言是要老派一些的，带薰衣草的气味的；而带亭子间和拐角楼梯的弄堂房子的流言则是新派的，气味是樟脑丸的气味。
+ 无论老派和新派，却都是有一颗诚心的，也称得上是真情的。
+ 那全都是用手掬水，掬一捧漏一半地掬满一池，燕子衔泥衔一口掉半口地筑起一巢的，没有半点偷懒和取巧。
+ 上海的弄堂真是见不得的情景，它那背阴处的绿苔，其实全是伤口上结的疤一类的，是靠时间抚平的痛处。
+ 因它不是名正言顺，便都长在了阴处，长年见不到阳光。
+ 爬墙虎倒是正面的，却是时间的帷幕，遮着盖着什么。
+ 鸽群飞翔时，望着波涛连天的弄堂的屋瓦，心是一刺刺的疼痛。
+ 太阳是从屋顶上喷薄而出，坎坎坷坷的，光是打折的光，这是由无数细碎集合而成的壮观，是由无数耐心集合而成的巨大的力。
+ 2．流言
+ 流言总是带着阴沉之气。
+ 这阴沉气有时是东西厢房的薰衣草气味，有时是樟脑丸气味，还有时是肉砧板上的气味。
+ 它不是那种板烟和雪茄的气味，也不是六六粉和敌敌畏的气味。
+ 它不是那种阳刚凛冽的气味，而是带有些阴柔委婉的，是女人家的气味。
+ 是闺阁和厨房的混淆的气味，有点脂粉香，有点油烟味，还有点汗气的。
+ 流言还都有些云遮雾罩，影影绰绰，是哈了气的窗玻璃，也是蒙了灰尘的窗玻璃。
+ 这城市的弄堂有多少，流言就有多少，是数也数不清，说也说不完的。
+ 这些流言有一种蔓延的洇染的作用，它们会把一些正传也变成流言一般暧昧的东西，于是，什么是正传，什么是流言，便有些分不清。
+ 流言是真假难辨的，它们假中有真，真中有假，也是一个分不清。
+ 它们难免有着荒诞不经的面目，这荒诞也是女人家短见识的荒诞，带着些少见多怪，还有些幻觉的。
+ 它们在弄堂这种地方，从一扇后门传进另一扇后门，转眼间便全世界皆知了。
+ 它们就好像一种无声的电波，在城市的上空交叉穿行；它们还好像是无形的浮云，笼罩着城市，渐渐酿成一场是非的雨。
+ 这雨也不是什么倾盆的雨，而是那黄梅天里的雨，虽然不暴烈，却是连空气都湿透的。
+ 因此，这流言是不能小视的，它有着细密绵软的形态，很是纠缠的。
+ 上海每一条弄堂里，都有着这样是非的空气。
+ 西区高尚的公寓弄堂里，这空气也是高朗的，比较爽身，比较明澈，就像秋日的天，天高云淡的；再下来些的新式弄堂里，这空气便要混浊一些，也要波动一些，就像风一样，吹来吹去；更低一筹的石窟门老式弄堂里的是非空气，就又不是风了，而是回潮天里的水汽，四处可见污迹的；到了棚户的老弄，就是大雾天里的雾，不是雾开日出的雾，而浓雾作雨的雾，弥弥漫漫，五步开外就不见人的。
+ 但无论哪一种弄堂，这空气都是渗透的，无处不在。
+ 它们可说是上海弄堂的精神性质的东西。
+ 上海的弄堂如果能够说话，说出来的就一定是流言。
+ 它们是上海弄堂的思想，昼里夜里都在传播。
+ 上海弄堂如果有梦的话，那梦，也就是流言。
+ 流言总是鄙陋的。
+ 它有着粗俗的内心，它难免是自甘下贱的。
+ 它是阴沟里的水，被人使用过，污染过的。
+ 它是理不直气不壮，只能背地里窃窃喳喳的那种。
+ 它是没有责任感，不承担后果的，所以它便有些随心所欲，如水漫流。
+ 它均是经不起推敲，也没人有心去推敲的。
+ 它有些像言语的垃圾，不过，垃圾里有时也可淘出真货色的。
+ 它们是那些正经话的作了废的边角料，老黄叶片，米里边的稗子。
+ 它们往往有着不怎么正经的面目，坏事多，好事少，不干净，是个腌臜货。
+ 它们其实是用最下等的材料制造出来的，这种下等材料，连上海西区公寓里的小姐都免不了堆积了一些的。
+ 但也唯独这些下等的见不得人的材料里，会有一些真东西。
+ 这些真东西是体面后头的东西，它们是说给自己也不敢听的，于是就拿来，制作流言了。
+ 要说流言的好，便也就在这真里面了。
+ 这真却有着假的面目，是在假里做真的，虚里做实，总有些改头换面，声东击西似的。
+ 这真里是有点做人的胆子的，是不怕丢脸的胆子，放着人不做却去做鬼的胆子，唱反调的胆子。
+ 这胆子里头则有着一些哀意了。
+ 这哀意是不遂心不称愿的哀，有些气在里面的，哀是哀，心却是好高骛远的，唯因这好高骛远，才带来了失落的哀意。
+ 因此，这哀意也是粗鄙的哀意，不是唐诗宋词式的，而是街头切口的一种。
+ 这哀意便可见出了重量，它是沉痛的，是哀意的积淀物，不是水面上的风花雪月。
+ 流言其实都是沉底的东西，不是手淘万洗，百炼千锤的，而是本来就有，后来也有，洗不净，炼不精的，是做人的一点韧，打断骨头连着筋，打碎牙齿咽下肚，死皮赖脸的那点韧。
+ 流言难免是虚张声势，危言耸听，魑魅魍魉一起来，它们闻风而动，随风而去，摸不到头，抓不到尾。
+ 然而，这城市里的真心，却唯有到流言里去找的。
+ 无论这城市的外表有多华美，心却是一颗粗鄙的心，那心是寄在流言里的，流言是寄在上海的弄堂里的。
+ 这东方巴黎遍布远东的神奇传说，剥开壳看，其实就是流言的芯子。
+ 就好像珍珠的芯子，其实是粗糙的沙粒，流言就是这颗沙粒一样的东西。
+ 流言是混淆视听的，它好像要改写历史似的，并且是从小处着手。
+ 它蚕食般地一点一点咬噬着书本上的记载，还像白蚁侵蚀华厦大屋。
+ 它是没有章法，乱了套的，也不按规矩来，到哪算哪的，有点流氓地痞气的。
+ 它不讲什么长篇大论，也不讲什么小道细节，它只是横看来。
+ 它是那种偷袭的方法，从背后擦上一把，转过身却没了影，结果是冤无头，债无主。
+ 它也没有大的动作，小动作却是细细碎碎的没个停，然后敛少成多，细流汇大江。
+ 所谓“谣言蜂起”，指的就是这个，确是如蜂般嗡嗡营营的。
+ 它是有些卑鄙的，却也是勤恳的。
+ 它是连根火柴梗都要抬起来作引火柴的，见根线也拾起来穿针用的。
+ 它虽是捣乱也是认真恳切，而不是玩世不恭，就算是谣言也是悉心编造。
+ 虽是无根无凭，却是有情有意。
+ 它们是自行其事，你说你的，它说它的，什么样的有公论的事情，在它都是另一番是非。
+ 它且又不是持不同政见，它是一无政见，对政治一窍不通，它走的是旁门别道，同社会不是对立也不是同意，而是自行一个社会。
+ 它是这社会的旁枝错节般的东西，它引不起社会的警惕心，因此，它的暗中作祟往往能够得逞。
+ 它们其实是一股不可小视的力量，有点“大风始于青萍之末”的意味。
+ 它们是背离传统道德的，却不以反封建的面目，而是一味的伤风败俗，是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们又敢把皇帝拉下马，也不以共和民主的面目，而是痞子的作为，也是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们是革命和反革命都不齿的，它们被两边的力量都抛弃和忽略。
+ 它们实在是没个正经样，否则便可上升到公众舆论这一档里去明修栈道，如今却只能暗渡陈仓，走的是风过耳。
+ 风过耳就风过耳，它也不在乎，它本是四海为家的，没有创业的观念。
+ 它最是没有野心，没有抱负，连头脑也没有的。
+ 它只有着作乱生事的本能，很茫然地生长和繁殖。
+ 它繁殖的速度也是惊人的，鱼撒籽似的。
+ 繁殖的方式也很多样，有时环扣环，有时套连套，有时谜中谜，有时案中案。
+ 它们弥漫在城市的空中，像一群没有家的不拘形骸的浪人，其实，流言正是这城市的浪漫之一。
+ 流言的浪漫在于它无拘无束能上能下的想象力。
+ 这想象力是龙门能跳狗洞能钻的，一无清规戒律。
+ 没有比流言更能胡编乱造，信口雌黄的了。
+ 它还有无穷的活力，怎么也扼它不死，是野火烧不尽，春风吹又生的。
+ 它是那种最卑贱的草籽，风吹到石头缝里也照样生根开花。
+ 它又是见缝就钻，连闺房那样帷幕森严的地方都能出入的。
+ 它在大小姐花绷上的绣花外流连，还在女学生的课余读物，那些哀情小说的书页流连，书页上总是有些泪痕的。
+ 台钟滴滴答答走时声中，流言一点一点在滋生；洗胭脂的水盆里，流言一点一点在滋生。
+ 隐秘的地方往往是流言丛生的地方，隐私的空气特别利于流言的生长。
+ 上海的弄堂是很藏得住隐私的，于是流言便漫生漫长。
+ 夜里边，万家万户灭了灯，有一扇门缝里露出的一线光，那就是流言；床前月亮地里的一双绣花拖鞋，也是流言；老妈子托着梳头匣子，说是梳头去，其实是传播流言去；少奶奶们洗牌的哗哗声，是流言在作响；连冬天没有人的午后，天井里一跳一跳的麻雀，都在说着鸟语的流言。
+ 这流言里有一个“私”字，这“私”字里头是有一点难言的苦衷。
+ 这苦衷不是唐明皇对杨贵妃的那种，也不是楚霸王对虞姬的那种，它不是那种大起大落、可歌可泣、悲天恸地的苦衷，而是狗皮倒灶，牵丝攀藤，粒粒屑屑的。
+ 上海的弄堂是藏不住大苦衷的。
+ 它的苦衷都是割碎了平均分配的，分到各人名下也就没有多少的。
+ 它即便是悲，即便是恸，也是悲在肚子里，恸在肚子里，说不上戏台子去供人观赏，也编不成词曲供人唱的，那是怎么来怎么去都只有自己知道，苦来苦去只苦自己，这也就是那个“私”字的意思，其实也是真正的苦衷的意思。
+ 因此，这流言说到底是有一些痛的，尽管痛的不是地方，倒也是钻心钻肺的。
+ 这痛都是各人痛各人，没有什么共鸣，也引不起同情，是很孤单的痛。
+ 这也是流言的感动之处。
+ 流言产生的时刻，其实都是悉心做人的时刻。
+ 上海弄堂里的做人，是悉心悉意，全神贯注的做人，眼睛只盯着自己，没有旁骛的。
+ 不想创造历史，只想创造自己的，没有大志气，却用尽了实力的那种。
+ 这实力也是平均分配的实力，各人名下都有一份。
+
+ Peace Lane
+ SHANGHAI MUST HAVE at least a hundred Peace Lanes, some occupying a large area connecting two major streets, others connected to other longtang, forming a vast network of twisted, dirty lanes where one can easily get lost.
+ As confusing as they may be to outsiders, each has developed a distinct identity simply through having survived for so many years.
+ Under moonlight, these blocks of crumbling wood and brick look positively serene, like something out of a painting executed with minute brushstrokes; they too hold memories and aspirations.
+ The ringing bells make their evening rounds, reminding residents to watch their cooking fires, evincing a trace of warmth and goodwill from those who live there.
+ Mornings, however, begin with night-soil carts, clattering in to collect waste for fertilizer, and the raspy noises of brushes scrubbing out commodes.
+ Amid the smoke of coal burners, laundry soaked overnight is taken out to be hung, banner-like, on bamboo poles.
+ Every action, every gesture comes across to the onlooker as a boastful swagger or perhaps an exaggerated fit of pique; why, the collective provocation would be enough to darken the rising sun.
+ Each Peace Lane has a few residents who are as old as the neighborhood.
+ Being history's witnesses, they observe newcomers with knowing eyes.
+ Some are not averse to mingling with newcomers, and this creates an impression of continuity.
+ But on the whole they like to keep to themselves, adding an air of mystery to the neighborhood.
+ Wang Qiyao moved into the third floor of 39 Peace Lane.
+ Different batches of tenants had left their plants on the balcony.
+ Most had withered, but a few nameless ones had sprouted new leaves.
+ Insects swam in the stagnant liquid of moldy jars in the kitchen, yet among them was a bottle of perfectly good peanut oil.
+ On the wall behind the door somebody had written, "Buy birthday present on January 10," and a child had scrawled "Wang Gensheng eats shit."
+ One could only speculate about the birthday celebrant and the object of the child's resentment.
+ Rubbish lay, piled up at haphazard—one could make nothing coherent out of all this.
+ Having put her things down among other people's debris, Wang Qiyao decided to make the place her own by hanging up her curtains.
+ The room did seem different with the curtains.
+ However, with no shade over the light bulb, the objects in the room simply looked naked rather than illuminated.
+ Outside it was a typical evening in May.
+ The warm breeze carried with it whiffs of grease and swill, which was the basic odor of Shanghai, although the typical Shanghainese was so steeped in it he scarcely noticed.
+ Later in the night would come the scent of rice gruel flavored with osmanthus blossoms.
+ The smells were familiar, the curtains were familiar, and the evening outside was familiar, but Wang Qiyao felt strange.
+ She needed to reattach herself to life here; fortunately for her, the lines where attachments could be made were clearly marked on the fabric.
+ Wang Qiyao was grateful to the large flowers on the curtains, which, no matter where they were placed, remained in full bloom, faithfully retaining the glory of bygone days.
+ The floor and the window frames emitted the odiferous warmth of decaying wood.
+ Scurrying mice conveyed their greetings.
+ Soon, bells reminding people to watch their cooking fires began ringing.
+ Wang Qiyao underwent three months of training as a nurse in order to be certified to give injections.
+ She hung out a sign advertising injections outside the entrance to her apartment on Peace Lane.
+ Similar signs could be seen along the entrances of other longtang—following those signs inside, one could find Wang Qiyaos of all different shapes and sizes eking out a living.
+ They all woke up early, put on clean clothes, and straightened up their rooms.
+ Then they ignited the alcohol burner to disinfect a box of needles.
+ The sun, reflected from the rooftops across the alley, left rectangles of light on the wooden floor.
+ After switching off the burner, they reached for a book to read while they waited for patients.
+ The patients tended to come in batches, morning and afternoon, but there might be one or two in the evening.
+ Once in a while, when someone requested a house call, they hurried off in white cap and surgical mask.
+ Lugging a straw bag containing the needles and medicinal cotton, they looked very much like professional nurses as they scurried down the street.
+ Wang Qiyao always wore a simple cheongsam.
+ In the 1950s these were becoming rare on the streets of Shanghai, a symbol of nostalgia as well as style, at once old-fashioned and modern.
+ When she crossed the streets on house calls, she was often struck by a sense of déjà vu—the places were familiar, only the roles were changed.
+ One day she called on a patient in a dark apartment where the waxed floor reflected her shoes and stockings, and was led into the bedroom.
+ There, under a green silk blanket, a young woman lay.
+ Wang Qiyao had the curious sensation that the woman was herself.
+ Having administered the shot, she put her things away and left, but her heart seemed to tarry in that apartment.
+ She could almost hear the woman complaining to the maid that the shrimps from the market were too small and not fresh enough—didn't she know the master would be home for dinner that night?
+ At times she stared into the blue flames of the alcohol burner and saw a resplendent world in which people sang and danced for all eternity.
+ Once in a while she caught a late movie, one of the ones that started at eight, when street lamps were reflected on the face of the silent streets.
+ Only the theater lobby would be bustling, as though time had stood still.
+ She only went to old movies: Zhou Xuan in Street Angel, Bai Yang in Crossroads, and others.
+ Although they had no connection to her present situation, they were familiar and they spoke to her.
+ She subscribed to an evening newspaper to fill the hours of dusk.
+ She read every word in the newspaper, making sense perhaps of half the reports.
+ By the time she finished it, the water would be boiling and it would be dinner time.
+ There was an exciting element of unpredictability to her work.
+ Hearing footsteps on the staircase at night, she would speculate, Who could it be?
+ She was unusually vivacious on these occasions and often talked a bit too much, asking this or that as she reignited the alcohol burner to sterilize the needle.
+ If the patient was a child, she would put out all her charm.
+ She would feel sad after the patient left.
+ Pondering over the recent commotion, she would forget to put things away, and then discover that the pot had boiled dry.
+ Such interruptions in her tranquil routine gave rise to a vague feeling of anticipation.
+ Something was fomenting, she felt, from which something might just develop.
+ Once, awakened in the middle of the night by urgent and frightened calls for help at the door, she threw a jacket over her nightgown and rushed downstairs, her heart pounding, to find two men from the provinces carrying someone on a stretcher.
+ The person was critically ill.
+ They had mistaken her for a doctor.
+ After giving them directions to the nearest hospital, she went back upstairs but could not sleep a wink.
+ All kinds of odd things happened in the night in this city.
+ Under the lamp at the entrance to the longtang, the shingle advertising "Injection Nurse Wang Qiyao" looked as if it was waiting patiently to be noticed.
+ The passing cars and the windswept fallen leaves hinted at concealed activities in the dark night.
+ People came to Wang Qiyao in an unending parade.
+ Those who stopped coming were quickly replaced by others.
+ She would speculate about her patients' professions and backgrounds and was pleased to find most of her guesses correct as, with a few casual remarks, she pried the facts out of them.
+ Her best sources were nannies accompanying little charges—these eagerly volunteered all kinds of unflattering information about their employers.
+ A number of patients had nothing wrong with them, but came for routine health-enhancing shots, such as placenta fluid.
+ They became so comfortable with her that they would drop by to gossip.
+ Thus, without going out of her house, Wang Qiyao learned a great deal about the neighborhood.
+ This hodgepodge of activity was enough to fill up half her day.
+ Sometimes she was so busy she could hardly keep up with all the goings-on.
+ The hustle-bustle on Peace Lane was both invasive and highly contagious.
+ Wang Qiyao's tranquility gradually gave way to frequent footfalls on the stairs, doors opening and shutting; her name was regularly hollered by people on the ground with upturned heads, their fervent voices carrying far and wide on quiet afternoons.
+ Before long, the oleanders, planted haphazardly in makeshift planters formed from broken bricks on balconies, put forth their dazzling flowers.
+ Nothing marvelous had happened to Wang Qiyao, but through careful cultivation her life had also sprouted countless little sprigs that held the promise of developing into something.
+ People at Peace Lane knew Wang Qiyao as a young widow.
+ Several attempts were made to match her up with men, including a teacher who, though only thirty, was already bald.
+ Arrangements were made for them to meet at a theater to watch a movie about victorious peasants—the kind of thing she detested—but she forced herself to sit through it.
+ Whenever there was a lull in the show, she heard a faint whistling sound coming from the man as he breathed.
+ Seeing this was the best she could do, she declined all further matchmaking efforts on her behalf.
+ As she watched the smoky sky above Peace Lane, she often wondered if anything exciting would ever happen to her again.
+ To charges of arrogance as well as to praise for being loyal to her late husband, she turned a deaf ear.
+ She ignored all gossip and advice, remaining at once genial and distant.
+ This was normal on Peace Lane, where friendships were circumscribed, there being untold numbers of large fish swimming around in the murky waters.
+ Underneath all that conviviality, people were lonely, though often they did not know it themselves, merely muddling through from one day to the next.
+ Wang Qiyao was rather muddleheaded about some things, while she couldn't have been more clear-sighted about others; the former concerned issues of daily living, while the latter were reserved for her private thoughts.
+ She was occupied with people and things during the day.
+ At night, after she turned off the lights and the moonlight lit up the big flowers on the curtains, she could not help but slip into deep thought.
+ There was a great deal of thinking going on around Peace Lane, but much of it, like sediment, had sunk to the bottom of people's hearts, all the juice squeezed out of them, so that they had solidified and could no longer be stirred up.
+ Wang Qiyao had not reached this stage.
+ Her thoughts still had stems, leaves, and flowers, which glimmered in the dark night of Peace Lane.
+ A Frequent Guest
+ Among Wang Qiyao's frequent visitors was one Madame Yan, who came quite regularly.
+ She lived in a townhouse with a private entrance at the end of Peace Lane.
+ She must have been thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, as her eldest son, an architecture student at Tongji University, was already nineteen.
+ Her husband had owned a light bulb factory that, since 1949, was jointly operated with the state.
+ He was now the deputy manager—a mere figurehead, according to Madame Yan.
+ Madame Yan painted her eyebrows and wore lipstick even on days when she didn't leave the house.
+ She favored a short green Chinese jacket over a pair of Western-style pants made of cheviot wool.
+ When they saw her coming, people stopped talking and turned to stare, but she acted as if they did not exist.
+ Her children did not play with the other kids, and, since her husband was driven everywhere by a chauffeur, few people really knew what he looked like.
+ There was a high turnover among their servants; in any case, they were not permitted to loiter when they went out for errands, so they, too, appeared aloof.
+ Every Monday and Thursday Madame Yan would come for a shot of imported vitamins to help her ward off colds.
+ The first time she saw Wang Qiyao, she was taken aback.
+ Her clothes, the way she ate, her every move and gesture, hinted of a splendid past.
+ Madame Yan decided they could be friends.
+ She had always felt Peace Lane was beneath her.
+ Her husband, a frugal person, had bought the property at a good price.
+ In response to her complaints, he had, in bed, promised many times to move them to a house with a garden.
+ Now that their assets were controlled by the government, they felt lucky simply to be allowed to keep their house.
+ Still, as long as she lived in Peace Lane, Madame Yan felt like a crane among chickens.
+ No one there was her equal and, in her eyes, even the neighbors were no better than her servants.
+ She was therefore delighted to see another woman similarly out of place moving into no. 39.
+ Without seeking Wang Qiyao's permission, she made herself a regular visitor.
+ Madame Yan usually showed up in the afternoon sometime after two o'clock, heralded by the fragrance of scented powder and her sandalwood fan.
+ Most of Wang Qiyao's patients came between three and four o'clock, so they had an hour to kill.
+ Sitting across from each other in the lazy summer afternoon, they would stifle their yawns and chatter on without fully realizing what they were talking about, as cicadas droned in the parasol tree at the entrance to the longtang.
+ Wang Qiyao would ladle out some of her chilled plum soup, which they sipped absentmindedly while exchanging gossip.
+ Then, having thrown off their afternoon sluggishness and cooled off, they would perk up.
+ Madame Yan did most of the talking while Wang Qiyao listened, but both were equally absorbed in the conversation.
+ Madame Yan would go on and on, passing from stories about her parents to gossip about her in-laws; actually, all she wanted was to hear herself talk.
+ As for Wang Qiyao, she listened with her heart and eventually made all business concerning the Yan family her own.
+ When, once in a while, Madame Yan inquired about Wang Qiyao's family, she always answered in the vaguest terms.
+ She suspected Madame Yan didn't believe most of what she said, but that was fine—she was free to speculate.
+ Wang Qiyao would much rather that Madame Yan guessed the truth but left things discreetly unsaid; but Madame Yan, who had to some extent figured out the situation, insisted on asking questions pointblank.
+ It was her way of testing Wang Qiyao's sincerity.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, wanted to be sincere, but there were some things that simply could not be spoken aloud.
+ So they went around in circles, one chasing and the other evading, and before they knew it, a grudge had grown up between them.
+ Fortunately, grudges are no impediment to friendships between women.
+ The friendships of women are made of grudges: the deeper the grudge, the deeper the friendship.
+ Sometimes they parted acrimoniously, but would resume their friendship the very next day with a deeper understanding of each other.
+ One day Madame Yan announced that she wanted to set Wang Qiyao up with someone, but Wang Qiyao declined with a good-humored laugh.
+ When Madame Yan inquired into the reason, Wang Qiyao simply recounted the scene at the movie theater with the schoolteacher.
+ Madame Yan laughed out loud but then continued with a straight face, "I'll promise you three things about the guy I want to introduce you to.
+ One, I'll make sure he's not a teacher; two, that he's still got a head of hair; and three, that he doesn't have asthma."
+ They both collapsed in laughter, but that was the last time Madame Yan brought up the topic of matchmaking.
+ They came to a tacit understanding that the subject would not be broached and they would simply let nature take its course.
+ Both being still young and bright, their sensitivity had not yet been ground down by time, and they quickly understood how each other felt.
+ Although there was a ten-year difference between them, Madame Yan acted a bit young for her age and Wang Qiyao was more mature, so they were well-suited.
+ People like them, who become friends at mid-life, tend to keep part of themselves hidden away.
+ Even Madame Yan, who usually wore her heart on her sleeve, retained certain secrets that she herself might not have understood.
+ It was not necessary for them to know everything there was to know about each other—a little sympathy went a long way.
+ And even though Madame Yan was not satisfied, she could bear it and still treat Wang Qiyao as a true friend.
+ What Madame Yan had was time on her hands.
+ Her husband left early every morning and did not get home until late at night.
+ Two of her children were grown, while the third was cared for by a nanny.
+ She socialized with the wives of other industrialists and businessmen, but this hardly took up all her time.
+ Dropping by to see Wang Qiyao became part of her daily routine; she sometimes even stayed for dinner, insisting that they simply eat what was already on hand rather than doing anything fancy.
+ Consequently, they often had leftover rice, heated up again with just a dish of mud snails to go with it.
+ Wang Qiyao's near-ascetic lifestyle reminded Madame Yan of her own simple, quiet life before marriage, which seemed so long ago.
+ If a patient came while they were talking, Madame Yan would help by bringing over a chair, getting the medicine out, and collecting the money.
+ More than once the patient thought the well-dressed woman was Wang Qiyao's younger sister, which caused her to blush with pleasure, as if she were a child being patted on the head by an adult.
+ Afterward she would in a self-deprecating tone urge Wang Qiyao to get some new clothes and have her hair permed.
+ She spoke eloquently about how a woman must treasure her youth and beauty, which would disappear before she knew it.
+ This never failed to touch Wang Qiyao, who, at twenty-five, was indeed watching her youth slip by.
+ Madame Yan's outfits were always new and fashionable, but that was all she could do to hold on to the tail end of her youth.
+ At times her appearance startled and touched Wang Qiyao.
+ There was an innocence about her heavy makeup and also a certain world-weariness, blended together to create a desolate kind of beauty.
+ Eventually, unable to withstand Madame Yan's blandishments, Wang Qiyao went out and got herself a perm.
+ The smell of shampoo, lotion, and burning hair was intimately familiar to Wang Qiyao, as was the image of a woman sitting under the hair dryer, one hand holding a magazine, the other extended to be pampered by a manicurist.
+ The routines of washing, cutting, rolling, perming, drying, and setting had long been imprinted on her mind.
+ She felt like she had been there just the day before, surrounded by faces she knew.
+ When the process was completed, the old Wang Qiyao emerged in the mirror—the intervening three years seemed to have been snipped off along with her split ends.
+ Looking into the mirror, she noted Madame Yan's face, on which was a mixture of astonishment and envy.
+ As the stylist gave her hair a last-minute adjustment with a hand blower, the expression on Wang Qiyao's face, turning slightly to avoid the hot air with just a soupçon of the spoiled child, belonged to yesteryear.
+
+ 6．平安里
+ 上海这城市最少也有一百条平安里。
+ 一说起平安里，眼前就会出现那种曲折深长、藏污纳垢的弄堂。
+ 它们有时是可走穿，来到另一条马路上；还有时它们会和邻弄相通，连成一片。
+ 真是有些像网的，外地人一旦走进这种弄堂，必定迷失方向，不知会把你带到哪里。
+ 这样的平安里，别人看，是一片迷乱，而它们自己却是清醒的，各自守着各自的心，过着有些挣扎的日月。
+ 当夜幕降临，有时连月亮也升起的时候，平安里呈现出清洁宁静的面目，是工笔画一类的，将那粗疏的生计描画得细腻了。
+ 那平安里其实是有点内秀的，只是看不出来。
+ 在那开始朽烂的砖木格子里，也会盛着一些谈不上如锦如绣，却还是月影花影的回忆和向往。
+ “小心火烛”的摇铃声声，是平安里的一点小心呵护，有些温爱的。
+ 平安里的一日生计，是在喧嚣之中拉开帷幕；粪车的轱辘声，涮马桶声，几十个煤球炉子在弄堂里升烟，隔夜洗的衣衫也晾出来了，竹竿交错，好像在烟幕中升旗。
+ 这些声色难免有些夸张，带着点负气和炫耀，气势很大的，将东升的日头都遮暗了。
+ 这里有一些老住户，与平安里同龄，他们是平安里的见证人一样，用富于历史感的眼睛，审视着那些后来的住户。
+ 其中有一部分是你来我往，呈现出川流不息的景象。
+ 他们的行迹藏头露尾，有些神秘，在平安里的上空散布着疑云。
+ 王琦瑶住进平安里三十九号三楼。
+ 前边几任房客都在晒台上留下各种花草，大多枯败，也有一两盆无名的，却还长出了新叶。
+ 前几任的房客还在灶间里留下各自的瓶瓶罐罐，里面生了霉，积水里游着小虫，却又有半瓶新鲜的花生油。
+ 房门后的墙上留着一些手迹，有大人的，记着事：正月初十备寿礼。
+ 也不知是谁的寿礼。
+ 也有小孩的，是发泄私愤，写着“王根生吃屎”。
+ 都是些零星的岁月，不成篇章，却这里那里的，俯拾皆是。
+ 还是一层摞一层，糊鞋靠一样，扎扎实实，针锥都吃不进去。
+ 王琦瑶安置下自己的几件东西，别的都乱摊着，先把几幅窗帘装上，拉起，开亮了电灯。
+ 那房间就变了面目，虽是接在人家的茬上，到底也是换新的。
+ 那电灯没有章子，光便满房间的，不是明亮，而是样样东西都扒了皮，裸着了。
+ 窗外是五月的天，风是和暖的，夹了油烟和泔水的气味，这其实才是上海芯子里的气味，嗅久了便浑然不觉，身心都浸透了。
+ 再晚些，桂花糖粥的香味也飘上来了，都是旧相识。
+ 窗帘也是旧窗帘，遮着熟知的夜晚。
+ 这熟知里却是有点隔，要悉心去连上，续上，有些拼接的痕迹。
+ 王琦瑶很感激窗帘上的大花朵，易时易地都是盛开，忠心陪伴的样子。
+ 它还有留影留照的意思，是好时光的遗痕，再是流逝，依然绚烂。
+ 地板和木窗框散发出木头的霉烂的暖意，有老鼠小心翼翼的脚步，从心上踩过似的，也是关照。
+ 然后，“小心火烛”的铃声便响起了。
+ 王琦瑶到护士教习所学了三个月，得了一张注射执照，便在平安里弄口挂了牌子。
+ 这种牌子，几乎每三个弄口就有一块，是形形色色的王琦瑶的营生。
+ 她们早晨起来收拾干净房间，穿一身干净衣服，然后便点起酒精灯，煮一盒注射针头。
+ 阳光从前边人家的屋顶上照进窗口，在地板上划下一方一方的。
+ 她们熄了酒精灯，打开一本闲书，等着有人上门来打针。
+ 来人一般是上午一拨，下午一拨，也有晚上的一个两个。
+ 还有来请上门去打针的，那样的话，她们便提一个草包，装着针盒、药棉，白布帽和口罩，俨然一个护士的样子，去了。
+ 王琦瑶总是穿一件素色的旗袍，在五十年代的上海街头，这样的旗袍正日渐少去，所剩无多的几件，难免带有缅怀的表情，是上个时代的遗迹，陈旧和摩登集一身的。
+ 王琦瑶穿着旗袍，走过一两条马路，去给病家打针。
+ 她会有旧境重现的心情，不过人都是换了角色的。
+ 有一日，她去集雅公寓，走进暗沉沉的客厅，打蜡地板映着她的鞋袜。
+ 她被这家的佣人引进卧房，床上一个年轻女人，盖一条绿绸薄被，她觉得这女人就是自己的化身。
+ 打完针，装好东西，走出那公寓，心却好像留在了那里。
+ 她几乎能听见那女人对佣人发嗔的声音，是怪她买来的虾又小又不新鲜，明知道先生要来家吃晚饭的。
+ 她有时望着酒精灯蓝色的火苗，会望见斑斓的景象，里面有一个小世界，小世界里的歌舞永恒不止，是天上的歌舞。
+ 她偶尔去看一场电影，晚上八点的那一场。
+ 马路上静静的，路面有灯的反光，电影院前厅那静里的沸腾，有着时光倒流的意思。
+ 她看的多是老电影，周璇的《马路天使》，白杨的《十字街头》，这也是旧相识，最不相关的故事也是肺腑之言。
+ 她订了一份晚报，黄昏时间是看报度过的，报上的每一个字她都读到，懂一半，不懂一半，半懂不懂之间，晚饭的时间便到了，炉子上的水也开了。
+ 晚上来打针的，总有点不速之客的味道，听见楼梯响，她便猜：是谁来了。
+ 她有些活跃，话也多几句。
+ 倘若打针的是孩子，她便格外地要哄他高兴。
+ 她重新点上酒精灯消毒针头，问东问西，打完针，病家要走时，她就有些不舍。
+ 那一阵骚动与声响还会留下余音，她忘了收拾，锅里的水干了底才醒来。
+ 这种夜晚，打破了千篇一律的生活，虽然是个没结果，可毕竟制造了一点起伏不定，使人生出期待。
+ 那期待是茫茫然的，方向都不明，有什么未知在酝酿和发展，终于会有果实似的。
+ 她有一次夜半被叫醒。
+ 人们早已入睡，那叫声便显得格外惊动，带着些危急和恐怖。
+ 王琦瑶的心擂鼓似的怦怦响着，她睡衣外面披上件夹袄便下楼去开门，见是两个乡下人，抬了一个担架，躺着垂危的病人，说是请王医师救命。
+ 王琦瑶知道他们弄错了，将护士当作医师了。
+ 她指点他们去最近处的医院，再回楼上，却怎么也睡不着了。
+ 这城市的夜晚总有着出其不意，每一点动静都不寻常。
+ 弄口路灯下，写着注射护士王琦瑶的牌子，带着点翘首以待。
+ 静夜里有汽车驶过，风扫落叶的声音，夜晚便流动起来，有了一股暗中的活跃。
+ 上门打针的人川流不息，今天去了明天来，常有新人出现。
+ 这时，王琦瑶便暗自打量，猜那人的家庭和职业，再用些闲话去套，套出的几句实情，竟也能八九不离十。
+ 要逢到那些做奶妈的带孩子来，不问也要告诉你东家的底细。
+ 哪个奶妈不是碎嘴？
+ 又不是对东家有仇有恨，要把一肚子苦水倒给你的样子？
+ 还有一些是固定出现的病人，这些其实都算不上病人，打的是胎盘液之类的营养针，一周一次或一周两次。
+ 日子长了，有几个不打针时也来，坐坐，说说闲话，张家长李家短。
+ 这样，王琦瑶虽然不出门，也知天下事了。
+ 这些杂碎虽说是人家的，可也把王琦瑶的日子填个半满。
+ 一早一晚，有时甚至会是忙碌的，眼和耳都有些不够用。
+ 平安里的闹，是会传染的，而且无缝不钻，渐渐地，就有些将王琦瑶的清静给打破了。
+ 楼梯上的脚步纷沓起来，门开门关频繁起来，时常有人在后弄仰头叫王琦瑶的名字，一声声的。
+ 尤其是在那种悠闲的下午，这叫声便传远，有一股殷切的味道。
+ 夹竹桃也开了。
+ 平安里也是有几棵夹竹桃的，栽在晒台上碎砖围起来的一掬泥土中，开出绚烂的花朵。
+ 白昼里虽不会有奇遇，可却是悉心积累起许多细枝末节，最后也要酿成个什么。
+ 王琦瑶和人相熟起来。
+ 人们知道她是个年轻的寡妇，自然就有热心说媒的人上门。
+ 王琦瑶见过其中的一个，是个做教师的，说是三十岁，却已谢顶。
+ 两人在电影院里见面，看一场农民翻身的电影，是王琦瑶最不要看的那种，硬撑到底的。
+ 其中有静默的间隙，便听见那教书的局促的呼吸声，带了一股胸腔里的啸音，是哮喘的症状。
+ 王琦瑶从此便对说媒的人婉言谢绝，她知道再介绍谁也跳不出教书先生这个窠臼。
+ 她不怪别人，只怪自己命运不济。
+ 她望着平安里油烟弥漫的上空，心里想，还会有什么好事情来临呢？
+ 人们有说她骄傲，也有说她守节，什么闲话她都作耳边风，什么开导的话她也作耳边风。
+ 虽是相熟，却还是隔的，这也是正常。
+ 平安里的相熟中不知有多少隔，浑水里不知有多少大鱼。
+ 平安里的相熟都是不求甚解，浮皮潦草，表面上闹，底下还是寂寞，这寂寞是人不知，己也不知。
+ 日子就糊里糊涂地过下去。
+ 王琦瑶是糊涂一半，清楚一半，糊涂的那半供过，清楚的一半是供想。
+ 白天忙着应付各样的人和事，到了夜晚，关了灯，月光一下子跳到窗帘上，把那大朵大朵的花推近眼前，不想也要想。
+ 平安里的夜晚其实也是有许多想头的，只不过没有王琦瑶窗帘上的大花朵，映显不出来罢了。
+ 许多想头都是沉在心底，沉渣一般。
+ 全是叫生计熬炼的，挤干汁，沥干水，凝结成块，怎么样的激荡也泛不起来。
+ 王琦瑶还没到这一步，她的想头还有些枝叶花朵，在平安里黯淡的夜里，闪出些光亮来。
+ 7．熟客
+ 常来的人中间，有一个人称严家师母的，更是常来一些。
+ 她也是住平安里，弄底的，独门独户的一幢。
+ 她三十六七岁的年纪，最大的儿子倒有十九岁了，在同济读建筑。
+ 她家先生一九四九年前是一爿灯泡厂的厂主，公私合营后做了副厂长，照严家师母的话， 就是摆摆样子的。
+ 严家师母在平常的日子，也描眉毛，抹口红，穿翠绿色的短夹袄，下面是舍味呢的西装裤。
+ 她在弄堂里走过，人们便都停了说话，将目光转向她。
+ 她则昂然不理会，进出如入无人之境。
+ 她家的儿女也不与邻人家的孩子嬉戏玩耍，严先生更是汽车进，汽车出，多年来，连他的面目都没看真切过。
+ 严家的娘姨是不让随便出来的，又换得勤，所以就连她家娘姨，也像是骄傲的，与人们并不相识。
+ 严家师母每逢星期一和四，到王琦瑶这里打一种进口的防止感冒的营养针。
+ 她第一眼见王琦瑶，心中便暗暗惊讶，她想，这女人定是有些来历。
+ 王琦瑶一举一动，一衣一食，都在告诉她隐情，这隐情是繁华场上的。
+ 她只这一眼就把王琦瑶视作了可亲可近。
+ 严家师母在平安里始终感到委屈，住在这里全为了房价便宜，因严先生是克勤克俭的人。
+ 为此她没少发牢骚，严先生枕头上也立下千般愿，万般誓，不料公私合营，产业都归了国家，能保住一处私房就是天恩地恩，花园洋房终成泡影。
+ 严家师母在平安里总是鹤立鸡群，看别人都是下人一般，没一个可与她平起平坐。
+ 现在，三十九号住进一个王琦瑶，不由她又惊又喜，还使她有同病相怜之感。
+ 也不管王琦瑶同意不同意，便做起她的座上客。
+ 严家师母总是在下午两点钟以后来王琦瑶处，手里拿一把檀香扇，再加身上的脂粉，人未见香先到。
+ 下午来打针多是在三四点钟，这一小时总空着，只她们俩，面对面地坐。
+ 夏天午间的困盹还没完全过去，禁不住哈欠连哈欠的。
+ 她们强打精神，自己都不知说的什么。
+ 弄口梧桐树上的蝉一迭声叫，传进来是嗡嗡的，也是不清楚。
+ 王琦瑶舀来自己做的乌梅汤给客人喝，一杯喝下去也不知喝的什么。
+ 等那哈欠过去，人渐渐醒了，胸中那股潮热劲平息下去，便有了些好的心情。
+ 一般总是严家师母说，王琦瑶听，说的和听的都入神。
+ 严家师母对了王琦瑶像有几百年的心里话，竹筒倒豆子似的，从娘家说到婆家，其实都是说给自己听的。
+ 王琦瑶呢？
+ 耳朵里听进的严家的事，落到心里便成了自己的事，是听自己的心声。
+ 也有时候，严家师母要问起王琦瑶的事，王琦瑶只照一般回答的话说，明知道她未必信，也只能叫她自己去猜，猜对了也别出口。
+ 严家师母虽是能猜出几分，却偏要开口问，像是检验王琦瑶的诚心似的。
+ 王琦瑶不是不诚心，只是不能说。
+ 两人有些兜圈子，你追我躲，心里就种下了芥蒂。
+ 好在女人和女人是不怕种下芥蒂的，女人间的友谊其实是用芥蒂结成的，越是有芥蒂，友情越是深。
+ 她们两人有时是不欢而散，可下一日又聚在了一处，比上一日更知心。
+ 这一日，严家师母要与王琦瑶做媒，王琦瑶笑着说不要。
+ 严家师母问这又是为什么。
+ 王琦瑶并不说理由，只把那一日同教书先生看电影的情景描绘给她。
+ 她听了便是笑，笑过后则正色道：我要介绍给你的，一不教书，二不败顶，三不哮喘，说到此处，两人就又忍不住地笑，笑断肠子了。
+ 笑完后，严家师母就不提做媒的事，王琦瑶自然更不提，是心照不宣，也是顺水推舟。
+ 两人都是聪敏人，又还年轻，没叫时间磨钝了心，一点就通的。
+ 虽然相差有近十岁的年纪，可一个浅了几岁，另一个深了几岁，正好走在了一起。
+ 像她们这样半路上的朋友，各有各的隐衷，别看严家师母竹筒倒豆子，内中也有自己未必知道的保留，彼此并不知根知底，能有一些同情便可以了。
+ 所以尽管严家师母有些不满足的地方，可也担待下来，做了真心相待的朋友。
+ 严家师母就是时间多，虽有严先生，却是早出晚归；有三个孩子，大的大了，小的丢给奶妈；再有些工商界的太太们的交际，毕竟不能天天去。
+ 于是，王琦瑶家便成了好去处，天天都要点个卯的，有时竟连饭也在这里陪王琦瑶吃。
+ 王琦瑶要去炒两个菜，她则死命拦着不放，说是有啥吃啥。
+ 她们常常是吃泡饭，黄泥螺下饭。
+ 王琦瑶这种简单的近于苦行的日子，有着淡泊和安宁，使人想起闺阁的生活，那已是多么遥远的了。
+ 当她们正说着闲话，会有来打针的人，严家师母就帮着端椅子，收钱接药，递这递那。
+ 来人竟把装扮艳丽的她看成是王琦瑶的妹妹，严家师母便兴奋得红了脸，好像孩子得到了大人的夸奖。
+ 事后，她必得鼓动王琦瑶烫头发做衣服，怀着点自我牺牲的精神。
+ 她说着做女人的道理，有关青春的短暂和美丽。
+ 想到青春，王琦瑶不由哀从中来。
+ 她看见她二十五岁的年纪在苍白的晨曦和昏黄的暮色里流淌，她是挽也挽不住，抽刀断水水更流的。
+ 严家师母的装束是常换常新，紧跟时尚，也只能拉住青春的尾巴。
+ 她的有些装束使王琦瑶触目惊心，却有点感动。
+ 她的光艳照人里有一些天真，也有一些沧桑，杂糅在一起，是哀绝的美。
+ 经不住严家师母言行并教的策动，王琦瑶真就去烫了头发。
+ 走进理发店，那洗发水和头油的气味，夹着头发的焦糊味，扑鼻而来，真是熟得不能再熟。
+ 一个女人正烘着头发，一手拿本连环画看，另一手伸给理发师修剪的样子，也是熟进心里去的。
+ 洗头，修剪，卷发，电烫，烘干，定型，一系列的程序是不思量，自难忘。
+ 王琦瑶觉得昨天还刚来过的，周围都是熟面孔。
+ 最后，一切就绪，镜子里的王琦瑶也是昨天的，中间那三年的岁月是一剪子剪下，不知弃往何处。
+ 她在镜子里看见站在身后的严家师母瞠目结舌的表情，几乎是后悔怂恿她来烫发的。
+ 理发师正整理她的鬓发，手指触在脸颊，是最悉心的呵护。
+ 她微微侧过脸，躲着吹风机的热风，这略带娇憨的姿态也是昨天的。
+
+ Childbirth
+ ONE DAY MR. CHENG went to Wang Qiyao's after work to find her pale and flustered, lying down every so often and then getting up to pace around.
+ She even knocked over a glass, which shattered on the floor, but didn't bother to pick up the pieces.
+ Mr. Cheng hurried out to call a pedicab, came back in to help her downstairs, and then rushed them off to the hospital.
+ Having arrived at the hospital, she seemed to improve, and Mr. Cheng went out to get something for their dinner.
+ By the time he got back, Wang Qiyao had already been taken into the delivery room.
+ It was a baby girl.
+ She was born at eight o'clock.
+ They told Mr. Cheng that she had long arms and legs and a full head of black hair.
+ This set him wondering, Just who does she look like?
+ When, three days later, he brought mother and daughter home from the hospital, the threesome attracted quite a few curious stares down the longtang.
+ Mr. Cheng had fetched Wang Qiyao's mother the day before, setting up a place for her on the sofa, and even going to the trouble of preparing a set of toiletries.
+ Mrs. Wang was silent the whole time, but, as Mr. Cheng busied himself with the household chores, she blurted out, "If only you had been the child's father . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng trembled and almost lost hold of the things in his hands.
+ He wanted to say something but his throat had closed up.
+ By the time he was able to speak, he had forgotten what to say.
+ So he simply pretended that he had not heard.
+ When Wang Qiyao came home the next day, her mother had already prepared a pot of chicken broth and the customary bowl of soup with red jujube and longan, which was supposed to be so nourishing for new mothers.
+ She handed the bowl to her daughter in silence.
+ She did not bother to even look at her granddaughter; it was as if the child did not exist.
+ Neighbors began to call on them, but they were only the most casual of acquaintances—the only contact they normally had with Wang Qiyao was waving hello as she went in and out of the longtang; now they came out of curiosity.
+ Each one went on about how much the baby looked like Wang Qiyao, all the while wondering who the father was.
+ Going into the kitchen to fetch the hot water Thermos, Mr. Cheng found Mrs. Wang standing in front of the window, looking out at the overcast sky and quietly wiping away the tears.
+ Mr. Cheng had always thought her a calculating woman.
+ Back when he used to call on Wang Qiyao, she would never even bother to greet him but always sent the maid down to talk to him at the door instead.
+ Now, he sensed, she was much closer to him, perhaps more understanding and sympathetic even than her daughter.
+ He stood behind her for a moment before offering a timid attempt at consolation.
+ "Don't worry, Auntie.
+ I'll take care of her."
+ With those words he could feel the tears welling up and hastened back into the room with the hot water thermos.
+ The next day Madame Yan, who had not visited for ages, came to see Wang Qiyao.
+ She had long heard of the pregnancy from her servant Mama Zhang, who had seen Wang Qiyao coming and going with that protruding belly of hers; Wang Qiyao obviously wasn't worried about the rumors her pregnancy might stir up.
+ Kang Mingxun and Sasha had by this time long vanished from the scene, one hiding out at home while the other fled far away.
+ Then, out of nowhere, appeared this Mr. Cheng, who suddenly started coming by at least three times a day.
+ Although Madame Yan wasn't exactly sure what had transpired, she wasn't in the least bit taken off guard; in fact, she fancied herself one imbued with keen insights into the situation of women like Wang Qiyao.
+ Still, she was intrigued by Mr. Cheng.
+ She could tell from the fine quality of the old suit he wore that this Mr. Cheng had been a stylish man back in the old days.
+ She took him to be some kind of playboy whom Wang Qiyao must have known back in her dance hall days.
+ Madame Yan imagined all kinds of things about Mr. Cheng.
+ She had run into him a few times in the alley: he was always on his way to Wang Qiyao's with snacks like "stinky tofu," and would always rush briskly past lest the food get cold.
+ The grease from the tofu had already soaked the bottom of the bag and was about to drip through.
+ Madame Yan was touched, even somewhat jealous of Wang Qiyao for having such a devoted friend.
+ Hearing that Wang Qiyao had given birth, she was moved to sympathy; being a woman, she could relate to how difficult things must have been for Wang Qiyao, and decided to go over to see how she was.
+ Mrs. Wang, sensing that Madame Yan was a cut above the others, felt favored by the visit and tried to make herself pleasant.
+ She even brewed some tea and sat down with Madame Yan.
+ With Mr. Cheng away at work, these three women of different generations compared notes about the hardships of childbirth.
+ Wang Qiyao mostly just sat and listened, as if the shady circumstances surrounding the father of her child prevented her from claiming her share of the glory.
+ Her mother and Madame Yan, on the other hand, vividly recalled every detail from earlier decades.
+ When Mrs. Wang started to speak about how hard it was giving birth to Wang Qiyao, the irony of the present situation was not lost on her and her eyes reddened.
+ She quickly found an excuse to scurry off into the kitchen, leaving the other two in an awkward silence.
+ The baby had just been fed and was deep in sleep, her outline barely visible in the candle light.
+ Wang Qiyao had been looking down as she picked her fingernails, but she abruptly raised her head and laughed.
+ It was a tragic laugh that affected even Madame Yan.
+ "Madame Yan, I really appreciate you coming to see me . . . especially after all that's happened.
+ I was worried you would look down on me," Wang Qiyao said.
+ "Oh, cut it out, Wang Qiyao!" replied Madame Yan.
+ "Nobody is looking down on you!
+ I'm calling on Kang Mingxun in a few days and I'm going to see to it that he comes to see you."
+ At the mention of his name, Wang Qiyao turned away.
+ It was only after a long silence that she replied, "That's right, it's been ages since I've seen him."
+ Madame Yan grew suspicious, but was forced to keep her thoughts to herself; instead she casually suggested that they all get together again.
+ "It's a pity that Sasha's no longer around.
+ He must be off in Siberia eating his Russian bread!
+ But that's okay, you can bring along that new friend of yours and we'll have a foursome for our mahjong games."
+ She took the opportunity to ask Wang Qiyao the gentleman's name, his age, where he was from, and where he worked, all of which Wang Qiyao responded to matter-of-factly.
+ At that point Madame Yan asked bluntly, "He is so loyal to you, and neither of you is getting any younger....
+ Why don't you just get married?"
+ Wang Qiyao responded with another laugh.
+ Raising her head, she looked Madame Yan straight in the eye.
+ "A woman like me. . . .
+ How could I talk of marriage?"
+ The next day, Kang Mingxun indeed came by to call on Wang Qiyao.
+ Although she had expected him to show up after Madame Yan's visit, she was still caught by surprise.
+ Standing there face to face, neither knew what to say.
+ Mrs. Wang sized up the situation and decided it was best to give them some privacy, but slammed the door shut on her way out to register her disapproval.
+ But Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun didn't even notice.
+ This was the first time they had been together since their parting.
+ It felt like thousands of years since they had last seen each other.
+ They had appeared in each other's dreams, but the images in their dreams were so far from the real person that they would have been better off not even dreaming.
+ They had, in truth, resolved not to think of each other—and succeeded.
+ But, face to face once again, they discovered that letting go was not as easy as they had thought.
+ They stood there for a moment before Kang Mingxun walked around to the other side of the bed to take a look at the baby.
+ Wang Qiyao stopped him.
+ When he asked why he shouldn't see the baby, she said, "Because I said so. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun pressed for an explanation.
+ Wang Qiyao said that it wasn't his baby.
+ They fell silent for a while before he said, "Well, whose is it then, if it isn't mine?"
+ "Sasha's."
+ At that, the two of them broke down in tears.
+ All the sorrow they had suppressed back when they had to make that difficult decision suddenly came rushing back; they wondered how they had ever got through everything that had brought them to this point.
+ "I'm so sorry . . . I'm so sorry. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun kept apologizing, knowing it would do no good even if he said it a thousand times over.
+ Wang Qiyao kept shaking her head, aware that if she did not accept the apology, she would have nothing at all.
+ They were both in tears, but it was Wang Qiyao who stopped crying first.
+ Wiping away her tears, she insisted, "She really is Sasha's child."
+ Hearing her say this, Kang Mingxun also pulled back his tears and sat himself down.
+ There was no more mention of the baby; it was as if she had ceased to exist.
+ Wang Qiyao had Kang Mingxun make himself some tea and, as he busied himself, she asked him what he had been doing of late—did he still play bridge?
+ Was there any news on the job front?
+ "For the past few months, it feels like I have been doing only one thing—waiting in line.
+ I get in line at nine thirty every morning to get into the Chinese restaurant.
+ Then I line up again around four at a Western restaurant.
+ Sometimes I have to line up just to get a cup of coffee or a quick bite, like a bowl of rice with salted pork."
+ He explained that he was the one who usually got stuck holding a place in line for the rest of the family; once it got to close to his turn, everyone else would show up.
+ "Everyone talks about there not being enough to eat, but I feel like all I do all day long is eat!"
+ Wang Qiyao took a closer look at him and jokingly observed, "You've been eating so much that you're starting to grow gray."
+ "I don't think that's from eating too much—it's from missing someone too much...."
+ Wang Qiyao rolled her eyes.
+ "Oh no, I'm not singing Rendezvous at the Pavilion with you again!"
+ They seemed to have slipped back into their old ways—except that there was this new addition asleep on the bed.
+ Sparrows were pecking at crumbs on the windowsill and they could hear someone forcefully shaking out a comforter on a nearby balcony.
+ Kang Mingxun was just on his way out as Mr. Cheng came back from work.
+ Passing on the stairs, they exchanged a quick glance but neither left much of an impression on the other.
+ It wasn't until he got inside that Wang Qiyao explained that the man was her neighbor Madame Yan's cousin, the one she used to spend time with.
+ "It's almost dinner time.
+ How come you didn't ask him to stay for dinner?"
+ Mr. Cheng asked.
+ "We really don't have anything special to entertain a guest... so I thought it would be rude to invite him," she explained.
+ Mrs. Wang kept quiet but had a disgusted look on her face.
+ She went out of her way to be nice to Mr. Cheng, who wondered who had crossed her—he knew it wasn't him.
+ As usual, he spent some time playing with the baby after dinner.
+ Seeing the baby fed and contentedly asleep with her tiny fist in her mouth, he took his leave.
+ It was around eight o'clock.
+ People and cars passed back and forth under the bright city lights.
+ Instead of taking the trolley, Mr. Cheng draped his fall coat over his arm and walked home.
+ He took in the familiar scents of the city and soaked up the evening scene.
+ Now that the burden weighing on him for so long had been finally lifted, he felt relaxed: mother and child were safe and sound and the baby didn't bother him as he had originally feared.
+ In fact, Mr. Cheng was struck with a peculiar happiness; it was as if he, and not the child, had been given a new lease on life.
+ The late show was about to begin at the cinemas, which added a feeling of excitement to the night air.
+ The city still had the spirit of a night owl, and the same energy of years ago was still there.
+ The tricolor revolving pole outside the barbershop was the emblem of this unsleeping city.
+ The strong aroma of Brazilian coffee wafting out of Old Chang's gives the impression that time is flowing backward.
+ How exciting the night is!
+ Desire and contentment abound and, despite the compromises that have to be made, everyone gives their all, living life to the fullest.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes grew moist and a strange excitement welled up in his heart, the like of which he had not experienced in a long time.
+ The next time Kang Mingxun showed up, Mrs. Wang did not go into the kitchen to avoid him.
+ She sat on the sofa reading a cartoon version of the Dream of the Red Chamber.
+ Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun couldn't help but feel awkward and fell back on making small talk about the weather.
+ When the baby woke up crying, Wang Qiyao asked Kang Mingxun to hand her a clean diaper.
+ To her dismay, her mother got up and, taking the diaper out of Kang Mingxun's hand, scolded her.
+ "How could you have the gentleman do this kind of thing?"
+ "I don't mind," explained Kang Mingxun.
+ "It's not like I'm busy with anything else. . . ."
+ "Right, let him help out," Wang Qiyao added.
+ Mrs. Wang drew a long face.
+ "Don't you have any manners?
+ How could you ask a gentleman like him to lay his hands on these filthy articles?
+ He is decent enough to treat you with respect and come to visit; but don't take it as a sign that you can walk all over him.
+ Show some tact!"
+ Stunned by the innuendo in her mother's sudden attack, Wang Qiyao burst into tears.
+ Mrs. Wang became even more incensed.
+ She flung the diaper in her daughter's face, screaming, "I try to help you save face, but you just don't seem to care!
+ You demean yourself, and it's all your own doing!
+ If you want to lead a life of shame, go ahead!
+ Nobody's going to be able to help you if you don't help yourself!"
+ With that, Mrs. Wang also burst out crying.
+ Kang Mingxun was thoroughly bemused; he had no idea what had brought this on.
+ Not knowing what else to do, he set about trying to mollify Mrs. Wang, "Please don't be upset, Auntie.
+ You know that Wang Qiyao has a good heart. . . ."
+ His words made Mrs. Wang laugh.
+ She turned to him, "Mister, you are very perceptive.
+ Wang Qiyao does indeed have a good heart.
+ She has no choice.
+ Where would she be if she didn't have a good heart?"
+ Suddenly Kang Mingxun realized that he was the object of her wrath.
+ He stepped back and stammered something inaudible.
+ At this point, the baby, whom no one had been tending to, began to howl.
+ Of the four people in the room, three were now in tears.
+ Aghast at the chaos, Kang Mingxun felt impelled to say, "It is less than a month since Wang Qiyao gave birth.
+ She should still be resting and we should try not to make her upset."
+ Mrs. Wang laughed coldly.
+ "Oh, so Wang Qiyao should be resting this month, should she?
+ That's funny, I didn't know.
+ With no man around to rely on, how is she supposed to be able to rest?
+ Will you explain that to me?"
+ Those words brought an abrupt end to Wang Qiyao's tears.
+ When she had finished changing and feeding the baby, she said, "Mom, you said I lack tact; but what about you?
+ How do you think it looks when you say such things in front of our guest?
+ After all, it's not as if he has anything to do with our family.
+ You're the one who is demeaning me—and yourself!
+ At any rate, I'll always be your daughter!"
+ Mrs. Wang was dumbstruck.
+ By the time she was ready to respond, Wang Qiyao cut her off.
+ "This gentleman has the decency to come by and pay his respects.
+ I would never dream of making any unseemly demands on him—and neither should you!
+ All my life I've had no one to rely on but myself; I make no other claims besides that.
+ I'm sorry to have troubled you to help out during this difficult time, but I promise you that I will repay you for your trouble."
+ Her remarks were directed at her mother, but they were also meant for Kang Mingxun.
+ Mother and daughter both fell silent for a time, until Ms. Wang wiped away her tears and murmured bleakly, "I see I've been worrying too much.
+ Well, you are almost through your first month, and it looks like I'm no longer needed here."
+ Even as she spoke, she began to gather up her personal effects.
+ Neither Wang Qiyao nor Kang Mingxun dared say a word to persuade her to stay.
+ They watched in shock as she packed her things and placed a red envelope on the baby's chest.
+ She went out the door and down the stairs; then they heard the sound of the downstairs door closing, and she was gone.
+ Inside the red envelope were 200 yuan and a gold pendant.
+ When Mr. Cheng arrived, he found Wang Qiyao out of bed cooking dinner in the kitchen.
+ He asked where Mrs. Wang had gone.
+ Wang Qiyao told him that her father was not feeling well and, since it was already almost a month since the birth, she had persuaded her mother to go home to look after him.
+ Mr. Cheng noticed her swollen eyes and guessed that she had been crying, but he decided not to press her and simply let things go at that.
+ With Mrs. Wang gone, the mood that evening was a bit dull.
+ Wang Qiyao was not very talkative and answered Mr. Cheng's questions absentmindedly, leaving her guest rather down.
+ Mr. Cheng sat off to one side and read the newspaper.
+ He read on for quite some time and the apartment grew quiet.
+ He thought that Wang Qiyao must be asleep, but when he looked over he saw that she had propped her head against the pillow and was staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought.
+ He quietly approached to ask what she was thinking.
+ The last thing he expected was for her to jerk back and ask him what he wanted.
+ There was alarm in her eyes and a distant look that made Mr. Cheng feel like a stranger.
+ He retreated to the sofa and went on with reading his newspaper.
+ All of a sudden, rowdy noises broke out from the longtang outside.
+ Opening the window to look out, Mr. Cheng saw that a crowd had gathered around a man holding up a weasel he had caught in his chicken coop.
+ After recounting the beast's crimes, the man carried it toward the entrance to the longtang with the crowd following close behind.
+ Mr. Cheng was about to close the window when he caught the scent of osmanthus blossoms in the air; it wasn't terribly strong, but the fragrance went straight to his heart.
+ He also noticed the narrow span of sky above Peace Lane—a deep, deep blue.
+ He felt exhilarated.
+ Turning to Wang Qiyao, he said, "Let's have a banquet to celebrate the child's one-month birthday."
+ Wang Qiyao did not say anything at first.
+ Then, breaking into a smile: "Is that cause for celebration?"
+ "Yes," Mr. Cheng said more earnestly.
+ "A first-month birthday is always a happy and auspicious occasion!"
+ "What's so happy and auspicious about it?"
+ Mr. Cheng did not know how to answer.
+ Although she had been the one to crush his excitement, he pitied her.
+ Wang Qiyao rolled over away from him.
+ After a pause, she continued, "Let's not fuss over this one-month celebration.
+ Let's simply make a few dishes, buy a bottle of wine, and invite Madame Yan and her cousin over.
+ They have been good to me, coming to see me and all."
+ That was enough to put Mr. Cheng back in high spirits.
+ He pondered what kind of soup and dishes they should serve.
+ Wang Qiyao objected to virtually every one of his suggestions, and he had to start from scratch.
+ They became more animated as they argued back and forth about the menu and gradually things went back to normal.
+ On the afternoon of the dinner Mr. Cheng left work early to pick up the food for that evening.
+ They put the baby to bed early and chatted as they cooked.
+ Mr. Cheng saw that Wang Qiyao was in a good mood, which also put him in a good mood.
+ They arranged the cold dishes in a delightful pattern, garnishing the plate with purple radishes.
+ Wang Qiyao declared, "Mr. Cheng, you're not only a great photographer, but you can cook too!"
+ "And you didn't even mention what I'm best at . . ."
+ "What's that?"
+ "Railroad engineering."
+ "I practically forgot your true calling.
+ You see, all along you have been entertaining us with your hobbies, and hiding your real talent!"
+ "It's not that I was trying to hide it....
+ I just never get the chance to show it off!"
+ Their jovial banter was interrupted by the guests, who had come bearing gifts.
+ Madame Yan brought a pound of cashmere yarn, and Kang Mingxun a pair of gold ingots.
+ Wang Qiyao wanted to tell him that he shouldn't have given such an expensive gift, but was worried that Madame Yan would take that as a sign that her gift wasn't lavish enough, so she decided to accept them both and save her misgivings for another day.
+ Everyone went inside to see the baby before dinner and they all commented on how precious she looked.
+ Since there were four of them, it worked out perfectly when they sat down at the table, one person on each side.
+ This was the first time that Mr. Cheng had met the evening's guests.
+ Madame Yan had taken note of him, but he had never noticed her, and he had only passed Kang Mingxun on the staircase, when neither could get a good look at the other.
+ Wang Qiyao made the introductions and they proceeded with dinner as if they were all acquainted.
+ Madame Yan already had a good impression of Mr. Cheng and was especially friendly toward him; it wasn't long before she felt like they were old friends.
+ Although Mr. Cheng was a bit overwhelmed by her warmth, he realized she had nothing but the best intentions.
+ Kang Mingxun, on the other hand, was stiff and subdued.
+ He said little, focusing on the warm rice wine.
+ They finished off the first bottle rather quickly and started on a second.
+ Mr. Cheng excused himself so he could go to the kitchen to prepare another dish, but seeing he was a bit tipsy, Wang Qiyao put her hand on his shoulder, motioning him to sit back down, and insisted that she take care of it.
+ He gently caressed the hand on his shoulder, but she instinctively pulled it away.
+ Kang Mingxun, in spite of himself, flashed Mr. Cheng a rather sharp glance.
+ The effect on Mr. Cheng was instantaneously sobering.
+ Wang Qiyao returned to the table with the new dish she had just whipped up.
+ By then even Madame Yan, whose cheeks were red, was getting a bit tipsy.
+ She proposed a toast to Mr. Cheng, declaring him a rare gentleman and even quoting the old adage, "It's easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend who can really understand you."
+ Her words were inappropriate to the occasion; obviously, alcohol was bringing out some hidden truths.
+ Not content to propose a toast on her own, she insisted that Kang Mingxun also drink to Mr. Cheng.
+ Kang Mingxun raised his cup but didn't know quite what to say.
+ As the rest of the party waited anxiously, he finally came out with something that sounded even more inappropriate.
+ "Here's to Mr. Cheng soon finding matrimonial bliss!"
+ Mr. Cheng accepted their toast with equanimity and a "thank you."
+ Then, turning to Wang Qiyao, he asked if she had anything to say.
+ Wang Qiyao was a bit disconcerted by the unfamiliar glint in his eyes—she wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or something else—so she put on a placating smile.
+ "Naturally, I should have been the first one to toast Mr. Cheng.
+ Just as Madame Yan said, it is easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend.
+ No one else here understands me the way Mr. Cheng does.
+ He has always been there for me during my most difficult times.
+ And for all the mistakes I have made, he has always forgiven me.
+ I owe him a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to repay."
+ Conscious that it was the alcohol that had emboldened her to open up, Mr. Cheng couldn't help being at once deeply disappointed and hurt by her words; all she spoke of was gratitude, with not a word about love.
+ On the brink of tears, he lowered his head.
+ Only after a long pause did he manage to force a smile and say,
+ "Hey, we're not here to celebrate my one-month birthday!
+ Why is everyone toasting me?
+ Drinking to Wang Qiyao would be more like it!"
+ And so, with Madame Yan leading the way, they all toasted Wang Qiyao.
+ But, perhaps because they had all talked too much already, no one had much left to say.
+ So they just drank, one cup after another.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes met Kang Mingxun's once again.
+ They stared mutely at each other, neither fully understanding the circumstances.
+ But the seeds of suspicion had been planted.
+ Everyone drank more than they should have that evening.
+ Mr. Cheng couldn't remember how he had seen the guests out or whether he had washed the dishes after they left.
+ He woke up to discover himself on Wang Qiyao's sofa, a thin blanket draped over him.
+ Leftover food was still on the table, and the room was filled with the sweet and sour fragrance of rice wine.
+ The moon shining through the curtains on his face was cool as water.
+ He felt utterly at peace as he watched the moonlight dancing on the curtain; he decided to let his mind go blank and not worry about anything that had happened that night.
+ Suddenly he heard a gentle voice ask, "Would you care for some tea?"
+ He followed the voice and saw Wang Qiyao lying in bed across the room.
+ She had also woken up, but her face was obscured by the shadows and Mr. Cheng could only make out her silhouette.
+ Mr. Cheng did not feel awkward; on the contrary, he was filled with a sense of serenity.
+ "I'm so embarrassed!" he said.
+ Wang Qiyao responded with a silent laugh.
+ "You fell asleep with your head on the table.
+ It took the three of us to get you onto the sofa."
+ "I drank too much," he said.
+ "But that was only because I was happy."
+ After a silence, Wang Qiyao responded, "Actually . . . you drank so much because you were upset. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed.
+ "What's there for me to be upset about?
+ I was really happy."
+ Neither of them spoke and gradually the moonlight shifted a bit closer.
+ Bathed in the moonlight, Mr. Cheng had the sensation that he was lying in water.
+ Quite some time passed, and he was certain that Wang Qiyao must have long fallen asleep, when she suddenly called out his name.
+ He was surprised to hear her call him.
+ "What is it?"
+ Wang Qiyao hesitated before asking, "Can't you get to sleep?"
+ "I think I got all the sleep I needed when I passed out earlier!"
+ "That's not what I meant. . . ."
+ "I think I know quite well what you meant," insisted Mr. Cheng.
+ "I don't think so. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed, "Of course I do."
+ "If you understand what I meant, then why don't you tell me...?"
+ "If that's what you want, I will then," replied Mr. Cheng.
+ "You meant that all this time we have been but just one step away from taking our relationship somewhere else.
+ And if I were to take that step, you would not refuse me."
+ Wang Qiyao marveled at Mr. Cheng's perceptiveness, especially since he usually came off so stiff and bookish.
+ Embarrassed, she tried to find an excuse to explain things away.
+ "I know I don't deserve you . . . and that's why I wanted to wait for you to make the first move."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed again.
+ He felt extremely relaxed, as if floating on air.
+ When he spoke, it felt almost as if someone else was doing the talking, but the words that came out were indeed his deepest and most honest inner thoughts.
+ "We talked about taking that one last step. . . .
+ Well, I have been waiting practically half my life to take that step.
+ But it's not as easy as it sounds.
+ Have you ever heard the saying, 'People can be a short distance away, yet poles apart'?
+ There are a lot of things in life that simply can't be forced."
+ Wang Qiyao remained silent and Mr. Cheng, unconcerned as to whether she was really listening, continued to pour out the feelings he had accumulated inside himself all those years.
+ He explained how he had long ago come to understand this principle.
+ So long as they could be close friends, confidants, he thought, his life would not have been in vain.
+ But once people are together, it is as the saying goes: "A boat sailing against the current must forge ahead or else be driven back."
+ "I would be lying if I said that I didn't have the desire to forge ahead . . . but when the boat won't go forward anymore . . . all I can do is turn back."
+ After a long silence, he suddenly asked, "Kang Mingxun is the father, isn't he?"
+ Wang Qiyao laughed, "What does it matter whether he is or not?"
+ Mr. Cheng grew a bit self-conscious.
+ "I was only asking."
+ The two of them turned over, away from each other, and before long they were both fast asleep, snoring lightly.
+ The following day Mr. Cheng did not show up at Wang Qiyao's after work—he went to see Jiang Lili instead.
+ He had called her at her office, and they agreed to meet on Tilan Bridge.
+ By the time Mr. Cheng arrived, Jiang Lili was already standing there waiting, constantly looking at her watch.
+ She had clearly arrived too early but insisted on blaming Mr. Cheng for being late.
+ Mr. Cheng refused to argue with her.
+ They found a small restaurant nearby, went in, and ordered a few dishes.
+ As soon as the waiter turned away, Mr. Cheng bent over the table and started to cry, a stream of tears falling steadily on the bleached table cloth.
+ Jiang Lili could pretty much figure out what had happened, but made no effort to comfort him.
+ All she offered was silence as she silently fixed her gaze on the ashen wall, which had recently been stained a pale white.
+ At that moment, all Mr. Cheng was focused on was his own pain, and he made no effort to understand what Jiang Lili might be feeling.
+ Even people as good-natured and generous as Mr. Cheng can become extremely selfish and unfair in love.
+ They tiptoe around their loved ones, fearful of giving offense; but with the people who love them they are thoroughly inconsiderate and arrogant, behaving like spoiled brats.
+ This was what had motivated him to seek out Jiang Lili.
+ Jiang Lili did not speak for a long time.
+ Then, seeing that he was still crying, she sneered, "What's wrong?
+ Went out and got your heart broken, did you?"
+ Mr. Cheng gradually stopped crying and sat in silence.
+ Jiang Lili had the urge to taunt him further, but, taking pity on him, softened up.
+ "You know, it seems like the harder we try to get something, the more elusive it becomes.
+ But when we don't want something, it ends up falling into our lap."
+ Mr. Cheng asked softly, "And what if one gives up on something but it still remains elusive?"
+ Jiang Lili was livid.
+ She raised her voice, "What, are all the women in the world dead?
+ Don't tell me that I'm the only one left?
+ Sent here to listen to you ramble on about your grievances over her?"
+ Mr. Cheng lowered his head contritely and was silent.
+ Jiang Lili also gave up speaking to him, and the two of them sat for some time in an awkward silence.
+ In the end, it was Mr. Cheng who continued.
+ "Actually, I came here to ask a favor of you. . . .
+ I'm not sure what made me break down like that.
+ I'm so sorry."
+ Somewhat mollified, Jiang Lili told him to go ahead and say what he had to say.
+ "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and you are the only one I can go to for help.
+ I know it's not right, but there is no one else I can turn to."
+ "Whatever it is, let's hear it!"
+ Mr. Cheng explained that he would never again visit Wang Qiyao.
+ He wanted to ask Jiang Lili to look out for her.
+ Jiang Lili did not know whether to be angry or bitter.
+ It took a long time before she managed to say, "Well I guess all the women in the world are dead . . . even me."
+ Mr. Cheng took her ridicule in stride and Jiang Lili stopped herself from saying more.
+ Wang Qiyao waited for Mr. Cheng's return.
+ She waited several days, but in the end it was Jiang Lili who came to visit.
+ She had come straight from work in Yangshupu and had had to transfer several times on the bus.
+ By the time she got there, her hair was disheveled, her shoes were covered with dust, and she was quite hoarse.
+ She carried a netted bag stuffed with fruits, crackers, milk powder, and a barely used bed sheet.
+ She emptied everything out onto the table before Wang Qiyao could stop her, and with several forceful motions, ripped the bed sheet into several small pieces to be used as diapers.
+
+ 14.分娩
+ 这天，程先生下班后到王琦瑶处，见她脸色苍白，坐立不安，一会儿躺倒，一会儿站起，一个玻璃杯碰在地上，摔得粉碎，也顾不上去收拾。
+ 程先生赶紧去叫来一辆三轮车，扶她下楼，去了医院。
+ 到医院倒痛得好些了，程先生就出来买些吃的做晚饭。
+ 再回到医院，人已经进了产房，晚上八点便生下了，是个女孩，说是一出娘胎就满头黑发，手脚很长。
+ 程先生难免要想：她究竟像谁呢？
+ 三天之后，程先生接了王琦瑶母女出院，进弄堂时，自然招来许多眼光。
+ 程先生早一天就把王琦瑶的母亲接来，在沙发上安了一张铺，还很细心地准备了洗漱用具。
+ 王琦瑶母亲一路无言，看程先生忙着，忽然间说了一句：程先生要是孩子的爸爸就好了。
+ 程先生拿东西的手不禁抖了一下，他想说什么，喉头却哽着，待咽下了，又不知该说什么了，只得装没听见。
+ 王琦瑶到家后，她母亲已炖了鸡汤和红枣桂圆汤，什么话也没有地端给她喝，也不看那孩子一眼，就当没这个人似的。
+ 过一会儿，就有人上门探望，都是弄堂里的，平时仅是点头之交，并不往来，其时都是因好奇而来。
+ 看了婴儿，口口声声直说像王琦瑶，心里都在猜那另一半像谁。
+ 程先生到灶间拿热水瓶给客人添水，却见王琦瑶母亲一个人站在灰蒙蒙的窗前，静静地抹着眼泪。
+ 程先生向来觉得她母亲势利，过去并不把他放在眼里，他在楼下叫王琦瑶，她连门都不肯开，只让老妈子伸出头来回话。
+ 这时，他觉着她的心与他靠近了些，甚至是比王琦瑶更有了解和同情的。
+ 他站在她的身后，嗫嚅了一会儿，说道：伯母，请你放心，我会对她照顾的。
+ 说完这话，他觉着自己也要流泪，赶紧拎起热水瓶回房间去了。
+ 过了一天，严师母来看王琦瑶了。
+ 她已经很久没有上门，早听娘姨张妈说，王琦瑶有喜了，挺着肚子在弄堂里进出，也不怕人笑话。
+ 其时，康明逊和萨沙都销声匿迹了似的，一个闭门不出，一个远走高飞，倒是半路里杀出个程先生，一日三回地来。
+ 严师母虽然不清楚究竟发生了怎样的事，但自视对王琦瑶一路的女人很了解，并不大惊小怪，倒是那个程先生给了她奇异的印象。
+ 她看出他的旧西装是好料子的，他的做派是旧时代的摩登。
+ 她猜想他是一个小开，舞场上的旧知那类人物，就从他身上派生出许多想象。
+ 她曾有几回在弄口看见他，手里捧着油炸臭豆腐什么的，急匆匆地走着，怕手里的东西凉了，那油浸透了纸袋，几乎要滴下来的样子。
+ 严师母不由受了感动，觉出些江湖不忘的味道，暗里甚至还对王琦瑶生出羡嫉。
+ 这时听说王琦瑶生了，也动了恻隐之心，感触到几分女人共同的苦衷，便决定上门看望。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲看出严师母身份不同，有一些安慰似的，脸色和悦了一些，泡来茶，一同坐下聊天。
+ 程先生上班去了，就只这老少三个女人，互诉着生产的苦情。
+ 比起来，王琦瑶多是听，少是说，因不是来路明正的生产，不敢居功似的。
+ 严师母和她母亲却是越说越热乎，虽然是多年前的事情，一点一滴都不忘怀的。
+ 她母亲说到生王琦瑶的艰辛，不觉触动心事，又红了眼圈，赶紧推说有事，避到灶间去了。
+ 留下这两人，竟一时无语。
+ 婴儿吃足了奶已睡着，蜷在蜡烛光里，也看不见个人形。
+ 王琦瑶低头剔着手指甲，忽然抬头一笑。
+ 这一笑是有些惨然的，严师母都不觉有一阵酸楚。
+ 王琦瑶说：严师母，谢谢你不嫌弃我，还来看我。
+ 严师母说：王琦瑶，你快不要说这样的话了，谁嫌弃你了？
+ 过几天我去叫康明逊也来看你。
+ 听到这个名字，王琦瑶把脸转到一边，背着严师母，停了一会儿才说：是呀，我也有好久没看见他了。
+ 严师母心里狐疑，嘴上却不好说，只闲扯着要重新聚一聚，可惜萨沙不在了，去西伯利亚吃苏联面包了，不过，补上那位新来的先生，也够一桌麻将了。
+ 说到这里，便问王琦瑶那位先生姓什么，贵庚多少，籍贯何处，在哪里高就。
+ 王琦瑶一一告诉她后，她便直截了当问道：看他对你这样忠心，两人又都不算年轻，为什么不结婚算了呢？
+ 王琦瑶听了这话又是一笑，仰起脸看了严师母说道：我这样的人，还谈什么结婚不结婚的话呢？
+ 又过了一天，康明逊果然来了。
+ 王琦瑶虽是有准备，也是意外。
+ 两人一见面，都是怔怔的，说不出话来。
+ 她母亲是个明眼人，见这情形便走开去，关门时却重重地一摔，不甘心似的。
+ 这两人则是什么也听不见了。
+ 自从分手后，这是第一次见，中间相隔有十万八千年似的。
+ 彼此的梦里都做过无数回，那梦里的人都不大像了，还不如不梦见。
+ 其实都已经决定不去想了，也真不再想了，可人一到了面前，却发觉从没放下过的。
+ 两人怔了一时，康明逊就绕到床边要看孩子。
+ 王琦瑶不让看，康明逊问为什么，王琦瑶说，不让看就是不让看。
+ 康明逊还问为什么，王琦瑶就说因为不是他的孩子。
+ 两人又沉默了一会儿，康明逊问：不是我的是谁的？
+ 王琦瑶说：是萨沙的。
+ 说罢，两人都哭了。
+ 许多辛酸当时并不觉得，这时都涌上心头，心想，他们是怎样才熬过来的呀！
+ 康明逊连连说道：对不起，对不起。
+ 自己知道说上一万遍也是无从补过，可不说对不起又说什么呢？
+ 王琦瑶只是摇头，心里也知道不要这个对不起，就什么也没了。
+ 哭了一会儿，王琦瑶先止住了，擦干眼泪说道：确是萨沙的孩子。
+ 听她这一说，康明逊的眼泪也干了，在椅子上坐下，两人就此不再提孩子的话，也像没这个人似的。
+ 王琦瑶让他自己泡茶，问他这些日子做什么，打不打桥牌，有没有分配工作的消息。
+ 他说这几个月来好像只在做一件事，就是排队。
+ 上午九点半到中餐馆排队等吃饭，下午四点钟再到西餐社排队等吃饭，有时是排队喝咖啡，有时是排队吃咸肉菜饭。
+ 总是他一个人排着，然后家里老老少少的来到。
+ 说是闹饥荒，却好像从早到晚都在吃。
+ 王琦瑶看着他说：头上都吃出白头发来了。
+ 他就说：这怎么是吃出来的呢？
+ 分明是想一个人想出来的。
+ 王琦瑶白他一眼，说：谁同你唱“楼台会”！
+ 过去的时光似乎又回来了，只是多了床上那个小人。
+ 麻雀在窗台上啄着什么碎屑，有人拍打晒透的被子，啪啪地响。
+ 程先生回来时，正好康明逊走，两人在楼梯上擦肩而过，互相看了一眼，也没留下什么印象。
+ 进房间才听王琦瑶说是弄堂底严师母的表弟，过去常在一起玩的。
+ 就说怎么临吃晚饭了还让人走。
+ 王琦瑶说没什么菜好留客的。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲并不说什么，脸色很不好看，但对程先生倒比往日更殷勤。
+ 程先生知道这不高兴不是对自己，却不知是对谁。
+ 吃过饭后，照例逗那婴儿玩一会儿，看王琦瑶给她喂了奶，她将小拳头塞进嘴巴，很满足地睡熟，便告辞出来。
+ 其时是八点钟左右，马路上人来车往，华灯照耀，有些流光溢彩。
+ 程先生也不去搭电车，臂上搭着秋大衣，信步走着。
+ 他在这夜晚里嗅到了他所熟悉的气息。
+ 灯光令他亲切，是驻进他身心里的那种。
+ 程先生现在的心情是闲适的，多日来的重负终于卸下，王琦瑶母女平安，他又不像担心的那样，对那婴儿生厌。
+ 程先生甚至有一种奇怪的兴奋心情，好像新生的不是那婴儿，而是他自己。
+ 电影院正将开映第四场电影，这给夜晚带来了活跃的空气。
+ 这城市还是睡得晚，精力不减当年。
+ 理发店门前的三色灯柱旋转着，也是夜景不熄的内心。
+ 老大昌的门里传出浓郁的巴西咖啡的香气，更是时光倒转。
+ 多么热闹的夜晚啊！
+ 四处是活跳跳的欲望和满足，虽说有些得过且过，却也是认真努力，不虚此生。
+ 程先生的眼睛几乎湿润了，心里有一种美妙的悸动，是他长久没体验过的。
+ 康明逊再一次来的时候，王琦瑶的母亲没有避进厨房，她坐在沙发上看一本连环画的《红楼梦》。
+ 这两个人难免尴尬，说着些天气什么的闲话。
+ 孩子睡醒哭了，王琦瑶让康明逊将干净尿布递一块给她，不料她母亲站了起来，拿过康明逊手中的尿布，说：怎么好叫先生你做这样的事情呢。
+ 康明逊说不要紧，反正他也没事，王琦瑶也说让他拿好了。
+ 她母亲便将脸一沉，说：你懂不懂规矩，他是一位先生，怎么能碰这些屎尿的东西，人家是对你客气，把你当个人来看望你，你就以为是福气，要爬上脸去，这才是不识相呢！
+ 王琦瑶被她母亲劈头盖脸一顿说，话里且句句有所指，心里委屈，脸上又挂不住，就哭了起来。
+ 她这一哭，她母亲更火了，将手里的尿布往她脸上摔去，接着骂道：给你脸你不要脸，所以才说自作自践，这“践”都是自己“作”出来的。
+ 自己要往低处走，别人就怎么扶也扶不起了！
+ 说着，自己也流泪了。
+ 康明逊蒙了，不知是怎么会引起来这一个局面，又不好不说话，只得劝解道：伯母不要生气，王琦瑶是个老实人……
+ 她母亲一听这话倒笑了，转过脸对了他道：先生你算是明白人，知道王琦瑶老实，她确实是老实，她也只好老实，她倘若要不老实呢？
+ 又怎么样？
+ 康明逊这才听出这一句句原来都是冲着他来的，不由后退了几步，嘴里嗫嚅着。
+ 这时，孩子见久久没人管她，便大哭起来。
+ 房间里四个人有三个人在哭，真是乱得可以。
+ 康明逊忍不住说：王琦瑶还在月子里，不能伤心的。
+ 她母亲便连连冷笑道：王琦瑶原来是在坐月子，我倒不知道，她男人都没有，怎么就坐月子，你倒给我说说这个道理！
+ 话说到这样，王琦瑶的眼泪倒干了，她给孩子换好尿布，又喂给她奶吃，然后说：妈，你说我不懂规矩，可你自己不也是不懂规矩？
+ 你当了客人的面，说这些揭底的话，就好像与人家有什么干系似的，你这才是作践我呢！
+ 也是作践你自己，好歹我总是你的女儿。
+ 她这一席话把她母亲说怔了，待要开口，王琦瑶又说道：人家先生确是看得起我才来看我，我不会有非分之想，你也不要有非分之想，我这一辈子别的不敢说，但总是靠自己，这一次累你老人家侍候我坐月子，我会知恩图报的。
+ 她这话，既是说给母亲听，也是说给康明逊听，两人一时都沉默着。
+ 她母亲擦干眼泪，怆然一笑，说：看来我是多操了心，反正你也快出月子了，我在这里倒是多余了。
+ 说罢就去收拾东西要走，这两人都不敢劝她，怔怔地看她收拾好东西，再将一个红纸包放在婴儿胸前，出了门去，然后下楼，便听后门一声响，走了。
+ 再看那红纸包里，是装了二百块钱，还有一个金锁片。
+ 程先生到来时，见王琦瑶已经起床，在厨房里烧晚饭。
+ 问她母亲上哪里去了，王琦瑶说是爹爹有些不舒服，她这里差几天就满月，劝母亲回去了。
+ 程先生又见她眼睛肿着，好像哭过的样子，无端的却不好问，只得作罢。
+ 这天晚上，兴许少了一个人的缘故，显出了沉闷。
+ 王琦瑶不太说话，问她什么也有些答非所问，程先生不免扫兴，一个人坐在一边看报纸。
+ 看了一会儿，听房间里没动静，以为王琦瑶睡着了，回过头去，却见她靠在枕上，两眼睁着，望了天花板，不知在想什么。
+ 他轻轻走过去，想问她什么，不料她却惊了一跳，回头反问程先生要什么。
+ 她的眼睛是漠然警觉的表情，使程先生觉着自己是个陌生人，就退回到沙发上，重新看报纸。
+ 忽听窗下弄堂里嘈杂声起，便推窗望去，原来是谁家在鸡窝里抓住一只黄鼠狼。
+ 那人倒提着黄鼠狼控诉它的罪孽，围了许多人看，然后，人们簇拥着他向弄口走去。
+ 程先生正要关窗，却在空气里嗅到一股桂花香，虽不浓烈，却沁人肺腑。
+ 他还注意到平安里上方的狭窄的天空，是十分彻底的深蓝。
+ 他心里有些跃然，回过头对王琦瑶说：等孩子满月，办一次满月酒吧！
+ 王琦瑶先不回答，然后笑了笑说：办什么满月酒！
+ 程先生更加积极地说：满月总是高兴吉利的事。
+ 王琦瑶反问：有什么高兴吉利？
+ 程先生被她问住了，虽然被泼了冷水，心里却只有对她的可怜。
+ 王琦瑶翻了个身，面向壁地躺着，停了一会儿，又说：也别提什么满不满月了，就烧几个菜，买一瓶酒，请严师母和她表弟吃顿便饭，他们都待我不错的，还来看我。
+ 程先生就又高兴起来，盘算着炒几个菜，烧什么汤，王琦瑶总是与他唱反调，把他的计划推翻再重来。
+ 两人你一句我一句地争执着，才有些热闹起来。
+ 这天下午，程先生提前下班，买了菜到王琦瑶处，两人将孩子哄睡了，便一起忙了起来，一边忙一边说话。
+ 程先生见王琦瑶情绪好，自己的情绪也就好，将冷盆摆出各色花样，紫萝卜镶边的。
+ 王琦瑶说程先生不仅会照相，还会烹饪啊！
+ 程先生说：我最会的一样你却没有说。
+ 王琦瑶问：最会的是哪一样？
+ 程先生说：铁路工程。
+ 王琦瑶说：我倒忘了程先生的老本行了，弄了半天，原来都是在拿副业敷衍我们，真本事却藏着。
+ 程先生就笑，说不是藏着，而是没地方拿出来。
+ 两人正打趣，客人来了，严师母表姐弟俩一同进了门，都带着礼物。
+ 严师母是一磅开司米绒线，康明逊则是一对金元宝。
+ 王琦瑶想说金元宝的礼过重了，又恐严师母误以为嫌她的礼轻，便一并收下，日后再说。
+ 大家再看一遍孩子，称赞她大有人样，然后就围桌坐下，正好一人一面。
+ 程先生同这两位全是初次见面。
+ 严师母见过他，他却没见过严师母，和康明逊则是楼梯上交臂而过，谁也没看清谁。
+ 这时候，便由王琦瑶做了介绍，算是认识了。
+ 严师母在此之前就对程先生有好印象，便分外热情，见面就熟。
+ 程先生虽是有些招架不住，可也心领她的好意，并不见怪。
+ 相比之下，康明逊倒显得拘谨和沉默，也不大吃菜，只是喝温热的黄酒，一瓶黄酒很快喝完了，又开了一瓶。
+ 程先生说要去炒菜，站起来却有些摇晃，王琦瑶就说她去炒，按他坐下。
+ 他抬起手，在王琦瑶按他的肩的手背上抚摸了一下，王琦瑶本能地一抽手。
+ 对面的康明逊不禁看他一眼，是锐利的目光。
+ 程先生心里一动，清醒了一半。
+ 王琦瑶炒了热菜上来，重又入座。
+ 严师母也脸热心跳地有了几分醉意。
+ 她向程先生敬一杯酒，称他是世上少有的仁义之士，又说是黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求。
+ 话都说得有些不搭调，可也是借酒吐真言，放了平时则是难出口的。
+ 严师母自己敬了酒不算，又怂恿康明逊也向程先生敬酒。
+ 康明逊只得也举酒杯，却不晓得该说什么，看大家都等着，心里着急，说出的话更不搭调，说的是：祝程先生早结良缘。
+ 程先生照单全收，都是一个“谢”字，然后问王琦瑶有什么话说。
+ 王琦瑶看程先生的眼睛很不像过去，有些无赖似的，不知是喝了酒还是有别的原因，心里不安着，脸上便带了安抚的笑容，说：
+ 我当然是第一个要敬程先生酒的，就像方才严师母说的，“黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求”，要说知心，这里人没一个比得上程先生对我的，程先生是我王琦瑶最难堪时的至交，王琦瑶就算是有一万个错处，程先生也是一个原谅，这恩和义是刻骨铭心，永世难报。
+ 程先生听她只说恩义，却不提一个“情”字，也知她是借了酒向他交心的意思，胸中有无穷的感慨，还是伤感，眼泪几乎都到了下眼睑，只是低头，停了一会儿，才勉强笑道：今天又不是我满月，怎么老向我敬酒，应当敬王琦瑶才对呢！
+ 于是又由严师母带头，向王琦瑶敬酒。
+ 可大约是方才的话都说多了，这时倒都不说话，只喝酒。
+ 喝着喝着，程先生与康明逊的目光又碰在一起，相互看了一眼，虽没看明白什么的，可心里却都种下了疑窦。
+ 这天的酒都喝过量了，程先生不记得是怎么送走的客人，也不记得洗没洗碗盏了，他一觉醒来，发现竟是睡在王琦瑶的沙发上，身上盖一床薄被，桌上还摆着碗碟剩菜，满屋都是黄酒酸甜的香。
+ 月光透过窗帘，正照在他的脸上，真是清凉如水。
+ 他心里很安宁，看着窗帘上的光影，什么都不去想的。
+ 忽听有声音轻轻问道：要不要喝茶？
+ 他循声音望去，见是王琦瑶躺在房间那头的床上，也醒了。
+ 脸在阴影里，看不清楚，只见一个隐约的轮廓。
+ 程先生并不觉局促，反是一片静谧，他说：真是现世啊！
+ 王琦瑶不出声地笑了：趴在桌上就睡着了，三个人一起把你抬到了沙发。
+ 他说：喝过头了，也是高兴的缘故。
+ 静了一下，王琦瑶说：其实你是不高兴。
+ 程先生笑了一声：我怎么会不高兴？
+ 真的是高兴。
+ 两人都不说话，月光又移近了一些。
+ 程先生觉着自己像躺在水里似的。
+ 过了很久，程先生以为王琦瑶睡着了，不料却听她叫了声程先生。
+ 他问：什么事啊？
+ 王琦瑶停了一下，说：程先生睡不着吗？
+ 程先生说：方才那一大觉是睡足了。
+ 王琦瑶说，你没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生说：我很明白。
+ 王琦瑶就说：你还是没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生笑了：我当然明白的。
+ 王琦瑶就说：倘若明白，你说给我听听。
+ 程先生道：要我说我就说，你的意思是，如今你我只这一步之遥，只要我程先生跨过这一步，你王琦瑶是不会说一个“不”的。
+ 王琦瑶心里诧异这个呆木头似的程先生其实解人至深，面上却有些尴尬，解嘲说：我自知是不配，所以只能等程先生提出。
+ 程先生又笑了，这时他感到身心都十分轻松，几乎要飘起来似的，他听着自己的声音就好像听着别人在说话，说的都是体己的话。
+ 他说：要说这一步，我程先生几乎等了有半辈子了，可这不是说跨过就跨过的，不是还有咫尺天涯的说法吗？
+ 许多事情都是强求不得的。
+ 王琦瑶那边悄然无声，程先生不管她是否醒着，只顾自己滔滔不绝地说，像是把积攒了十余年的话全一股脑儿地倒出来。
+ 他说他其实早就明白这个道理，并且想好就做个知己知彼的朋友，也不枉为一世人生；可这人和人在一起，就有些像古话说的“逆水行舟，不进则退”的道理，要说没有进一步的愿望是不真实的，要进又进不了的时候，看来就只得退了。
+ 停了一会儿，他突然问道：康明逊是孩子的父亲吧？
+ 王琦瑶出声地笑了，说：是又如何？
+ 不是又如何？
+ 程先生倒反有些窘，说：随便问问的。
+ 两人各自翻了个身，不一会儿都睡熟了，发出了轻微的鼾声。
+ 第二天，程先生下了班后，没有到王琦瑶处，他去找蒋丽莉了。
+ 事先他给她往班上打了电话，约好在提篮桥见面。
+ 程先生到时，蒋丽莉已在那里站着了，不停地看表。
+ 分明是她到早了，却怨程先生晚了。
+ 程先生也不与她争辩，两人在附近找了个小饭馆，坐进去，点好菜。
+ 那堂倌一转身，程先生便伏在桌上哭了，眼泪成串地落在碱水刷白的白木桌面上。
+ 蒋丽莉心里明白了大半，并不劝解，只沉默着，眼睛看着对面的墙壁，墙壁是刷了石灰水的，惨白的颜色。
+ 这时的程先生只顾着发泄自己的难过，全然不顾别人是什么心情，即便是如程先生这样的忠厚人，爱起来也极端自私的，也极其地不公平。
+ 在他所爱的人面前，兢兢业业，小心翼翼，而到了爱他的人面前，却无所顾忌，目中无人，有些像耍赖的小孩。
+ 也正是这个，促使程先生来找蒋丽莉了。
+ 蒋丽莉沉默了一会儿，回头看他还在流泪，嘲笑道：怎么，失恋了？
+ 程先生的泪渐渐止了，坐在那里不作声。
+ 蒋丽莉还想刺他，又看他可怜，就换了口气道：世上东西，大多是越想越不得，不想倒得了。
+ 程先生轻声说：要不想也不得怎么办呢？
+ 蒋丽莉一听这话就火了，大了声说：天下女人都死光了吗？
+ 可不还有个蒋丽莉活着吗？
+ 这蒋丽莉是专供听你哭她活着的吗？
+ 程先生自知有错，低头不语，蒋丽莉也不说了。
+ 两人僵持了一会儿，程先生说：我本是有事托你，可不知道怎么就哭了起来，真是不好意思。
+ 听他这话，蒋丽莉也平和下来，说有什么事尽管说好了。
+ 程先生说：这件事我想来想去只能托你，其实也许是最不妥的，可却再无他人了。
+ 蒋丽莉说：有什么妥不妥的，有话快说。
+ 程先生就说托她今后多多照顾王琦瑶，她那地方，他从此是不会再去了。
+ 蒋丽莉听他说出的这件事情，心里不知是气还是怨，憋了半天才说出一句：天下女人原来真就死光了，连我一同都死光的。
+ 程先生忍着她奚落，可蒋丽莉就此打住，并没再往下说什么。
+ 王琦瑶等程先生来，等了几日，却等来蒋丽莉。
+ 她是下班后从杨树浦过来，调了几部车，头发蓬乱着，鞋面上全是灰，声音嘶哑。
+ 手里提了一个网兜，装了水果、饼干、奶粉，还有一条半新的床单。
+ 进门就抖出来，王琦瑶来不及去阻止，就唰唰几下子，撕成一堆尿布。
+
+ Old Colour
+ "LAO KE-LA" REFERS to a specific breed of debonair figures active during the fifties and sixties.
+ These were the keepers of old-style Shanghai fashion in the new society, at a time when holding on to the past was considered radical.
+ The term probably originated with the English word "old colour," or perhaps "old classic," a remnant of the colonial culture of Shanghai in the day of the treaty ports.
+ As the lingo of the city incorporated bits and pieces of foreign languages, words became dismembered and, with the passage of time, grew increasingly distant from their original meanings.
+ By the eighties, people who fell into the category of "Old Colour" were virtually extinct.
+ The surviving handful were all fairly advanced in age, their erstwhile shape completely transformed; eventually even the term itself was forgotten.
+ But then something odd happened.
+ In the mid eighties, a new generation of Old Colours emerged quietly upon the scene.
+ Lacking their predecessors' craving for notoriety, they were not compelled to behave ostentatiously and appeared more easygoing.
+ It was not even easy to spot them in the crowd.
+ Where might one go to find such a specimen?
+ These Old Colours—when everyone was out buying a stereo, they were listening to old phonographs.
+ When Nikon and Minolta cameras equipped with auto-focus features were all the rage, they were busy fiddling with their vintage Rolleiflex 120s.
+ They sported wind-up watches, drank coffee brewed in small pots, shaved with old-fashioned razor blades and shaving cream, took great delight in antique slide projectors, and wore large leather shoes shaped like boats.
+ When you saw these markings, you could be certain that you had found one.
+ Then, having found one, you couldn't help but notice just how crude and boorish the so-called fashionable were in comparison.
+ The rush to be trendy left no time for elegance or refinement.
+ One was driven about by a succession of waves.
+ Speed and quantity were all that mattered, and the result was that corners were cut and things got done in a slipshod manner and had eventually to be discarded.
+ You could tell this by looking at the clothing shops where advertisements for markdowns were posted all over the walls, shelves, and counters—even the stalls outside.
+ Before the last season's clothes had sold out, they were two steps behind the latest fashion, which had already arrived.
+ What choice was there but to run constant sales and markdowns?
+ In this crude and uncultured fashion world, the "Old Colours" were the stewards in charge of safekeeping refinement.
+ They were the only ones paying attention to the things that mattered; though they never advertised themselves or talked about what they were doing, they had their feet firmly planted on the ground.
+ They took things one step at a time; men of action, they let others do the talking.
+ They didn't even have a name.
+ The term "Old Colour" was given to them by the few who remembered the old days, but it never gained wide circulation.
+ A small minority called them Western-style "Yuppies," but that never caught on either.
+ And so they remained nameless, silently tilling their little plot of land.
+ We could, if we chose, refer to them as nostalgic "lovers of the past," although they were all young and didn't have a past to love per se.
+ But they had all been to the Bund and seen, riding on the ferry, what it looked like from out on the water: there they saw the ramparts formed by the Georgian buildings, the Gothic bell tower with its pointed steeple, and the dark forbidding windows staring back at them—all of which sent them down the tunnel of time.
+ They had also climbed up to the rooftops to release pigeons and fly kites, and there, looking out over the sea of rooftops, a few of which jutted out like sails, felt as if they were navigating against the currents of time.
+ Besides these, the ivy crawling up the sides of the walls and the sounds of someone playing the piano in the Western-style house next door also came to feed their nostalgia.
+ Wang Qiyao knew one of these "Old Colours."
+ He was twenty-six years old, so calling him an "Old Colour" was a bit ironic, a way of emphasizing his youth.
+ A gym teacher at a local middle school, he normally dressed in sweatpants, and his hair looked like the bristle end of a scrub brush.
+ He had a dark complexion from years of working outdoors.
+ At school he kept to himself and never fraternized with his colleagues.
+ Who would have guessed that he was an accomplished flamenco guitar player with a collection of more than a hundred jazz records?
+ This "Old Colour" lived in a traditional longtang in Hongkou, with parents who were honest, hardworking government employees and watched what they spent; his sister had left home to get married.
+ He himself occupied the third-floor tingzijian: his palmwood cot lay on the floor along with his record player.
+ As soon as he entered his room, he would take off his shoes and, sitting on the bare floor, enter into his own little universe.
+ Outside his dormer window was a slanted portion of the roof.
+ Occasionally, during the summer, he would climb out the window with a backpack, spread a mat out over the roof tiles, and, tying himself to the windowsill with a rope around his waist, spend the evening lying outside.
+ Looking up, he would see a sprinkling of stars suspended in the deep blue sky above.
+ He could faintly make out the rumbling sounds of the machinery from a factory in the distance, and the smoke from the factory's smokestack billowed white against the sky.
+ The scattered sounds of the night seemed to have sunk down to earth, while he himself had dissolved into the air, empty of thoughts and desires.
+ Old Colour was still without a girlfriend.
+ Although he got on quite well with some of the girls in his regular circle of friends, things had never developed past the point of ordinary friendship.
+ As there was nothing further he needed, he had no particular aspirations and was content just to have a job.
+ However, he recognized that he had only himself to rely on, and this made him approach things with a positive attitude.
+ And, though he lacked long-term goals, he did have some short-term plans.
+ This meant that, while never vexed by major problems, he was struck by the occasional fit of inexplicable depression.
+ For these depressions he found an antidote in his collection of old jazz records from the twenties.
+ The sound of the saxophone, mixed with the hissing sound of the needle against the vinyl, gave him a feeling of an almost palpable intimacy.
+ Old Colour was a bit old-fashioned: nothing new suited his taste, because to him it lacked substance and smacked of the nouveau riche; but then neither was he a fan of things that were too old, which would have felt antiquated and dismal.
+ A hundred years was just about enough.
+ He longed for a time back when, like the sprinkling of stars in the night sky, only the elite prospered—for a European-style house on a smooth cobblestone road, and the spiraling sounds of the phonograph twisting their way up through an otherwise perfect silence.
+ This was, when all was said and done, what all those old jazz records stood for.
+ His young friends were all modern individuals at the cutting edge of fashion, quite the opposite of Old Colour.
+ When Shanghai inaugurated its first tennis court, his friends were the first customers standing in line; when a certain luxury hotel opened up a bowling alley, they were the first to try it out.
+ All of them were college classmates of Old Colour from the phys-ed department; they prided themselves on their athletic spirit and prowess, which happened to be right in tune with worldwide fashion.
+ Just look at the most popular brand names of the day—Nike and Puma—you could see that they were all athletic apparel, whereas brands like Pierre Cardin had long been on the way down.
+ This cohort would appear on the streets on motorcycles, a girl seated at the back with her hair streaming down from her helmet, and you could feel the rush of wind as they flew past.
+ They were the wildest ones on the dance floor at the discos.
+ They always managed to get hold of a foreigner or two to give their gatherings an international flavor—which, incidentally, gained them entry into all kinds of exclusive places where only international guests were welcome.
+ Among them, Old Colour was always the quiet one: he never really contributed to the group.
+ When everyone else was having a great time, he would be off standing in one corner as if he did not count.
+ He seemed a bit lonely, but it was precisely such loneliness that provided this fashionable, happy-go-lucky crowd with a certain substance.
+ So it actually wouldn't have been the same if he hadn't been there.
+ As for himself, he needed a modern backdrop to set himself off from everyone else; had he been thrown into the sea of people unattached, his old-fashioned style would have been completely drowned out.
+ Because his style appeared outdated on the surface, people had a hard time identifying it for what it was; but it really stood out against a super-modern background, like an antique placed on a velvet mat.
+ Without the mat, someone would probably have thrown the piece away, thinking it was junk.
+ Therefore Old Colour had to run with that crowd, lonely as he may have been.
+ If he had left, he would have lost even the distinction of being lonely—he would have simply disappeared among the teeming masses.
+ Old Colour's parents always thought of him as a responsible son; he didn't drink or smoke, had a steady job and a healthy hobby, and never got mixed up with the wrong sort of girl.
+ They themselves had been fairly conservative in their youth; going to the movies once a week was their sole entertainment.
+ There was a period when his mother became obsessed with collecting movie pamphlets, but during the Cultural Revolution she took it upon herself to burn her entire collection; later the movie theaters stopped putting them out.
+ Once his parents bought a television set, they stopped going to the movies altogether.
+ Every night they would turn on the television after dinner and watch until eleven o'clock.
+ With this television set, their golden years seemed perfect.
+ The music their son played up in the tingzijian had a familiar sound, which tended to confirm their opinions that he was steady.
+ The fact that he was taciturn also put them at ease.
+ Even when they had dinner together at the same table, the entire meal would pass with barely a few words.
+ When it came down to it, they were all strangers to each other, but seeing each other, day in, day out, they didn't think much about their state, as if this was how it was supposed to be.
+ But they were, in truth, decent people; their thoughts and actions were always in line and, whether it be spiritual or material, just a little bit of space was enough for them.
+ Crammed in under the rooftops of the Shanghai longtang were countless people living out their frugal lives just like that.
+ On occasion you might feel that it is rather noisy—as soon as the windows were opened, your ears would be assaulted by all kinds of sounds.
+ But don't be offended: what you hear are the accumulated sounds of the activities of prudent people over their lifetime; at least the noise shows that they are lively.
+ And Old Colour certainly wasn't the only one stargazing from the rooftop on those summer nights; the hearts of all these people are restless and unsure of where to go—and so up they go to the rooftops.
+ There everything is wide open; even the knowing pigeons are bedded down for the evening, leaving the sky empty of their flight.
+ All the noise and clatter remain below, but they have floated to the top and it feels good to drift for a while.
+ In these longtang with the dormer windows, the songs of the heart have quite a distinctive sound, and the dormer windows are the throats through which the songs are forced out.
+ Old Colour finds true understanding in the neighborhoods on the west side of Shanghai, and he likes to wander there along the tree-lined streets.
+ Even the canopies of the trees there have a history, having filtered out the sunlight for a century.
+ Maoming Road passes from a roaring hubbub on one end to quietude on the other, both of which have the vintage of years.
+ Old Colour loved traversing this area, where he had the feeling that time had been turned back.
+ Examining the trolley tracks on the street, he tried to imagine what it was like when the cars were still running; he could picture two rows of wooden benches facing each other inside the trolley, just like the ones he had seen in old silent films.
+ There seemed to be writing on the brick and stonework of the old hotels; as he patiently read them, the words recounted trials and tribulations from the past.
+ The areas on the east side of the city also understood Old Colour.
+ Every major street there leads to the river.
+ Though the scene is less refined, it has a sharpness about it.
+ The silent film being played here is more like a sweeping epic, the action coming on like a hurricane.
+ Time has stopped for the seagulls soaring across the sky, as it has for the pigeons.
+ That's what he, too, wanted—for time to stop.
+ That's not too much to ask, is it?
+ He didn't ask for an eternity, only the last fifty years.
+ His request was restrained, like the sunrise in the city, which does not come up over the sea or the horizon, but from the rooftops—its beginning and the end curtailed.
+ In fact, the city is still a child and doesn't have many days to look back upon.
+ But a child like Old Colour was already an old man, who, bypassing experience, went straight to reminiscence.
+ All of his deepest thoughts were dialogues with the past.
+ At least the clock in the Customs House was still ringing, in a world where everything else seemed to have vanished like clouds and mist, and the sound he heard was the very sound heard decades ago.
+ As Old Colour walked down the street, the wind blowing against his face was a draft squeezed through the space between two buildings.
+ He may have looked calm on the surface, but his heart was vibrant, almost dancing with joy.
+ He loved the sunset over Shanghai; the streets at dusk were like a faded oil painting, a perfect match for the mood of the city.
+ One day a friend of his told Old Colour about a party someone was having.
+ All kinds of people were supposed to be coming, including a former Miss Shanghai from the old days.
+ He hopped onto the back of his friend's motorcycle, and they headed west to the new residential area near the airport.
+ The man lived on the thirteenth floor of a building that he was managing for the owner, a relative of his who was living overseas.
+ He didn't normally live there, but every few days he would invite friends over for a fun-filled afternoon or evening.
+ Gradually, his parties started to gain some notoriety: word traveled fast, as one guest brought ten friends and each of them brought along others—but he didn't mind, everyone was welcome.
+ As the numbers started to build up, it was inevitable that some questionable individuals would weasel their way in, and sometimes unpleasant things, such as thefts, would happen.
+ But with so many people, the probability of someone extraordinary showing up was also quite high.
+ Occasionally, real celebrities would appear, such as movie stars, the first violin from a famous orchestra, and reporters, as well as the children and grandchildren of powerful Communist and Nationalist leaders.
+ This friend's parties were like small political meetings, where old stories and the latest gossip were passed around the living room, the whole place abuzz with excitement.
+ In this new district, all you saw when you opened the windows was a forest of buildings.
+ Some of the windows were lit up while others remained dark; the sky was unobstructed, but this made the stars seem more distant.
+ Below, the cars speeding down the straight broad roads looked like a chain of pearls.
+ Not far off there would always be a construction site, where the lights blazed through the night and the noise of pile-drivers, hammering away in rhythm, filled the entire space below the heavens.
+ The air is choked with particles of chalky cement and the wind is especially strong as it whips between the buildings.
+ The lights over in the hotel district look a little lonely due to the heights of the buildings around it, but theirs is a resplendent loneliness that pierces the heart with rapture.
+ This was indeed a brand-new district that greeted everything with an open heart, quite unlike the downtown area, whose convoluted feelings are more difficult to grasp.
+ Arriving in the new district, one has the feeling that one has left the city behind.
+ The style of the streets and buildings—built at right angles in a logical manner—is so unlike downtown, which seems to have been laid out by squeezing the emotions out from the heart.
+ Under the sky of the new district, the joyful laughter coming from the thirteenth floor of this joint-venture construction suddenly dissipates and the music fades away.
+ But how much does that bit of happiness really matter in this new district?
+ Playing out behind the honeycomb-like windows of those tall buildings is a fresh new form of happiness.
+ In hotels so new that they have yet to acquire their four or five stars, there are buffets, dances, and receptions every night, as well as brazen games of passion that offered no excuses as they announced themselves to the world with "do not disturb" signs.
+ With people of all races and colors taking part, it feels like a party of universal jubilation.
+ This is especially so around Christmas time: as soon as the Christmas carols break out, you are hard pressed to discern whether you are in China or abroad.
+ When you first arrive here, the place seems to lack a heart because it is so carefree—but that is because it hasn't yet had time to build up a reservoir of recollections; its mind is blank and has not begun to feel the need to call on its memory.
+ Such is the spiritual state of the entire district.
+ The laughter and gaiety coming from the thirteenth floor form but a drop in the ocean.
+ The only one who seems a bit annoyed is the elevator attendant, as people come rushing in and out of the elevator, in couples or crowds, holding wine and flowers—mostly strangers, in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
+ More than a dozen groups of guests had already arrived by the time Old Colour got to the party.
+ The door had been left half-open and the room was filled with people moving about.
+ No one paid the newcomers much attention as they came in; the stereo was blaring loud music.
+ A few people sat around watching a television miniseries in the first room, which led out to the balcony.
+ The door to the balcony was ajar and the wind was agitating the curtains.
+ In a corner of this room sat a woman with fair skin, wearing light makeup, in a pinkish-purple suit made of raw silk.
+ She was leaning forward slightly toward the television screen with her arms crossed.
+ The curtain brushed against her skirt from time to time, but this didn't seem to distract her.
+ Only when the screen suddenly lit up did her drooping eyelids show, giving away her age.
+ But the stamp of age passes in a flickering instant: she carefully wrapped hers up and tucked it away inside her bones.
+ The years had tiptoed around her, careful not to leave too many traces, but in the end they couldn't help leaving a few.
+ This was Wang Qiyao in 1985.
+ Around this time the opulence of 1946 was revived in a few essays reminiscing about old Shanghai, and the name Wang Qiyao suddenly came into the spotlight again.
+ One or two nosy reporters even went so far as to investigate what had happened to Wang Qiyao in the years following the pageant; several articles were published in the back pages of the newspapers but failed to generate much interest, and the whole thing eventually died down.
+ A lot of time had indeed gone by.
+ No matter how glamorous a woman has been, once she has entered the black hole of time, she is lucky to generate even a few flickers of light.
+ The aura surrounding the beauty pageant, no less than Wang Qiyao herself, had also faded after forty years, and it only served to date her by revealing her age.
+ It was like the old clothes at the bottom of her chest: though many were still in good shape, wearing them only made her look older, because they were from the wrong era.
+ The only one who seemed to be moved by any of this history was Zhang Yonghong.
+ She didn't believe the story initially, but once she had accepted it she had an endless array of questions for Wang Qiyao.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, resisted answering them at first, but once she began to open up, she had an endless series of revelations for Zhang Yonghong to uncover.
+ There were many things that Wang Qiyao thought she had completely forgotten, but as soon as she got started, all of those tiny bits and fragments of detail came together to make a flowing river of memories.
+ The stories she told were those of a woman who had stood in the limelight; but wasn't that the goal of all those girls on Huaihai Road trying to outdress one another?
+ Wave after wave of fashion that came and went—weren't they all vying for their moment in the spotlight?
+ Zhang Yonghong, who understood the magnitude of the splendor Wang Qiyao was describing, exclaimed, "I'm so envious!"
+ Zhang Yonghong introduced Wang Qiyao to all of her boyfriends and invited her to all kinds of parties.
+ These were mostly parties for young people, and, knowing her own place, Wang Qiyao would usually sit off to one side.
+ Nevertheless, her elegance would still add a touch of distinction to the party.
+ Barring the occasional glance, people didn't pay her any attention, but everyone was aware that there was a "Miss Shanghai" in their presence.
+ On occasion there might even be a few people eagerly awaiting her arrival, not realizing that she had been sitting in the corner all along—she sat there alone until the music stopped and the show was over.
+ Wang Qiyao was always well dressed and elegant; she was never awkward and never got in the way.
+ She was an ornament, a painting on the wall to adorn the living room.
+ The painting was done in somber hues, with a dark yellow base; it had true distinction, and even though the colors were faded, its value had appreciated.
+ Everything else was simply transient flashes of light and shadow.
+ It was under these circumstances that Old Colour first met Wang Qiyao.
+ Could that be the "Miss Shanghai" everyone was talking about? he wondered.
+ Just as he was about to walk away, he saw Wang Qiyao look up and scan the room before lowering her head again.
+ The look in her eyes had a hint of panic, but she was not at all looking for sympathy or forgiveness.
+ It was then that Old Colour realized how callous he had been.
+ He thought, The Miss Shanghai pageant was nearly forty years ago.
+ His vision grew blurry as he stared at Wang Qiyao, as if his eyes couldn't focus properly, and through that hazy vision he saw an image of her from more than three decades ago.
+ Gradually the image became clearer, taking on depth and new details.
+ But none of those details looked real; they floated on the surface, piercing Old Colour's heart.
+ He came face to face with a cruel reality—the corrosive power of time.
+ At twenty-six years of age, Old Colour should have been too young to care about the passing of time; time had yet to teach him such truths, but that is precisely why he longed for the past—that is the only reason he dared to extol the fruits of time!
+ The passage of time associated with those old jazz records was indeed a good thing; it had smoothed things out until they were strong and fine, rubbing off the superficial layers to reveal the inner grain, like gold emerging when the fire has burned away the dross.
+ But what he saw that day was not an object, like an old jazz record, but a person.
+ He was at a complete loss as to what to say, because the situation had an element of the tragic.
+ He had finally touched the heart of that bygone era, whereas before he had only paced back and forth on its surface.
+ Something halted his steps and Old Colour couldn't bring himself to walk away.
+ He picked up a glass of wine and leaned up against the door, fixing his gaze on the television.
+ Eventually Wang Qiyao got up from the corner to go to the restroom.
+ As she walked past him, he flashed her a smile.
+ She immediately accepted his smile, responding with a look of gratitude before smiling back at him.
+ When she came back, he asked her if he could get her a drink.
+ She pointed to the corner and said that she already had a cup of tea, so there was no need.
+ He asked her to dance.
+ She hesitated for a moment . . . and accepted.
+ Disco music was blaring in the living room, but they danced the four-step at half speed.
+ With all manner of wild movements swirling around them, only they were stationary, like a lone island in a rushing torrent.
+ She apologized, suggesting that he go back to disco dancing rather than waste his time with her.
+ But he insisted that he was having a good time.
+ He put his hand on her waist and could feel the slight pulsations of her body.
+ It was a strategy of nonmovement in response to the myriad changes taking place around her, of finding her own rhythm, no matter what the tempo of her surroundings might be, a rhythm that could carry her through time.
+ Moved by this, he remained lost in silence until she suddenly complimented his dance skills; they were now doing a traditional Latin number.
+ When the tune changed, someone else invited Wang Qiyao to dance.
+ During the next number, they each danced with their respective partners but their eyes occasionally met, whereupon they exchanged a knowing smile, lit up with the joy of this chance meeting.
+ The party took place on the evening of National Day and fireworks were being set off from one of the balconies.
+ A single rocket shot up into the darkness and slowly unfurled its fiery petals in the night sky before breaking up into a stream of falling stars, which vanished slowly, leaving a faint white shadow in the sky.
+ It was some time before the last of the light was absorbed into the blackness.
+
+ 10．老克腊
+ 所谓“老克腊”指的是某一类风流人物，尤以五十和六十年代盛行。
+ 在那全新的社会风貌中，他们保持着上海的旧时尚，以固守为激进。
+ “克腊”这词其实来自英语“colour”，表示着那个殖民地文化的时代特征。
+ 英语这种外来语后来打散在这城市的民间口语中，内中的含义也是打散了重来，随着时间的演进，意思也越来越远。
+ 像“老克腊”这种人，到八十年代，几乎绝迹，有那么三个五个的，也都上了年纪，面目有些蜕变，人们也渐渐把这个名字给忘了似的。
+ 但很奇怪的，到了八十年代中叶，于无声处地，又悄悄地生长起一代年轻的老克腊，他们要比旧时代的老克腊更甘于寂寞，面目上也比较随和，不作哗众取宠之势。
+ 在熙来攘往的人群中，人们甚至难以辨别他们的身影，到哪里才能找到他们呢？
+ 人们都在忙着置办音响的时候，那个在听老唱片的；人们时兴“尼康”“美能达”电脑调焦照相机的时候，那个在摆弄“罗莱克斯”一二零的；手上戴机械表，喝小壶煮咖啡，用剃须膏刮脸，玩老式幻灯机，穿船形牛皮鞋的，千真万确，就是他。
+ 找到他，再将眼光从他身上移开，去看目下的时尚，不由看出这时尚的粗陋鄙俗。
+ 一窝蜂上的，都来不及精雕细刻。
+ 又像有人在背后追赶，一浪一浪接替不暇。
+ 一个多和一个快，于是不得不偷工减料，粗制滥造，然后破罐破摔。
+ 只要看那服装店就知道了，墙上，货架上，柜台里，还有门口摊子上挂着大甩卖牌子的，一代流行来不及卖完，后一代后两代已经来了，不甩卖又怎么办？
+ “老克腊”是这粗糙时尚中的一点精细所在。
+ 他们是真讲究，虽不作什么宣言，也不论什么理，却是脚踏实地，一步一个脚印，自己做，让别人说。
+ 他们甚至也没有名字，叫他们“老克腊”只是一两个过来人的发明，也流传不开。
+ 另有少数人，将他们归到西方的“雅皮士”里， 也是难以传播。
+ 因此，他们无名无姓的，默默耕耘着自己的一方田地。
+ 其实，我们是可以把他们叫做“怀旧”这两个字的，虽然他们都是新人，无旧可念，可他们去过外滩呀，摆渡到江心再蓦然回首，便看见那屏障般的乔治式建筑，还有歌特式的尖顶钟塔，窗洞里全是森严的注视，全是穿越时间隧道的。
+ 他们还爬上过楼顶平台，在那里放鸽子或者放风筝，展目便是屋顶的海洋，有几幢耸起的，是像帆一样，也是越过时间的激流。
+ 再有那山墙上的爬墙虎，隔壁洋房里的钢琴声，都是怀旧的养料。
+ 王琦瑶认识的便是其中一个，今年二十六岁。
+ 人们叫他“老克腊”，是带点反讽的意思，指的是他的小。
+ 他在一所中学做体育教师，平时总穿一身运动衣裤，头发是板刷式的那种。
+ 由于室外作业，长年都是黝黑的皮肤。
+ 在学校里少言寡语，与同事没有私交，谁也不会想到他其实弹了一手好吉它，西班牙式的，家里存有上百张爵士乐的唱片。
+ 他家住虹口一条老式弄堂房子，父母都是勤俭老实的职员，姐姐已经出嫁。
+ 他自己住一个三层阁，将棕绷放在地上，唱机也放在地上，进去就脱了鞋，席地而坐，自成一统的天下。
+ 他的老虎天窗开出去就是一片下斜的屋瓦，夏天有时候他在屋瓦上铺一张席子，再用根背包带系了腰，拴在窗台上，爬出去躺着。
+ 眼前便是一片深蓝的天空，悬挂着一些星星。
+ 远处有一家工厂，有隐约的轰鸣声传来，那烟囱里的一柱烟，在夜空里是白色的。
+ 一些琐细的夜声沉淀下去，他就像被空气溶解了似的，思无所思，想无所想。
+ 他还没有女朋友。
+ 在一起玩的男女中，虽也不乏相互有好感的，但只到好朋友这一层上，便停止了发展，因为没有进一步的需要。
+ 他对生活也没什么理想，只要有事干就行，也晓得事情是要自己去找，因此还是抱积极的态度。
+ 没有远的目标，近的目标是有的。
+ 所以，他便也没有大的烦恼，只不过有时会有一些无名的忧郁。
+ 这点忧郁，也是有安慰的，就是那些二十年代的爵士乐。
+ 萨克斯管里夹带着唱片的走针声，嘶嘶的，就有了些贴肤可感的意思。
+ 他是有些老调子的，新东西讨不得他欢心，觉着是暴发户的味道，没底气的。
+ 但老也不要老得太过，老得太过便是老八股，亦太荒凉，只须有百十年的时间尽够了。
+ 要的是那刚开始的少数人的繁华，黑漆漆的夜空里，那一小丛灿烂，平整的蛋硌路上，一座欧式洋房，还有那万籁俱寂中的一点蜿蜒曲折的音响。
+ 说起来，其实就是那老爵士乐可以代表和概括的。
+ 老克腊的那些男女青年朋友，都是摩登的人物，他们与老克腊处在事物的两极，他们是走在潮流的最前列。
+ 这城市有网球场了，他们是第一批顾客；某宾馆进得保龄球了，他们也是第一批顾客。
+ 他们是老克腊读体育系时的同学，以体育的精神独领风骚，也体现了当今世界的潮流特征。
+ 只看那些名牌：耐克，彪马，几乎都来自于运动服装，而西装的老牌子“皮尔·卡丹”，却是在衰落下去。
+ 他们这一列人出现在马路上的形象，多是骑着摩托车，后座上有个姑娘，长发从头盔下飘起来，一阵风地过去。
+ 迪斯科舞厅中最疯狂的一伙也是他们。
+ 他们以各种方式，总能结识一个或两个外国人，参加在其中，使他们这一群人有了国际的面目，并可自由出入一些国际场所。
+ 老克腊在其中是默默无闻的一个，没有建树的一个。
+ 别人热闹的时候，他大多是靠边站，有他没他都行的。
+ 他看上去是有些寂寞的，但正是这寂寞，为这个快乐新潮的群体增添了底蕴。
+ 所以，有他和没他还是不一样的。
+ 对他来说呢，也是需要有一个摩登背景衬底，真将他抛入茫茫人海，无依无托的，他的那个老调子，难免会被淹没。
+ 因那老调子是有着过时的表象，为世人所难以识辨，它只有在一个崭崭新的座子上，才可显出价值。
+ 就好像一件古董是要放在天鹅绒华丽的底子上，倘若没这底子，就会被人扔进垃圾箱了。
+ 所以，他也离不开这个群体，虽然是寂寞的，但要是离开了，就连寂寞也没有，有的只是同流合俗。
+ 老克腊的父母，将他看作一个老实的孩子：不抽烟，不喝酒，有正经的工作，也有正经的业余生活，亦不乱交女朋友。
+ 他们年轻的时候，也都不是贪玩的人，每周看一回电影，便是他们所有的娱乐。
+ 他母亲曾有一度，热衷于收集电影说明书，“文化大革命”时自觉烧掉了她的收藏，后来的电影院也再不出售说明书了。
+ 再往后，他们因有了电视机，就不去电影院了。
+ 每天晚饭吃过，打开电视机，一直看到十一点。
+ 有了电视机，他们的晚年便很完美了。
+ 儿子在阁楼上放的老音乐，在他们听来是有些耳熟，更使他们认定儿子是个老实的孩子。
+ 他的少言寡语，也叫他们放心。
+ 他们即便在一张桌上吃饭，从头到尾都说不上几个字。
+ 其实彼此是陌生的，但因为朝夕相处，也不把这陌生当回事，本该如此似的。
+ 说到底，这都是些真正的老实人，收着手脚，也收着心，无论物质还是精神，都只顾一小点空间就够用了。
+ 在上海弄堂的屋顶下，密密匝匝地存着许多这样的节约的生涯。
+ 有时你会觉着那里比较嘈杂，推开窗便噪声盈耳，你不要怪它，这就是简约人生聚沙成塔的动静。
+ 他们毕竟是活泼泼的，也是要有些声响的。
+ 在夏夜的屋顶上，躺着看星空的其实不止一个孩子，他们心里都是有些鼓荡，不知要往哪里去，就来到屋顶。
+ 那里就开阔多了，也自由多了，连鸽子也栖了，让出了它们的领空。
+ 那嘈杂都在底下了，而他们浮了上来，漂流一会儿就会好的。
+ 像这样有老虎天窗的弄堂，也是有些不同凡响的心曲，那硬是被挤压出来的，老虎天窗就是它的歌喉。
+ 真了解老克腊的是上海西区的马路。
+ 他在那儿常来常往，有树阴罩着他。
+ 这树阴也是有历史的，遮了一百年的阳光，茂名路是由闹至静，闹和静都是有年头的。
+ 他就爱在那里走动，时光倒流的感觉。
+ 他想，路面上有着电车轨道，将是什么样的情形，那电车里面对面的木条长椅间，演的都是黑白的默片，那老饭店的建筑，砖缝和石棱里都是有字的，耐心去读，可读出一番旧风雨。
+ 上海东区的马路也了解老克腊，条条马路通江岸，那风景比西区粗犷，也爽利，演的黑白默片是史诗题材，旧风雨也是狂飙式的。
+ 江鸥飞翔，是没有岁月的，和鸽子一样，他要的就是这没有岁月。
+ 要的也不过分，不是地老天荒的一种，只是五十年的流萤。
+ 就像这城市的日出，不是从海平线和地平线上起来的，而是从屋脊上起来的，总归是掐头去尾，有节制的。
+ 论起来，这城市还是个孩子，真没多少回头望的日子。
+ 但像老克腊这样的孩子，却又成了个老人，一下地就在叙旧似的，心里话都是与旧情景说的。
+ 总算那海关大钟还在敲，是烟消云灭中的一个不灭，他听到的又是昔日的那一响。
+ 老克腊走在马路上，有风迎面吹来。
+ 是从楼缝中挤过来的变了形的风，他看上去没什么声色，心却是活跃的，甚至有些歌舞的感觉。
+ 他就喜欢这城市的落日，落日里的街景像一幅褪了色的油画，最合乎这城市的心境。
+ 这一天，朋友说谁家举行一个派对，来人有谁谁谁，据说还有一个当年的上海小姐。
+ 他坐在朋友的摩托车后座，一路西去，来到靠近机场的一片新型住宅区。
+ 那朋友住一幢侨汇房的十三楼，是他国外亲戚买下后托他照管的。
+ 平时他并不来住，只是三天两头地开派对，将各种的朋友汇集起来，过一个快乐的夜晚，或者快乐的白天。
+ 他的派对渐渐地有了名声，一传十，十传百的，来的人呢，也是一带十，十带百，他全是欢迎。
+ 人多了，难免鱼目混珠，掺和进来一些不正经的人，就会有不愉快的事情发生，比如撬窃的案子。
+ 但按照概率来说，人多了也会沙里淘金地出现精英。
+ 因此，有时他的派推对上会有特别的人物出场，比如电影明星，乐团的首席提琴手，记者，某共产党或国民党将领的子孙。
+ 他的派对就像一个小政协似的，许多旧闻和新闻在客厅上空交相流传，可真是热闹。
+ 在这新区，推开窗户，便可看见如林的高楼，窗户有亮有暗，天空显得很辽阔，星月反而远了。
+ 低头看去，宽阔笔直的马路上跑着如豆的汽车，成串的亮珠子。
+ 不远处永远有一个工地，彻夜的灯光，电力打夯机的声音充满在夜空底下，有节律地涌动着。
+ 空气里有一些水泥的粉末，风又很浩荡，在楼之间行军。
+ 那宾馆区的灯光却因为天地楼群的大和高，显得有些寂寥，却是璀璨的寂寥，有一些透心的快乐似的。
+ 这真是新区，是坦荡荡的胸襟，不像市区，怀着曲折衷肠，叫人猜不透。
+ 到新区来，总有点出城的感觉，那种马路和楼房的格式全是另一路的，横平竖直是讲道理讲出来的，不像市区，全是掏心窝掏出来的。
+ 在新区的夜空底下，这幢侨汇房十三楼里的欢声笑语，一下子就消散了，音乐声也消散了。
+ 这点快乐在新区算得上什么？
+ 在那高楼的蜂窝般的窗洞里，全是新鲜的快乐。
+ 还没加上四星或五星级的酒店里的，那里每晚都举行着冷餐会，舞会，招待会。
+ 还储留着一些艳情，那也是响当当的，名正言顺，门口挂着“请勿打扰”的牌子。
+ 那里的快乐因有着各色人种的参加，带着普天同庆的意思。
+ 尤其到了圣诞节，圣诞歌一唱，你真分不清是中国还是外国。
+ 这地方一上来就显得有些没心肺，无忧虑，是因为它没来得及积蓄起什么回忆，它的头脑里还是空白一片，还用不着使用记忆力。
+ 这就是一整个新区的精神状态。
+ 十三楼里那点笑闹，只是沧海一粟罢了。
+ 只有开电梯的那女人有些不耐烦，这一群群，一伙伙，手里拿着酒或捧着花，涌进和涌出电梯，又大多是生人，形形色色的。
+ 老克腊来到时，已不知是第十几批了。
+ 门半开着，里面满是人影晃动。
+ 他们走进去，谁也不注意他们，音响开着，有很暴烈的乐声放出。
+ 通往阳台的一间屋里，掩着门坐了一些人在看电视里的连续剧。
+ 阳台门开着，风把窗幔卷进卷出，很鼓荡的样子。
+ 屋角里坐着一个女人，白皙的皮肤，略施淡妆，穿一件丝麻的藕荷色套裙。
+ 她抱着胳膊，身体略向前倾，看着电视屏幕。
+ 窗幔有时从她裙边扫过去，也没叫她分心。
+ 当屏幕上的光陡地亮起来，便可看见她下眼睑略微下坠，这才显出了年纪。
+ 但这年纪也瞬息即过，是被悉心包藏起来，收在骨子里。
+ 是蹑着手脚走过来的岁月，唯恐留下痕迹，却还是不得已留下了。
+ 这就是一九八五年的王琦瑶。
+ 其时，在一些回忆旧上海的文章中，再现了一九四六年的繁盛场景，于是，王琦瑶的名字便跃然而出。
+ 也有那么一两个好事者，追根溯源来找王琦瑶，写一些报屁股文章，却并没有引起反响，于是便销声匿迹了。
+ 到底是年经月久，再大的辉煌，一旦坠入时间的黑洞，能有些个光的渣就算不错了。
+ 四十年前的这道光环，也像王琦瑶的人一样，不尽人意地衰老了。
+ 这道光环，甚至还给王琦瑶添了年纪，给她标上了纪年。
+ 它就像箱底的旧衣服一样，好是好，可是错过了年头，披挂上身，一看就是个陈年累月的人，所以它还是给王琦瑶添旧的。
+ 唯有张永红受了感动，她起先不相信，后来相信了，便涌出无数个问题。
+ 王琦瑶开始矜持着，渐渐就打开了话匣子，更是有无数个回答等着她来问的。
+ 许多事情她本以为忘了，不料竟是一提就起，连同那些琐琐碎碎的细节，点点滴滴的，全都汇流成河。
+ 这是一个女人的风头，淮海路上的争奇斗艳的女孩，要的不就是它？
+ 那一代接一代的新潮流，推波助澜的，不就是抢一个风头？
+ 张永红掂得出那光荣的分量，她说：你真是叫人羡慕啊！
+ 她向她每一任男友介绍王琦瑶，将王琦瑶邀请到各类聚会上。
+ 这些大都是年轻人的聚会上，王琦瑶总是很识时务地坐在一边，却让她的光辉为聚会添一笔奇色异彩。
+ 人们常常是看不见她，也无余暇看她，但都知道，今夜有一位“上海小姐”到场。
+ 有时候，人们会从始至终地等她莅临，岂不知她就坐在墙角，直到曲终人散。
+ 她穿着那么得体，态度且优雅，一点不扫人兴的，一点不碍人事情的。
+ 她就像一个摆设，一幅壁上的画，装点了客厅。
+ 这摆设和画，是沉稳的色调，酱黄底的，是真正的华丽，褪色不褪本。
+ 其余一切，均是浮光掠影。
+ 老克腊就是在此情此景下见到王琦瑶的，他想：这就是人们说的“上海小姐”吗？
+ 他要走开时，见王琦瑶抬起了眼睛，扫了一下又低下了。
+ 这一眼带了些惊恐失措，并没有对谁的一种茫茫然的哀恳，要求原谅的表情。
+ 老克腊这才意识到他的不公平，他想，“上海小姐”已是近四十年的事情了。
+ 再看王琦瑶，眼前便有些发虚，焦点没对准似的，恍惚间，他看见了三十多年前的那个影。
+ 然后，那影又一点一点清晰，凸现，有了些细节。
+ 但这些细节终不那么真实，浮在面上的，它们刺痛了老克腊的心。
+ 他觉出了一个残酷的事实，那就是时间的腐蚀力。
+ 在他二十六岁的年纪里，本是不该知道时间的深浅，时间还没把道理教给他，所以他才敢怀旧呢，他才敢说时间好呢！
+ 老爵士乐里头的时间，确是个好东西，它将东西打磨得又结实又细腻，把东西浮浅的表面光泽磨去，呈现出细密的纹路，烈火见真金的意思。
+ 可他今天看见的，不是老爵士乐那样的旧物，而是个人，他真不知说什么好了。
+ 事情竟是有些惨烈，他这才真触及到旧时光的核了，以前他都是在旧时光的皮肉里穿行。
+ 老克腊没走开，有什么拖住了他的脚步。
+ 他就端着一杯酒，倚在门框上，眼睛看着电视。
+ 后来，王琦瑶从屋角走出来想是要去洗手间。
+ 走过他身边时，他微笑了一下。
+ 她立即将这微笑接了过去，流露出感激的神情，回了一笑。
+ 等她回来，他便对她说，要不要替她去倒杯饮料？
+ 她指了屋角，说那里有她的一杯茶，不必了。
+ 他又请她跳舞，她略迟疑一下，接受了。
+ 客厅里在放着迪斯科的音乐，他们跳的却是四步，把节奏放慢一倍的。
+ 在一片激烈摇动之中，唯有他们不动，狂潮中的孤岛似的。
+ 她抱歉道，他还是跳迪斯科去吧，别陪她磨洋工了。
+ 他则说他就喜欢这个。
+ 他扶在她腰上的手，觉出她身体微妙的律动，以不变应万变，什么样的节奏里都能找到自己的那一种律动，穿越了时光。
+ 他有些感动，沉默着，忽听她在说话，夸他跳得好，是老派的拉丁风。
+ 接下来的舞曲，也有别人来邀请王琦瑶了。
+ 他们各自和舞伴悠然走步，有时目光相遇，便会心地一笑，带着些邂逅的喜悦。
+ 这一晚是国庆夜，有哪幢楼的平台上，放起礼花，孤零零的一朵，在湛黑的天空上缓缓地舒开叶瓣，又缓缓凋零成细细的流星，渐渐消失，空中还留有一团浅白的影。
+ 许久，才融入黑夜。
+
+ The Madness Years
+ China, 1967
+ The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days.
+ Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.
+ The Red Union commander was anxious, though not because of the defenders he faced.
+ The more than two hundred Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were mere greenhorns compared with the veteran Red Guards of the Red Union, which was formed at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in early 1966.
+ The Red Union had been tempered by the tumultuous experience of revolutionary tours around the country and seeing Chairman Mao in the great rallies in Tiananmen Square.
+ But the commander was afraid of the dozen or so iron stoves inside the building, filled with explosives and connected to each other by electric detonators.
+ He couldn't see them, but he could feel their presence like iron sensing the pull of a nearby magnet.
+ If a defender flipped the switch, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike would all die in one giant ball of fire.
+ And the young Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were indeed capable of such madness.
+ Compared with the weathered men and women of the first generation of Red Guards, the new rebels were a pack of wolves on hot coals, crazier than crazy.
+ The slender figure of a beautiful young girl emerged at the top of the building, waving the giant red banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade.
+ Her appearance was greeted immediately by a cacophony of gunshots.
+ The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears.
+ Together, they formed a condensed version of modern history.
+ Numerous members of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade had engaged in similar displays before.
+ They'd stand on top of the building, wave a flag, shout slogans through megaphones, and scatter flyers at the attackers below.
+ Every time, the courageous man or woman had been able to retreat safely from the hailstorm of bullets and earn glory for their valor.
+ The new girl clearly thought she'd be just as lucky.
+ She waved the battle banner as though brandishing her burning youth, trusting that the enemy would be burnt to ashes in the revolutionary flames, imagining that an ideal world would be born tomorrow from the ardor and zeal coursing through her blood....
+ She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest.
+ Her fifteen-year-old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it and whistled in the air behind her.
+ The young Red Guard tumbled down along with her flag, her light form descending even more slowly than the piece of red fabric, like a little bird unwilling to leave the sky.
+ The Red Union warriors shouted in joy.
+ A few rushed to the foot of the building, tore away the battle banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, and seized the slender, lifeless body.
+ They raised their trophy overhead and flaunted it for a while before tossing it toward the top of the metal gate of the compound.
+ Most of the gate's metal bars, capped with sharp tips, had been pulled down at the beginning of the factional civil wars to be used as spears, but two still remained.
+ As their sharp tips caught the girl, life seemed to return momentarily to her body.
+ The Red Guards backed up some distance and began to use the impaled body for target practice.
+ For her, the dense storm of bullets was now no different from a gentle rain, as she could no longer feel anything.
+ From time to time, her vinelike arms jerked across her body softly, as though she were flicking off drops of rain.
+ And then half of her young head was blown away, and only a single, beautiful eye remained to stare at the blue sky of 1967.
+ There was no pain in that gaze, only solidified devotion and yearning.
+ And yet, compared to some others, she was fortunate.
+ At least she died in the throes of passionately sacrificing herself for an ideal.
+ Battles like this one raged across Beijing like a multitude of CPUs working in parallel, their combined output, the Cultural Revolution.
+ A flood of madness drowned the city and seeped into every nook and cranny.
+ At the edge of the city, on the exercise grounds of Tsinghua University, a mass "struggle session" attended by thousands had been going on for nearly two hours.
+ This was a public rally intended to humiliate and break down the enemies of the revolution through verbal and physical abuse until they confessed to their crimes before the crowd.
+ As the revolutionaries had splintered into numerous factions, opposing forces everywhere engaged in complex maneuvers and contests.
+ Within the university, intense conflicts erupted between the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution Working Group, the Workers' Propaganda Team, and the Military Propaganda Team.
+ And each faction divided into new rebel groups from time to time, each based on different backgrounds and agendas, leading to even more ruthless fighting.
+ But for this mass struggle session, the victims were the reactionary bourgeois academic authorities.
+ These were the enemies of every faction, and they had no choice but to endure cruel attacks from every side.
+ Compared to other "Monsters and Demons," reactionary academic authorities were special:
+ During the earliest struggle sessions, they had been both arrogant and stubborn.
+ That was also the stage in which they had died in the largest numbers.
+ Over a period of forty days, in Beijing alone, more than seventeen hundred victims of struggle sessions were beaten to death.
+ Many others picked an easier path to avoid the madness:
+ Lao She, Wu Han, Jian Bozan, Fu Lei, Zhao Jiuzhang, Yi Qun, Wen Jie, Hai Mo, and other once-respected intellectuals had all chosen to end their lives.
+ Those who survived that initial period gradually became numb as the ruthless struggle sessions continued.
+ The protective mental shell helped them avoid total breakdown.
+ They often seemed to be half asleep during the sessions and would only startle awake when someone screamed in their faces to make them mechanically recite their confessions, already repeated countless times.
+ Then, some of them entered a third stage.
+ The constant, unceasing struggle sessions injected vivid political images into their consciousness like mercury, until their minds, erected upon knowledge and rationality, collapsed under the assault.
+ They began to really believe that they were guilty, to see how they had harmed the great cause of the revolution.
+ They cried, and their repentance was far deeper and more sincere than that of those Monsters and Demons who were not intellectuals.
+ For the Red Guards, heaping abuse upon victims in those two latter mental stages was utterly boring.
+ Only those Monsters and Demons who were still in the initial stage could give their overstimulated brains the thrill they craved, like the red cape of the matador.
+ But such desirable victims had grown scarce.
+ In Tsinghua there was probably only one left.
+ Because he was so rare, he was reserved for the very end of the struggle session.
+ Ye Zhetai had survived the Cultural Revolution so far, but he remained in the first mental stage.
+ He refused to repent, to kill himself, or to become numb.
+ When this physics professor walked onto the stage in front of the crowd, his expression clearly said: Let the cross I bear be even heavier.
+ The Red Guards did indeed have him carry a burden, but it wasn't a cross.
+ Other victims wore tall hats made from bamboo frames, but his was welded from thick steel bars.
+ And the plaque he wore around his neck wasn't wooden, like the others, but an iron door taken from a laboratory oven.
+ His name was written on the door in striking black characters, and two red diagonals were drawn across them in a large X.
+ Twice the number of Red Guards used for other victims escorted Ye onto the stage: two men and four women.
+ The two young men strode with confidence and purpose, the very image of mature Bolshevik youths.
+ They were both fourth-year students majoring in theoretical physics, and Ye was their professor.
+ The women, really girls, were much younger, second-year students from the junior high school attached to the university. Dressed in military uniforms and equipped with bandoliers, they exuded youthful vigor and surrounded Ye Zhetai like four green flames.
+ His appearance excited the crowd.
+ The shouting of slogans, which had slackened a bit, now picked up with renewed force and drowned out everything else like a resurgent tide.
+ After waiting patiently for the noise to subside, one of the male Red Guards turned to the victim.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you are an expert in mechanics.
+ You should see how strong the great unified force you're resisting is.
+ To remain so stubborn will lead only to your death!
+ Today, we will continue the agenda from the last time.
+ There's no need to waste words.
+ Answer the following question without your typical deceit: Between the years of 1962 and 1965, did you not decide on your own to add relativity to the intro physics course?"
+ "Relativity is part of the fundamental theories of physics," Ye answered.
+ "How can a basic survey course not teach it?"
+ "You lie!" a female Red Guard by his side shouted.
+ "Einstein is a reactionary academic authority.
+ He would serve any master who dangled money in front of him.
+ He even went to the American Imperialists and helped them build the atom bomb!
+ To develop a revolutionary science, we must overthrow the black banner of capitalism represented by the theory of relativity!"
+ Ye remained silent.
+ Enduring the pain brought by the heavy iron hat and the iron plaque hanging from his neck, he had no energy to answer questions that were not worth answering.
+ Behind him, one of his students also frowned.
+ The girl who had spoken was the most intelligent of the four female Red Guards, and she was clearly prepared, as she had been seen memorizing the struggle session script before coming onstage.
+ But against someone like Ye Zhetai, a few slogans like that were insufficient.
+ The Red Guards decided to bring out the new weapon they had prepared against their teacher.
+ One of them waved to someone offstage.
+ Ye's wife, physics professor Shao Lin, stood up from the crowd's front row.
+ She walked onto the stage dressed in an ill-fitting green outfit, clearly intended to imitate the military uniform of the Red Guards.
+ Those who knew her remembered that she had often taught class in an elegant qipao, and her current appearance felt forced and awkward.
+ "Ye Zhetai!"
+ She was clearly unused to such theater, and though she tried to make her voice louder, the effort magnified the tremors in it.
+ "You didn't think I would stand up and expose you, criticize you?
+ Yes, in the past, I was fooled by you.
+ You covered my eyes with your reactionary view of the world and science!
+ But now I am awake and alert.
+ With the help of the revolutionary youths, I want to stand on the side of the revolution, the side of the people!"
+ She turned to face the crowd.
+ "Comrades, revolutionary youths, revolutionary faculty and staff, we must clearly understand the reactionary nature of Einstein's theory of relativity.
+ This is most apparent in general relativity: Its static model of the universe negates the dynamic nature of matter.
+ It is anti-dialectical!
+ It treats the universe as limited, which is absolutely a form of reactionary idealism...."
+ As he listened to his wife's lecture, Ye allowed himself a wry smile.
+ Lin, I fooled you?
+ Indeed, in my heart you've always been a mystery.
+ One time, I praised your genius to your father—he's lucky to have died early and escaped this catastrophe—and he shook his head, telling me that he did not think you would ever achieve much academically.
+ What he said next turned out to be so important to the second half of my life: "Lin Lin is too smart.
+ To work in fundamental theory, one must be stupid."
+ In later years, I began to understand his words more and more.
+ Lin, you truly are too smart.
+ Even a few years ago, you could feel the political winds shifting in academia and prepared yourself.
+ For example, when you taught, you changed the names of many physical laws and constants: Ohm's law you called resistance law, Maxwell's equations you called electromagnetic equations, Planck's constant you called the quantum constant....
+ You explained to your students that all scientific accomplishments resulted from the wisdom of the working masses, and those capitalist academic authorities only stole these fruits and put their names on them.
+ But even so, you couldn't be accepted by the revolutionary mainstream.
+ Look at you now: You're not allowed to wear the red armband of the "revolutionary faculty and staff"; you had to come up here empty-handed, without the status to carry a Little Red Book....
+ You can't overcome the fault of being born to a prominent family in pre-revolutionary China and of having such famous scholars as parents.
+ But you actually have more to confess about Einstein than I do.
+ In the winter of 1922, Einstein visited Shanghai.
+ Because your father spoke fluent German, he was asked to accompany Einstein on his tour.
+ You told me many times that your father went into physics because of Einstein's encouragement, and you chose physics because of your father's influence.
+ So, in a way, Einstein can be said to have indirectly been your teacher.
+ And you once felt so proud and lucky to have such a connection.
+ Later, I found out that your father had told you a white lie.
+ He and Einstein had only one very brief conversation.
+ The morning of November 13, 1922, he accompanied Einstein on a walk along Nanjing Road.
+ Others who went on the walk included Yu Youren, president of Shanghai University, and Cao Gubing, general manager of the newspaper Ta Kung Pao.
+ When they passed a maintenance site in the road bed, Einstein stopped next to a worker who was smashing stones and silently observed this boy with torn clothes and dirty face and hands.
+ He asked your father how much the boy earned each day.
+ After asking the boy, he told Einstein: five cents.
+ This was the only time he spoke with the great scientist who changed the world.
+ There was no discussion of physics, of relativity, only cold, harsh reality.
+ According to your father, Einstein stood there for a long time after hearing the answer, watching the boy's mechanical movements, not even bothering to smoke his pipe as the embers went out.
+ After your father recounted this memory to me, he sighed and said, "In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground.
+ The gravity of reality is too strong."
+ "Lower your head!" one of the male Red Guards shouted.
+ This may actually have been a gesture of mercy from his former student.
+ All victims being struggled against were supposed to lower their heads.
+ If Ye did lower his head, the tall, heavy iron hat would fall off, and if he kept his head lowered, there would be no reason to put it back on him.
+ But Ye refused and held his head high, supporting the heavy weight with his thin neck.
+ "Lower your head, you stubborn reactionary!"
+ One of the girl Red Guards took off her belt and swung it at Ye.
+ The copper belt buckle struck his forehead and left a clear impression that was quickly blurred by oozing blood.
+ He swayed unsteadily for a few moments, then stood straight and firm again.
+ One of the male Red Guards said, "When you taught quantum mechanics, you also mixed in many reactionary ideas."
+ Then he nodded at Shao Lin, indicating that she should continue.
+ Shao was happy to oblige.
+ She had to keep on talking, otherwise her fragile mind, already hanging on only by a thin thread, would collapse completely.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you cannot deny this charge!
+ You have often lectured students on the reactionary Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics."
+ "It is, after all, the explanation recognized to be most in line with experimental results."
+ His tone, so calm and collected, surprised and frightened Shao Lin.
+ "This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function.
+ This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
+ "Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?"
+ Ye's sudden counterattack shocked those leading the struggle session.
+ For a moment they did not know what to do.
+ "Of course it should be the correct philosophy of Marxism that guides scientific experiments!" one of the male Red Guards finally said.
+ "Then that's equivalent to saying that the correct philosophy falls out of the sky.
+ This is against the idea that the truth emerges from experience.
+ It's counter to the principles of how Marxism seeks to understand nature."
+ Shao Lin and the two college student Red Guards had no answer for this.
+ Unlike the Red Guards who were still in junior high school, they couldn't completely ignore logic.
+ But the four junior high girls had their own revolutionary methods that they believed were invincible.
+ The girl who had hit Ye before took out her belt and whipped Ye again.
+ The other three girls also took off their belts to strike at Ye.
+ With their companion displaying such revolutionary fervor, they had to display even more, or at least the same amount.
+ The two male Red Guards didn't interfere.
+ If they tried to intervene now, they would be suspected of being insufficiently revolutionary.
+ "You also taught the big bang theory.
+ This is the most reactionary of all scientific theories."
+ One of the male Red Guards spoke up, trying to change the subject.
+ "Maybe in the future this theory will be disproven.
+ But two great cosmological discoveries of this century—
+ Hubble's law, and observation of the cosmic microwave background–show that the big bang theory is currently the most plausible explanation for the origin of the universe."
+ "Lies!"
+ Shao Lin shouted.
+ Then she began a long lecture about the big bang theory, remembering to splice in insightful critiques of the theory's extremely reactionary nature.
+ But the freshness of the theory attracted the most intelligent of the four girls, who couldn't help but ask, "Time began with the singularity?
+ So what was there before the singularity?"
+ "Nothing," Ye said, the way he would answer a question from any curious young person.
+ He turned to look at the girl kindly.
+ With his injuries and the tall iron hat, the motion was very difficult.
+ "No ... nothing?
+ That's reactionary!
+ Completely reactionary!" the frightened girl shouted.
+ She turned to Shao Lin, who gladly came to her aid.
+ "The theory leaves open a place to be filled by God."
+ Shao nodded at the girl.
+ The young Red Guard, confused by these new thoughts, finally found her footing.
+ She raised her hand, still holding the belt, and pointed at Ye.
+ "You: you're trying to say that God exists?"
+ "I don't know."
+ "What?"
+ "I'm saying I don't know.
+ If by 'God' you mean some kind of superconsciousness outside the universe, I don't know if it exists or not.
+ Science has given no evidence either way."
+ Actually, in this nightmarish moment, Ye was leaning toward believing that God did not exist.
+ This extremely reactionary statement caused a commotion in the crowd.
+ Led by one of the Red Guards on stage, another tide of slogan-shouting exploded.
+ "Down with reactionary academic authority Ye Zhetai!"
+ "Down with all reactionary academic authorities!"
+ "Down with all reactionary doctrines!"
+ Once the slogans died down, the girl shouted, "God does not exist.
+ All religions are tools concocted by the ruling class to paralyze the spirit of the people!"
+ "That is a very one-sided view," Ye said calmly.
+ The young Red Guard, embarrassed and angry, reached the conclusion that, against this dangerous enemy, all talk was useless.
+ She picked up her belt and rushed at Ye, and her three companions followed.
+ Ye was tall, and the four fourteen-year-olds had to swing their belts upward to reach his head, still held high.
+ After a few strikes, the tall iron hat, which had protected him a little, fell off.
+ The continuing barrage of strikes by the metal buckles finally made him fall down.
+ The young Red Guards, encouraged by their success, became even more devoted to this glorious struggle.
+ They were fighting for faith, for ideals.
+ They were intoxicated by the bright light cast on them by history, proud of their own bravery....
+ Ye's two students had finally had enough.
+ "The chairman instructed us to 'rely on eloquence rather than violence'!"
+ They rushed over and pulled the four semicrazed girls off Ye.
+ But it was already too late.
+ The physicist lay quietly on the ground, his eyes still open as blood oozed from his head.
+ The frenzied crowd sank into silence.
+ The only thing that moved was a thin stream of blood.
+ Like a red snake, it slowly meandered across the stage, reached the edge, and dripped onto a chest below.
+ The rhythmic sound made by the blood drops was like the steps of someone walking away.
+ A cackling laugh broke the silence.
+ The sound came from Shao Lin, whose mind had finally broken.
+ The laughter frightened the attendees, who began to leave the struggle session, first in trickles, and then in a flood.
+ The exercise grounds soon emptied, leaving only one young woman below the stage.
+ She was Ye Wenjie, Ye Zhetai's daughter.
+ As the four girls were taking her father's life, she had tried to rush onto the stage.
+ But two old university janitors held her down and whispered into her ear that she would lose her own life if she went.
+ The mass struggle session had turned into a scene of madness, and her appearance would only incite more violence.
+ She had screamed and screamed, but she had been drowned out by the frenzied waves of slogans and cheers.
+ When it was finally quiet again, she was no longer capable of making any sound.
+ She stared at her father's lifeless body, and the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.
+ After the crowd dispersed, she remained like a stone statue, her body and limbs in the positions they were in when the two old janitors had held her back.
+ After a long time, she finally let her arms down, walked slowly onto the stage, sat next to her father's body, and held one of his already-cold hands, her eyes staring emptily into the distance.
+ When they finally came to carry away the body, she took something from her pocket and put it into her father's hand: his pipe.
+ Wenjie quietly left the exercise grounds, empty save for the trash left by the crowd, and headed home.
+ When she reached the foot of the faculty housing apartment building, she heard peals of crazy laughter coming out of the second-floor window of her home.
+ That was the woman she had once called mother.
+ Wenjie turned around, not caring where her feet would carry her.
+ Finally, she found herself at the door of Professor Ruan Wen.
+ Throughout the four years of Wenjie's college life, Professor Ruan had been her advisor and her closest friend.
+ During the two years after that, when Wenjie had been a graduate student in the Astrophysics Department, and through the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Professor Ruan remained her closest confidante, other than her father.
+ Ruan had studied at Cambridge University, and her home had once fascinated Wenjie: refined books, paintings, and records brought back from Europe; a piano; a set of European-style pipes arranged on a delicate wooden stand, some made from Mediterranean briar, some from Turkish meerschaum.
+ Each of them seemed suffused with the wisdom of the man who had once held the bowl in his hand or clamped the stem between his teeth, deep in thought, though Ruan had never mentioned the man's name.
+ The pipe that had belonged to Wenjie's father had in fact been a gift from Ruan.
+ This elegant, warm home had once been a safe harbor for Wenjie when she needed to escape the storms of the larger world, but that was before Ruan's home had been searched and her possessions seized by the Red Guards.
+ Like Wenjie's father, Ruan had suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution.
+ During her struggle sessions, the Red Guards had hung a pair of high heels around her neck and streaked her face with lipstick to show how she had lived the corrupt lifestyle of a capitalist.
+ Wenjie pushed open the door to Ruan's home, and she saw that the chaos left by the Red Guards had been cleaned up: The torn oil paintings had been glued back together and rehung on the walls; the toppled piano had been set upright and wiped clean, though it was broken and could no longer be played; the few books left behind had been put back neatly on the shelf....
+ Ruan was sitting on the chair before her desk, her eyes closed.
+ Wenjie stood next to Ruan and gently caressed her professor's forehead, face, and hands—all cold.
+ Wenjie had noticed the empty sleeping pill bottle on the desk as soon as she came in.
+ She stood there for a while, silent.
+ Then she turned and walked away.
+ She could no longer feel grief.
+ She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero.
+ But as she was about to leave Ruan's home, Wenjie turned around for a final look.
+ She noticed that Professor Ruan had put on makeup.
+ She was wearing a light coat of lipstick and a pair of high heels.
+
+ 疯狂年代
+ 中国，1967年。
+ “红色联合”对“四·二八兵团”总部大楼的攻击已持续了两天，他们的旗帜在大楼周围躁动地飘扬着，仿佛渴望干柴的火种。
+ “红色联合”的指挥官心急如焚，他并不惧怕大楼的守卫者，那二百多名“四·二八”战士，与诞生于l966年初、经历过大检阅和大串联的“红色联合”相比要稚嫩许多。
+ 他怕的是大楼中那十几个大铁炉子，里面塞满了烈性炸药，用电雷管串联起来，他看不到它们，但能感觉到它们磁石般的存在，开关一合，玉石俱焚，而“四·二八”的那些小红卫兵们是有这个精神力量的。
+ 比起已经在风雨中成熟了许多的第一代红卫兵，新生的造反派们像火炭上的狼群，除了疯狂还是疯狂。
+ 大楼顶上出现了一个娇小的身影，那个美丽的女孩子挥动着一面“四·二八”的大旗，她的出现立刻招来了一阵杂乱的枪声，射击的武器五花八门，有陈旧的美式卡宾枪、捷克式机枪和三八大盖，也有崭新的制式步枪和冲锋枪——后者是在“八月社论”发表之后从军队中偷抢来的——连同那些梭标和大刀等冷兵器，构成了一部浓缩的近现代史……
+ “四·二八”的人在前面多次玩过这个游戏，在楼顶上站出来的人，除了挥舞旗帜外，有时还用喇叭筒喊口号或向下撒传单，每次他们都能在弹雨中全身而退，为自己挣到了崇高的荣誉。
+ 这次出来的女孩儿显然也相信自己还有那样的幸运。
+ 她挥舞着战旗，挥动着自己燃烧的青春，敌人将在这火焰中化为灰烬，理想世界明天就会在她那沸腾的热血中诞生……
+ 她陶醉在这鲜红灿烂的梦幻中，直到被一颗步枪子弹洞穿了胸膛，十五岁少女的胸膛是那么柔嫩，那颗子弹穿过后基本上没有减速，在她身后的空中发出一声啾鸣。
+ 年轻的红卫兵同她的旗帜一起从楼顶落下，她那轻盈的身体落得甚至比旗帜还慢，仿佛小鸟眷恋着天空。
+ “红色联合”的战士们欢呼起来，几个人冲到楼下，掀开四·二八的旗帜，抬起下面纤小的遗体，作为一个战利品炫耀地举了一段，然后将她高高地扔向大院的铁门。
+ 铁门上带尖的金属栅条大部分在武斗初期就被抽走当梭镖了，剩下的两条正好挂住了她，那一瞬间，生命似乎又回到了那个柔软的躯体。
+ 红色联合的红卫兵们退后一段距离，将那个挂在高处的躯体当靶子练习射击，密集的子弹对她来说已柔和如雨，不再带来任何感觉。
+ 她那春藤般的手臂不时轻挥一下，仿佛拂去落在身上的雨滴，直到那颗年轻的头颅被打掉了一半，仅剩的一只美丽的眼睛仍然凝视着一九六七年的蓝天，目光中没有痛苦，只有凝固的激情和渴望。
+ 其实，比起另外一些人来，她还是幸运的，至少是在为理想献身的壮丽激情中死去。
+ 这样的热点遍布整座城市，像无数并行运算的CPU，将“文革大革命”联为一个整体。
+ 疯狂如同无形的洪水，将城市淹没其中，并渗透到每一个细微的角落和缝隙。
+ 在城市边缘的那所著名大学的操场上，一场几千人参加的批斗会已经进行了近两个小时。
+ 在这个派别林立的年代，任何一处都有错综复杂的对立派别在格斗。
+ 在校园中，红卫兵、文革工作组、工宣队和军宣队，相互之间都在爆发尖锐的冲突，而每种派别的内部又时时分化出新的对立派系，捍卫着各自不同的背景和纲领，爆发更为残酷的较量。
+ 但这次被批斗的反动学术权威，却是任何一方均无异议的斗争目标，他们也只能同时承受来自各方的残酷打击。
+ 与其他的牛鬼蛇神相比，反动学术权威有他们的特点：当打击最初到来时，他们的表现往往是高傲而顽固的，这也是他们伤亡率最高的阶段。
+ 在首都，四十天的时间里就有一千七百多名批斗对象被活活打死，更多的人选择了更快捷的路径来逃避疯狂：老舍、吴晗、翦伯赞、傅雷、赵九章、以群、闻捷、海默等，都自己结束了他们那曾经让人肃然起敬的生命。
+ 从这一阶段幸存下来的人，在持续的残酷打击下渐渐麻木，这是一种自我保护的精神外壳，使他们避免最后的崩溃。
+ 他们在批斗会上常常进入半睡眠状态，只有一声恫吓才能使其惊醒过来，机械地重复那已说过无数遍的认罪词。
+ 然后，他们中的一部分人便进入了第三阶段，旷日持久的批判将鲜明的政治图像如水银般注入了他们的意识，将他们那由知识和理性构筑的思想大厦彻底摧毁，他们真的相信自己有罪，真的看到了自己对伟大事业构成的损害，并为此痛哭流涕，他们的忏悔往往比那此非知识分子的牛鬼蛇神要深刻得多，也真诚得多。
+ 而对于红卫兵来说，进入后两个阶段的批判对象是最乏味的，只有处于第一阶段的牛鬼蛇神才能对他们那早已过度兴奋的神经产生有效的刺激，如同斗牛士手上的红布，但这样的对象越来越少了，在这所大学中可能只剩下一个，他由于自己的珍稀而被留到批判大会最后出场。
+ 叶哲泰从文革开始一直活到了现在，并且一直处于第一阶段，他不认罪，不自杀，也不麻木。
+ 当这位物理学教授走上批判台时，他那神情分明在说：让我背负的十字架更沉重一些吧！
+ 红卫兵们让他负担的东西确实很重，但不是十字架。
+ 别的批判对象戴的高帽子都是用竹条扎的框架，而他戴的这顶却是用一指粗的钢筋焊成的，还有他挂在胸前的那块牌子，也不是别人挂的木板，而是从实验室的一个烤箱上拆下的铁门，上面用黑色醒目地写着他的名字，并沿对角线画上了一个红色的大叉。
+ 押送叶哲泰上台的红卫兵比别的批判对象多了一倍，有六人，两男四女。
+ 两个男青年步伐稳健有力，一副成熟的青年布尔什维克形象，他们都是物理系理论物理专业大四年级的，叶哲泰曾是他们的老师；那四名女孩子要年轻得多，都是大学附中的初二学生，这些穿着军装扎着武装带的小战士挟带着逼人的青春活力，像四团绿色的火焰包围着叶哲泰。
+ 叶哲泰的出现使下面的人群兴奋起来，刚才已有些乏力的口号声又像新一轮海潮般重新高昂起来，淹没了一切。
+ 耐心地等口号声平息下去后，台上两名男红卫兵中的一人转向批判对象：“叶哲泰，你精通各种力学，应该看到自己正在抗拒的这股伟大的合力是多么强大，顽固下去是死路一条！
+ 今天继续上次大会的议程，废话就不多说了。
+ 老实回答下面的问题：在六二至六五届的基础课中，你是不是擅自加入了大量的相对论内容？！”
+ “相对论已经成为物理学的古典理论，基础课怎么能不涉及它呢？”
+ 叶哲泰回答说。
+ “你胡说！”
+ 旁边的一名女红卫兵厉声说，“爱因斯坦是反动的学术权威，他有奶便是娘，跑去为美帝国主义造原子弹！
+ 要建立起革命的科学，就要打倒以相对论为代表的资产阶级理论黑旗！”
+ 叶哲泰沉默着，他在忍受着头上铁高帽和胸前铁板带来的痛苦，不值得回应的问题就沉默了。
+ 在他身后，他的学生也微微皱了一下眉头。
+ 说话的女孩儿是这四个中学红卫兵中天资最聪颖的一个，并且显然有备而来，刚才上台前还看到她在背批判稿，但要对付叶哲泰，仅凭她那几句口号是不行的。
+ 他们决定亮出今天为老师准备的新武器，其中的一人对台下挥了一下手。
+ 叶哲泰的妻子，同系的物理学教授绍琳从台下的前排站起来，走上台。
+ 她身穿一件很不合体的草绿色衣服，显然想与红卫兵的色彩拉近距离，但熟悉绍琳的人联想到以前常穿精致旗袍讲课的她，总觉得别扭。
+ “叶哲泰！”
+ 绍琳指着丈夫喝道，她显然不习惯于这种场合，尽量拔高自己的声音，却连其中的颤抖也放大了，“你没有想到我会站出来揭发你，批判你吧！？
+ 是的，我以前受你欺骗，你用自己那反动的世界观和科学观蒙蔽了我！
+ 现在我醒悟了，在革命小将的帮助下，我要站到革命的一边，人民的一边！”
+ 她转向台下，“同志们、革命小将们、革命的教职员工们，我们应该认清爱因斯坦相对论的反动本质，这种本质，广义相对论体现得最清楚：它提出的静态宇宙模型，否定了物质的运动本性，是反辩证法的！
+ 它认为宇宙有限，更是彻头彻尾的反动唯心主义……”
+ 听着妻子滔滔不绝的演讲，叶哲泰苦笑了一下。
+ 琳，我蒙蔽了你？
+ 其实你在我心中倒一直是个谜。
+ 一次，我对你父亲称赞你那过人的天资——他很幸运，去得早，躲过了这场灾难——老人家摇摇头，说我女儿不可能在学术上有什么建树；接着，他说出了对我后半生很重要的一句话：琳琳太聪明了，可是搞基础理论，不笨不行啊。
+ 以后的许多年里，我不断悟出这话的深意。
+ 琳，你真的太聪明了，早在几年前，你就嗅出了知识界的政治风向，做出了一些超前的举动，比如你在教学中，把大部分物理定律和参数都改了名字，欧姆定律改叫电阻定律，麦克斯韦方程改名成电磁方程，普朗克常数叫成了量子常数……
+ 你对学生们解释说：所有的科学成果都是广大劳动人民智慧的结晶，那些资产阶级学术权威不过是窃取了这些智慧。
+ 但即使这样，你仍然没有被“革命主流”所接纳，看看现在的你，衣袖上没有“革命教职员工”都戴着的红袖章；你两手空空地上来，连一本语录都没资格拿……
+ 谁让你出生在旧中国那样一个显赫的家庭，你父母又都是那么著名的学者。
+ 说起爱因斯坦，你比我有更多的东西需要交待。
+ 1922年冬天，爱因斯坦到上海访问，你父亲因德语很好被安排为接待陪同者之一。
+ 你多次告诉我，父亲是在爱因斯坦的亲自教诲下走上物理学之路的，而你选择物理专业又是受了父亲的影响，所以爱翁也可以看作你的间接导师，你为此感到无比的自豪和幸福。
+ 后来我知道，父亲对你讲了善意的谎言，他与爱因斯坦只有过一次短得不能再短的交流。
+ 那是l922年11月l3日上午，他陪爱因斯坦到南京路散步，同行的好像还有上海大学校长于右任、《大公报》经理曹谷冰等人，经过一个路基维修点，爱因斯坦在一名砸石子的小工身旁停下，默默看着这个在寒风中衣衫破烂、手脸污黑的男孩子，问你父亲：他一天挣多少钱？
+ 问过小工后，你父亲回答：五分。
+ 这就是他与改变世界的科学大师唯一的一次交流，没有物理学，没有相对论，只有冰冷的现实。
+ 据你父亲说，爱因斯坦听到他的回答后又默默地站在那里好一会儿，看着小工麻木的劳作，手里的烟斗都灭了也没有吸一口。
+ 你父亲在回忆这件事后，对我发出这样的感叹：在中国，任何超脱飞扬的思想都会砰然坠地的，现实的引力太沉重了。
+ “低下头！”
+ 一名男红卫兵大声命令。
+ 这也许是自己的学生对老师一丝残存的同情，被批斗者都要低头，但叶哲泰要这样，那顶沉重的铁高帽就会掉下去，以后只要他一直低着头，就没有理由再给他戴上。
+ 但叶哲泰仍昂着头，用瘦弱的脖颈支撑着那束沉重的钢铁。
+ “低头！
+ 你个反动顽固分子！ ！”
+ 旁边一名女红卫兵解下腰间的皮带朝叶哲泰挥去，黄铜带扣正打在他脑门上，在那里精确地留下了带扣的形状，但很快又被淤血模糊成黑紫的一团。
+ 他摇晃了一下，又站稳了。
+ 一名男红卫兵质问叶哲泰：“在量子力学的教学中，你也散布过大量的反动言论！”
+ 说完对绍琳点点头，示意她继续。
+ 绍琳迫不及待地要继续下去了，她必须不停顿地说下去，以维持自己那摇摇欲坠的精神免于彻底垮掉。
+ “叶哲泰，这一点你是无法抵赖的！
+ 你多次向学生散布反动的哥本哈根解释！”
+ “这毕竟是目前公认的最符合实验结果的解释。”
+ 叶哲泰说，在受到如此重击后，他的口气还如此从容，这让绍琳很吃惊，也很恐惧。
+ “这个解释认为，是外部的观察导致了量子波函数的坍缩，这是反动唯心论的另一种表现形式，而且是一种最猖狂的表现！”
+ “是哲学指引实验还是实验指引哲学？”
+ 叶哲泰问道，他这突然的反击令批判者们一时不知所措。
+ “当然是正确的马克思主义哲学指引科学实验！”
+ 一名男红卫兵说。
+ “这等于说正确的哲学是从天上掉下来的。
+ 这反对实践出真知，恰恰是违背马克思主义对自然界的认知原则的。”
+ 绍琳和两名大学红卫兵无言以对，与中学和社会上的红卫兵不同，他们不可能一点儿道理也不讲。
+ 但来自附中的四位小将自有她们“无坚不摧”的革命方式，刚才动手的那个女孩儿又狠抽了叶哲泰一皮带，另外三个女孩子也都分别抡起皮带抽了一下，当同伴革命时，她们必须表现得更革命，至少要同样革命。
+ 两名男红卫兵没有过问，他们要是现在管这事，也有不革命的嫌疑。
+ “你还在教学中散布宇宙大爆炸理论，这是所有科学理论中最反动的一个！”
+ 一名男红卫兵试图转移话题。
+ “也许以后这个理论会被推翻，但本世纪的两大宇宙学发现：哈勃红移和3K宇宙背景辐射，使大爆炸学说成为目前为止最可信的宇宙起源理论。”
+ “胡说！”
+ 绍琳大叫起来，又接着滔滔不绝地讲起了宇宙大爆炸，自然不忘深刻地剖析其反动本质。
+ 但这理论的超级新奇吸引了四个小女孩儿中最聪明的那一个，她不由自主地问道：“连时间都是从那个奇点开始的！？
+ 那奇点以前有什么？”
+ “什么都没有。”
+ 叶哲泰说，像回答任何一个小女孩儿的问题那样，他转头慈祥地看着她，铁高帽和已受的重伤，使他这动作很艰难。
+ “什么…… 都没有？！
+ 反动！
+ 反动透顶！ ！”
+ 那女孩儿惊恐万状地大叫起来，她不知所措地转向绍琳寻求帮助，立刻得到了回应。
+ “这给上帝的存在留下了位置。”
+ 绍琳对女孩儿点点头提示说。
+ 小红卫兵那茫然的思路立刻找到了立脚点，她举起紧握皮带的手指着叶哲泰，“你，是想说有上帝？！”
+ “我不知道。”
+ “你说什么！”
+ “我是说不知道，如果上帝是指宇宙之外的超意识的话，我不知道它是不是存在；正反两方面，科学都没给出确实的证据。”
+ 其实，在这噩梦般的时刻，叶哲泰已倾向于相信它不存在了。
+ 这句大逆不道的话在整个会场引起了骚动，在台上一名红卫兵的带领下，又爆发了一波波的口号声。
+ “打倒反动学术权威叶哲泰！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学术权威！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学说！！” ……
+ “上帝是不存在的，一切宗教，都是统治阶级编造出来的麻痹人民的精神工具！”
+ 口号平息后，那个小女孩儿大声说。
+ “这种看法是片面的。”
+ 叶哲泰平静地说。
+ 恼羞成怒的小红卫兵立刻做出了判断，对于眼前这个危险的敌人，一切语言都无意义了。
+ 她抡起皮带冲上去，她的三个小同志立刻跟上。
+ 叶哲泰的个子很高，这四个十四岁的女孩儿只能朝上抡皮带才能打到他那不肯低下的头。
+ 在开始的几下打击后，他头上能起一定保护作用的铁高帽被打掉了，接下来带铜扣的宽皮带如雨点般打在他的头上和身上——他终于倒下了。
+ 这鼓舞了小红卫兵们，她们更加投入地继续着这“崇高”的战斗，她们在为信念而战，为理想而战，她们为历史给予自己的光辉使命所陶醉，为自己的英勇而自豪……
+ “最高指示：要文斗不要武斗！”
+ 叶哲泰的两名学生终于下定了决心，喊出了这句话，两人同时冲过去，拉开了已处于半疯狂状态的四个小女孩儿。
+ 但已经晚了，物理学家静静地躺在地上，半睁的双眼看着从他的头颅上流出的血迹，疯狂的会场瞬间陷入了一片死寂。
+ 那条血迹是唯一在动的东西，它像一条红蛇缓慢地蜿蜒爬行着，到达台沿后一滴滴地滴在下面一个空箱子上，发出有节奏的“哒哒”声，像渐行渐远的脚步。
+ 一阵怪笑声打破了寂静，这声音是精神已彻底崩溃的绍琳发出的，听起来十分恐怖。
+ 人们开始离去，最后发展成一场大溃逃，每个人想都尽快逃离这个地方。
+ 会场很快空了下来，只剩下一个姑娘站在台下。
+ 她是叶哲泰的女儿叶文洁。
+ 当那四个女孩儿施暴夺去父亲生命时，她曾想冲上台去，但身边的两名老校工死死抓住她，并在耳边低声告诉她别连自己的命也不要了，当时会场已经处于彻底的癫狂，她的出现只会引出更多的暴徒。
+ 她曾声嘶力竭地哭叫，但声音淹没在会场上疯狂的口号和助威声中，当一切寂静下来时，她自己也发不出任何声音了，只是凝视台上父亲已没有生命的躯体，那没有哭出和喊出的东西在她的血液中弥漫、溶解，将伴她一生。
+ 人群散去后，她站在那里，身体和四肢仍保持着老校工抓着她时的姿态，一动不动，像石化了一般。
+ 过了好久，她才将悬空的手臂放下来，缓缓起身走上台，坐在父亲的遗体边，握起他的一只已凉下来的手，两眼失神地看着远方。
+ 当遗体要被抬走时，叶文洁从衣袋中拿出一样东西放到父亲的那只手中，那是父亲的烟斗。
+ 文洁默默地离开了已经空无一人一片狼藉的操场，走上回家的路。
+ 当她走到教工宿舍楼下时，听到了从二楼自家窗口传出的一阵阵痴笑声，这声音是那个她曾叫做妈妈的女人发出的。
+ 文洁默默地转身走去，任双脚将她带向别处。
+ 她最后发现自己来到了阮雯的家门前。
+ 在大学四年中，阮老师一直是她的班主任，也是她最亲密的朋友。
+ 在叶文洁读天体物理专业研究生的两年里，再到后来停课闹革命至今，阮老师一直是她除父亲外最亲近的人。
+ 阮雯曾留学剑桥，她的家曾对叶文洁充满了吸引力，那里有许多从欧洲带回来的精致的书籍、油画和唱片，一架钢琴；还有一排放在精致小木架上的欧式烟斗，父亲那只就是她送的，这些烟斗有地中海石楠根的，有土耳其海泡石的，每一个都仿佛浸透了曾将它们拿在手中和含在嘴里深思的那个男人的智慧，但阮雯从未提起过他。
+ 这个雅致温暖的小世界成为文洁逃避尘世风暴的港湾。
+ 但那是阮雯的家被抄之前的事，她在运动中受到的冲击和文洁父亲一样重。
+ 在批斗会上，红卫兵把高跟鞋挂到她脖子上，用口红在她的脸上划出许多道子，以展示她那腐朽的资产阶级生活方式。
+ 叶文洁推开阮雯的家门，发现抄家后混乱的房间变得整洁了，那几幅被撕的油画又贴糊好挂在墙上，歪倒的钢琴也端正地立在原位，虽然已被砸坏不能弹了，但还是擦得很干净，残存的几本精装书籍也被整齐地放回书架上……
+ 阮雯端坐在写字台前的那把转椅上，安详地闭着双眼。
+ 叶文洁站在她身边，摸摸她的额头、脸和手，都是冰凉的，其实文洁在进门后就注意到了写字台上倒放着的那个已空的安眠药瓶。
+ 她默默地站了一会儿，转身走去，悲伤已感觉不到了，她现在就像一台盖革计数仪，当置身于超量的辐射中时，反而不再有任何反应，没有声响，读数为零。
+ 但当她就要出门时，还是回过头来最后看了阮雯一眼，她发现阮老师很好地上了妆，她抹了口红，也穿上了高跟鞋。
+
+ The location for the Three Body players' meet-up was a small, out-of-the-way coffee shop.
+ Wang had always imagined game meet-ups would be lively events full of people, but this meet-up consisted of only seven players, including himself.
+ Like Wang, the other six did not look like gaming enthusiasts.
+ Only two were relatively young.
+ Another three, including a woman, were middle-aged.
+ There was also an old man who appeared to be in his sixties or seventies.
+ Wang had originally thought that as soon as they met they'd begin a lively discussion of Three Body, but he was wrong.
+ The profound but strange content of Three Body had had a psychological impact on the participants.
+ All the players, including Wang himself, couldn't bring it up easily.
+ They only made simple self-introductions.
+ The old man took out a refined pipe, filled it with tobacco, and smoked as he strolled around, admiring the paintings on the walls.
+ The others sat silently, waiting for the meet-up organizer to show up.
+ They had all come early.
+ Actually, of the six, Wang already knew two.
+ The old man was a famous scholar who had made his name by imbuing Eastern philosophy with the content of modern science.
+ The strangely dressed woman was a famous writer, one of those rare novelists who wrote in an avant-garde style but still had many readers.
+ You could start one of her books on any page.
+ Of the two middle-aged men, one was a vice president at China's largest software company, plainly and casually dressed so that his status wasn't obvious at all; and the other was a high-level executive at the State Power Corporation.
+ Of the two young men, one was a reporter with a major media outlet, and the other was a doctoral student in the sciences.
+ Wang now realized that a considerable number of Three Body players were probably social elites like them.
+ The meet-up organizer showed up not long after.
+ Wang's heart began to beat faster as soon as he saw the man: it was Pan Han, prime suspect for the murder of Shen Yufei.
+ He took out his phone when no one was looking and texted Shi Qiang.
+ "Haha, everyone got here early!"
+ Pan greeted them in a relaxed manner, as though nothing was wrong.
+ Appearing in the media, he usually looked disheveled, like a vagrant, but today, he was dressed sharply in a suit and dress shoes.
+ "You're just like I imagined.
+ Three Body is intended for people in your class because the common crowd cannot appreciate its meaning and mood.
+ To play it well requires knowledge and understanding that ordinary people do not possess."
+ Wang sent out his text: Spotted Pan Han.
+ At Yunhe Coffee Shop in Xicheng District.
+ Pan continued.
+ "Everyone here is an excellent Three Body player.
+ You have the best scores and are devoted to it.
+ I believe that Three Body is already an important part of your lives."
+ "It's part of what keeps me alive," the young doctoral student said.
+ "I saw it by accident on my grandson's computer," the old philosopher said, lifting his pipe stem.
+ "The young man abandoned it after a few tries, saying it was too abstruse.
+ But I was attracted to it.
+ I find it strange, terrible, but also beautiful.
+ So much information is hidden beneath a simple representation."
+ A few players nodded at this description, including Wang himself.
+ Wang received Da Shi's reply text: We also see him.
+ No worries.
+ Carry on.
+ Play the fanatic in front of them, but not so much that you can't pull it off.
+ "Yes," the author agreed, and nodded.
+ "I like the literary elements of Three Body.
+ The rises and falls of two hundred and three civilizations evoke the qualities of epics in a new form."
+ She mentioned 203 civilizations, but Wang had only experienced 184.
+ This told Wang that Three Body progressed independently for each player, possibly with different worlds.
+ "I'm a bit sick of the real world," the young reporter said.
+ "Three Body is already my second reality."
+ "Really?"
+ Pan asked, interested.
+ "Me too," the software company vice president said.
+ "Compared to Three Body, reality is so vulgar and unexciting."
+ "It's too bad that it's only a game," said the power company executive.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ Wang noticed his eyes sparkling with excitement.
+ "I have a question that I think everyone wants to know the answer to," Wang said.
+ "I know what it is.
+ But you might as well ask."
+ "Is Three Body only a game?"
+ The other players nodded.
+ Clearly the question was also on their minds.
+ Pan stood up and said solemnly, "The world of Three Body, or Trisolaris, really does exist."
+ "Where is it?" several players asked in unison.
+ After looking at each of them in turn, Pan sat down and spoke.
+ "Some questions I can answer.
+ Others I cannot.
+ But if you are meant to be with Trisolaris, all your questions will be answered someday."
+ "Then ... does the game really portray Trisolaris accurately?" the reporter asked.
+ "First, the ability of Trisolarans to dehydrate through its many cycles of civilization is real.
+ In order to adapt to the unpredictable natural environment and avoid extreme environmental conditions unsuitable for life, they can completely expel the water in their bodies and turn into dry, fibrous objects."
+ "What do Trisolarans look like?"
+ Pan shook his head.
+ "I don't know.
+ I really don't.
+ In every cycle of civilization, the appearance of Trisolarans is different.
+ However, the game does portray something else that really existed on Trisolaris: the Trisolaran-formation computer."
+ "Ha!
+ I thought that was the most unrealistic aspect," the software company vice president said.
+ "I conducted a test with more than a hundred employees at my company.
+ Even if the idea worked, a computer made of people would probably operate at a speed slower than manual computation."
+ Pan gave a mysterious smile.
+ "You're right.
+ But suppose that of the thirty million soldiers forming the computer, each one is capable of raising and lowering the black and white flags a hundred thousand times per second, and suppose also that the light cavalry soldiers on the main bus can run at several times the speed of sound, or even faster.
+ Then the result would be very different.
+ "You asked about the appearance of the Trisolarans just now.
+ According to some signs, the bodies of the Trisolarans who formed the computer were covered by a purely reflective surface, which probably evolved as a response to survival under extreme conditions of sunlight.
+ The mirrorlike surface could be deformed into any shape, and they communicated with each other by focusing light with their bodies.
+ This kind of light-speech could transmit information extremely rapidly and was the foundation of the Trisolaran-formation computer.
+ Of course, this was still a very inefficient machine, but it was capable of completing calculations that were too difficult to be performed manually.
+ The computer did in fact make its first appearance in Trisolaris as formations of people, before becoming mechanical and then electronic."
+ Pan stood up and paced behind the players.
+ "As a game, Three Body only borrows the background of human society to simulate the development of Trisolaris.
+ This is done to give players a familiar environment.
+ The real Trisolaris is very different from the world of the game, but the existence of the three suns is real.
+ They're the foundation of the Trisolaran environment."
+ "Developing this game must have cost an enormous amount of effort," the vice president said.
+ "But the goal is clearly not profit."
+ "The goal of Three Body is very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals," Pan said.
+ "What ideals do we have in common, exactly?"
+ Wang immediately regretted the question.
+ He wondered whether asking it sounded hostile.
+ Pan studied everyone meaningfully, and then added in a soft voice, "How would you feel if Trisolaran civilization were to enter our world?"
+ "I would be happy."
+ The young reporter was the first to break the silence.
+ "I've lost hope in the human race after what I've seen in recent years.
+ Human society is incapable of self-improvement, and we need the intervention of an outside force."
+ "I agree!" the author shouted.
+ She was very excited, as though finally finding an outlet for pent-up feelings.
+ "The human race is hideous.
+ I've spent the first half of my life unveiling this ugliness with the scalpel of literature, but now I'm even sick of the work of dissection.
+ I yearn for Trisolaran civilization to bring real beauty to this world."
+ Pan said nothing.
+ That glint of excitement appeared in his eyes again.
+ The old philosopher waved his pipe, which had gone out.
+ He spoke with a serious mien.
+ "Let's discuss this question with a bit more depth: What is your impression of the Aztecs?"
+ "Dark and bloody," the author said.
+ "Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests.
+ Those are my impressions."
+ The philosopher nodded.
+ "Very good.
+ Then try to imagine: If the Spanish Conquistadors did not intervene, what would have been the influence of that civilization on human history?"
+ "You're calling black white and white black," the software company vice president said.
+ "The Conquistadors who invaded the Americas were nothing more than murderers and robbers."
+ "Even so, at least they prevented the Aztecs from developing without bound, turning the Americas into a bloody, dark great empire.
+ Then civilization as we know it wouldn't have appeared in the Americas, and democracy wouldn't have thrived until much later.
+ Indeed, maybe they wouldn't have appeared at all.
+ This is the key to the question: No matter what the Trisolarans are like, their arrival will be good news for the terminally ill human race."
+ "But have you thought through the fact that the Aztecs were completely destroyed by the Western invaders?" the power company executive asked.
+ He looked around, as though seeing these people for the first time.
+ "Your thoughts are very dangerous."
+ "You mean profound!" the doctoral student said, raising a finger.
+ He nodded vigorously at the philosopher.
+ "I had the same thought, but I didn't know how to express it.
+ You said it so well!"
+ After a moment of silence, Pan turned to Wang.
+ "The other six have all given their views.
+ What about you?"
+ "I stand with them," Wang said, pointing to the reporter and the philosopher.
+ He kept his answer simple.
+ The less said the better.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ He turned to the software company vice president and the power company executive.
+ "The two of you are no longer welcome at this meet-up, and you are no longer appropriate players for Three Body.
+ Your IDs will be deleted.
+ Please leave now.
+ Thank you."
+ The two stood up and looked at each other; then glanced around, confused, and left.
+ Pan held out his hand to the remaining five, shaking each person's hand in turn.
+ Then he said, solemnly, "We are comrades now."
+
+ 《三体》网友的聚会地点是一处僻静的小咖啡厅。
+ 在汪淼的印象中，这个时代的游戏网友聚会都是人数众多的热闹盛会，但这次来的连自己在内也只有七个人，而那六位，同自己一样，不论怎么看都不像游戏爱好者。
+ 比较年轻的只有两位，另外五位，包括一位女士，都是中年人，还有一个老者，看上去有六七十岁了。
+ 汪淼本以为大家一见面就会对《三体》展开热烈的讨论，但现在发现自己想错了。
+ 《三体》那诡异而深远的内涵，已对其参与者产生了很深的心理影响，使得每个人，包括汪淼自己，都很难轻易谈起它。
+ 大家只是简单地相互做了自我介绍，那位老者，掏出一把很精致的烟斗，装上烟丝抽了起来，踱到墙边去欣赏墙上的油画。
+ 其他人则都坐着等待聚会组织者的到来，他们都来得早了。
+ 其实这六个人中，汪淼有两个已经认识。
+ 那位鹤发童颜的老者，是一位著名学者，以给东方哲学赋予现代科学内涵而闻名。
+ 那位穿着怪异的女士，是著名作家，是少见的风格前卫却拥有众多读者的小说家，她写的书，从哪一页开始看都行。
+ 其他四位，两名中年人，一位是国内最大软件公司的副总裁（穿着朴素随意，丝毫看不出来），另一位是国家电力公司的高层领导。
+ 两名年轻人，一位是国内大媒体的记者，另一位是在读的理科博士生。
+ 汪淼现在意识到，《三体》的玩家，可能相当一部分是他们这样的社会精英。
+ 聚会的组织者很快来了，汪淼见到他，心跳骤然加快，这人竟是潘寒，杀死申玉菲的头号嫌疑人。
+ 他悄悄掏出手机，在桌下给大史发短信。
+ “呵呵，大家来得真早！”
+ 潘寒轻松地打招呼，似乎什么事都没有发生。
+ 他一改往常在媒体上那副脏兮兮的流浪汉模样，西装革履，显得风度翩翩，“你们和我想象的差不多，都是精英人士，《三体》就是为你们这样的阶层准备的，它的内涵和意境，常人难以理解；玩它所需要的知识，其层次之高，内容之深，也是常人不可能具备的。”
+ 汪淼的短信已经发出：见到潘寒，在西城区云河咖啡馆。
+ 潘寒接着说：“在座的各位都是《三体》的优秀玩家，成绩最好，也都很投人。
+ 我相信，《三体》已成为你们生活中的一部分。”
+ “是生命中的一部分。”
+ 那位年轻的博士生说。
+ “我是从孙子的电脑上偶然看到它的，”老哲学家翘着烟斗柄说，“年轻人玩了几下就放弃了，说太深奥。
+ 我却被它吸引，那深邃的内涵，诡异恐怖又充满美感的意境，逻辑严密的世界设定，隐藏在简洁表象下海量的信息和精确的细节，都令我们着迷。”
+ 包括汪淼在内的几位网友都连连点头。
+ 这时汪淼收到了大史回的短信：我们也看到他了，没事，该干什么干什么。
+ 注意，在他们面前你要尽量表现得极端些，但不要太过了，那样装不像。
+ “是的，”女作家点头赞同。
+ “从文学角度看，《三体》也是卓越的，那二百零三轮文明的兴衰，真是一首首精美的史诗。”
+ 她提到二百零三轮文明，而汪淼经历的是一百九十一轮，这让汪淼再次确信了一点：《三体》对每个玩家都有一个独立的进程。
+ “我对现实世界真有些厌倦了，《三体》已成为我的第二现实。”
+ 年轻的记者说。
+ “是吗？”
+ 潘寒很有兴趣地插问一句。
+ “我也是，与《三体》相比，现实是那么的平庸和低俗。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “可惜啊，只是个游戏。”
+ 国电公司领导说。
+ “很好。”
+ 潘寒点点头，汪淼注意到他眼中放出兴奋的光来。
+ “有一个问题，我想是我们大家都渴望知道的。”
+ 汪淼说。
+ “我知道是什么，不过你问吧。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “《三体》仅仅是个游戏吗？”
+ 网友们纷纷点头，显然这也是他们急切想问的。
+ 潘寒站起来，郑重地说：“三体世界是真实存在的。”
+ “在哪里？”
+ 几个网友异口同声地问。
+ 潘寒坐下，沉默良久才开口：“有些问题我能够回答，有些不能，但如果各位与三体世界有缘，总有一天所有的问题都能得到解答。”
+ “那么，游戏中是否表现了三体世界的某些真实成分呢？”
+ 记者问。
+ “首先，在很多轮文明中，三体人的脱水功能是真实的，为了应对变幻莫测的自然环境，他们随时可以将自己体内的水分完全排出，变成干燥的纤维状物体，以躲过完全不适合生存的恶劣气候。”
+ “三体人是什么样子的？”
+ 潘寒摇摇头：“不知道，真的不知道。
+ 每一轮文明中，三体人的外形都完全不同，另外，游戏中还反映了一个三体世界中的真实存在：人列计算机。”
+ “哈，我觉得那是最不真实的！”
+ IT副总裁说，“我用公司的上百名员工进行过一个简单的测试，即使这想法真能实现，人列计算机的运算速度可能比一个人的手工计算都慢。”
+ 潘寒露出神秘的笑容说：“不错，但假如构成计算机的三千万个士兵，每个人在一秒钟内可以挥动黑白小旗十万次，总线上的轻骑兵的奔跑速度是几倍音速甚至更快，结果就不一样了。
+ 你们刚才问过三体人的外形，据一些迹象推测，构成人列计算机的三体人，外表可能覆盖着一层全反射镜面，这种镜面可能是为了在恶劣的日照条件下生存而进化出来的，镜面可以变化出各种形状，他们之间就通过镜面聚焦的光线来交流，这种光线语言信息传输的速度是很快的，这就是人列计算机得以存在的基础。
+ 当然，这仍是一台效率很低的机器，但确实能够完成人类手工力不能及的运算。
+ 计算机在三体世界首先确实是以人列形式出现，然后才是机械式和电子式的。”
+ 潘寒站起来，围着网友们的背后踱步：
+ “我现在能告诉大家的只是：作为一个游戏，《三体》只是借用人类的背景来模拟三体世界的发展，这样做只是为游戏者提供一个熟悉的环境，真实的三体世界与游戏中的差别很大，但其中三颗太阳的存在是真实的，这是三体世界自然结构的基础。”
+ “开发这个游戏肯定花费了很大的力量，但它的目的显然不是盈利。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “《三体》游戏的目的很单纯，就是为了聚集起我们这样志同道合的人。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “什么志和什么道呢？”
+ 汪淼问，但旋即有些后悔，仔细想着自己的问题是否露出了些许的敌意。
+ 这个问题果然令潘寒沉默下来，他用意味深长的目光逐个将在座的每个人打量一遍，轻轻地说：“如果三体文明要进入人类世界，你们是什么态度？”
+ “我很高兴，”年轻的记者首先打破沉默说，“这些年看到的事，让我对人类已经失望了，人类社会已经无力进行自我完善，需要一个外部力量的介入。”
+ “同意！”
+ 女作家大声说，她很激动，似乎终于找到了一个发泄某种东西的机会，“人类是什么？
+ 多么丑恶的东西，我上半生一直在用文学这把解剖刀来揭露这种丑恶，现在连这种揭露都厌倦了。
+ 我向往着三体文明能把真正的美带到这个世界上来。”
+ 潘寒没有说话，那种兴奋的光芒又在双眼中亮起来。
+ 老哲学家挥着已经熄灭的烟斗，一脸严肃地说：“让我们来稍微深入地探讨一下这个问题：你们对阿兹特克文明有什么印象？”
+ “黑暗而血腥，从林中阴森的火光照耀着鲜血流淌的金字塔。
+ 这就是我对它的印象。”
+ 女作家说。
+ 哲学家点点头：“很好，那么想象一下，假如后来没有西班牙人的介入，这个文明会对人类历史产生什么影响？”
+ “你这是颠倒黑白，”IT副总裁指着哲学家说，“那时入侵美洲的西班牙人不过是强盗和凶手！”
+ “就算如此，他们至少制止了下面事情的发生：阿兹特克无限制地发展，把美洲变成一个血腥和黑暗的庞大帝国，那时美洲和全人类的民主和文明时代就要更晚些到来，甚至根本就不会出现。
+ 这就是问题的关键之处——不管三体文明是什么样子，它们的到来对病入膏育的人类文明总是个福音。”
+ “可您想过没有，阿兹特克文明最后被西方人侵者毁灭了。”
+ 国电公司领导说， 同时环视了一下四周，仿佛是第一眼见到这些人，“这里的思想很危险。”
+ “是深刻！”
+ 博士生举起一根手指说，同时对哲学家连连点头，“我也有这个想法，但不知道如何表达，您说得太好了。”
+ 一阵沉默后，潘寒转向汪淼：“他们六人已经表明了自己的态度，您呢？”
+ “我站在他们一边。”
+ 汪淼指指记者和哲学家等人说。
+ 言多必失，他只是简单地答这一句。
+ “很好，”潘寒说着，转向了IT经理和国电公司领导，“你们二位，已经不适合这场聚会了，也不适合继续玩《三体》游戏。
+ 你们的ID将被注销，下面请你们离开。
+ 谢谢你们的到来，请！”
+ 两人站起身来对视一下，又困惑地看看周围，转身走出门去。
+ 潘寒向剩下的五个人伸出手来，挨个与他们紧紧握手。
+ 最后庄严地说：“我们，是同志了。”
+
+ The deaths of Lei and Yang were treated as accidents.
+ Everybody at the base knew that Ye and Yang were a happy couple, and no one suspected her.
+ A new commissar came to the base, and life returned to its habitual peace.
+ The tiny life inside Ye grew bigger every day, and she also felt the world outside change.
+ One day, the security platoon commander asked Ye to come to the gatehouse at the entrance to the base.
+ When she entered the gatehouse, she was surprised to see three children: two boys and a girl, about fifteen or sixteen.
+ They all wore old coats and dog fur hats, obviously locals.
+ The guard on duty told her that they came from the village of Qijiatun.
+ They had heard that the people on Radar Peak were learned and had come to ask some questions related to their studies.
+ Ye wondered how they dared to come onto Radar Peak.
+ This was a restricted military zone, and the guards were authorized to warn intruders only once before shooting.
+ The guard saw that Ye was puzzled and explained that they had just received orders that Red Coast Base's security rating had been reduced.
+ The locals were allowed onto Radar Peak as long as they stayed outside the base.
+ Several local peasants had already come yesterday to bring vegetables.
+ One of the children took out a worn-out middle school physics textbook.
+ His hands were dirty and cracked like tree bark.
+ In a thick Northeastern accent, he asked a simple physics question:
+ The textbook said that a body in free fall is under constant acceleration but will always reach a terminal velocity.
+ They had been thinking about this for several nights and could not understand why.
+ "You walked all this way just to ask this?" Ye asked.
+ "Teacher Ye, don't you know that they've restarted the exam?" the girl said excitedly.
+ "The exam?"
+ "The National College Entrance Exam!
+ Whoever studies hard and gets the best score gets to go to college!
+ It began two years ago.
+ Didn't you know?"
+ "There's no need for recommendations anymore?"
+ "No.
+ Anyone can take the exam.
+ Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it."
+ Ye was stunned.
+ This change left her with mixed feelings.
+ Only after a while did she realize that the children were still waiting with their books held up.
+ She hurriedly answered their question, explaining that it was due to air resistance reaching equilibrium against the force of gravity.
+ Then she promised that if they encountered any difficulties in their studies in the future, they could always come to her for help.
+ Three days later, seven children came to seek Ye.
+ In addition to the three who had come last time, there were four more from villages located even farther away.
+ The third time, fifteen children came to find her, and even a teacher at a small-town high school came along.
+ Because there was a shortage of teachers, he had to teach physics, math, and chemistry, and he came to ask Ye for some help on teaching.
+ The man was over fifty years old, and his face was already full of wrinkles.
+ He was very nervous in front of Ye, and spilled books everywhere.
+ After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: "Children, that was a scientist.
+ A real, bona fide scientist!"
+ After that, children would come to her for tutoring every few days.
+ Sometimes there were so many of them that the gatehouse couldn't accommodate them all.
+ With the permission of the officers in charge of base security, the guards would escort them to the cafeteria.
+ There, Ye put up a small blackboard and taught the children.
+ It was dark by the time Ye got off work on the eve of Chinese New Year, 1980.
+ Most people at the base had already left Radar Peak for the three-day holiday, and it was quiet everywhere.
+ Ye returned to her room.
+ This was once the home of her and Yang Weining, but now it was empty, her only companion the unborn child within her.
+ In the night outside, the cold wind of the Greater Khingan Mountains screamed, carrying with it the faint sound of firecrackers going off in the village of Qijiatun.
+ Loneliness pressed down on Ye like a giant hand, and she felt herself being crushed; compressed until she was so small that she disappeared into an invisible corner of the universe....
+ Just then, someone knocked on her door.
+ When she opened it, Ye first saw the guard, and then, behind him, the fire of several pine branch torches flickering in the cold wind.
+ The torches were held aloft by a crowd of children, their faces bright red from the cold, and icicles hung from their hats.
+ When they came into her room, they seemed to bring the cold air in with them.
+ Two of the boys, thinly dressed, had suffered the most.
+ They had taken off their thick coats and wrapped them around something that they carried in their arms.
+ Unwrapping the coats revealed a large pot, the fermented cabbage and pork dumplings inside still steaming hot.
+ That year, eight months after she sent her signal toward the sun, Ye went into labor.
+ Because the baby was malpositioned and her body was weak, the base clinic couldn't handle her case and had to send her to the nearest town hospital.
+ This became one of the hardest times in Ye's life.
+ After enduring a great deal of pain and losing a large amount of blood, she sank into a coma.
+ Through a blur she could only see three hot, blinding suns slowly orbiting around her, cruelly roasting her body.
+ This state lasted for some time, and she hazily thought it was probably the end for her.
+ It was her hell.
+ The fire of the three suns would torment her and burn her forever.
+ This was punishment for her betrayal, the betrayal that exceeded all others.
+ She sank into terror: not for her, but for her unborn child—was the child still in her?
+ Or had she already been born into this hell to suffer eternally with her?
+ She didn't know how much time had passed.
+ Gradually the three suns moved farther away.
+ After a certain distance, they suddenly shrank and turned into crystalline flying stars.
+ The air around her cooled, and her pain lessened.
+ She finally awoke.
+ Ye heard a cry next to her.
+ Turning her head with great effort, she saw the baby's pink, wet, little face.
+ The doctor told Ye that she had lost more than 2,000 ml of blood.
+ Dozens of peasants from Qijiatun had come to donate blood to her.
+ Many of the peasants had children who Ye had tutored, but most had no connection to her at all, having only heard her name from the children and their parents.
+ Without them, she would certainly have died.
+ Ye's living situation became a problem after the birth of her child.
+ The difficult birth had damaged her health.
+ It was impossible for her to stay at the base with the baby all by herself, and she had no relatives who could help.
+ Just then, an old couple living in Qijiatun came to talk to the base leaders and explained that they could take Ye and her baby home with them and take care of them.
+ The old man used to be a hunter and also gathered some herbs for traditional medicine.
+ Later, after the forest around the area was lost to logging, the couple had turned to farming, but people still called him Hunter Qi out of habit.
+ They had two sons and two daughters.
+ The daughters were married and had moved out.
+ One of the sons was a soldier away from home, and the other was married and lived with them.
+ The daughter-in-law had also just given birth.
+ Ye still hadn't been rehabilitated politically, and the base leadership was unsure about this suggested solution.
+ But in the end, there was no other way, and so they allowed the couple to take Ye and the baby home from the hospital on a sled.
+ Ye lived for more than half a year with this peasant family in the Greater Khingan Mountains.
+ She was so weak after giving birth that her milk did not come in.
+ During this time, the baby girl, Yang Dong, was breastfed by all the women of the village.
+ The one who nursed her the most was Hunter Qi's daughter-in-law, called Feng.
+ Feng had the strong, solid frame of the women of the Northeast.
+ She ate sorghum every day, and her large breasts were full of milk even though she was feeding two babies at the same time.
+ Other nursing women in Qijiatun also came to feed Yang Dong.
+ They liked her, saying that the baby had the same clever air as her mother.
+ Gradually, Hunter Qi's home became the gathering place for all the women of the village.
+ Old and young, matrons and maidens, they all liked to stop by when they had nothing else going on.
+ They admired Ye and were curious about her, and she found that she had many women's topics to discuss with them.
+ On countless days, Ye held Yang Dong and sat with the other women of the village in the yard, surrounded by birch posts.
+ Next to her was a lazy black dog and the playing children, bathing in the warm sunlight.
+ She paid attention especially to the women with the copper tobacco pipes.
+ Leisurely, they blew smoke out of their mouths, and the smoke, filled with sunlight, gave off a silvery glow much like the fine hairs on their plump limbs.
+ One time, one of them handed her the long-stemmed cupronickel pipe and told her it would make her feel better.
+ She took only two hits before she became dizzy, and they laughed about it for several days.
+ As for the men, Ye had little to say to them.
+ The matters that occupied them all day also seemed outside her understanding.
+ She gathered that they were interested in planting some ginseng for cash while the government seemed to be relaxing policies a little, but they didn't quite have the courage to try.
+ They all treated Ye with great respect and were very polite toward her.
+ She didn't pay much attention to this at first.
+ But after a while, after observing how those men roughly beat their wives and flirted outrageously with the widows in the village, saying things that made her blush, she finally realized how precious their respect was.
+ Every few days, one of them would bring a hare or pheasant he had caught to Hunter Qi's home.
+ They also gave Yang Dong strange and quaint toys that they'd made with their own hands.
+ In Ye's memory, these months seemed to belong to someone else, like a segment of another life that had drifted into hers like a feather.
+ This period condensed in her memory into a series of classical paintings—not Chinese brush paintings but European oil paintings.
+ Chinese brush paintings are full of blank spaces, but life in Qijiatun had no blank spaces.
+ Like classical oil paintings, it was filled with thick, rich, solid colors.
+ Everything was warm and intense: the heated kang stove-beds lined with thick layers of ura sedge, the Guandong and Mohe tobacco stuffed in copper pipes, the thick and heavy sorghum meal, the sixty-five-proof baijiu distilled from sorghum—all of these blended into a quiet and peaceful life, like the creek at the edge of the village.
+ Most memorable to Ye were the evenings.
+ Hunter Qi's son was away in the city selling mushrooms—the first to leave the village to earn money elsewhere, so she shared a room in his house with Feng.
+ Back then, there was no electricity in the village, and every evening, the two huddled around a kerosene lamp.
+ Ye would read while Feng did her needlework.
+ Ye would lean closer and closer to the lamp without noticing, and her bangs would often get singed, at which point the two of them would glance up and smile at each other.
+ Feng, of course, never had this happen to her.
+ She had very sharp eyes, and could do detailed work even in the dim light from heating charcoal.
+ The two babies, not even half a year old, would be sleeping together on the kang next to them.
+ Ye loved to watch them sleep, their even breathing the only sound in the room.
+ At first, Ye did not like sleeping on the heated kang, and often got sick, but she gradually got used to it.
+ As she slept, she would imagine herself becoming a baby sleeping in someone's warm lap.
+ The person who held her wasn't her father or mother, or her dead husband.
+ She didn't know who it was.
+ The feeling was so real that she would wake up with tears on her face.
+ One time, she put down her book and saw that Feng was holding the cloth shoe she was stitching over her knee and staring into the kerosene lamp without moving.
+ When she realized that Ye was looking at her, Feng asked, "Sister, why do you think the stars in the sky don't fall down?"
+ Ye examined Feng.
+ The kerosene lamp was a wonderful artist and created a classical painting with dignified colors and bright strokes:
+ Feng had her coat draped over her shoulders, exposing her red belly-band, and a strong, graceful arm.
+ The glow from the kerosene lamp painted her figure with vivid, warm colors, while the rest of the room dissolved into a gentle darkness.
+ Close attention revealed a dim red glow, which didn't come from the kerosene lamp, but the heating charcoal on the ground.
+ The cold air outside sculpted beautiful ice patterns on the windowpanes with the room's warm, humid air.
+ "You're afraid of the stars falling down?"
+ Ye asked softly.
+ Feng laughed and shook her head.
+ "What's there to be afraid of?
+ They're so tiny."
+ Ye did not give her the answer of an astrophysicist.
+ She only said, "They're very, very far away.
+ They can't fall."
+ Feng was satisfied with this answer, and went back to her needlework.
+ But Ye could no longer be at peace.
+ She put down her book and lay down on the warm surface of the kang, closing her eyes.
+ In her imagination, the rest of the universe around their tiny cottage disappeared, just the way the kerosene lamp hid most of the room in darkness.
+ Then she substituted the universe in Feng's heart for the real one.
+ The night sky was a black dome that was just large enough to cover the entirety of the world.
+ The surface of the dome was inlaid with countless stars shining with a crystalline silver light, none of which was bigger than the mirror on the old wooden table next to the bed.
+ The world was flat and extended very far in each direction, but ultimately there was an edge where it met the sky.
+ The flat surface was covered with mountain ranges like the Greater Khingan Mountains, and with forests dotted with tiny villages, just like Qijiatun....
+ This toy-box-like universe comforted Ye, and gradually it shifted from her imagination into her dreams.
+ In this tiny mountain hamlet deep in the Greater Khingan Mountains, something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie's heart.
+ In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared.
+ Ye eventually returned to Red Coast Base with Yang Dong.
+ Another two years passed, divided between anxiety and peace.
+ Ye then received a notice: Both she and her father had been politically rehabilitated.
+ Soon after, a letter arrived for her from Tsinghua, stating that she could return to teach right away.
+ Accompanying the letter was a sum of money: the back pay owed to her father after his rehabilitation.
+ Finally, at base meetings, her supervisors could call her comrade.
+ Ye faced all these changes with equanimity, showing no sign of excitement or elation.
+ She had no interest in the outside world, only wanting to stay at the quiet, out-of-the-way Red Coast Base.
+ But for the sake of Yang Dong's education, she finally left the base that she had once thought would be her home for the rest of her life, and returned to her alma mater.
+ Leaving the mountains, Ye felt spring was everywhere.
+ The cold winter of the Cultural Revolution really was over, and everything was springing back to life.
+ Even though the calamity had just ended, everything was in ruins, and countless men and women were licking their wounds.
+ The dawn of a new life was already evident.
+ Students with children of their own appeared on college campuses; bookstores sold out of famous literary works; technological innovation became the focus in factories; and scientific research now enjoyed a sacred halo.
+ Science and technology were the only keys to opening the door to the future, and people approached science with the faith and sincerity of elementary school students.
+ Though their efforts were naïve, they were also down-to-earth.
+ At the first National Conference on Science, Guo Moruo, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, declared that it was the season of rebirth and renewal for China's battered science establishment.
+ Was this the end of the madness?
+ Were science and rationality really coming back?
+ Ye asked herself these questions repeatedly.
+ Ye never again received any communication from Trisolaris.
+ She knew that she would have to wait at least eight years to hear that world's response to her message, and after leaving the base, she no longer had any way of receiving extraterrestrial replies.
+ It was such an important thing, and yet she had done it all by herself.
+ This gave her a sense of unreality.
+ As time passed, that sense grew ever stronger.
+ What had happened resembled an illusion, a dream.
+ Could the sun really amplify radio signals?
+ Did she really use it as an antenna to send a message about human civilization into the universe?
+ Did she really receive a message from the stars?
+ Did that blood-hued morning, when she had betrayed the entire human race, really happen?
+ And those murders ...
+ Ye tried to numb herself with work so as to forget the past—and almost succeeded.
+ A strange kind of self-protective instinct caused her to stop recalling the past, to stop thinking about the communication she had once had with another civilization.
+ Her life passed this way, day after day, in tranquility.
+ After she had been back at Tsinghua for a while, Ye took Dong Dong to see her grandmother, Shao Lin.
+ After her husband's death, Shao had soon recovered from her mental breakdown and found ways to survive in the tiny cracks of politics.
+ Her attempts to chase the political winds and shout the right slogans finally paid off, and later, during the "Return to Class, Continue the Revolution" phase, she went back to teaching.
+ But then Shao did something that no one expected.
+ She married a persecuted high-level cadre from the Education Ministry.
+ At that time, the cadre still lived in a "cowshed" for reform through labor.
+ This was part of Shao's long-term plan.
+ She knew that the chaos in society could not last long.
+ The young rebels who were attacking everything in sight had no experience in managing a country.
+ Sooner or later, the persecuted and sidelined old cadres would be back in power.
+ Her gamble paid off.
+ Even before the end of the Cultural Revolution, her husband was partially restored to his old position.
+ After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, he was soon promoted to the level of a deputy minister.
+ Based on this background, Shao Lin also rose quickly as intellectuals became favored again.
+ After becoming a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she very wisely left her old school and was promoted to be the vice president of another famous university.
+ Ye Wenjie saw this new version of her mother as the very model of an educated woman who knew how to take care of herself.
+ There was not a hint of the persecution that she went through.
+ She enthusiastically welcomed Ye and Dong Dong, inquired after Ye's life during those years with concern, exclaimed that Dong Dong was so cute and smart, and meticulously directed the cook in preparing Ye's favorite dishes.
+ Everything was done with skill, practice, and the appropriate level of care.
+ But Ye could clearly detect an invisible wall between her mother and herself.
+ They carefully avoided sensitive topics and never mentioned Ye's father.
+ After dinner, Shao Lin and her husband accompanied Ye and Dong Dong down to the street to say good-bye.
+ Then Shao Lin returned home while the deputy minister asked to have a word with Ye.
+ In a moment, the deputy minister's kind smile turned to frost, as though he had impatiently pulled off his mask.
+ "We're happy to have you and the child visit in the future under one condition: Do not try to pursue old historical debts.
+ Your mother bears no responsibility for your father's death.
+ She was a victim as well.
+ Your father clung to his own faith in a manner that was not healthy and walked all the way down a blind alley.
+ He abandoned his responsibility to his family and caused you and your mother to suffer."
+ "You have no right to speak of my father," Ye said, anger suffusing her voice.
+ "This is between my mother and me.
+ It has nothing to do with you."
+ "You're right," Shao Lin's husband said coldly.
+ "I'm only passing on a message from your mother."
+ Ye looked up at the residential apartment building reserved for high-level cadres.
+ Shao Lin had lifted a corner of the curtain to peek down at them.
+ Without a word, Ye bent down to pick up Dong Dong and left.
+ She never returned.
+ Ye searched and searched for information about the four female Red Guards who had killed her father, and eventually managed to locate three of them.
+ All three had been sent down to the countryside and then returned, and all were unemployed.
+ After Ye got their addresses, she wrote a brief letter to each of them, asking them to meet her at the exercise grounds where her father had died.
+ Just to talk.
+ Ye had no desire for revenge.
+ Back at Red Coast Base, on that morning of the transmission, she had gotten revenge against the entire human race, including those Red Guards.
+ But she wanted to hear these murderers repent, wanted to see even a hint of the return of humanity.
+ That afternoon after class, Ye waited for them on the exercise grounds.
+ She didn't have much hope, and was almost certain that they wouldn't show up.
+ But at the time of the appointment, the three old Red Guards came.
+ Ye recognized them from a distance because they were all dressed in now-rare green military uniforms.
+ When they came closer, she realized that the uniforms were likely the same ones they had worn at that mass struggle session.
+ The clothes had been laundered until their color had faded, and they had been conspicuously patched.
+ Other than the uniforms, the three women in their thirties no longer resembled the three young Red Guards who had looked so valiant on that day.
+ They had lost not only youth, but also something else.
+ The first impression Ye had was that, though the three had once seemed to be carved out of the same mold, they now looked very different from each other.
+ One had become very thin and small, and her uniform hung loose on her.
+ Already showing her age, her back was bent and her hair had a yellow tint.
+ Another had become thick framed, so that the uniform jacket she wore could not even be buttoned.
+ Her hair was messy and her face dark, as though the hardship of life had robbed her of any feminine refinement, leaving behind only numbness and rudeness.
+ The third woman still had hints of her youthful appearance, but one of her sleeves was now empty and hung loose as she walked.
+ The three old Red Guards stood in front of Ye in a row—just like they had stood against Ye Zhetai—trying to recapture their long-forgotten dignity.
+ But the demonic spiritual energy that had once propelled them was gone.
+ The thin woman's face held a mouselike expression.
+ The thickset woman's face showed only numbness.
+ The one-armed woman gazed up at the sky.
+ "Did you think we wouldn't dare to show up?" the thickset woman asked, her tone trying to be provocative.
+ "I thought we should see each other.
+ There should be some closure to the past," Ye said.
+ "The past is finished.
+ You should know that."
+ The thin woman's voice was sharp, as though she was always frightened of something.
+ "I meant spiritual closure."
+ "Then you want to hear us repent?" the thick woman asked.
+ "Don't you think you should?"
+ "Then who will repent to us?" the one-armed woman asked.
+ The thickset woman said, "Of the four of us, three had signed the big-character poster at the high school attached to Tsinghua.
+ Revolutionary tours, the great rallies in Tiananmen, the Red Guard Civil Wars, First Red Headquarters, Second Red Headquarters, Third Red Headquarters, Joint Action Committee, Western Pickets, Eastern Pickets, New Peking University Commune, Red Flag Combat Team, The East is Red—we went through every single milestone in the history of the Red Guards from birth to death."
+ The one-armed woman took over.
+ "During the Hundred-Day War at Tsinghua, two of us were with the Jinggang Mountain Corps, and the other two were with the April Fourteenth Faction.
+ I held a grenade and attacked a homemade tank from the Jinggang Mountain faction.
+ My arm was crushed by the treads on the tank.
+ My blood and muscle and bones were ground into the mud.
+ I was only fifteen years old."
+ "Then, we were sent to the wilderness!"
+ The thickset woman raised her arms.
+ "Two of us were sent to Shaanxi, the other two to Henan, all to the most remote and poorest corners.
+ When we first went, we were still idealistic, but that didn't last.
+ After a day of laboring in the fields, we were so tired that we couldn't even wash our clothes.
+ We lay in leaky straw huts and listened to wolves cry in the night, and gradually we woke from our dreams.
+ We were stuck in those forgotten villages and no one cared about us at all."
+ The one-armed woman stared at the ground numbly.
+ "While we were down in the countryside, sometimes, on a trail across the barren hill, I'd bump into another Red Guard comrade or an enemy.
+ We'd look at each other: the same ragged clothes, the same dirt and cow shit covering us.
+ We had nothing to say to each other."
+ The thickset woman stared at Ye.
+ "Tang Hongjing was the girl who gave your father the fatal strike with her belt.
+ She drowned in the Yellow River.
+ There was a flood that carried off a few of the sheep kept by the production team.
+ So the Party secretary called to the sent-down students, 'Revolutionary youths!
+ It's time to test your mettle!'
+ And so, Hongjing and three other students jumped into the river to save the sheep.
+ It was early spring, and the surface of the river was still covered by a thin layer of ice.
+ All four died, and no one knew if it was from drowning or freezing.
+ When I saw their bodies ...
+ I ... I ... can't fucking talk about this anymore."
+ She covered her eyes and sobbed.
+ The thin woman sighed, tears in her eyes.
+ "Then, later, we returned to the city.
+ But so what if we're back?
+ We still have nothing.
+ Rusticated youths who have returned don't lead very good lives.
+ We can't even find the worst jobs.
+ No job, no money, no future.
+ We have nothing."
+ Ye had no words.
+ The one-armed woman said, "There was a movie called Maple recently.
+ I don't know if you've seen it.
+ At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who had died during the faction civil wars.
+ The child asks the adult, 'Are they heroes?'
+ The adult says no.
+ The child asks, 'Are they enemies?'
+ The adult again says no.
+ The child asks, 'Then who are they?'
+ The adult says, 'History.'"
+ "Did you hear that?"
+ The thickset woman waved an arm excitedly at Ye.
+ "History!
+ History!
+ It's a new age now.
+ Who will remember us?
+ Who will think of us, including you?
+ Everyone will forget all this completely!"
+ The three old Red Guards departed, leaving only Ye on the exercise grounds.
+ More than a dozen years ago, on that rainy afternoon, she had stood alone here as well, gazing at her dead father.
+ The old Red Guard's final remark echoed endlessly in her mind....
+ The setting sun cast a long shadow from Ye's slender figure.
+ The small sliver of hope for society that had emerged in her soul had evaporated like a drop of dew in the sun.
+ Her tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had also disappeared without a trace.
+
+ 雷志成和杨卫宁遇难后，上级很快以普通工作事故处理了这件事，在基地所有人眼中，叶文洁和杨卫宁感情很好，谁也没有对她起疑心。
+ 新来的基地政委很快上任，生活又恢复了以往的宁静，叶文洁腹中的小生命一天天长大，同时，她也感到了外部世界的变化。
+ 这天，警卫排排长叫叶文洁到门岗去一趟。
+ 她走进岗亭，吃了一惊：这里有三个孩子，两男一女，十五六岁的样子，都穿着旧棉袄，戴着狗皮帽，一看就是当地人。
+ 哨兵告诉她，他们是齐家屯的，听说雷达峰上都是有学问的人，就想来问几个学习上的问题。
+ 叶文洁暗想，他们怎么敢上雷达峰？
+ 这里是绝对的军事禁区，岗哨对擅自接近者只需警告一次就可以开枪。
+ 哨兵看出了叶文洁的疑惑，告诉她刚接到命令，红岸基地的保密级别降低了，当地人只要不进入基地，就可以上雷达峰来，昨天已经来过几个当地农民，是来送菜的。
+ 一个孩子拿出一本已经翻得很破旧的初中物理课本，他的手黑乎乎的，像树皮一般满是皴裂，他用浓重的东北口音问了一个中学物理的问题：课本上说自由落体开始一直加速，但最后总会以匀速下落，他们想了几个晚上，都想不明白。
+ “你们跑这么远，就为问这个？”
+ 叶文洁问。
+ “叶老师，您不知道吗？
+ 外头高考了！”
+ 那女孩儿兴高采烈地说。
+ “高考？”
+ “就是上大学呀！
+ 谁学习好，谁考的分高谁就能上！
+ 一年前就是了，您还不知道？！”
+ “不推荐了？”
+ “不了，谁都可以考，连村里‘黑五类’的娃都行呢！”
+ 叶文洁愣了半天，这个变化很让她感慨。
+ 过了好一会儿，她才发现面前捧着书的孩子们还等着，赶忙紧回答他们的问题，告诉他们那是由于空气阻力与重力平衡的缘故；同时还许诺，如果以后有学习上的困难，可以随时来找她。
+ 三天后，又有七个孩子来找叶文洁，除了上次来过的三个外，其他四个都是从更远的村镇来的。
+ 第三次来找她的孩子是十五个，同来的还有一位镇中学的老师，由于缺人，他物理、数学和化学都教，他来向叶文洁请教一些教学上的问题。
+ 这人已年过半百，满脸风霜，在叶文洁面前手忙脚乱，书什么的倒了一地。
+ 走出岗亭后，叶文洁听到他对学生们说：“娃娃们，科学家，这可是正儿八经的科学家啊！”
+ 以后隔三差五地就有孩子来请教，有时来的人很多，岗亭里站不下，经过基地负责安全警卫的领导同意，由哨兵带着他们到食堂的饭厅里，叶文洁就在那儿支起一块小黑板给孩子们讲课。
+ 1978年的除夕夜，叶文洁下班后天已经完全黑了，基地的人大部分已在三天假期中下了山，到处都是一片寂静。
+ 叶文洁回到自己的房间，这里曾是她和杨卫宁的家，现在空荡荡的，只有腹中的孩子陪伴着她。
+ 外面的寒夜中，大兴安岭的寒风呼啸着，风中隐隐传来远处齐家屯的鞭炮声。
+ 孤寂像一只巨掌压着叶文洁，她觉得自己被越压越小，最后缩到这个世界看不到的一个小角落去了……
+ 就在这时，响起了敲门声，开门后叶文洁首先看到哨兵，他身后有几支松明子的火光在寒风中摇曳着，举火把的是一群孩子，他们脸冻得通红，狗皮帽上有冰碴子，进屋后带着一股寒气。
+ 有两个男孩子冻得最厉害，他们穿得很单薄，却用两件厚棉衣裹着一个什么东西抱在怀里，把棉衣打开来，是一个大瓷盆，里面的酸菜猪肉馅饺子还冒着热气。
+ 那一年，在向太阳发出信号八个月后，叶文洁临产了，由于胎位不正，她的身体又很弱，基地卫生所没有条件接生，就把她送到了最近的镇医院。
+ 这竟是叶文洁的一个鬼门关，她遇到了难产，在剧痛和大出血后陷入昏迷，冥冥中只看到三个灼热刺眼的太阳围绕着她缓缓转动，残酷地炙烤着她。
+ 这情景持续了很长时间后，她在朦胧中想到，这可能就是她永恒的归宿了，这就是她的地狱，三个太阳构成的地狱之火将永远灼烧着她，这是她因那个超级背叛受到的惩罚。
+ 她陷入强烈的恐惧中，不是为自己，而是为孩子——孩子还在腹中吗？
+ 还是随着她来到这地狱中蒙受永恒的痛苦？
+ 不知过了多久，三个太阳渐渐后退了，退到一定距离后突然缩小，变成了晶莹的飞星，周围凉爽了，疼痛也在减轻，她终于醒了过来。
+ 叶文洁听到耳边的一声啼哭，她吃力地转过脸，看到了婴儿粉嘟嘟、湿乎乎的小脸儿。
+ 医生告诉叶文洁，她出血达两千多毫升，齐家屯的几十位农民来给她献血，他们中很多人的孩子她都辅导过，但更多的是素昧平生，只是听孩子和他们的父母说起过她，要不是他们的话，她死定了。
+ 以后的日子成了问题，叶文洁产后虚弱，在基地自己带孩子是不可能的，她又无亲无故。
+ 这时，齐家屯的一对老人来找基地领导，说他们可以把叶文洁和孩子带回家去照顾。
+ 男的原来是个猎户，也采些药材，后来周围的林子越来越少，就种地了，但人们还是叫他齐猎头儿。
+ 他们有两儿两女，女孩都嫁出去了，一个儿子在外地当兵，另一个成家后与他们一起过，儿媳妇也是刚生了娃。
+ 叶文洁这时还没有平反，基地领导很是为难，但也只有这一个办法了，就让他们用雪橇把叶文洁从镇医院接回了家。
+ 叶文洁在这个大兴安岭的农家住了半年多，她产后虚弱，没有奶水，这期间，杨冬吃着百家奶长大了。
+ 喂她最多的是齐猎头儿的儿媳妇，叫大凤，这个健壮的东北妮子每天吃着高粱米大渣子，同时奶两个娃，奶水还是旺旺的。
+ 屯子里其他处于哺乳期的媳妇们也都来喂杨冬，她们很喜欢她，说这娃儿有她妈的灵气儿。
+ 渐渐地，齐猎头儿家成了屯里女人们的聚集地，老的少的，出嫁了的和大闺女，没事儿都爱向这儿跑，她们对叶文洁充满了羡慕和好奇，她也发现自己与她们有很多女人间的话可谈。
+ 记不清有多少个晴朗的日子，叶文洁抱着杨冬同屯子里的女人们坐在白桦树柱围成的院子里，旁边有玩耍的孩子和懒洋洋的大黑狗，温暖的阳光拥抱着这一切。
+ 她每次都特别注意看那几个举着铜烟袋锅儿的，她们嘴里悠然吐出的烟浸满了阳光，同她们那丰满肌肤上的汗毛一样，发出银亮的柔光。
+ 有一次她们中的一位将长长的白铜烟锅递给她，让她“解解乏”，她只抽了两口，就被冲得头昏脑涨，让她们笑了好几天。
+ 同男人们叶文洁倒是没什么话说，他们每天关心的事儿她也听不太明白，大意是想趁着政策松下来种些人参，但又不太敢干。
+ 他们对叶文洁都很敬重，在她面前彬彬有礼。
+ 她最初对此没有在意，但日子长了后，当她看到那些汉子如何粗暴地打老婆，如何同屯里的寡妇打情骂俏时，说出那些让她听半句都脸红的话，才感到这种敬重的珍贵。
+ 隔三差五，他们总有人把打到的野兔山鸡什么的送到齐猎头儿家，还给杨冬带来许多自己做的奇特而古朴的玩具。
+ 在叶文洁的记忆中，这段日子不像是属于自己的，仿佛是从别的人生中飘落的片断，像一片羽毛般飞入自己的生活。
+ 这段记忆被浓缩成一幅幅欧洲古典油画，很奇怪，不是中国画，就是油画，中国画上空白太多，但齐家屯的生活是没有空白的，像古典的油画那样，充满着浓郁得化不开的色彩。
+ 一切都是浓烈和温热的：铺着厚厚乌拉草的火坑、铜烟锅里的关东烟和莫合烟、厚实的高粱饭、六十五度的高粱酒……
+ 但这一切，又都在宁静与平和中流逝着，像屯子边上的小溪一样。
+ 最令叶文洁难忘的是那些夜晚。
+ 齐猎头儿的儿子到城里卖蘑菇去了，他是屯里第一个外出挣钱的人，她就和大凤住在一起。
+ 那时齐家屯还没通电，每天晚上，她们俩守在一盏油灯旁，叶文洁看书，大凤做针线活。
+ 叶文洁总是不自觉地将书和眼睛凑近油灯，常常刘海被烤得吱啦一下，这时她俩就抬头相视而笑。
+ 大凤从来没出过这事儿，她的眼神极好，借着炭火的光也能干细活儿。
+ 两个不到半周岁的孩子睡在她身边的炕上，他们的睡相令人陶醉，屋里能听到的，只有他们均匀的呼吸声。
+ 叶文洁最初睡不惯火炕，总是上火，后来习惯了，睡梦中，她常常感觉自己变成了婴儿，躺在一个人温暖的怀抱里，这感觉是那么真切，她几次醒后都泪流满面——但那个人不是父亲和母亲，也不是死去的丈夫，她不知道是谁。
+ 有一次，她放下书，看到大凤把纳着的鞋底放到膝上，呆呆地看着灯花。
+ 发现叶文洁在看自己，大凤突然问：“姐，你说天上的星星咋的就不会掉下来呢？”
+ 叶文洁细看大凤，油灯是一位卓越的画家，创作了这幅凝重色调中又带着明快的古典油画：
+ 大凤披着棉袄，红肚兜和一条圆润的胳膊露出来，油灯突出了她的形象，在她最美的部位涂上了最醒目的色彩，将其余部分高明地隐没于黑暗中。
+ 背景也隐去了，一切都淹没于一片柔和的黑暗中，但细看还是能看到一片暗红的光晕，这光晕不是来自油灯，而是地上的炭火照出来的，可以看到，外面的严寒已开始用屋里温暖的湿气在窗户上雕出美丽的冰纹了。
+ “你害怕星星掉下来吗？”
+ 叶文洁轻轻地问。
+ 大凤笑着摇摇头，“怕啥呢？
+ 它们那么小。”
+ 叶文洁终于还是没有做出一个天体物理学家的回答，她只是说：“它们都很远很远，掉不下来的。”
+ 大凤对这回答已经很满意，又埋头做起针线活儿来。
+ 但叶文洁却心绪起伏，她放下书，躺到温暖的炕面上，微闭着双眼，在想象中隐去这间小屋周围的整个宇宙，就像油灯将小屋中的大部分隐没于黑暗中一样。
+ 然后，她将大凤心中的宇宙置换过来。
+ 这时，夜空是一个黑色的巨大球面，大小正好把世界扣在其中，球面上镶着无数的星星，晶莹地发着银光，每个都不比床边旧木桌上的那面圆镜子大。
+ 世界是平的，向各个方向延伸到很远很远，但总是有边的。
+ 这个大平面上布满了大兴安岭这样的山脉，也布满了森林，林间点缀着一个个像齐家屯一样的村庄……
+ 这个玩具盒般的宇宙令她感到分外舒适，渐渐地这宇宙由想象变成了梦乡。
+ 在这个大兴安岭深处的小山村里，叶文洁心中的什么东西渐渐融化了，在她心灵的冰原上，融出了小小的一汪清澈的湖泊。
+ 杨冬出生后，在红岸基地，时间在紧张和平静中又过去了两年多。
+ 这时，叶文洁接到了通知，她和父亲的案件都被彻底平反；不久之后又收到了母校的信，说她可以立刻回去工作。
+ 与信同来的还有一大笔汇款，这是父亲落实政策后补发的工资。
+ 在基地会议上，领导终于称她为叶文洁同志了。
+ 叶文洁很平静地面对这一切，没有激动和兴奋。
+ 她对外面的世界不感兴趣，宁愿一直在僻静的红岸基地待下去，但为了孩子的教育，她还是离开了本以为要度过一生的红岸基地，返回了母校。
+ 走出深山，叶文洁充满了春天的感觉，“文革”的严冬确实结束了，一切都在复苏之中。
+ 虽然浩劫刚刚结束，举目望去一片废墟，无数人在默默地舔着自己的伤口，但在人们眼中，未来新生活的曙光已经显现。
+ 大学中出现了带着孩子的学生，书店中文学名著被抢购一空，工厂中的技术革新成了一件最了不起的事情，科学研究更是被罩上了一层神圣的光环。
+ 科学和技术一时成了打开未来之门的唯一钥匙，人们像小学生那样真诚地接近科学，他们的奋斗虽是天真的，但也是脚踏实地的。
+ 在第一次全国科学大会上，郭沫若宣布科学的春天到来了。
+ 这是疯狂的终结吗？
+ 科学和理智开始回归了？
+ 叶文洁不止一次地问自己。
+ 直到离开红岸基地，叶文洁再也没有收到来自三体世界的消息。
+ 她知道，要想收到那个世界对她那条信息的回答，最少要等八年，何况她离开了基地后，已经不具备接收外星回信的条件了。
+ 那件事实在太重大了，却由她一个人静悄悄地做完，这就产生了一种不真实的感觉。
+ 随着时间的流逝，这种虚幻感越来越强烈，那件事越来越像自己的幻觉，像一场梦。
+ 太阳真的能够放大电波吗？
+ 她真的把太阳作为天线，向宇宙中发射过人类文明的信息吗？
+ 真的收到过外星文明的信息吗？
+ 她背叛整个人类文明的那个血色清晨真的存在过？
+ 还有那一次谋杀……
+ 叶文洁试着在工作中麻木自己，以便忘掉过去——她竟然几乎成功了，一种奇怪的自我保护本能使她不再回忆往事，不再想起她与外星文明曾经有过的联系，日子就这样在平静中一天天过去。
+ 回到母校一段时间后，叶文洁带着冬冬去了母亲绍琳那里。
+ 丈夫惨死后，绍琳很快从精神错乱中恢复过来，继续在政治夹缝中求生存。
+ 她紧跟形势高喊口号，终于得到了一点报偿，在后来的“复课闹革命”中重新走上了讲台。
+ 但这时，绍琳却做出了一件出人意料的事，与一位受迫害的教育部高干结了婚，当时那名高干还在干校住“牛棚”劳改中。
+ 对此绍琳有自己的深思熟虑，她心里清楚，社会上的混乱不可能长久，目前这帮夺权的年轻造反派根本没有管理国家的经验，现在靠边站和受迫害的这批老干部迟早还是要上台执政的。
+ 后来的事实证明她这次赌博是正确的，“文革”还没有结束，她的丈夫已经部分恢复了职位，十一届三中全会后，他迅速升到了副部级。
+ 绍琳凭着这个背景，在这知识分子重新得到礼遇的时候，很快青云直上。
+ 在成为科学院学部委员之后，她很聪明地调离了原来的学校，很快升为另一所名牌大学的副校长。
+ 叶文洁见到的母亲，是一位保养得很好的知识女性形象，丝毫没有过去受磨难的痕迹。
+ 她热情地接待了叶文洁母女，关切地询问她这些年是怎么过来的，惊叹冬冬是多么的聪明可爱，细致入微地对做饭的保姆交代叶文洁喜欢吃的菜……
+ 这一切都做得那么得体，那么熟练，那么恰到好处。
+ 但叶文洁清楚地感觉到她们之间的隔阂，她们小心地避开敏感的话题，没有谈到叶文洁的父亲。
+ 晚饭后，绍琳和丈夫送叶文洁和孩子走了很远，副部长说要和叶文洁说句话，绍琳就先回去了。
+ 这时，副部长的脸色一瞬间由温暖的微笑变得冷若冰霜，像不耐烦地扯下一副面具，他说：“以后欢迎你带孩子常来，但有一条，不要来追究历史旧账。
+ 对于你父亲的死，你母亲没有责任，她也是受害者。
+ 倒是你父亲这个人，对自己那些信念的执著有些变态了，一条道走到黑，抛弃了对家庭的责任，让你们母女受了这么多的苦。”
+ “您没资格谈我的父亲，”叶文洁气愤地说，“这是我和母亲间的事，与别人无关。”
+ “确实与我无关，”绍琳的丈夫冷冷地点点头，“我是在转达你母亲的意思。”
+ 叶文洁回头看，在那座带院子的高干小楼上，绍琳正撩开窗帘的一角向这边偷窥。
+ 叶文洁无言地抱起冬冬走了，以后再也没有回去过。
+ 叶文洁多方查访当年打死父亲的那四个红卫兵，居然查到了她们中的三个。
+ 这三个人都是返城知青，现在她们都没有工作。
+ 叶文洁得知她们的地址后，分别给她们写了一封简单的信，约她们到当年父亲遇害的操场上谈谈。
+ 叶文洁并没有什么复仇的打算。
+ 在红岸基地的那个旭日初升的早晨，她已向包括她们在内的全人类复了仇，她只想听到这些凶手的忏悔，看到哪怕是一点点人性的复归。
+ 这天下午下课后，叶文洁在操场上等着她们。
+ 她并没有抱多大希望，几乎肯定她们是不会来的，但在约定的时间，三个老红卫兵来了。
+ 叶文洁远远就认出了那三个人，因为她们都穿着现在已经很少见的绿军装。
+ 走近后，她发现这很可能就是她们当年在批判会上穿的那身衣服，衣服都已洗得发白，有显眼的补丁。
+ 但除此以外，这三个三十左右的女人与当年那三名英姿飒爽的红卫兵已没有任何相似之处了，从她们身上消逝的，除了青春，显然还有更多的东西。
+ 叶文洁的第一印象就是，与当年的整齐划一相比，她们之间的差异变大了。
+ 其中的一人变得很瘦小，当年的衣服穿在身上居然还有些大了，她的背有些弯，头发发黄，已显出一丝老态；另一位却变得十分粗壮，那身衣服套在她粗笨的身体上扣不上扣子，她头发蓬乱，脸黑黑的，显然已被艰难的生活磨去了所有女性的精致，只剩下粗鲁和麻木了；第三个女人身上倒还有些年轻时的影子，但她的一只袖管是空的，走路时荡来荡去。
+ 三个老红卫兵走到叶文洁面前，面对着她站成了一排——当年，她们也是这样面对叶哲泰的——试图再现那早已忘却的尊严，但她们当年那魔鬼般的精神力量显然已荡然无存。
+ 瘦小女人的脸上有一种老鼠的表情，粗壮女人的脸上只有麻木，独臂女人的两眼望着天空。
+ “你以为我们不敢来？”
+ 粗壮女人挑衅似的问道。
+ “我觉得我们应该见见面，过去的事情总该有个了结的。”叶文洁说。
+ “已经了结了，你应该听说过的。”
+ 瘦小女人说，她的声音尖尖的，仿佛时刻都带着一种不知从何而来的惊恐。
+ “我是说从精神上。”
+ “那你是准备听我们忏悔了？”粗壮女人问。
+ “你们不该忏悔吗？”
+ “那谁对我们忏悔呢？”
+ 一直沉默的独臂女人说。
+ 粗壮女人说：“我们四个人中，有三个在清华附中的那张大字报上签过名，从大串联、大检阅到大武斗，从‘一司’、‘二司’、‘三司’到‘联动’、‘西纠’、‘东纠’，再到‘新北大公社’、‘红旗战斗队’和‘东方红’，我们经历过红卫兵从生到死的全过程。”
+ 独臂女人接着说：“在清华校园的百日大武斗中，我们四个人，两个在‘井冈山’，两个在‘四·一四’。
+ 我曾经举着手榴弹冲向‘井冈山’的土造坦克，这只手被坦克轮子压碎了，当时血肉和骨头在地上和成了泥——那年我才十五岁啊。”
+ “后来我们走向广阔天地了！”
+ 粗壮女人扬起双手说，“我们四个，两个去了陕西，两个去了河南，都是最偏僻最穷困的地方。
+ 刚去的时候还意气风发呢，可日子久了，干完一天的农活，累得连衣服都洗不动；
+ 躺在漏雨的草屋里，听着远处的狼叫，慢慢从梦里回到现实。
+ 我们待在穷乡僻壤里，真是叫天天不语，叫地地不应啊。”
+ 独臂女人呆呆地看着地面说：“有时，在荒山小径上，遇到了昔日的红卫兵战友，或是武斗中的敌人，双方互相看看，一样的衣衫破烂，一样的满身尘土和牛粪，相视无语啊。”
+ “唐红静，”粗壮女人盯着叶文洁说，“就是那个朝你父亲的头抽了最要命一皮带的女孩儿，在黄河中淹死了。
+ 洪水把队里的羊冲走了几只，队支书就冲知青们喊：革命小将们，考验你们的时候到了！
+ 于是，红静就和另外三个知青跳下河去捞羊，那时还是凌汛，水面上还浮着一层冰呢！
+ 四个人全死了，谁知是淹死的还是冻死的。
+ 见到他们尸首的时候……
+ 我…… 我他妈说不下去了……”
+ 她捂着脸哭了起来。
+ 瘦小女人流着泪长叹一声，“后来回城了，可回来又怎么样呢？
+ 还是一无所有，回来的知青日子都不好过，而我们这样的人最次的工作都找不到，没有工作没有钱没有前途，什么都没有了。”
+ 叶文洁彻底无语了。
+ 独臂女人说：“最近有一部电影，叫《枫》，不知你看过没有？
+ 结尾处，一个大人和一个小孩儿站在死于武斗的红卫兵墓前，那孩子问大人：他们是烈士吗？
+ 大人说不是；孩子又问：他们是敌人吗？
+ 大人说也不是；孩子再问：那他们是什么？
+ 大人说：是历史。”
+ “听到了吗？
+ 是历史！
+ 是历史了！”
+ 粗壮女人兴奋地对叶文洁挥着一只大手说，“现在是新时期了，谁还会记得我们，拿咱们当回事儿？
+ 大家很快就会忘干净的！”
+ 三个老红卫兵走了，把叶文洁一个人留在操场上，十多年前那个阴雨霏霏的下午，她也是这样孤独地站在这里，看着死去的父亲。
+ 那个老红卫兵最后的一句话在她脑海中不停地回响着……
+ 夕阳给叶文洁瘦弱的身躯投下长长的影子。
+ 在她的心灵中，对社会刚刚出现的一点希望像烈日下的露水般蒸发了，对自己已经做出的超级背叛的那一丝怀疑也消失得无影无踪，将宇宙间更高等的文明引入人类世界，终于成为叶文洁坚定不移的理想。
+
+ "Don't worry," Shi Qiang said to Wang, as he sat down next to him at the meeting table.
+ "I'm not radioactive anymore.
+ The last couple of days they've washed me inside and outside like a flour sack.
+ They didn't originally think you needed to attend this meeting, but I insisted.
+ Heh.
+ I bet the two of us are going to be important this time."
+ As Da Shi spoke, he picked a cigar butt out of the ashtray, lit it, and took a long drag.
+ He nodded, and, in a slow, relaxed manner, blew the smoke into the faces of the attendees sitting on the other side of the table.
+ One of the people sitting opposite him was the original owner of the cigar, Colonel Stanton of the U.S. Marine Corps.
+ He gave Da Shi a contemptuous look.
+ Many more foreign military officers were at this meeting than the last.
+ They were all in uniform.
+ For the first time in human history, the armed forces of the world's nations faced the same enemy.
+ General Chang said, "Comrades, everyone at this meeting now has the same basic understanding of the situation.
+ Or, as Da Shi here would put it, we have information parity.
+ The war between alien invaders and humanity has begun.
+ Our descendants won't face the Trisolarans for another four and a half centuries.
+ For now, our opponents are still human.
+ Yet, in essence, these traitors to the human race can also be seen as enemies from outside human civilization.
+ We have never faced an enemy like this.
+ The next war objective is very clear: We must capture the intercepted Trisolaran messages stored on Judgment Day.
+ These messages may have great significance for our survival.
+ "We haven't yet done anything to draw the suspicion of Judgment Day.
+ The ship still sails the Atlantic freely.
+ It has already submitted plans to the Panama Canal Authority to pass through the canal in four days.
+ This is a great opportunity for us.
+ As the situation develops, such an opportunity may never arise again.
+ Right now, all the Battle Command Centers around the globe are drafting up operation plans, and Central will select one within ten hours and begin implementation.
+ The purpose of this meeting is to discuss possible plans of operation, and then report one to three of our best suggestions to Central.
+ Time is of the essence, and we must work efficiently.
+ "Note that any plan must guarantee one thing: the secure capture of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Judgment Day was rebuilt from an old tanker, and both the superstructure and the interior have been extensively renovated with complex structures to contain many new rooms and passageways.
+ Supposedly even the crew relies on a map when entering unfamiliar areas.
+ We, of course, know even less about the ship's layout.
+ Right now, we cannot even be certain of the location of the computing center on Judgment Day, and we don't know whether the intercepted Trisolaran messages are stored in servers located in the computing center, or how many copies they have.
+ The only way to achieve our objective is to completely capture and control Judgment Day.
+ "The most difficult part is preventing the enemy from erasing Trisolaran data during our attack.
+ Destroying the data would be very easy.
+ The enemy would not use conventional methods to erase the data during an attack, because it's easy to recover the data using known technology.
+ But if they just emptied a cartridge clip at the server hard drive or other storage media, it would all be over, and doing so would take no more than ten seconds.
+ So we must disable all enemies near the storage equipment within ten seconds of their detecting an attack.
+ Since we don't know the exact location of the data storage or the number of copies, we must eliminate all enemies on Judgment Day within a very brief period of time, before the target has been alerted.
+ At the same time, we can't heavily damage the facilities within, especially computer equipment.
+ Thus, this is a very difficult task.
+ Some think it's impossible."
+ A Japanese Self-Defense Forces officer said, "We believe that the only chance for success is to rely on spies on Judgment Day.
+ If they're familiar with where the Trisolaran information is stored, they can control the area or move the storage equipment elsewhere right before our operation."
+ Someone asked, "Reconnaissance and monitoring of Judgment Day have always been the responsibility of NATO military intelligence and the CIA.
+ Do we have such spies?"
+ "No," the NATO liaison said.
+ "Then we have nothing more to discuss except bullshit," said Da Shi.
+ He was met with annoyed looks.
+ Colonel Stanton said, "Since the objective is eliminating all personnel within an enclosed structure without harming other equipment within, our first thought was to use a ball lightning weapon."
+ Ding Yi shook his head.
+ "The existence of this kind of weapon is now public knowledge.
+ We don't know if the ship has been equipped with magnetic walls to shield against ball lightning.
+ Even if it hasn't, a ball lightning weapon can indeed kill all personnel within the ship, but it cannot do so simultaneously.
+ Also, after the ball lightning enters the ship, it may hover in the air for some time before releasing its energy.
+ This wait time can last from a dozen seconds to a minute or longer.
+ They will have enough time to realize they've been attacked and destroy the data."
+ Colonel Stanton asked, "What about a neutron bomb?"
+ "Colonel, you should know that's not going to work."
+ The speaker was a Russian officer.
+ "The radiation from a neutron bomb cannot kill right away.
+ After a neutron bomb attack, the amount of time left to the enemy would be more than enough for them to have a meeting just like this one."
+ "Another thought was to use nerve gas," a NATO officer said.
+ "But releasing it and having it spread throughout the ship would take time, so it still doesn't achieve General Chang's requirements."
+ "Then the only choices left are concussion bombs and infrasonic waves," Colonel Stanton said.
+ Others waited for him to finish his thought, but he said nothing more.
+ Da Shi said, "I use concussion bombs in police work, but they're toys.
+ They're indeed capable of stunning people inside a building into unconsciousness, but they're only good for a room or two.
+ Do you have any concussion bombs big enough to stun a whole oil tanker full of people?"
+ Stanton shook his head.
+ "No.
+ Even if we did, such a large explosive device would certainly damage equipment inside the ship."
+ "So what about infrasonic weapons?" someone asked.
+ "They're still experimental and cannot be used in live combat.
+ Also, the ship is very large.
+ At the power level available to current experimental prototypes, the most that a full assault on Judgment Day could do is to make the people inside feel dizzy and nauseous."
+ "Ha!"
+ Da Shi extinguished the cigar butt, now as tiny as a peanut.
+ "I told you all we have left to discuss is bullshit.
+ We've been at it for a while now.
+ Let's remember what the general said: 'Time is of the essence!'"
+ He gave a sly grin to the translator, a female first lieutenant who looked unhappy with his language.
+ "Not easy to translate, eh, comrade?
+ Just get the approximate meaning across."
+ But Stanton seemed to understand what he was saying.
+ He pointed at Shi Qiang with a fresh cigar that he had just taken out.
+ "Who does this policeman think he is, that he can talk to us this way?"
+ "Who do you think you are?"
+ Da Shi asked.
+ "Colonel Stanton is an expert in special ops," a NATO officer said.
+ "He has been a part of every major military operation since the Vietnam War."
+ "Then let me tell you who I am.
+ More than thirty years ago, my reconnaissance squad managed to sneak dozens of kilometers behind Vietnamese lines and capture a hydroelectric station under heavy guard.
+ We prevented the Vietnamese plan to demolish the dam with explosives, which would have flooded the attack route for our army.
+ That's who I am.
+ I defeated an enemy who once defeated you."
+ "That's enough!"
+ General Chang slammed the table.
+ "Don't bring up irrelevant matters.
+ If you have a plan, say what it is."
+ "I don't think we need to waste time on this policeman,"
+ Colonel Stanton said contemptuously, as he lit his cigar.
+ Without waiting for a translation, Da Shi jumped up.
+ "'Pao-Li-Si'—I heard that word twice.
+ What?
+ You look down on the police?
+ If you're talking about dropping some bombs and turning that ship into smithereens, yeah, you military are the experts.
+ But if you're talking about retrieving something out of it without damage, I don't care how many stars are on your shoulder, you aren't even as good as a thief.
+ For this kind of thing, you have to think outside the box.
+ OUT. OF. THE. BOX!
+ You will never be as good at it as criminals, masters of out-of-the-box thinking.
+ "You know how good they are?
+ I once handled a robbery where the criminals managed to steal one car out of a moving train.
+ They reconnected the cars before and after the one they were interested in so that the train got all the way to its destination without anyone noticing.
+ The only tools they used were a length of wire cable and a few steel hooks.
+ Those are the real special ops experts.
+ And someone like me, a criminal cop who has been playing cat and mouse with them for more than a decade, has received the best education and training from them."
+ "Tell us your plan, then," General Chang said.
+ "Otherwise, shut up!"
+ "There are so many important people here that I didn't think it was my place to speak.
+ And I was afraid that you, General, would say I was being rude again."
+ "You're already the definition of rudeness.
+ Enough!
+ Tell me what your out-of-the-box plan is."
+ Da Shi picked up a pen and drew two parallel curves on the table.
+ "That's the canal."
+ He put the ashtray between the two lines.
+ "This is Judgment Day."
+ Then he reached across the table and pulled Colonel Stanton's just-lit cigar out of his mouth.
+ "I can no longer tolerate this idiot!" the colonel shouted, standing up.
+ "Da Shi, get out of here!" General Chang said.
+ "Give me one minute.
+ I'll be done soon."
+ Da Shi extended a hand in front of Colonel Stanton.
+ "What do you want?" the colonel asked, puzzled.
+ "Give me another one."
+ Stanton hesitated for a second before taking another cigar out of a beautiful wooden box and handing it to Da Shi.
+ Da Shi took the smoking end of the first cigar and pressed it against the table so that it stood on the shore of the Panama Canal that he'd drawn on the table.
+ He flattened the end of the other cigar and erected it on the other shore of the canal.
+ "We set up two pillars on the shores of the canal, and then between them we string many parallel, thin filaments, about half a meter apart.
+ The filaments should be made from the nanomaterial called 'Flying Blade,' developed by Professor Wang.
+ A very appropriate name, in this case."
+ After Shi Qiang finished speaking, he stood and waited a few seconds.
+ Then he raised his hands, said to the stunned crowd, "That's it," turned, and left.
+ The air seemed frozen.
+ Everyone present stayed still like stone statues.
+ Even the droning from the computers all around them seemed more careful.
+ After a long while, someone timidly broke the silence, "Professor Wang, is 'Flying Blade' really in the form of filaments?"
+ Wang nodded.
+ "Given our current molecular construction technique, the only form we can make is a filament.
+ The thickness is about one-hundredth the thickness of human hair....
+ Officer Shi got this information from me before the meeting."
+ "Do you have enough material?"
+ "How wide is the canal?
+ And how tall is the ship?"
+ "The narrowest point of the canal is one hundred fifty meters wide.
+ Judgment Day is thirty-one meters tall, with a draft of eight meters or so."
+ Wang stared at the cigars on the table and did some mental calculations.
+ "I think I should have enough."
+ Another long silence.
+ Everyone was trying to recover from their astonishment.
+ "What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?"
+ "That doesn't seem likely."
+ "Even if they were sliced," a computer expert said, "it's not a big deal.
+ The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth.
+ Given that premise, whether it's hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data."
+ "Anyone got a better idea?"
+ Chang looked around the table.
+ No one spoke.
+ "All right.
+ Then let's focus on this and work out the details."
+ Colonel Stanton, who had been silent the whole time, stood up.
+ "I will go and ask Officer Shi to come back."
+ General Chang indicated that he should remain seated.
+ Then he called out, "Da Shi!"
+ Da Shi returned, grinning at everyone.
+ He picked up the cigars on the table.
+ The one that had been lit he put into his mouth, and the other he stuffed into his pocket.
+ Someone asked, "When Judgment Day passes, can those two pillars bear the force applied against the Flying Blade filaments?
+ Maybe the pillars would be sliced apart first."
+ Wang said, "That's easy to solve.
+ We have some small amounts of Flying Blade material that are flat sheets.
+ We can use them to protect the parts of the column where the filaments are attached."
+ The discussion after that was mainly between the naval officers and navigation experts.
+ "Judgment Day is at the upper limit in terms of tonnage that can pass through the Panama Canal.
+ It has a deep draft, so we have to consider installing filaments below the waterline."
+ "That will be very difficult.
+ If there's not enough time, I don't think we should worry about it.
+ The parts of the ship below the waterline are used for engines, fuel, and ballast, causing a lot of noise, vibration, and interference.
+ The conditions are too poor for computing centers and other similar facilities to be located there.
+ But for the parts above water, a tighter nanofilament net will give better results."
+ "Then it's best to set the trap at one of the locks along the canal.
+ Judgment Day is built to Panamax specifications, just enough to fill the thirty-two-meter locks.
+ Then we would only need to make the Flying Blade filaments thirty-two meters long.
+ This will also make it easier to erect the pillars and string the filaments between them, especially for the underwater parts."
+ "No.
+ The situation around the locks is too unpredictable.
+ Also, a ship inside the lock must be pulled forward by four 'mules,' electric locomotives on rails.
+ They move slowly, and the time inside the locks will also be when the crew is most alert.
+ An attempt to slice through the ship during that time would most likely be discovered."
+ "What about the Bridge of the Americas, right outside the Miraflores Locks?
+ The abutments at the two ends of the bridge can serve as the pillars for stringing the filaments."
+ "No.
+ The distance between the abutments is too great.
+ We don't have enough Flying Blade material."
+ "Then it's decided: The site of operation should be the narrowest point of the Gaillard Cut, a hundred and fifty meters across.
+ Add in some slack for the pillars ... let's call it a hundred seventy meters."
+ Wang said, "If that's the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters.
+ I don't have enough material for a tighter net."
+ "In other words, we have to make sure the ship crosses during the day," Da Shi said, blowing out another mouthful of smoke.
+ "Why?"
+ "At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they'll all be lying down.
+ Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap.
+ But during the day, even if they're sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient."
+ A few scattered laughs.
+ The attendees, all under heavy stress, felt a bit of release tinged with the smell of blood.
+ "You're truly a demon," a female UN official said to Da Shi.
+ "Will innocent bystanders be hurt?"
+ Wang asked, his voice trembling.
+ A naval officer replied, "When the ship goes through the locks, more than a dozen cable workers will come onboard, but they'll all get off after the ship passes.
+ The Panama Canal pilot will have to accompany the ship the entire eighty-two kilometers, so the pilot will have to be sacrificed."
+ A CIA officer said, "And some of the crew aboard Judgment Day probably don't know the real purpose of the ship."
+ "Professor," General Chang said, "do not concern yourself with these thoughts.
+ The information we need to obtain has to do with the very survival of human civilization.
+ Someone else will make the call."
+ As the meeting ended, Colonel Stanton pushed the beautiful cigar box in front of Shi Qiang.
+ "Captain, the best Havana has to offer.
+ They're yours."
+ Four days later, Gaillard Cut, Panama Canal
+ Wang could not even tell that he was in a foreign country.
+ He knew that to the west, not too far away, was beautiful Gatun Lake.
+ To the east was the magnificent Bridge of the Americas and Panama City.
+ But he had had no chance to see either of them.
+ Two days earlier, he had arrived by direct flight from China to Tocumen International Airport near Panama City and then rode a helicopter here.
+ The sight before him was very common: The construction work under way to widen the canal caused the tropical forest on both slopes to be quite sparse, revealing large patches of yellow earth.
+ The color felt familiar to Wang.
+ The canal didn't seem very special, probably because it was so narrow here, but a hundred thousand people had dug out this part of the canal in the previous century, one hoe at a time.
+ Wang and Colonel Stanton sat on lounge chairs under an awning halfway up the slope.
+ Both wore loose, colorful shirts, with their Panama hats tossed to the side, looking like two tourists.
+ Below, on each shore of the canal, a twenty-four-meter steel pillar lay flat against the ground, parallel to the shore.
+ Fifty ultrastrong nanofilaments, each 160 meters long, were strung between the pillars.
+ At the end on the eastern shore, every filament was connected to a length of regular steel wire.
+ This was to give the filaments enough slack so that they could sink to the bottom of the canal, aided by attached weights.
+ The setup permitted other ships safe passage.
+ Luckily, traffic along the canal wasn't quite as busy as Wang had imagined.
+ On average, only about forty large ships passed through each day.
+ The operation's code name was "Guzheng," based on the similarity between the structure and the ancient Chinese zither by that name.
+ The slicing net of nanofilaments was thus called the "zither."
+ An hour earlier, Judgment Day had entered the Gaillard Cut from Gatun Lake.
+ Stanton asked Wang whether he had ever been to Panama before.
+ Wang said no.
+ "I came here in 1989," the colonel said.
+ "Because of that war?"
+ "Yes, that was one of those wars that left me with no impression.
+ I only remember being in front of the Vatican embassy as 'Nowhere to Run' by Martha and the Vandellas played for the holed-up Noriega.
+ That was my idea, by the way."
+ In the canal below them, a pure white French cruise ship slowly sailed past.
+ Several passengers in colorful clothing strolled leisurely on the green-carpeted deck.
+ "Second Observation Post reporting: There are no more ships in front of the target."
+ Stanton's walkie-talkie squawked.
+ Stanton gave the order.
+ "Raise the zither."
+ Several men wearing hard hats appeared on both shores, looking like maintenance workers.
+ Wang stood up, but the colonel pulled him down.
+ "Professor, don't worry.
+ They know what to do."
+ Wang watched as those on the eastern shore rapidly winched back the steel wires attached to the nanofilaments and secured the tightened nanofilaments to the pillar.
+ Then, slowly, the two pillars were stood upright using their mechanical hinges.
+ As a disguise, the pillars were decorated with some navigational markings and water depth indicators.
+ The workers proceeded leisurely, as though they were simply carrying out their boring jobs.
+ Wang gazed at the space between the pillars.
+ There seemed to be nothing there, but the deadly zither was already in place.
+ "Target is four kilometers from the zither," the voice in the walkie-talkie said.
+ Stanton put the walkie-talkie down.
+ He continued the conversation with Wang.
+ "The second time I came to Panama was in 1999, to attend the ceremony for the handover of the canal to Panama.
+ Oddly, by the time we got to the Authority's building, the Stars and Stripes were already gone.
+ Supposedly the U.S. government had requested that the flag be lowered a day early to avoid the embarrassment of lowering the flag in front of a crowd....
+ Back then, I thought I was witnessing history.
+ But now that seems so insignificant."
+ "Target is three kilometers from the zither."
+ "Yes, insignificant," Wang mumbled.
+ He wasn't listening to Stanton at all.
+ The rest of the world had ceased to exist for him.
+ All of his attention was focused on the spot where Judgment Day would appear.
+ By now the sun that had risen over the Atlantic was falling toward the Pacific.
+ The canal sparkled with golden light.
+ Close by, the deadly zither stood quietly.
+ The two steel pillars were dark and reflected no sunlight, looking even older than the canal that flowed between them.
+ "Target is two kilometers from the zither."
+ Stanton seemed to not have heard the voice from the walkie-talkie.
+ He continued, "After learning that the alien fleet is coming toward the Earth, I've been suffering from amnesia.
+ It's so strange.
+ I can't recall many things from the past.
+ I don't remember the details of the wars I experienced.
+ Like I just said, those wars all seem so insignificant.
+ After learning this truth, everyone becomes a new person spiritually, and sees the world anew.
+ I've been thinking: Suppose two thousand years ago, or even earlier, humanity learned that an alien invasion fleet would arrive a few thousand years later.
+ What would human civilization be like now?
+ Professor, can you imagine it?"
+ "Ah, no..."
+ Wang answered perfunctorily, his mind elsewhere.
+ "Target is one point five kilometers from the zither."
+ "Professor, I think you will be the Gaillard of this new era.
+ We're waiting for your new Panama Canal to be built.
+ Indeed, the space elevator is a canal.
+ Just as the Panama Canal connected two oceans, the space elevator will connect space with the Earth."
+ Wang knew that the colonel's babbling was meant to help him through this very difficult time.
+ He was grateful, but it wasn't working.
+ "Target is one kilometer from the zither."
+ Judgment Day appeared.
+ In the light from the setting sun coming over the hills to the side, it was a dark silhouette against the golden waves of the canal.
+ The sixty-thousand-ton ship was much larger than Wang had imagined.
+ Its appearance was like another peak abruptly inserted among the hills.
+ Even though Wang knew that the canal was capable of accommodating ships as large as seventy thousand tons, witnessing such a large ship in such a narrow waterway was a strange feeling.
+ Given its immensity, the canal below seemed to no longer exist.
+ The ship was a mountain gliding across solid earth.
+ After he grew used to the sunlight, Wang saw that Judgment Day's hull was pitch black, and the superstructure was painted pure white.
+ The giant antenna was gone.
+ They heard the roar from the ship's engines, accompanied by the churning sound of waves that had been generated by the round prow slapping against the shores of the canal.
+ As the distance between Judgment Day and the deadly zither closed, Wang's heart began to beat faster, and his breath became short.
+ He had a desire to run away, but he felt so weak that he could no longer control his body.
+ All at once, he was overwhelmed by a deep hatred for Shi Qiang.
+ How could the bastard have come up with such an idea?
+ Like that UN official said, he is a demon!
+ But the feeling passed.
+ He thought that if Da Shi were by his side, he would probably feel better.
+ Colonel Stanton had invited Shi Qiang to come, but General Chang refused to give permission because he said that Da Shi was needed where he was.
+ Wang felt the colonel's hand on his back.
+ "Professor, all this will pass."
+ Judgment Day was below them now, passing through the deadly zither.
+ When its prow first contacted the plane between the two steel pillars, the space that seemed empty, Wang's scalp tightened.
+ But nothing happened.
+ The immense hull of the ship continued to slowly sail past the two steel pillars.
+ When half the ship had passed, Wang began to doubt whether the nanofilaments between the steel pillars really existed.
+ But a small sign soon negated his doubt.
+ He noticed a thin antenna located at the very top of the superstructure breaking at its base, and the antenna tumbling down.
+ Soon, there was a second sign indicating the presence of the nanofilaments, a sign that almost made Wang break down.
+ Judgment Day's wide deck was empty save for one man standing near the stern hosing down the ship's bollards.
+ From his vantage point, Wang saw everything clearly.
+ The moment that that section of the ship passed between the pillars, the hose broke into two pieces not too far from the man, and water spilled out.
+ The man's body stiffened, and the nozzle tumbled from his hand.
+ He remained standing for a few seconds, then fell.
+ As his body contacted the deck, it came apart in two halves.
+ The top half crawled through the expanding pool of blood, but had to use two arms that were bloody stumps.
+ The hands had been cleanly sliced off.
+ After the stern of the ship went between the two pillars, Judgment Day continued to sail forward at the same speed, and everything seemed normal.
+ But then Wang heard the sound of the engine shift into a strange whine, before turning into chaotic noise.
+ It sounded like a wrench being thrown into the rotor of a large motor—no, many, many wrenches.
+ He knew this was the result of the rotating parts of the engine having been cut.
+ After a piercing, tearing sound, a hole appeared in the side of the stern of Judgment Day, made by a large metallic piece punching through the hull.
+ A broken component flew out of the hole and fell into the water, causing a large column of water to shoot up.
+ As it briefly flew past, Wang recognized it as a section of the engine crankshaft.
+ A thick column of smoke poured out of the hole.
+ Judgment Day, which had been sailing along the right shore, now began to turn, dragging this smoky tail.
+ Soon it crossed over the canal and smashed into the left shore.
+ As Wang looked, the giant prow deformed as it collided into the slope, slicing open the hill like water, causing waves of earth to spill in all directions.
+ At the same time, Judgment Day began to separate into more than forty slices, each slice half a meter thick.
+ The slices near the top moved faster than the slices near the bottom, and the ship spread open like a deck of cards.
+ As the forty-some metal slices moved past each other, the piercing noise was like countless giant fingernails scratching against glass.
+ By the time the intolerable noise ended, Judgment Day was spilled on the shore like a stack of plates carried by a stumbling waiter, the plates near the top having traveled the farthest.
+ The slices looked as soft as cloth, and rapidly deformed into complicated shapes impossible to imagine as having once belonged to a ship.
+ Soldiers rushed toward the shore from the slope.
+ Wang was surprised to find so many men hidden nearby.
+ A fleet of helicopters arrived along the canal with their engines roaring; crossed the canal surface, which was now covered by an iridescent oil slick; hovered over the wreckage of Judgment Day; and began to drop large quantities of fire suppression foam and powder.
+ Shortly, the fire in the wreckage was under control, and three other helicopters began to drop searchers into the wreckage with cables.
+ Colonel Stanton had already left.
+ Wang picked up the binoculars he'd left on top of his hat.
+ Overcoming his trembling hands, he observed Judgment Day.
+ By this time, the wreckage was mostly covered by fire-extinguishing foam and powder, but the edges of some of the slices were left exposed.
+ Wang saw the cut surfaces, smooth as mirrors.
+ They reflected the fiery red light of dusk perfectly.
+ He also saw a deep red spot on the mirror surface.
+ He wasn't sure if it was blood.
+ Three days later
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you understand Trisolaran civilization?
+ YE WENJIE: No.
+ We received only very limited information.
+ No one has real, detailed knowledge of Trisolaran civilization except Mike Evans and other core members of the Adventists who intercepted their messages.
+ INTERROGATOR: Then why do you have such hope for it, thinking that it can reform and perfect human society?
+ YE: If they can cross the distance between the stars to come to our world, their science must have developed to a very advanced stage.
+ A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards.
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific?
+ YE: ...
+ INTERROGATOR: Let me presume to guess: Your father was deeply influenced by your grandfather's belief that only science could save China.
+ And you were deeply influenced by your father.
+ YE: (sighing quietly) I don't know.
+ INTERROGATOR: We have already obtained all the Trisolaran messages intercepted by the Adventists.
+ YE: Oh ... what happened to Evans?
+ INTERROGATOR: He died during the operation to capture Judgment Day.
+ But the posture of his body pointed us to the computers holding copies of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Thankfully, they were all encoded with the same self-interpreting code used by Red Coast.
+ YE: Was there a lot of data?
+ INTERROGATOR: Yes, about twenty-eight gigabytes.
+ YE: That's impossible.
+ Interstellar communication is very inefficient.
+ How can so much data have been transmitted?
+ INTERROGATOR: We thought so at first, too.
+ But things were not at all as we had imagined—not even in our boldest, most fantastic imaginations.
+ How about this?
+ Please read this section of the preliminary analysis of the captured data, and you can see the reality of the Trisolaran civilization, compared with your beautiful fantasies.
+
+ “没关系，我已经没有放射性了。”
+ 史强对坐在旁边的汪淼说，“这两天，我让人家像洗面口袋似的翻出来洗了个遍。
+ 这次会议本来没安排你参加，是我坚决要求请你来的，嘿，我保准咱哥俩这次准能出风头的。”
+ 史强说着，从会议桌上的烟灰缸中拣出一只雪茄屁股，点上后抽一口，点点头，心旷神怡地把烟徐徐吐到对面与会者的面前，其中就有这支雪茄的原主人斯坦顿，一名美国海军陆战队上校，他向大史投去鄙夷的目光。
+ 这次与会的有更多的外国军人，而且都穿上了军装。
+ 在人类历史上，全世界的武装力量第一次面对共同的敌人。
+ 常伟思将军说：“同志们，这次与会的所有人，对目前形势都有了基本的了解，用大史的话说，信息对等了。
+ 人类与外星侵略者的战争已经开始，虽然在四个半世纪后，我们的子孙才会真正面对来自异星的三体人侵者，我们现在与之作战的仍是人类；但从本质上讲，这些人类的背叛者也可以看成来自地球文明之外的敌人，我们是第一次面对这样的敌人。
+ 下一步的作战目标十分明确，就是要夺取‘审判日’号上被截留的三体信息，这些信息，可能对人类文明的存亡具有重要意义。”
+ “我们还没有惊动‘审判日’号，这艘巨轮目前仍以合法的身份行驶在大西洋上，它已向巴拿马运河管理局提出申请，将于四天后通过运河。
+ 这是我们采取行动的一次绝好的机会，随着形势的发展，很可能不会再有这样的机会了。
+ 现在，全球的各个作战中心都在制定行动方案，这些方案将由总部在十小时之内选择并确定一个。
+ 我们这次会议的任务，就是讨论行动方案，最后确定一至三个最可行的上报总部。
+ 各位，时间很紧，我们必须以最高效率工作。”
+ “请注意，所有方案都要确保一点：保证‘审判日’号上三体信息的安全并夺取得它。
+ ‘审判日’号是由油轮改装的，船体上层和内部都增加了复杂的结构，据说即使是船员，在进人不常去的区域时也要凭借地图认路，我们对其结构的了解就更少了。
+ 目前，我们甚至不知道‘审判日’号计算机中心的确切位置，也不知道被截留的三体信息是否存贮于计算机中心的服务器上、有几个备份。
+ 我们要达到目标的唯一途径，就是全面占领和控制‘审判日’号，这中间最困难的，就是在攻击行动中避免敌人删除三体信息。
+ 删除这些信息极其容易，敌人在紧急时刻不太可能进行常规删除，因为以目前的技术很容易恢复，但只需对服务器硬盘或其他存贮装置打上一梭子，一切就都完了，这前后在十秒钟内就能完成。
+ 而我们，必须在行动被觉察前十秒之内，使存贮装置附近的敌人失去行动能力。
+ 由于存贮装置的位置不明，备份数量也不清楚，所以必须在极短的时间内，在被目标觉察之前，消灭‘审判日’号上的全部敌人，同时又不能对其内部的其他设施，特别是计算机设备造成重大损坏。
+ 因此，这次任务十分困难，有人甚至认为是不可能完成的。”
+ 一名日本自卫队军官说：“我们认为，唯一可能成功的行动，是借助于我方潜伏在‘审判日’号内部，并对三体信息的存贮位置熟悉的侦察人员，在行动前控制或转移存贮设备。”
+ 有人问：“对‘审判日’号的监视和侦察一直是由北约军事情报机构和CIA负责的，有这样的潜伏者吗？”
+ “没有。”
+ 北约协调员说。
+ “那我们后面剩下的，就是扯淡了。”
+ 大史插上一句，立刻遭到很多人的白眼。
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“消灭一个封闭结构内部的人员，同时对其中的其他设施又不造成损坏，我们首先想到的就是球状闪电武器。”
+ 丁仪摇摇头：“不行，这种武器已广为人知，我们不知道船体是否装备了屏蔽球状闪电的磁场墙；即使没有，球状闪电虽然可以保证消灭船内的所有人员，但也不能保证同时性；而且，球状闪电进入船体内部后，可能还要在空中游荡一段时间才会释放能量，这段时间短则十几秒钟，长就有可能达到一分钟甚至更多，他们完全有时间察觉到袭击并采取毁灭信息的行动。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“那么中子弹呢？”
+ “上校，您应该知道那也是不行的！”
+ 一名俄罗斯军官说，“中子辐射不能瞬间致死，中子弹攻击后，船里敌人剩下的时间够开一次我们这样的会了。”
+ “另一个方案就是神经毒气，但由于其在船内的释放和扩散有一个过程，也不可能达到将军所说的目标。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “剩下的选择就是震荡炸弹和次声波了。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说，人们都期待着他的下文，但他却没有接着说出什么来。
+ 大史说：“震荡炸弹是我们警方用的玩意儿，确实可以一下子把建筑物里的人震昏，但目前好像只对一两个房间有用。
+ 你们有能一次震昏一船人那么大个儿的吗？”
+ 斯坦顿摇摇头，“没有，即使有，那样大的爆炸物也不可能不破坏船内的设施。”
+ “次声波武器呢？”
+ 有人问。
+ “还在实验阶段，无法用于实战。
+ 特别是那船十分巨大，以现在试验中的次声波武器的功率，如果对整个‘审判日’号同时攻击，最多也就是让里面的晕恶心而已。”
+ “哈，”大史抽得只剩下一粒花生大小的雪茄头说，“我说过剩下的就是扯淡了吧，都扯这么长了，大家记住首长的话：时间紧迫！”
+ 他坏笑着转向译员，一名一脸不自在的漂亮女中尉，“回吧同志，意思到了就行。”
+ 但斯坦顿居然似乎听懂了，他用刚刚抽出的一根雪茄指着史强说：“这个警察有什么资格这么对我们讲话？”
+ “你的资格呢？”
+ 大史反问。
+ “斯坦顿上校是资深的特种作战专家，他几乎参加过越战以来所有的重大军事行动。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “那告诉你我的资格：二十多年前，我所在的侦察排，穿插到越军纵深几十公里，占领了那里的一座严密设防的水电站，阻止了越南人炸坝阻断我军进攻道路的计划。
+ 这就是我的资格：我战胜过打败了你们的敌人。”
+ “够了大史！”
+ 常伟思拍拍桌子说，“不要扯远了，你可以说出自己的方案。”
+ “我看没必要在这个警察身上浪费时间。”
+ 斯坦顿上校轻蔑地说，同时开始点雪茄。
+ 没等译员翻译，大史就跳起来说：“泡立死（Police），我两次听出这个词了，咋的，看不起警察？
+ 要说甩一堆炸弹把那大船炸成碎末，那你们军人行；但要是从里面完好地取出什么东西，别看你肩上扛着几颗星，还不如小偷儿。
+ 这种事儿，要出邪招，绝对的邪招！
+ 这个，你们远比不上罪犯，他们是出邪招的大师！
+ 知道那招儿能邪到什么程度？
+ 我办过一个盗窃案，罪犯能把行驶中的列车中间的一节车厢偷了，前后的其余部分又完好地接起来开到终点站，用的工具只是一根钢丝绳和几只铁钩子。
+ 这才是特种作战专家！
+ 而像我这样儿在基层摸爬滚打了十几年的重案刑警，受到了他们最好的培养和教育。”
+ “说你的方案，否则就不要再发言了！”
+ 常伟思指着大史说。
+ “这儿这么多重量级人物，我刚才怕轮不上我，那样老领导您又会说我这人没礼貌了。”
+ “你已经没礼貌到家了！
+ 快些。
+ 说你的邪招！”
+ 史强拿起一支笔，在桌面上画了两条弯曲的平行线，“这是运河，”
+ 又拿起烟灰缸放到两条线之间，“这是‘审判日’号。”
+ 然后，他探身越过桌面，一把扯下了斯坦顿上校刚点燃的雪茄。
+ “我不能容忍这个白痴了！”
+ 上校站起来大叫。
+ “史强，出去。”
+ 常伟思厉声说。
+ “等我说完，就一分钟。”
+ 大史说着，向斯坦顿伸出另一只手。
+ “什么？”
+ 上校不解地问。
+ “再给我一支。”
+ 斯坦顿犹豫了一下，从一个精致的木盒中又拿出一支雪茄递给史强，后者将第一支雪茄冒烟的一头按到桌面上，使它竖立在桌子上画的巴拿马运河岸边，将另一支的一头弄平，立到“运河”的另一边。
+ “在运河两岸立两根柱子，柱子之间平行地扯上许多细丝，间距半米左右，这些细丝是汪教授他们制造出来的那种叫‘飞刃’的纳米材料。”
+ 史强说完，站在那里等了几秒钟，举起双手对着还没有反应过来的人们说：“完了，就这些。”
+ 说完转身走出了会场。
+ 空气凝固了，所有人像石化般一动不动，连周围电脑的嗡嗡声似乎都变得小心翼翼。
+ 不知过了多久，才有人怯生生地打破沉寂：“江教授，‘飞刃’是丝状的吗？”
+ 汪淼点点头，“用我们现有的分子建筑技术，只能生产出丝状的材料，粗细大约相当于头发丝的十分之一……
+ 这些史警官会前向我了解过。”
+ “现有的数量够吗？”
+ “运河有多宽？
+ 船的高度？”
+ “运河最窄处一百五十米，‘审判日’号高三十一米，吃水八米左右。”
+ 汪淼盯着桌上的雪茄，粗略计算了一下，“基本上够吧。”
+ 又是一阵漫长的沉默，与会者都在试图使自己从震惊中恢复过来。
+ “如果存贮三体信息的设备，硬盘光盘之类的，也被切割呢？”有人问。
+ “几率不大吧。”
+ “被切割也问题不大，”一名计算机专家说，“那种细丝极其锋利，切口一定很齐，在这种状态下，无论是硬盘光盘，还是集成电路存贮体，其中的信息绝大部分都可以恢复。”
+ “还有别的更可行的方案吗？”
+ 常伟恩看看会场，没人说话，“好，下面就集中讨论这个方案，开始研究细节吧。”
+ 一直沉默的斯坦顿上校站了起来，“我去叫警官回来。”
+ 常伟思挥挥手示意他坐下，然后喊了一声：“大史！”
+ 史强走了进来，带着那一脸坏笑看了看众人，拿起桌上“运河”边上的两支雪茄，把点过的塞到嘴里，另一支揣进口袋。
+ 有人问：“‘审判日’号通过时，那两根柱子能承受‘飞刃’吗？
+ 会不会柱子首先被割断呢？”
+ 汪淼说：“这个能解决，有少量片状的‘飞刃’材料，可以用作细丝在柱子上固定处的垫片。”
+ 下面的讨论主要是在海军军官和航海专家们之间进行了。
+ “‘审判日’号是巴拿马运河能通过的最大吨位的船只了，吃水很深，所以还要考虑纳米丝在水下的布设。”
+ “水下部分比较困难，如果时间来不及倒是可以放弃，那里主要放置发动机、燃油和一些压舱物，噪音、震动和干扰都很大，环境恶劣，计算机中心和类似的机构不太可能设在那个位置。
+ 倒是在水上部分，如果纳米丝的间距再小一些，效果肯定更好。”
+ “那在运河的三个船闸之一动手是最好的了，‘审判日’号是巴拿马尺型船，通过时正好填满船闸，‘飞刃’丝的长度只需三十二米左右，间距可以很小，立柱子和拉丝的操作相对也容易些，特别是水下部分。”
+ “不行，船闸处情况复杂，船在闸中要由四台轨道机车牵引通过，速度很慢，而这时也肯定是‘审判日’号上最警觉的时候，在切割过程中时极有可能被发现。”
+ “是否可以考虑米拉弗洛莱斯船闸外面的美洲大桥？
+ 桥墩就可以用作拉丝的柱子。”
+ “不行，桥墩的间距太宽，‘飞刃’材料肯定不够的。”
+ “那么我们就确定下来，行动位置是盖拉德水道的最窄处，一百五十米宽，算上建支柱的余量，按一百七十米吧。”
+ 汪淼说：“要这样，拉丝的间距最小就是五十厘米，再小，材料不够了。”
+ “那就是说，”大史吐出一口烟，“得想法让那船白天过运河。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “夜里船上的人睡觉啊，都是躺着的，五十厘米的空当太大了，白天他们就是坐着或蹲着，也够了。”
+ 响起了零星的几声笑，重压下的人们感到了一丝带着血腥味的轻松。
+ “你真是个魔鬼。”
+ 一位联合国女官员对大史说。
+ “会伤及无辜吗？”
+ 汪淼问，他的声音中带着明显可以听出来的颤抖。
+ 一名海军军官回答：“过船闸时要有十几名接缆工人上船，不过船通过后他们就下去了。
+ 巴拿马引水员要随船走完八十二公里的运河，肯定要牺牲掉。”
+ 一名CIA官员说：“还有‘审判日’号上的一部分船员，他们对这船是干什么的可能并不知情。”
+ “教授，这些事现在不用想，这不是你们要考虑的事情。
+ 我们要取得的信息关系到人类文明的存亡，会有人做出最后决定的。”
+ 常伟思说。
+ 散会时，斯坦顿上校把那个精致的雪茄木盒推到史强面前：“警官，上好的哈瓦纳，送给你了。”
+ 四天后，巴拿马运河盖拉德水道。
+ 汪淼没有一点儿身处异国他乡的感觉。
+ 他知道，西面不远处是美丽的加通湖，东面则是壮丽的美洲大桥和巴拿马城，但他都无缘见到，两天前他乘坐飞机从国内直接飞到巴拿马城附近的托库门军用机场，然后就乘直升机直接来到这里。
+ 眼前的景色太平常了，正在进行的运河拓宽工程使两岸山坡上的热带雨林变得稀稀拉拉，坡上露出了大片黄土，那色彩真的使汪淼感到对这里很熟悉。
+ 运河看上去也很普通，可能是因为在这一段它十分狭窄的缘故。
+ 这段水道是在上世纪初由十万人一锹锹开凿出来的。
+ 汪淼和斯坦顿上校坐在半山坡一座凉亭的躺椅上，两人都穿着宽大的花衬衣，大草帽扔在一边，看上去就是两个普通的游客。
+ 在这个位置，下面的运河尽收眼底。
+ 就在他们下方的运河两岸上，分别平放着两根二十四米长的钢柱，五十根一百六十米的超强度纳米丝已经按约零点五米的间距连接在两根钢柱上，只是每根纳米丝靠右岸的一端还连接了一段普通钢丝，这可以使纳米丝随着系在上面的坠物沉入河底，这样做是为了让其他的船只通过。
+ 好在运河上的运输并不像汪淼想象的那么繁忙，平均每天只有四十艘左右的大型船舶通过。
+ 两根钢柱的一端都与活动铰结相连，只有等待“审判日”号前面的最后一艘船通过，才能拉回普通钢丝，把纳米丝在右岸钢柱上做最后固定，然后钢柱才能立起来。
+ 行动的代号是“古筝”，这是很自然的联想，而纳米丝构成的切割网则被称为“琴”。
+ 一小时前，“审判日”号已由加通湖驶人盖拉德水道。
+ 斯坦顿问汪淼以前是否来过巴拿马，汪淼说没有。
+ “我在1989年来过。”
+ 上校说。
+ “是那次战争吧？”
+ “是，但对我来说是最没有印象的一次战争，只记得在梵蒂冈大使馆前为被包围的诺列加总统播放杰克逊的摇滚舞曲《无处可逃》，那是我的主意。”
+ 下面的运河中，一艘通体雪白的法国游轮正在缓缓驶过，铺着绿地毯的甲板上，有几名穿得花花绿绿的游客在闲逛。
+ “二号观察哨报告，目标前方已没有任何船只。”
+ 斯坦顿的步话机响了起来。
+ “把‘琴’立起来。”斯坦顿命令道。
+ 几名头戴安全帽工人模样的人出现在两岸。
+ 汪淼站起身来，但上校拉住了他，“教授，你不用管，他们会干得很好。”
+ 汪淼看着右岸的人利索地抽回连接纳米丝的普通钢丝，把已经绷紧的纳米丝在钢柱上固定好。
+ 然后，两岸的人同时拉动几根长钢索，使两根钢柱缓缓竖立起来。
+ 为了伪装，两根钢柱上都挂了一些航标和水位标志。
+ 他们干得很从容，甚至看上去有些懒洋洋的，像是在从事一件平淡乏味的工作。
+ 汪淼盯着钢柱之间的空间看，那里看上去一无所有，但死亡之琴已经就位。
+ “目标距琴四公里！”
+ 步话机里的声音说。
+ 斯坦顿放下步话机，又继续刚才的话题，“我第二次来巴拿马是1999年，参加过运河主权交接的仪式，很奇怪，当我们来到管理局大楼前时，看到星条旗已经降下了，据说是应美国政府要求提前一天降下的，以避免在众人面前降旗的尴尬场面出现……
+ 那时以为是在目睹一个历史性的时刻，现在想想，这些事情是多么的微不足道。”
+ “目标距琴三公里！”
+ “是啊，微不足道。”
+ 汪淼附和道。
+ 他根本没有听清斯坦顿在说什么，世界的其余部分对他来说已经不存在，他的全部注意力都集中到还没有在视野中出现的“审判日”号上。
+ 这时，早晨从太平洋东海岸升起的太阳正向太平洋西海岸落下，运河中金光粼粼，更近的下方，死亡之琴静静地立着，两根钢柱黑乎乎的，反射不出一点儿阳光，看上去比流过它们中间的运河更古老。
+ “目标距琴两公里！”
+ 斯坦顿似乎没有听到步话机中的声音，仍在滔滔不绝地说着：“自从得知外星人的舰队正在向地球飞来后，我就得了失忆症。
+ 很奇怪，过去的事都记不清了，我指的是自己经历过的那些战争，都记不清了，像刚才所说的，那些战争都那么微不足道。
+ 知道这件事以后，每个人在精神上都将成为新人，世界也将成为新的世界。
+ 我一直在想，假设在两千年前或更早的时间，人们知道有一支外星入侵舰队将在几千年后到达，那现在的人类文明是什么样子？
+ 教授，你能设想一下吗？”
+ “哦，不能……”
+ 汪淼心不在焉地敷衍着。
+ “目标距琴一点五公里！”
+ “教授，我想您将成为新世纪的盖拉德，我们期待着您的‘巴拿马运河’建成。
+ 不是吗？
+ 太空电梯其实就是一条运河，像巴拿马运河连接了两个大洋一样，太空电梯将地球和太空连接起来……”
+ 汪淼现在知道，上校唠叨着这些无意义的废话，其实是想帮他度过这一艰难时刻。
+ 他很感激，但这作用不大。
+ “目标距琴一公里！”
+ “审判日”号出现了，在从侧面山脊上照过来的落日光芒中，它是河面一片金波上的一个黑色剪影。
+ 这艘六万吨级的巨轮比汪淼想象的要大得多，它出现时，仿佛西边又突现了一座山峰，虽然汪淼知道运河可以通过七万吨级的船舶，但目睹这样的巨轮在如此窄小的河道中行驶，确实有一种奇怪的感觉。
+ 与它的巨大相比，下面的河流似乎已不存在，它像一座在陆地上移动的大山。
+ 适应了朝阳的光芒后，汪淼看到“审判日”号的船体是黑色的，上层建筑是雪白的，那面巨型天线不见了。
+ 巨轮发动机的轰鸣声已经可以听到，还有一阵轰轰的水声，那是它浑圆的船首推起的浪排冲击运河两岸发出的。
+ 随着“审判日”号与死亡之琴距离的缩短，汪淼的心跳骤然加速，呼吸也急促起来，他有一种立刻逃离的冲动，但一阵虚弱使他已无法控制自己的身体。
+ 他的心中突然涌起了一阵对史强的憎恨，这个王八蛋怎么会想出这样的主意？！
+ 正像那位联合国女官员所说，他是个魔鬼！
+ 但这种感觉转瞬即逝，他想到如果现在大史在身边，那自己的情况会好得多。
+ 斯坦顿上校曾申请大史同来，但常伟思没批准，那边现在更需要他。
+ 汪淼感觉到上校拍了拍他的手。
+ “教授，一切都会过去的。”
+ “审判日”号正在过去，它在通过死亡之琴。
+ 当它的舰首接触两根钢技之间似乎空无一物的平面时，汪淼头皮一紧，但什么都没有发生，巨轮庞大的船体从两根钢技间徐徐驶过。
+ 当船体通过一半时，汪淼甚至怀疑钢柱间的纳米丝是不是真的就不存在。
+ 但一个小小的迹象否定了他的怀疑，他注意到船体上层建筑最高处的一根细长的天线从下部折断了，天线滚落下来。
+ 很快，纳米丝存在的第二个迹象出现了，而这险些让汪淼彻底崩溃。
+ “审判日”号宽阔的甲板上很空荡，只是后甲板上有一个人在用水龙头冲洗缆桩，汪淼从高处看得很清楚，当船的这一部分从钢柱间移过的瞬间，那人的身体突然僵硬了，水龙头从他手里滑落；与此同时，连接龙头的胶皮水带也在不远处断成两截，水从那里白花花地喷了出来，那人直直地站了几秒钟就倒下了，他的身体在接触甲板的同时分成两截。
+ 那人的上半部分还在血泊中爬行，但只能用两只半条的手臂爬，因为他的手臂也被切断了一半。
+ 船尾通过了两根钢柱后，“审判日”号仍在以不变的速度向前行驶，一时看不出更多的异样。
+ 但汪淼听到发动机的声音发生了怪异的扭曲，接着被一阵杂乱的巨响所代替，那声音听起来像一台大马达的转子中被扔进去一个扳手，不，是很多个扳手一一他知道，这是发动机的转动部分被切割后发出的。
+ 在一声刺耳的破裂声后，“审判日”号的船尾一侧出现了一个破洞，这洞是被一个巨大的金属构件撞出的。
+ 那个飞出的构件旋即落人水中，激起了高高的水柱，在它一闪而过之际，汪淼看出那是船上发动机的一段曲轴。
+ 一股浓烟从破洞中涌出，在右岸直线航行了一段的“审判日”号就拖着这道烟尾开始转向，很快越过河面，撞到左岸上。
+ 汪淼看到，冲上岸坡的巨大船首在急剧变形的同时，将土坡像水那样冲开，激起汹涌的土浪。
+ 与此同时，“审判日”号开始散成四十多片薄片，每一片的厚度是半米，从这个距离看去是一片片薄板，上部的薄片前冲速度最快，与下面的逐级错开来，这艘巨轮像一叠被向前推开的扑克牌，这四十多个巨大的薄片滑动时相互磨擦，发出一阵尖利的怪音，像无数只巨指在划玻璃。
+ 在这令人无法忍受的声音消失后，“审判日”号已经化做一堆岸上的薄片，越靠上前冲得越远，像从一个绊倒的服务生手中向前倾倒的一摞盘子。
+ 那些薄片看上去像布片般柔软，很快变形，形成了一堆复杂的形状，让人无法想象它曾是一艘巨轮。
+ 大批士兵开始从山坡上冲向河岸，汪淼很惊奇附近究竟在什么时候什么地方隐蔽了这么多人。
+ 直升机群轰鸣着沿运河飞来，越过覆盖着一层色彩斑斓的油膜的河面，悬停在“审判日”号的残骸上空，抛撒大量的白色灭火剂和泡沫，很快控制了残骸中正在蔓延的火势，另外三架直升机迅速用缆索向残骸放下搜索人员。
+ 斯坦顿上校已经离开了，汪淼拿起了他放在草帽上的望远镜，克服着双手的颤抖观察被“飞刃”切割成四十多片的“审判日”号。
+ 这时，它有一大半已被灭火粉剂和泡沫所覆盖，但仍有一部分暴露着。
+ 汪淼看到了切割面，像镜面般光滑，毫不走形地映着天空火红的朝霞。
+ 他还看到了镜面上一块深红色的圆斑，不知是不是血。
+ 三天以后。
+ 审问者：你了解三体文明吗？
+ 叶文洁：不了解，我们得到的信息很有限，事实上，三体文明真实和详细的面貌，除了伊文斯等截留三体信息的降临派核心人员，谁都不清楚。
+ 审问者：那你为什么对其抱有那样的期望，认为它们能够改造和完善人类社会呢？
+ 叶文洁：如果他们能够跨越星际来到我们的世界，说明他们的科学已经发展到相当的高度，一个科学如此昌明的社会，必然拥有更高的文明和道德水准。
+ 审问者：你认为这个结论，本身科学吗？
+ 叶文洁：……
+ 审问者：让我冒昧推测一下：你的父亲深受你祖父科学救国思想的影响，而你又深受父亲的影响。
+ 叶文治（不为人察觉地叹息一声）：我不知道。
+ 审问者：现在告诉你，我们已经得到了被降临派截留的全部三体信息。
+ 叶文洁：哦…… 伊文斯怎么样了？
+ 审问者：在对”审判日”号采取行动的过程中，他死了。
+ （伊文斯被“飞刃”切割成三段。
+ 当时他身处“审判日”号的指挥中心，他最上面的那部分向前爬行了一米多，死的时候双眼盯着爬向的那个方向，正是在那个方向的一台电脑中，找到了被截留的三体信息。 ）
+ 叶文洁：信息很多吗？
+ 审问者：很多，约28G。
+ 叶文洁：这不可能，星际间超远程通讯的效率很低，怎么可能传送这么大的信息量？！
+ 审问者：开始时我们也这样想，但事情远远超过了所有人的想象，即使是最大胆、最离奇的想象。
+ 这样吧，请你阅读这些信息的一部分，你将看到自己美好幻想中的三体文明是什么样子。
+
+ At twenty-one, I was placed in a production team for reeducation in Yunnan.
+ That year Chen Qingyang was twenty-six and a doctor who happened to work where I did.
+ I was on the fourteenth production team down the mountain, and she was on the fifteenth team up the mountain.
+ One day she came down the mountain to see me, to discuss the fact that she was not damaged goods.
+ I didn't know her too well at the time, barely you might say.
+ The issue she wanted to discuss was this: Despite the fact that everyone believed she was damaged goods, she didn't think she was.
+ Because, to be damaged goods she had to have cheated on her husband, but she never did.
+ Although her husband had been in prison for a year, she hadn't slept with another man, nor had she ever done anything like that.
+ Therefore she simply couldn't understand why people kept calling her damaged goods.
+ If I'd wanted to comfort her, it wouldn't have been hard; I could prove logically that she was not damaged goods.
+ If Chen Qingyang were damaged goods, she would have had to have cheated on her husband, and therefore, there must be a man with whom she'd cheated.
+ Since at present no one could point out such a man, the proposition that Chen Qingyang had slept with another man was untenable.
+ Yet I insisted on saying that Chen Qingyang was damaged goods, and that this was beyond question.
+ Chen Qingyang came to me to ask me to prove she wasn't damaged goods because I had come to her for a shot.
+ The whole thing unfolded as follows: During the farm's busy season our team leader would not assign me to plow fields.
+ Instead he made me plant rice seedlings so that I could not stand straight most of the time.
+ Anyone familiar with me knew about the injury to my lower back, not to mention that I was a tall man, over six feet.
+ Having worked like this for a month, the pain in my lower back became so intolerable that I couldn't fall asleep without steroid injections.
+ The clinic at our team had a bunch of needles whose coating had completely peeled off, with tips all bent like fishhooks, which often pulled flesh from my lower back.
+ After a while my waist looked like it had been peppered by a shotgun, and the scars didn't fade for a long time.
+ Under the circumstances, I recalled that the doctor at the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, had graduated from Beijing Medical School.
+ Maybe she would be able to tell the difference between a hypodermic and a crotchet needle.
+ So I went to see her.
+ Not half an hour after my visit, she chased after me to my room, wanting me to prove that she wasn't damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said she didn't look down on damaged goods at all.
+ In fact, from what she observed, damaged goods seemed to have soft hearts, loved to help others and, most of all, hated to disappoint people.
+ Therefore, she even had a sneaking admiration for people like them.
+ However, the problem was not whether damaged goods were good or not good, but lay in the fact that she was not damaged goods at all, just as a cat was not a dog.
+ If a cat were called a dog, it wouldn't feel comfortable.
+ Now everyone called her damaged goods, which drove her to distraction and made her almost forget who she was.
+ As Chen Qingyang sat in my thatched shack and poured out her troubles, she had on a white smock that left her arms and legs exposed, the same outfit she had worn earlier in her clinic.
+ The only differences were that she had tied back her long, loose hair with a handkerchief and put on a pair of sandals.
+ As I looked at her, I began to wonder what was under her white smock, whether she had something on—or nothing at all, which would show what a beautiful woman Chen Qingyang was because she believed that it didn't really matter whether or not she wore underwear.
+ That kind of confidence needs to have been built up from childhood.
+ I told her that she was definitely damaged goods, and even enumerated several reasons to convince her.
+ I said that so-called damaged goods was just a denotation.
+ If people say you're damaged goods, then you must be damaged goods—there isn't much logic to it; if people say you slept with another man, you must have done it—there is not much logic to that either.
+ As for why they say you're damaged goods, in my opinion it's because of this: People generally agree that if a married woman hasn't cheated on her husband, her face must be leathery, and her breasts must sag.
+ Now your face is not dark but fair, your breasts are not hanging down but jutting out, so you must be damaged goods.
+ If you don't want to be damaged goods, you should try to darken your face and make your breasts sag so people won't accuse you of being damaged goods, which, of course, is a raw deal for you.
+ If you don't want a raw deal, sleep with another man so you can think of yourself as damaged goods, too.
+ Other people are not obliged to find out if you are damaged goods before calling you that, but you are obliged to stop them from calling you damaged goods.
+ As Chen Qingyang listened to my words, her face flushed and her eyes widened with anger.
+ She looked like she was about to slap me.
+ This woman was famous for her slapping; many men had felt her slaps.
+ However, suddenly disheartened, she said, "All right, let me be damaged goods.
+ As far as drooping or not drooping, dark or not dark, that's none of your business."
+ She also said that if I spent too much time pondering these matters, I would very likely get slapped.
+ Imagine the scene twenty years ago, when Chen Qingyang and I discussed the damaged goods issue.
+ Back then, my face was baked brown, my lips were dry and chapped, with bits of paper and tobacco stuck to them, my hair was matted like a coconut husk, the many holes in the ragged army greatcoat I wore were patched with bandages, as I sat, legs crossed, on the wooden bed, looking like a total hooligan.
+ You can imagine when Chen Qingyang heard such a person talking about whether her breasts drooped or not, how the palm of her hand itched.
+ She was a little oversensitive, but that was because many strong men went to see her who weren't sick at all.
+ What they wanted to see was damaged goods, not a doctor.
+ I was the only exception.
+ My lower back looked like it had been struck by Pigsy's rake.
+ Whether my back really hurt or not, those holes alone would justify my visit to the doctor.
+ Those holes also made her hope she might be able to convince me she was not damaged goods.
+ Even if there were just one person who believed she wasn't damaged goods, it would be very different than no one believing her.
+ But I intentionally disappointed her.
+ This is what I thought: if I wanted to prove she was not damaged goods and I could, then things would be too easy.
+ The truth was I couldn't prove anything, except things that didn't need proving.
+ In spring, our team leader claimed I was the one who had shot out the left eye of his dog, which was why the dog always looked at people with its head tilted, as if she were dancing ballet.
+ From then on, he always gave me a hard time.
+ Three things could have proved my innocence: 1. The team leader had no dog; 2. The dog was born blind in the left eye; 3. I'm a man with no hands who can't aim a gun.
+ Finally, none of the three requirements could be established: the team leader did have a brown dog; her left eye was indeed blinded by a shot; I could not only aim a gun but was also was an excellent marksman.
+ To make matters worse, I'd borrowed an air rifle from Luo Xiaosi not long before the incident, and using a bowl of mung beans as bullets, killed a couple of pounds of mice in an empty granary.
+ Of course, there were other crack shots on our production team, and one of them was Luo Xiaosi.
+ When he fired at the team leader's dog, I stood right beside him watching.
+ But I couldn't inform on other people, and my relationship with Luo Xiaosi was not bad.
+ Besides, if the team leader could have handled Luo Xiaosi, he wouldn't have accused me.
+ So I kept quiet.
+ To keep silent meant to acquiesce.
+ That was why in the spring I had to plant rice seedlings, stooped over in the field like a broken electricity pole; in the autumn I had to herd cattle, so I couldn't get a hot meal.
+ Of course, I could not take this lying down.
+ One day as I walked on the mountain, the team leader's dog came into view.
+ I happened to have Luo Xiaosi's air rifle with me, so I fired a bullet and blinded her right eye.
+ With neither left eye nor right eye, the dog couldn't get back to the team leader's house—God knows where she went.
+ I remember in those days, besides herding cattle on the mountain and lying in bed, I didn't have anything to do and nothing seemed to matter.
+ But Chen Qingyang came down the mountain again to see me.
+ There was another rumor in the air that she was having an affair with me and this time she wanted me to prove our innocence.
+ I told her that we would have to prove two things first before our innocence could be established: 1. Chen Qingyang was a virgin; 2. Castrated at birth, I was unable to have sex.
+ These two things would be hard to prove, so we couldn't prove our innocence.
+ I preferred to prove our guilt.
+ On hearing my words, Chen Qingyang's face first turned pale and then blushed all over.
+ Finally she stood up and left without saying a word.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that I had always been a scoundrel.
+ The first time she wanted me to prove her innocence, I looked up at the ceiling and began to talk nonsense; the next time she wanted me to prove our innocence, I earnestly suggested having intercourse with her.
+ So she decided she was going to slap me sooner or later.
+ If I had guessed her plan at the time, the things that happened later might never have happened.
+ On my twenty-first birthday, I was herding buffalo at the riverside.
+ In the afternoon I fell asleep on the grass.
+ I remembered covering myself with a few banana leaves before I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up I found nothing on my body. (Perhaps the buffalo had eaten the leaves.)
+ The sunshine in the subtropical dry season had burned my entire body red, leaving me in an agony of burning and itching.
+ My little Buddha pointed to the sky like an arrow, bigger than ever.
+ That was how I spent my birthday.
+ When I woke up, the sun glared down on me from a frighteningly blue sky.
+ A layer of fine dust, like a coating of talcum powder, covered my whole body.
+ I'd experienced numerous erections in my life, but none as vigorous and magnificent as that time.
+ Perhaps it was because of the location, so isolated from the villages that not even a soul could be seen.
+ I got up to check on my buffalo, only to find them all crouching at the far fork of the rivers, chewing grass quietly.
+ It was a surpassingly still moment, and the white wind was gently blowing across the field.
+ On the bank, several pairs of bulls from the mountain village were fighting each other.
+ Their eyes had turned red, and saliva drooled from the corner of their mouths.
+ This sort of bull had tightly packed balls and protruding penises.
+ Our bulls were not like that.
+ They would lie on the ground and stay put no matter how hard the other bulls tried to provoke them.
+ To prevent our bulls from hurting each other and slowing down the spring plowing, we castrated all of them.
+ I was present every time they castrated the bulls.
+ Ordinary bulls could just be cut with a knife.
+ But for extremely wild ones, you have to employ the art of hammer-smashing, which is to cut open their scrotums, take out the balls, and then use a wooden hammer to pulverize them.
+ From then on these altered bulls knew nothing but grazing and working.
+ No need to tie them down if you wanted to kill them.
+ Our team leader, the one who always wielded the hammer, had no doubts that surgery of this kind would also work on humans.
+ He would shout at us all the time: You young bulls!
+ You need a good hammering to make you behave.
+ In his way of thinking, this red, stiff, foot-long thing on my body was the incarnation of evil.
+ Of course, I had a different opinion.
+ To me, the thing was extremely important, as important as my existence itself.
+ The darkness began to settle in, and a cloud drifted idly across the sky.
+ The lower half of the cloud was immersed in darkness and the upper half still floated in sunshine.
+ That day I was twentyone, and in the golden age of my life.
+ I had so many desires; I wanted to love, to eat, and to be turned in a flash into the halfbright and half-dark cloud in the sky.
+ Only much later did I realize that life is a slow process of being hammered.
+ People grow old day after day, their desire disappears little by little, and finally they become like those hammered bulls.
+ However, that idea never crossed my mind on my twenty-first birthday.
+ I thought I would always be lively and strong, and that nothing could beat me.
+ I had invited Chen Qingyang over to eat fish with me that night, so I was supposed to catch fish in the afternoon.
+ But not until five o'clock did I remember I needed to go to where the fish were supposed to have been trapped to take a look.
+ Before I reached the small fork of the rivers, two Jingpo boys ran up, hurling mud at one another all the way.
+ Some landed on me.
+ They stopped fighting only after I picked them up by their ears.
+ I shouted at them, "You pricks, where're the fish?"
+ The older one said, "It was all that prick Le Long's fault!
+ He sat on the dam all the time, so the dam fucking collapsed."
+ Le Long roared back, "Wang Er, the fucking dam you built wasn't strong enough!"
+ I said, "That's bullshit!
+ I built the dam with sod.
+ What prick has the nerve to say it wasn't strong enough?"
+ I went down to see for myself.
+ Whether Le Long's fault or mine, the dam was gone anyway.
+ The water we bailed out all flowed back, any hope of catching fish went down the drain, and the whole day went to waste.
+ Of course, I wouldn't admit it was my fault.
+ Instead I yelled at Le Long.
+ Le Du (the other boy) also chimed in.
+ Le Long began to get angry.
+ He jumped up a couple of feet and roared, "Wang Er!
+ Le Du!
+ You pricks!
+ You are ganging up on me!
+ I'm going to tell my father.
+ He'll shoot the two of you with his bronze-barreled shotgun!"
+ After saying this, the little bastard tried to leap onto the bank to escape.
+ I caught his ankle and pulled him back.
+ "You want to run off and leave us to herd your buffalo?
+ You're fucking dreaming!"
+ The little bastard wailed wa-wa and tried to bite me.
+ But I grabbed him, pinned him to the ground, and held him hard.
+ He frothed at the mouth, cursing me in a mix of Mandarin, Jingpo, and Thai.
+ I talked back in standard Beijing dialect.
+ All of a sudden, he stopped cursing, eyeing the lower part of my body with envy.
+ I looked down and found my little Buddha standing up again.
+ I heard Le Long click his tongue admiringly, "Wow!
+ Want to fuck Le Du's sister?"
+ I immediately dropped him to put on my pants.
+ When I lit the gas lamp at the pump house, Chen Qingyang would often arrive unexpectedly and complain that life was meaningless.
+ She also said that she believed she was innocent in every respect.
+ I said that the way she dared claim innocence was itself the biggest sin.
+ In my opinion, craving good food and aversion to hard work, together with lust for beauty and sex, make up a human being's basic nature.
+ If you were a hard worker who lived a frugal and chaste life, you would commit the sin of hypocrisy, which was more disgusting than greed, sensuality, or laziness.
+ Words like this seemed to please her, although she never agreed with what I said out loud.
+ However, when I lit the gas lamp that night, she didn't show up for a long time.
+ It was not until nine that she appeared at my door and called my name, "Wang Er, you stinker!
+ Come out!"
+ I went out to see what was going on.
+ Dressed all in white, she looked especially smart, although her expression seemed tense.
+ She said, You invited me over to eat fish and have a heart-to-heart, but where is the fish?
+ I had to admit that the fish were still in the river.
+ All right, she said, at least we can still have a heart-to-heart.
+ Then let's talk.
+ I said, How about we go inside first?
+ She said that's fine, too.
+ So she went in and found herself a place to sit.
+ She looked angry.
+ I had planned to seduce Chen Qingyang on my twenty-first birthday, because she was my friend; and she had a full bosom, a slender waist, and shapely buttocks; besides, her neck was long and graceful and her face was pretty, too.
+ I wanted to have sex with her and thought she shouldn't refuse.
+ Because if she'd needed my body to practice vivisection, I would have lent it to her without giving it a second thought; likewise, if I needed to use her body for pleasure, it shouldn't be a problem either.
+ But she was a woman, and women in general were more or less small-minded.
+ For that reason, I needed to expand her mind, so I began to explain what "brotherhood" was.
+ In my opinion, brotherhood was the kind of great friendship that only existed among the outlaws of the forest.
+ Take the heroes in The Legend of the Water Margins for example.
+ Those guys would kill and set fires as soon as eat.
+ But as long as they heard the great name of Timely Rain, they would fall to their knees and kowtow.
+ Like them, I believed in nothing but brotherhood.
+ If you were my friend, even if you committed a crime beyond Heaven's forgiveness, I would still stand by you.
+ That night, I offered my great friendship to Chen Qingyang and she was immediately moved to tears.
+ She accepted my friendship right away, and, what was more, even expressed her wish to reward me with a greater friendship, saying that she would never betray me even if I turned out to be a low-down, shifty little scoundrel.
+ Relieved by her words, naturally I told her what was really on my mind: I'm twenty-one, but I've never experienced what happens between a man and a woman.
+ I really can't resign myself to that.
+ She stared at me blankly after hearing my words—maybe she was not prepared for this.
+ I kept persuading her, which didn't seem to work, so I put my hand on her shoulder and felt the tension in her muscles.
+ The woman could change her mind any minute and slap me—if that occurred, it would only prove that women didn't understand what great friendship meant.
+ But to my surprise, she didn't slap me.
+ Instead she snorted and then started laughing.
+ How stupid I am!
+ To be tricked so easily!
+ What trick?
+ What are you talking about?
+ I played dumb.
+ She said, I didn't say anything.
+ I asked her will you do it or not?
+ She said "Pah!" and she blushed.
+ It looked like she was a little shy, so I decided to take the initiative and began to get fresh with her.
+ She tried to push me away a few times, and then said, No, not here.
+ Let's go up to the mountain.
+ So I followed her all the way up to the mountain.
+ Later on, Chen Qingyang told me that she had never been able to figure out whether my great friendship was true or just a lie that I had made up then to trick her.
+ But she said that those words enchanted her like a spell, and that even if she lost everything because of it she'd have no regrets.
+ Actually, the great friendship was neither true nor false, like everything else in the world.
+ It was true if you believed it, and false if you didn't; my words were also neither true nor false, but I was prepared to stand by my words anytime and wouldn't back off even if the sky collapsed and the earth cracked open.
+ Because of this attitude of mine, no one really believed me, which explained why I made no more than a couple of friends, including Chen Qingyang, even though I took it on as a lifelong cause.
+ That night, halfway up the mountain, Chen Qingyang told me that she needed to go back to her place to get something, telling me to wait for her on the other side of the mountain.
+ I suspected that she might want to stand me up, but I didn't say anything.
+ I went straight to the other side of the mountain and smoked.
+ After a while, she arrived.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the first time I went to her for a shot, she was dozing at her desk.
+ In Yunnan everyone had plenty of time to nap, so they always seemed half asleep and half awake.
+ When I walked into her clinic, the room dimmed for a moment because it was a thatched mud hut where most of the sunshine came in through the door.
+ She awakened right then, raised her head, and asked what I was doing there.
+ I said my lower back hurt and she told me to lie down so that she could take a look at it.
+ I threw myself headlong onto the bamboo bed and nearly crushed it—my lower back hurt so much that I simply could not bend.
+ If it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have gone to see her.
+ Chen Qingyang said my mouth had lines around it even when I was very young, and dark circles always showed under my eyes.
+ I was a tall man of few words in worn-out clothes.
+ She gave me a shot and I left.
+ Maybe I thanked her, or maybe I didn't.
+ When she had the idea I could prove she wasn't damaged goods, only half a minute passed.
+ She ran out and found me taking a shortcut to the fourteenth team.
+ I strode down the slope, leaping over the ditches and mounds whenever there was one, descending rapidly along the mountain slope.
+ It was a morning in the dry season, and the wind blew up from the foot of the mountain, so I couldn't have heard anything even if she'd called me, not to mention that I never looked back anyway.
+ So that was the way I left.
+ Chen Qingyang said she had wanted to go after me then, but felt it would be hard to catch up, and besides I might not be able to prove her innocence.
+ So she walked back to the clinic.
+ She changed her mind later because she realized since everyone accused her of being damaged goods, they were all her enemies.
+ It was possible that I was not her enemy.
+ She didn't want to risk turning me into an enemy also.
+ I smoked on the back slope of the mountain that night.
+ Even though it was evening I could see into the distance, because the moonlight was bright, and the air was clear in that region.
+ Every now and then, I could hear dogs barking in the distance.
+ I spotted Chen Qingyang as soon as she came out of the fifteenth team—I doubted if I could see that far during the day.
+ But it felt different from the day.
+ Perhaps because there was no one around.
+ I couldn't tell whether there were people around or not in the evening, because it was silver-gray everywhere.
+ If you traveled with a torch, it meant you wanted the whole world to know where you were; if you didn't, it would be like wearing a cape of invisibility—people who knew you were there could see you, and people who didn't couldn't.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang slowly coming toward me, my heart began to pound, and it occurred to me without any instruction that we should have a little foreplay before getting down to business.
+ Chen Qingyang reacted pretty coldly to this.
+ Her lips were icy, and she didn't respond to my caresses at all.
+ By the time I tried to unbutton her dress, all thumbs, she pushed me away and started taking off her clothes by herself, piece by piece.
+ She folded her clothes neatly and put them aside.
+ Then she lay down stiffly on the grass.
+ Her naked body was extremely beautiful.
+ I took off my clothes in a hurry and crawled over to her.
+ Again she pushed me off, handing me something, saying, "Know how to use this?
+ Want me to teach you?"
+ It was a condom.
+ I was at the height of my excitement and the tone of her voice upset me a little.
+ But I put on the condom anyway and crawled on top of her.
+ Heart racing and out of breath, I fumbled for quite a while and couldn't get it right.
+ Again I heard her cold voice, "Hey, do you know what you're doing?"
+ I said, Of course I do.
+ Could you please move a little closer?
+ I want to study your anatomy in the light.
+ Then with a sound as loud as a thunderclap at my ear, I realized she'd given me a big slap.
+ I jumped to my feet, grabbed my clothes, and ran.
+
+ 我二十一岁时，正在云南插队。
+ 陈清扬当时二十六岁，就在我插队的地方当医生。
+ 我在山下十四队，她在山上十五队。
+ 有一天她从山上下来，和我讨论她不是破鞋的问题。
+ 那时我还不大认识她，只能说有一点知道。
+ 她要讨论的事是这祥的：虽然所有的人都说她是一个破鞋，但她以为自己不是的。
+ 因为破鞋偷汉，而她没有偷过汉。
+ 虽然她丈夫已经住了一年监狱，但她没有偷过汉。
+ 在此之前也未偷过汉。
+ 所以她简直不明白，人们为什么要说她是破鞋。
+ 如果我要安慰她，并不困难。
+ 我可以从逻辑上证明她不是破鞋。
+ 如果陈清扬是破鞋，即陈清扬偷汉，则起码有一个某人为其所偷。
+ 如今不能指出某人，所以陈清扬偷汉不能成立。
+ 但是我偏说，陈清扬就是破鞋，而且这一点毋庸置疑。
+ 陈清扬找我证明她不是破鞋，起因是我找她打针。
+ 这事经过如下：农忙时队长不叫我犁田，而是叫我去插秧，这样我的腰就不能经常直立。
+ 认识我的人都知道，我的腰上有旧伤，而且我身高在一米九以上。
+ 如此插了一个月，我腰痛难忍，不打封闭就不能入睡。
+ 我们队医务室那一把针头镀层剥落，而且都有倒钩，经常把我腰上的肉钩下来。
+ 后来我的腰就像中了散弹枪，伤痕久久不褪。
+ 就在这种情况下，我想起十五队的队医陈清扬是北医大毕业的大夫，对针头和勾针大概还能分清，所以我去找她看病。
+ 看完病回来，不到半个小时，她就追到我屋里来，要我证明她不是破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她丝毫也不藐视破鞋。
+ 据她观察，破鞋都很善良，乐于助人，而且最不乐意让人失望。
+ 因此她对破鞋还有一点钦佩。
+ 问题不在于破鞋好不好，而在于她根本不是破鞋。
+ 就如一只猫不是一只狗一样。
+ 假如一只猫被人叫成一只狗，它也会感到很不自在。
+ 现在大家都管她叫破鞋，弄得她魂不守舍，几乎连自己是谁都不知道了。
+ 陈清扬在我的草房里时，裸臂赤腿穿一件白大褂，和她在山上那间医务室里装束一样。
+ 所不同的是披散的长发用个手绢束住，脚上也多了一双拖鞋。
+ 看了她的样子，我就开始捉摸：她那件白大褂底下是穿了点什么呢，还是什么都没穿。
+ 这一点可以说明陈清扬很漂亮，因为她觉得穿什么不穿什么无所谓。
+ 这是从小培养起来的自信心。
+ 我对她说，她确实是个破鞋。
+ 还举出一些理由来：所谓破鞋者，乃是一个指称，大家都说你是破鞋，你就是破鞋，没什么道理可讲。
+ 大家说你偷了汉，你就是偷了汉，这也没什么道理可讲。
+ 至于大家为什么要说你是破鞋，照我看是这样：大家都认为，结了婚的女人不偷汉，就该面色黝黑，乳房下垂。
+ 而你脸不黑而且白，乳房不下垂而且高耸，所以你是破鞋。
+ 假如你不想当破鞋，就要把脸弄黑，把乳房弄下垂，以后别人就不说你是破鞋。
+ 当然这样很吃亏，假如你不想吃亏，就该去偷个汉来。
+ 这样你自己也认为自己是个破鞋。
+ 别人没有义务先弄明白你是否偷汉再决定是否管你叫破鞋。
+ 你倒有义务叫别人无法叫你破鞋。
+ 陈清扬听了这话，脸色发红，怒目圆睁，几乎就要打我一耳光。
+ 这女人打人耳光出了名，好多人吃过她的耳光。
+ 但是她忽然泄了气，说：好吧，破鞋就破鞋吧。
+ 但是垂不垂黑不黑的，不是你的事。
+ 她还说，假如我在这些事上琢磨得太多，很可能会吃耳光。
+ 倒退到二十年前，想像我和陈清扬讨论破鞋问题时的情景。
+ 那时我面色焦黄，嘴唇干裂，上面沾了碎纸和烟丝，头发乱如败棕，身穿一件破军衣，上面好多破洞都是橡皮膏粘上的，跷着二郎腿，坐在木板床上，完全是一副流氓相。
+ 你可以想像陈清扬听到这么个人说起她的乳房下垂不下垂时，手心是何等的发痒。
+ 她有点神经质，都是因为有很多精壮的男人找她看病，其实却没有病。
+ 那些人其实不是去看大夫，而是去看破鞋。
+ 只有我例外。
+ 我的后腰上好像被猪八戒筑了两耙。
+ 不管腰疼真不真，光那些窟窿也能成为看医生的理由。
+ 这些窟窿使她产生一个希望，就是也许能向我证明，她不是破鞋。
+ 有一个人承认她不是破鞋，和没人承认大不一样。
+ 可是我偏让她失望。
+ 我是这么想的：假如我想证明她不是破鞋，就能证明她不是破鞋，那事情未免太容易了。
+ 实际上我什么都不能证明，除了那些不需证明的东西。
+ 春天里，队长说我打瞎了他家母狗的左眼，使它老是偏过头来看人，好像在跳芭蕾舞。
+ 从此后他总给我小鞋穿。
+ 我想证明我自己的清白无辜，只有以下三个途径：1、队长家不存在一只母狗；2、该母狗天生没有左眼；3、我是无手之人，不能持枪射击。
+ 结果是三条一条也不成立。
+ 队长家确有一棕色母狗，该母狗的左眼确是后天打瞎，而我不但能持枪射击，而且枪法极精。
+ 在此之前不久，我还借了罗小四的汽枪，用一碗绿豆做子弹，在空粮库里打下了二斤耗子。
+ 当然，这队里枪法好的人还有不少，其中包括罗小四。
+ 汽枪就是他的，而且他打瞎队长的母狗时，我就在一边看着。
+ 但是我不能揭发别人，罗小四和我也不错。
+ 何况队长要是能惹得起罗小四，也不会认准了是我。
+ 所以我保持沉默。
+ 沉默就是默认。
+ 所以春天我去插秧，撅在地里像一根半截电线杆，秋收后我又去放牛，吃不上热饭。
+ 当然，我也不肯无所作为。
+ 有一天在山上，我正好借了罗小四的汽枪，队长家的母狗正好跑到山上叫我看见，我就射出一颗子弹打瞎了它的右眼。
+ 该狗既无左眼，又无右眼，也就不能跑回去让队长看见——天知道它跑到哪儿去了。
+ 我记得那些日子里，除了上山放牛和在家里躺着，似乎什么也没做。
+ 我觉得什么都与我无关。
+ 可是陈清扬又从山上跑下来找我。
+ 原来又有了另一种传闻，说她在和我搞破鞋。
+ 她要我给出我们清白无辜的证明。
+ 我说，要证明我们无辜，只有证明以下两点：1、陈清扬是处女；2、我是天阉之人，没有性交能力。
+ 这两点都难以证明。
+ 所以我们不能证明自己无辜。
+ 我倒倾向于证明自己不无辜。
+ 陈清扬听了这些话，先是气得脸白，然后满面通红，最后一声不吭地站起来走了。
+ 陈清扬说，我始终是一个恶棍。
+ 她第一次要我证明她清白无辜时，我翻了一串白眼，然后开始胡说八道。
+ 第二次她要我证明我们俩无辜，我又一本正经地向她建议举行一次性交。
+ 所以她就决定，早晚要打我一个耳光。
+ 假如我知道她有这样的打算，也许后面的事情就不会发生。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，正在河边放牛。
+ 下午我躺在草地上睡着了。
+ 我睡去时，身上盖了几片芭蕉叶子，醒来时身上已经一无所有（叶子可能被牛吃了）。
+ 亚热带旱季的阳光把我晒得浑身赤红，痛痒难当，我的小和尚直翘翘地指向天空，尺寸空前。
+ 这就是我过生日时的情形。
+ 我醒来时觉得阳光耀眼，天蓝得吓人，身上落了一层细细的尘土，好像一层爽身粉。
+ 我一生经历的无数次勃起，都不及那一次雄浑有力，大概是因为在极荒僻的地方，四野无人。
+ 我爬起来看牛，发现它们都卧在远处的河岔里静静地嚼草。
+ 那时节万籁无声，田野上刮着白色的风。
+ 河岸上有几对寨子里的牛在斗架，斗得眼珠通红，口角流涎。
+ 这种牛阴囊紧缩，阳具挺直。
+ 我们的牛不干这种事。
+ 任凭别人上门挑衅，我们的牛依旧安卧不动。
+ 为了防止斗架伤身，影响春耕，我们把它们都阉了。
+ 每次阉牛我都在场。
+ 对于一般的公牛，只用刀割去即可。
+ 但是对于格外生性者，就须采取锤骟术，也就是割开阴囊，掏出睾九，一木锤砸个稀烂。
+ 从此后受术者只知道吃草干活，别的什么都不知道，连杀都不用捆。
+ 掌锤的队长毫不怀疑这种手术施之于人类也能得到同等的效力，每回他都对我们呐喊：你们这些生牛蛋子，就欠砸上一锤才能老实！
+ 按他的逻辑，我身上这个通红通红，直不愣登，长约一尺的东西就是罪恶的化身。
+ 当然，我对此有不同的意见。
+ 在我看来，这东西无比重要，就如我之存在本身。
+ 天色微微向晚，天上飘着懒洋洋的云彩。
+ 下半截沉在黑暗里，上半截仍浮在阳光中。
+ 那一天我二十一岁，在我一生的黄金时代， 我有好多奢望。
+ 我想爱，想吃，还想在一瞬间变成天上半明半暗的云。
+ 后来我才知道，生活就是个缓慢受锤的过程，人一天天老下去，奢望也一天天消失，最后变得像挨了锤的牛一样。
+ 可是我过二十一岁生日时没有预见到这一点。
+ 我觉得自己会永远生猛下去，什么也锤不了我。
+ 那天晚上我请陈清扬来吃鱼，所以应该在下午把鱼弄到手。
+ 到下午五点多钟我才想起到戽鱼的现场去看看。
+ 还没走进那条小河岔，两个景颇族孩子就从里面一路打出来，烂泥横飞，我身上也挨了好几块，直到我拎住他们的耳朵，他们才罢手。
+ 我喝问一声：“鸡巴，鱼呢？”
+ 那个年记大点的说：“都怪鸡巴勒农！
+ 他老坐在坝上，把坝坐鸡巴倒了！”
+ 勒农直着嗓子吼：“王二！
+ 坝打得不鸡巴牢！”
+ 我说：“放屁！
+ 老子砍草皮打的坝，哪个鸡巴敢说不牢？”
+ 到里面一看，不管是因为勒农坐的也好，还是因为我的坝没打好也罢，反正坝是倒了，戽出来的水又流回去，鱼全泡了汤，一整天的劳动全都白费。
+ 我当然不能承认是我的错，就痛骂勒农。
+ 勒都（就是那另一个孩子）也附合我。
+ 勒农上了火，一跳三尺高，嘴里吼道：“王二！
+ 勒都！
+ 鸡巴！
+ 你们姐夫舅子合伙搞我！
+ 我去告诉我家爹，拿铜炮枪打你们！”
+ 说完这小免崽子就往河岸上窜，想一走了之。
+ 我一把薅住他脚脖子，把他揪下来。
+ “你走了我们给你赶牛哇？
+ 做你娘的美梦！”
+ 这小子哇哇叫着要咬我，被我劈开手按在地上。
+ 他口吐白沫，杂着汉话、景颇话、傣话骂我，我用正庄京片子回骂。
+ 忽然间他不骂了，往我下体看去，脸上露出无限羡慕之情。
+ 我低头一看，我的小和尚又直立起来了。
+ 只听勒农啧啧赞美道： “哇！
+ 想日勒都家姐啊！”
+ 我赶紧扔下他去穿裤子。
+ 晚上我在水泵房点起汽灯，陈清扬就会忽然到来，谈起她觉得活着很没意思，还说到她在每件事上都是清白无辜。
+ 我说她竟敢觉得自己清白无辜，这本身就是最大的罪孽。
+ 照我的看法，每个人的本性都是好吃懒作，好色贪淫，假如你克勤克俭，守身如玉，这就犯了矫饰之罪，比好吃懒作、好色贪淫更可恶。
+ 这些话她好像很听得进去，但是从不附合。
+ 那天晚上我在河边上点起汽灯，陈清扬却迟迟不至，直到九点钟以后，她才到门前来喊我：“王二，混蛋！
+ 你出来！”
+ 我出去一口看，她穿了一身白，打扮得格外整齐，但是表情不大轻松。
+ 她说道：你请我来吃鱼，做倾心之谈，鱼在哪里？
+ 我只好说，鱼还在河里。
+ 她说好吧，还剩下一个倾心之谈。
+ 就在这儿谈罢。
+ 我说进屋去谈，她说那也无妨，就进屋来坐着，看样子火气甚盛。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，打算在晚上引诱陈清扬，因为陈清扬是我的朋友，而且胸部很丰满，腰很细，屁股浑圆。
+ 除此之外，她的脖子端正修长，脸也很漂亮。
+ 我想和她性交，而且认为她不应该不同意。
+ 假如她想借我的身体练开膛，我准让她开。
+ 所以我借她身体一用也没什么不可以。
+ 唯一的问题是她是个女人，女人家总有点小器。
+ 为此我要启发她，所以我开始阐明什么叫作“义气”。
+ 在我看来，义气就是江湖好汉中那种伟大友谊。
+ 水浒中的豪杰们，杀人放火的事是家常便饭，可一听说及时雨的大名，立即倒身便拜。
+ 我也像那些草莽英雄，什么都不信，唯一不能违背的就是义气。
+ 只要你是我的朋友，哪怕你十恶不赦，为天地所不容，我也要站到你身边。
+ 那天晚上我把我的伟大友谊奉献给陈清扬，她大为感动，当即表示道：这友谊她接受了。
+ 不但如此，她还说要以更伟大的友谊还报我，哪怕我是个卑鄙小人也不背叛。
+ 我听她如此说，大为放心，就把底下的话也说了出来：我已经二十一岁了，男女间的事情还没体验过，真是不甘心。
+ 她听了以后就开始发愣，大概是没有思想准备。
+ 说了半天她毫无反应。
+ 我把手放到她的肩膀上去，感觉她的肌肉绷得很紧。
+ 这娘们随时可能翻了脸给我一耳光，假定如此，就证明女人不懂什么是交情。
+ 可是她没有。
+ 忽然间她哼了一声，就笑起来。
+ 还说：我真笨！
+ 这么容易就着了你的道儿！
+ 我说：什么道儿？
+ 你说什么？
+ 她说：我什么也没有说。
+ 我问她我刚才说的事儿你答应不答应？
+ 她说呸，而且满面通红。
+ 我看她有点不好意思，就采取主动，动手动脚。
+ 她搡了我几把，后来说，不在这儿，咱们到山上去。
+ 我就和她一块到山上去了。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她始终没搞明白我那个伟大友谊是真的呢，还是临时编出来骗她。
+ 但是她又说，那些话就像咒语一样让她着迷，哪怕为此丧失一切，也不懊侮。
+ 其实伟大友谊不真也不假，就如世上一切东西一样，你信它是真，它就真下去。
+ 你疑它是假，它就是假的。
+ 我的话也半真不假。
+ 但是我随时准备兑现我的话，哪怕天崩地裂也不退却。
+ 就因为这种态度，别人都不相信我。
+ 我虽然把交朋友当成终身的事业，所交到的朋友不过陈清扬等二三人而已。
+ 那天晚上我们到山上去，走到半路她说要回家一趟，要我到后山上等她。
+ 我有点怀疑她要晾我，但是我没说出来，径直走到后山上去抽烟。
+ 等了一些时间，她来了。
+ 陈清扬说，我第一次去找她打针时，她正在伏案打瞌睡。
+ 在云南每个人都有很多时间打瞌睡，所以总是半睡半醒。
+ 我走进去时，屋子里暗了一下，因为是草顶土坯房，大多数光从门口进来。
+ 她就在那一刻醒来，抬头问我干什么。
+ 我说腰疼，她说躺下让我看看。
+ 我就一头倒下去，扑到竹板床上，几乎把床砸塌。
+ 我的腰痛得厉害，完全不能打弯。
+ 要不是这样，我也不会来找她。
+ 陈清扬说，我很年轻时就饿纹入嘴，眼睛下面乌黑。
+ 我的身材很高，衣服很破，而且不爱说话。
+ 她给我打过针，我就走了，好像说了一声谢了，又好像没说。
+ 等到她想起可以让我证明她不是破鞋时，已经过了半分钟。
+ 她追了出来，看见我正取近路走回十四队。
+ 我从土坡上走下去，逢沟跳沟，逢坎跃坎，顺着山势下得飞快。
+ 那时正逢旱季的上午，风从山下吹来，喊我也听不见。
+ 而且我从来也不回头。
+ 我就这样走掉了。
+ 陈清扬说，当时她想去追我，可是觉得很难追上。
+ 而且我也不一定能够证明她不是破鞋。
+ 所以她走回医务室去。
+ 后来她又改变了主意去找我，是因为所有的人都说她是破鞋，因此所有的人都是敌人。
+ 而我可能不是敌人。
+ 她不愿错过了机会，让我也变成敌人。
+ 那天晚上我在后山上抽烟。
+ 虽然在夜里，我能看见很远的地方。
+ 因为月光很明亮，当地的空气又很干净。
+ 我还能听见远处的狗叫声。
+ 陈清扬一出十五队我就看见了，白天未必能看这么远。
+ 虽然如此，还是和白天不一样。
+ 也许是因为到处都没人。
+ 我也说不准夜里这片山上有人没人，因为到处是银灰色的一片。
+ 假如有人打着火把行路，那就是说，希望全世界的人都知道他在那里。
+ 假如你不打火把，就如穿上了隐身衣，知道你在那里的人能看见，不知道的人不能看见。
+ 我看见陈清扬慢慢走近，怦然心动，无师自通地想到，做那事之前应该亲热一番。
+ 陈清扬对此的反应是冷冰冰的。
+ 她的嘴唇冷冰冰，对爱抚也毫无反应。
+ 等到我毛手毛脚给她解扣子时，她把我推开，自己把衣服一件件脱下来，叠好放在一边，自己直挺挺躺在草地上。
+ 陈清扬的裸体美极了。
+ 我赶紧脱了衣服爬过去，她又一把把我推开，递给我一个东西说：“会用吗？
+ 要不要我教你？”
+ 那是一个避孕套。
+ 我正在兴头上，对她这种口气只微感不快。
+ 套上之后又爬到她身上去，心慌气躁地好一阵乱弄，也没弄对。
+ 忽然她冷冰冰他说： “喂！
+ 你知道自己在干什么吗？”
+ 我说当然知道。
+ 能不能劳你大驾躺过来一点？
+ 我要就着亮儿研究一下你的结构。
+ 只听啪的一声巨响，好似一声耳边雷，她给我一个大耳光。
+ 我跳起来，拿了自己的衣服，拔腿就走。
+
+ Finally we were taken into custody and forced to write confessions for a long time.
+ At first I wrote the following: Chen Qingyang and I have an indecent relationship.
+ That was all.
+ But it came down from above that what I wrote was too simple, and they asked me to start over.
+ Later on I wrote that Chen Qingyang and I had an indecent relationship, and that I had screwed her many times, and she liked being screwed by me.
+ This time the opinions from above said it needed more detail.
+ So I added detail: The fortieth time that we made illegal love, the location was the thatched hut I secretly built on the mountain.
+ It was either the fifteenth or the sixteenth by the lunar calendar—whatever the date, the moon shone brightly.
+ Chen Qingyang sat on the bamboo bed, her body gleaming in the moonlight that shone through the door.
+ I stood on the ground, and she locked her legs around my waist.
+ We chatted for a while.
+ I told her that her breasts were not just full, but also shapely; her navel not only round, but shallow too.
+ All of this was very good.
+ She said, Really?
+ I had no idea.
+ After a while the moonlight moved away.
+ I lit a cigarette, but she took it from me after I finished half of it, taking several drags.
+ She pinched my nose, for the locals believed that a virgin's nose would be very hard, and a man dying of too much sex would have a soft nose.
+ On some of these occasions she lazed on the bed, leaning against the bamboo wall; other times she held me like a koala bear, blowing warm breath on my face.
+ At last the moonlight shone through the window opposite the door and we were separate by then.
+ However, I wrote these confessions not for the military deputy — he was no longer our military deputy, having been discharged from the army and gone back home.
+ It didn't matter whether he was our military deputy or not, we had to write confessions about our errors anyway.
+ Years later, I had a good relationship with the director of personnel at our school.
+ He told me that the great thing about the job was that you could read other people's confessions, which I believe included mine.
+ I thought of all the confessions mine would be the richest and most vivid.
+ That was because I wrote it in a hotel, with nothing else to do, like a professional writer.
+ In the evening I made my escape.
+ That morning, I asked the mess officer for a day off because I needed to go to Jingkan to buy toothpaste.
+ I worked under the mess officer, who also had the task of watching me.
+ He was supposed to keep an eye on me every minute, but I disappeared as soon as it got dark.
+ In the morning I brought him a lot of loquats, all very good.
+ The loquats growing on the plain aren't edible, because of the ant colonies in them.
+ Only the ones on the mountain don't have ants.
+ The mess officer said since we got along, and the military deputy wasn't around, he'd allow me to go buy toothpaste.
+ But he also said the military deputy might return any minute.
+ If I were not here by the time the military deputy returned, he couldn't cover for me.
+ I left my team and climbed to the fifteenth team's mountainside, holding a small piece of mirror to reflect light on Chen Qingyang's back window.
+ After a while, she came up the mountain and told me that since people had been keeping a close eye on her for the past two days, she hadn't been able to get out.
+ And right now she was having her period.
+ She said that shouldn't be a problem and we could still do it.
+ I said that wasn't going to work.
+ When we said goodbye to each other, she insisted on giving me two hundred yuan.
+ I refused at first, but then took it after a while.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that nobody had been keeping a close eye on her those two days, and she hadn't been having her period when she saw me.
+ In fact, people in the fifteenth team didn't pay attention to her at all.
+ People there were used to accusing the innocent of being damaged goods, but as for real damaged goods, they just let them do whatever they wanted.
+ The reason that she didn't come up the mountain and kept me waiting for nothing was because she began to feel tired of it.
+ She couldn't do it unless she was in the right mood; having sex wouldn't necessarily put her in a good mood.
+ Of course, after her deception she felt guilty.
+ That was why she gave me two hundred yuan.
+ I thought since she might have trouble spending the two hundred yuan, I wouldn't mind helping her.
+ So I brought the money with me to Jingkan and bought a double-barreled shotgun for myself.
+ Later when I wrote my confessions, the double-barreled shotgun was also an issue.
+ They suspected that I might want to kill someone with it.
+ Actually, if I'd wanted to kill someone, it wouldn't have made any difference whether I used a two hundred-yuan double-barreled shotgun or a forty-yuan bronze-barreled gun.
+ A bronze-barreled gun, normally used to shoot wild ducks by the water, was not practical at all in the mountains; besides, it was as heavy as a corpse.
+ When I got to the street in Jingkan that day, it was already afternoon, and since it wasn't a market day, there was just a deserted dirt road and a few deserted state-run stores.
+ Inside one store a saleswoman dozed while a swarm of flies circled around.
+ The shelf display read "aloomenum wokk" and "aloomenum kittel," and underneath were aluminum woks and aluminum kettles.
+ I chatted awhile with the saleswoman, who was from Shandong Province, and she let me go in their storeroom to look around myself.
+ In there I saw a shotgun made in Shanghai.
+ So I bought it even though it had sat there for nearly two years.
+ At dusk I tested it on the riverbank and killed a heron.
+ The military deputy happened to return from the farm headquarters right then and was shocked to see my shotgun.
+ He went on about how it was not right that everyone could have a gun, and that someone had to talk to the team leader and confiscate Wang Er's gun.
+ When I heard this, I felt the urge to fire at his belly.
+ If I had, it would probably have killed him.
+ Then most likely I wouldn't be around today.
+ On the way back from Jingkan that afternoon, I waded through the paddy field and stood among the rice seedlings for a while.
+ I saw leeches swimming out like fish and sticking to my legs.
+ I was naked to the waist then, because I had used my clothes to wrap brown sugar buns (the only kind of food sold in the town's restaurant), and with the buns in my hands and a gun slung over my back, I felt really loaded down.
+ So I ignored the leeches.
+ Only when I got up the bank did I start pulling them off one by one and burning them.
+ They turned soft and blistery in the fire.
+ All of a sudden, I felt very frustrated and tired, nothing like a twenty-one-year-old.
+ I realized I would get old quickly if things continued like this.
+ After a while, I ran into Le Du, who told me that they had caught all the fish at the fork of the rivers.
+ My share had been dried into stockfish and stored at his sister's place.
+ His sister wanted me to come get it.
+ I knew his sister very well; she was a dark, pretty girl.
+ I told him that I couldn't get there for a while.
+ I gave him all my brown sugar buns and asked him to take a message to the fifteenth team, telling Chen Qingyang that I'd bought a gun with her money.
+ Le Du went to the fifteenth team and told Chen Qingyang.
+ She was afraid that I might shoot the military deputy.
+ This concern was not completely unreasonable.
+ By the evening I really began to consider taking a shot at the military deputy.
+ At dusk, when I shot the heron by the river, I ran into the military deputy.
+ As usual, I stayed mute and he kept nagging at me.
+ I got really angry.
+ For more than two weeks, he had been holding forth on the same subject over and over, that I was a bad person and needed thought reform.
+ People shouldn't let up on me for a minute.
+ I'd been hearing that sort of thing all my life but never got angrier than that night.
+ After a while, he said he had wonderful good news to announce later that day, but wouldn't reveal what it was except that "the rotten whore" Chen Qingyang and I were going to have a really hard time from now on.
+ Infuriated by what he said, I was tempted to choke him right on the spot, but my curiosity about the great news got the better of me.
+ However, he went on talking nonsense to keep me guessing.
+ Not until we reached our team did he say, Come to the meeting tonight.
+ I'll announce the news at the meeting.
+ But I didn't go to the meeting that evening.
+ I packed my stuff, ready to flee back to the mountains.
+ I believed that some major event must have happened to give the military deputy a way to take care of Chen Qingyang and me.
+ As for what the event was, I couldn't figure it out—in those days anything could happen.
+ I even imagined that the emperor had been restored and the military deputy had become the local chief.
+ He could castrate me with a hammer and then take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ By the time I finished my packing and was about to leave, I realized that things were not that bad.
+ People were shouting slogans at the meeting that I could hear even from my room.
+ It turned out that our state-run farm had been changed into an Army Production Corps, and the military deputy might be promoted to Regimental Commander.
+ At any rate, he couldn't castrate me, or take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ After a few minutes' hesitation, I slung the pack on my back.
+ Then I hacked up everything in the place with a machete, found a piece of charcoal, and wrote "xxx (the military deputy's name), fuck your mother!" on the wall.
+ After that I left and headed up the mountain.
+ That was how I ran away from the fourteenth team.
+ I also included these things in my confessions.
+ To summarize, it went like this: The military deputy had a personal grudge against me, which was twofold.
+ Firstly, I told the relief delegation that I had been beaten unconscious, which made the military deputy lose face; secondly, he and I fought over a woman, which was why he was always trying to screw me.
+ So, when I learned he was about to become Regimental Commander, I felt that I couldn't take it anymore and fled into the mountains.
+ Even today I still believe that was the true reason for my escape.
+ But they said that the military deputy hadn't become Regimental Commander, so my explanation for running away wouldn't stand up.
+ So, they said my confessions were unconvincing.
+ A convincing confession would be that Chen Qingyang and I were having a love affair.
+ As the saying goes: For sex, a man would dare anything.
+ We would do anything for it — well, there's some truth to that.
+ But when I ran away from our team, I didn't plan to see Chen Qingyang, thinking that I could just leave without telling anyone.
+ When I reached the edge of the mountains I realized that after all Chen Qingyang was a friend of mine and I should go back to say goodbye to her.
+ I hadn't expected Chen Qingyang to say she wanted to run away with me.
+ She said if she didn't join me in such an adventure, we would throw our great friendship to the dogs.
+ So she packed some stuff in a hurry and took off with me.
+ Without her and what she packed, I would have gotten sick and died on the mountain for sure.
+ The supplies she packed included lots of malaria medicine, and plenty of jumbo-sized condoms.
+ After Chen Qingyang and I escaped to the mountains, the farm panicked for a while.
+ They believed we had run off to Burma.
+ It wouldn't have been good for any of us if that news had gotten out.
+ So they didn't report us, only issued a wanted poster on the farm.
+ Both Chen Qingyang and I were easily recognized, and, besides, the double-barreled shotgun we brought along was hard to hide.
+ But for some reason nobody found us until half a year later when each of us returned to our own teams.
+ And then after another month, the public security section summoned us to write our confessions.
+ It was our bad luck to be the victims of a new political campaign and have someone inform on us.
+ The office of public security was located at the entrance to our farm's headquarters.
+ It was a lonely mud-brick house.
+ You could see it from far off, because it was whitewashed and set on a hill.
+ When people went to the market at headquarters, they could see it from a distance.
+ A patch of sisal hemp, a perennial dark green in color, surrounded the house, but the clay underneath was red.
+ I confessed my errors there, making a clean breast of everything.
+ We went up the mountains, and first we planted some corn on the back slope of the fifteenth team.
+ The soil there was poor, and half the corn didn't grow.
+ And then we left, sleeping in the daytime and walking at night, looking for other places to settle.
+ Finally we remembered an abandoned mill on the mountain, where there was a large, deserted area of fertile ground.
+ Since an escapee from the leper colony, whom people called Grandpa Liu, lived there, no one visited except Chen Qingyang, prompted by her sense of duty as a doctor.
+ We finally went there for shelter, living in the valley behind the mill.
+ Chen Qingyang treated Grandpa Liu's leprosy, and I tended the land for him.
+ After a while, I traveled to the market in Qingping and ran into some classmates.
+ They told me that the military deputy had been transferred someplace else and nobody remembered our affair anymore.
+ So we came back.
+ That was how the whole business went.
+ I remained in the public security section for a long time.
+ For a while the atmosphere was not bad.
+ They said my problem was pretty clear and all I needed to do was to write confessions.
+ But after a while the situation turned more serious; they suspected that we had gone abroad, colluded with the enemy, and come back on a mission.
+ So they took Chen Qingyang to the office, interrogating her severely.
+ While they interrogated her, I looked out the window—the sky was filled with clouds.
+ They wanted me to confess how I had slipped across the border.
+ As far as border-crossing went, I wasn't completely innocent.
+ I did cross the border.
+ I disguised myself as a Thai to go to the market on the other side.
+ I bought a few boxes of matches and salt.
+ But it was unnecessary to tell them about this.
+ Things unnecessary to say shouldn't be said.
+ Later I led those security people to our place to investigate.
+ The thatched hut that I built on the back slope of the fifteenth team had leaks in the roof, the cornfield attracted many birds, and the heap of used condoms behind our hut supplied ironclad evidence of our former occupancy.
+ The locals didn't like to use condoms, holding that condoms block exchange between yin and yang and gradually weaken people.
+ Actually, those local condoms were better than any other ones I used later.
+ They were made of 100 percent natural rubber.
+ Afterward I refused to take them there again.
+ Anyway, I told them I had never crossed the border, and they didn't believe me;
+ I showed them the place, but they still didn't believe me.
+ Things unnecessary to do shouldn't be done.
+ I stayed mute all day long, and so did Chen Qingyang.
+ The investigators asked us questions at first, but got lazy after a while.
+ On market day, many Thais and Jingpos came by, carrying fresh fruits and vegetables on their backs, and our interrogators got fewer and fewer.
+ Finally there was only one person left.
+ He also wanted to go to the market, but it wasn't time to release us yet and leaving us unattended was against the rules.
+ So he went outside to call someone.
+ He ordered a few passing women to stop.
+ They didn't stop but sped up.
+ We smiled when we saw this.
+ The security comrade finally stopped a woman.
+ Chen Qingyang rose to her feet, smoothed out her hair, straightened the collar of her shirt, and then turned around, putting her hands behind her back.
+ The woman tied her up, starting from her hands and then running the rope over her neck and arms to make a knot.
+ She apologized, I'm just hopeless at tying people up.
+ The security comrade said, That's good enough.
+ Then he tied me up, sat us back-to-back in two separate chairs, and roped the whole thing together.
+ He locked the door and went to the market.
+ After a long time, he came back to get something from the office desk.
+ He asked, Want to go to the bathroom?
+ It's still early.
+ I'll come back after a while and then let you two leave.
+ Then he went out again.
+ When he finally came to set us free, Chen Qingyang wiggled her fingers, smoothed her hair, and brushed the dust from her clothes.
+ Then we returned to our hotel room.
+ We went to the public security section every day and would be tied up every market day.
+ Beyond that, we had to go to every team to accept public denouncement with other bad elements.
+ They threatened, more than once, to use other methods of the proletarian dictatorship on us—that was how our investigation went.
+ Later on they stopped suspecting we had gone abroad.
+ They began to deal with Chen Qingyang in a more civilized way, often asking her to go to the hospital and treat the prostatitis of the chief of staff.
+ At that time, our farm had admitted a large number of retired army cadres, many of whom suffered from prostatitis.
+ Through the investigation, they found that Chen Qingyang was the only one on our entire farm who knew there was such a thing as a prostate gland in a human.
+ The security comrades told us to confess our love affair.
+ I said, How do you know we had a love affair?
+ Did you see it?
+ They said, Then confess your speculation problem.
+ Again I asked, How do you know I had a speculation problem?
+ They said, A traitorship problem would do.
+ Anyway, you have to confess something.
+ As far as what specific problem you want to confess, that's up to you.
+ If you confess nothing, we won't release you.
+ After discussing it, Chen Qingyang and I decided to confess our love affair.
+ She said, Things we actually did we shouldn't be afraid to confess.
+ That was how I got started writing confessions like a writer.
+ The first thing I confessed was what happened the night we ran away.
+ After a few drafts, I finally wrote that Chen Qingyang looked like a koala bear.
+ She admitted that she was very excited that night and really felt like a koala bear.
+ She finally had a chance to fulfill her great friendship.
+ So she locked her legs around my waist, grabbed my shoulder with her hands, and imagining that I was a tall tree, tried to climb up several times.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang again, it was already the nineties.
+ She told me that she had divorced her husband and was now living with her daughter in Shanghai.
+ She came to Beijing on a business trip.
+ As soon as she got to Beijing, she began to recall that Wang Er lived here and she might be able to see me.
+ Subsequently, she did run into me at Dragon-Lair Lake Temple Fair.
+ I had the same old look—deep wrinkles stretching toward my mouth, dark circles under my eyes, and I wore an old-fashioned cotton jacket.
+ Squatting on the ground, I was eating spiced giblets and baked pancakes that fancy places wouldn't serve.
+ The only difference was that my fingers had been burned yellow by nitric acid.
+ Chen Qingyang had changed a lot.
+ She wore a thin beige coat, a tweed skirt, high-heeled leather boots and a pair of goldrimmed glasses, like a public relations person in a big company.
+ If she hadn't called my name, I wouldn't have recognized her.
+ At that moment it dawned on me that everyone had his own essence, which would shine in the right setting.
+ I was essentially a rascal or bandit.
+ Now that I was a city dweller and a schoolteacher, mine didn't look quite right.
+ Chen Qingyang said her daughter had gone into her sophomore year at the university.
+ Recently she found out about our affair and wanted to meet me.
+ What occasioned this was: Her hospital wanted to promote Chen Qingyang, but they found this pile of confessions in her dossier.
+ After a discussion, the leaders decided they were persecutory materials from the Cultural Revolution and should be discarded.
+ So they sent someone to Yunnan to investigate her case, spent over ten thousand yuan on the trip, and finally removed all the confessions from the file.
+ Since she was the author, they returned them to her.
+ She brought them home and stashed them somewhere, and her daughter found them.
+ Her daughter said, Wow!
+ So that's how the two of you made me.
+ Actually, I had nothing to do with her daughter.
+ When her daughter was conceived, I had already left Yunnan.
+ Chen Qingyang explained things to her daughter that way, too.
+ But the girl said I could have put my sperm in a test tube and mailed it to Chen Qingyang, who was still in Yunnan at that time, for artificial insemination.
+ In her words, "There's nothing you pair of jerks wouldn't do."
+ The first night we escaped to the mountains, Chen Qingyang was very aroused.
+ When I finally got to sleep at daybreak, she woke me again.
+ At that time fog was pouring through the crack in the wall.
+ She wanted me to do it again, telling me not to wear the rubber thing.
+ She was going to have a brood of babies with me.
+ Let them hang down to here in a few years.
+ Meanwhile, she pulled her breasts down by the nipples to show me where they would reach.
+ But I didn't like the idea that her breasts would droop and said, Let's think of a way to keep them from drooping.
+ That was why I continued to wear the rubber thing.
+ After that she lost interest in making love to me.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang all those years later, I asked, How are they?
+ Did they droop?
+ She said, You bet they did.
+ They're as droopy as hell.
+ Want to see the droop?
+ I got to see them shortly after—they weren't that bad.
+ But she said, They will be that bad sooner or later.
+ There's no way out.
+ When I turned in this confession, the leaders really liked it.
+ One big shot, either the chief of staff or the commissar, received us and praised our attitudes.
+ They believed that we hadn't thrown ourselves into the enemy's embrace and betrayed our country, and our task in the future was to confess our illicit love affair.
+ If we confessed well, they would allow us to get married.
+ But we didn't want to get married.
+ So later they said if we confessed well, they would let me go back to civilization, and Chen Qingyang would get to work in a bigger hospital.
+ So I stayed in my hotel room and wrote confessions for over a month.
+ Nothing interrupted me except the government business that I had to perform.
+ I used carbon copies; the originals I kept, the duplicates I gave to her.
+ We used exactly the same confessions.
+ After a while, the security comrades came to talk to me, telling me about the big denouncement meeting they were going to hold.
+ All the people who had been investigated by the public security section would have to attend, including speculators, grafters, and all kinds of bad elements.
+ We belonged in the group, but the regimental leaders said that since we were young people, and had good attitudes, we didn't have to go.
+ But people compared their situation with ours, and asked, if everyone who'd been investigated had to be there, why were we being let off?
+ The security comrades were in a fix.
+ So we would have to take part in the meeting.
+ Finally they decided to work on mobilizing us to take part.
+ They told us that public denouncing had an impact on a person's mind, which could prevent us from committing errors in the future.
+ Since there was such an advantage, how could we miss the opportunity?
+ When the meeting day came, several thousand people flooded in from the farm headquarters and the nearby production teams.
+ We stood on the stage with many others.
+ After waiting a long time and hearing quite a few articles of denouncement read, our turn, convicts Wang and Chen, finally came.
+ It turned out that we were loose in morals and corrupted in lifestyle, and what was more, in order to evade thought reform, we had fled into the mountains.
+ Only under the influence of our party's policy did we come down the mountain to abandon darkness for sunlight.
+ Hearing comments like this, our emotions were stirred up, too.
+ So we raised our arms and shouted out the slogans: Down with Wang Er!
+ Down with Chen Qingyang!
+ After this round of public denouncement, we thought we were done with it.
+ But we still had to write confessions because the leaders wanted to read them.
+ On the back slope of the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, seized with an impulse once, said she was going to bear a litter of young for me, but I wasn't interested.
+ Later I thought having babies wasn't a bad idea.
+ But when I mentioned it to her, she changed her mind.
+ And she always thought that it was me who wanted to have sex.
+ She said, If you feel like it, just do it.
+ I don't care.
+ I thought it would be too selfish if it were only for me.
+ So I rarely asked for it.
+ Besides, cultivating the wilderness was very tiring and I didn't have the energy for it.
+ What I could confess was that I fondled her breasts when we rested at the edge of the field.
+ When we cultivated the wilderness in the dry season, hot air was all around.
+ We didn't sweat at all, but our muscles felt dry and painful.
+ On the hottest days, we could only sleep under a tree, with heads pillowed on bamboo stalks and bodies lying on palmbark rain capes.
+ I wondered why nobody asked me to confess about the palm-bark rain cape, one of the labor-protection supplies for our farm, and very expensive.
+ I brought two along; one was mine, the other one I picked up conveniently from someone's doorway.
+ I returned neither of them to the farm.
+ Even when I left Yunnan, no one asked me to return the palm-bark rain capes.
+ During our break at the edge of the field, Chen Qingyang covered her face with a bamboo hat, opened her shirt collar, and immediately fell asleep.
+ I reached in, feeling the beautiful curves.
+ After a while, I unbuttoned a few more buttons, seeing that her skin was pink.
+ Even though she always worked with her clothes on, the sunshine still got through the thin fabric.
+ As for me, working bare to the waist, I had turned as black as a devil.
+ Chen Qingyang's breasts were two firm scoops, even when she lay back.
+ But the other parts of her body were very slender.
+ She hadn't changed much in twenty years, except that her nipples had grown a little bit bigger and darker.
+ She said the culprit was her daughter.
+ When the child was a newborn, she looked like a pink baby pig.
+ With eyes closed, she swooped down on her mother's nipples sucking with all her might, until her mother became an old woman and she a beautiful young woman, a young version of her mother.
+ An older woman now, Chen Qingyang had become more sensitive.
+ When we relived our old days in the hotel, she seemed nervous about such subjects.
+ She hadn't been that way before.
+ Back when I hesitated to mention her breasts in the confessions, she said, Just write it down.
+ I said, You'd be exposed then.
+ She said, Let me be exposed.
+ I don't care.
+ She also said her breasts were made this way.
+ It wasn't like she had done something to fake them.
+ As for what other people thought when they heard about them, it wasn't her problem.
+ After all those years, I just discovered that Chen Qingyang was actually my ex-wife.
+ After we finished our confessions, they wanted us to get married.
+ I thought it was unnecessary.
+ But the leaders said that not getting married would have a very bad influence and insisted that we register.
+ So we registered to get married in the morning and divorced in the afternoon.
+ I thought it hadn't counted.
+ In the confusion they forgot to take our marriage certificate back, and so Chen Qingyang kept one for herself.
+ We used this shabby certificate issued to us twenty years ago to get a double room.
+ Without this, we wouldn't be allowed to stay in the same room.
+ It was different twenty years ago.
+ Twenty years ago they let us stay in the same hotel room to write our confessions, and back then we didn't even have the marriage certificate.
+ I wrote about what we had done on the back slope.
+ But the regional leaders asked the security comrades to pass on a message to me, saying that I could skip over the irrelevant details.
+ Just move on to the next case.
+ Hearing this, I lost my stubborn-as-amule temper: The motherfuckers!
+ Is this a case?
+ Chen Qingyang tried to help me understand: How many people are there in the world?
+ How many times do people do it every day?
+ And how many of them are important enough to be called cases?
+ I said actually they were all cases.
+ It was just that the leaders couldn't check on them all.
+ She said, Well then, just confess.
+ So I confessed: That night, we left the back slope and returned to the scene of the crime.
+
+ 最后我们被关了起来，写了很长时间的交待材料。
+ 起初我是这么写的：我和陈清扬有不正当的关系。
+ 这就是全部。
+ 上面说，这样写太简单， 叫我重写。
+ 后来我写，我和陈清扬有不正当关系，我干了她很多回，她也乐意让我干。
+ 上面说，这样写缺少细节。
+ 后来又加上了这样的细节：我们俩第四十次非法性交，地点是我在山上偷盖的草房。
+ 那天不是阴历十五就是阴历十六，反正月亮很亮。
+ 陈清扬坐在竹床上，月光从门里照进来，照在她身上。
+ 我站在地上，她用腿圈着我的腰。
+ 我们还聊了几句，我说她的乳房不但圆，而且长的很端正，脐窝不但圆，而且很浅。
+ 这些都很好。
+ 她说是吗，我自己不知道。
+ 后来月光移走了，我点了一根烟，抽到一半她拿走了，接着吸了几口。
+ 她还捏过我的鼻子，因为本地有一种说法，说童男的鼻子很硬，而纵欲过度行将死去的人鼻子很软。
+ 这些时候她懒懒地躺在床上，倚着竹板墙。
+ 其它的时间她像澳大利亚考拉熊一样抱住我，往我脸上吹热气。
+ 最后月亮从门对面的窗子里照进来。
+ 这时我和她分开。
+ 但是我写这些材料，不是给军代表看。
+ 他那时早就不是军代表了，而且已经复员回家去。
+ 他是不是代表不重要，反正犯了我们这种错误，总是要写交待材料。
+ 我后来和我们学校人事科长关系不错。
+ 他说当人事干部最大的好处就是可以看到别人写的交待材料。
+ 我想他说的包括了我写的交待材料。
+ 我以为我的交待材料最有文彩。
+ 因为我写这些材料时住在招待所，没有别的事可干，就像专业作家一样。
+ 我逃跑是晚上的事。
+ 那天上午，我找司务长请假，要到井坎镇买牙膏。
+ 我归司务长领导，他还有监视我的任务。
+ 他应该随时随地看住我，可是天一黑我就不见了。
+ 早上我带给他很多酸琶果，都是好的。
+ 平原上的酸琶果都不能吃，因为里面是一窝蚂蚁。
+ 只有山里的酸琶果才没蚂蚁。
+ 司务长说，他个人和我关系不坏，而且军代表不在。
+ 他可以准我去买牙膏。
+ 但是司务长又说，军代表随时会回来。
+ 要是他回来时我不在，司务长也不能包庇我。
+ 我从队里出去，爬上十五队的后山，拿个镜片晃陈清扬的后窗。
+ 过一会儿，她到山上来，说是头两天人家把她盯得特紧，跑不出来。
+ 而这几天她又来月经。
+ 她说这没关系，干吧。
+ 我说那不行。
+ 分手时她硬要给我二百块钱。
+ 起初我不要，后来还是收下了。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，头两天人家没有把她盯得特紧，后来她也没有来月经。
+ 事实上，十五队的人根本就不管她。
+ 那里的人习惯于把一切不是破鞋的人说成破鞋，而对真的破鞋放任自流。
+ 她之所以不肯上山来，让我空等了好几天，是因为对此事感到厌倦。
+ 她总要等有了好心情才肯性交，不是只要性交就有好心情。
+ 当然这样做了以后，她也不无内疚之心。
+ 所以她给我二百块钱。
+ 我想既然她有二百块钱花不掉，我就替她花。
+ 所以我拿了那些钱到井坎镇上，买了一条双筒猎枪。
+ 后来我写交待材料，双筒猎枪也是一个主题。
+ 人家怀疑我拿了它要打死谁。
+ 其实要打死人，用二百块钱的双筒猎枪和四十块钱的铜炮枪打都一样。
+ 那种枪是用来在水边打野鸭子的，在山里一点不实用，而且像死人一样沉。
+ 那天我到井坎街上时，已经是下午时分，又不是赶街的日子，所以只有一条空空落落的土路和几间空空落落的国营商店。
+ 商店里有一个售货员在打瞌睡，还有很多苍蝇在飞。
+ 货架上写着“吕过吕乎”，放着铝锅铝壶。
+ 我和那个胶东籍的售货员聊了一会天，她叫我到库房里看了看。
+ 在那儿我看见那条上海出的猎枪，就不顾它已经放了两年没卖出去的事实，把它买下了。
+ 傍晚时我拿它到小河边试放，打死了一只鹭鸶。
+ 这时军代表从场部回来，看见我手里有枪，很吃了一惊。
+ 他唠叨说，这件事很不对，不能什么人手里都有枪。
+ 应该和队里说一下，把王二的枪没收掉。
+ 我听了这话，几乎要朝他肚子上打一枪。
+ 如果打了的话，恐怕会把他打死。
+ 那样多半我也活不到现在了。
+ 那天下午我从井坎回队的路上，涉水从田里经过，曾经在稻棵里站了一会。
+ 我看见很多蚂蝗像鱼一样游出来，叮上了我的腿。
+ 那时我光着膀子，衣服包了很多红糖馅的包子（镇上饭馆只卖这一种食品），双手提包子，背上还背了枪，很累赘。
+ 所以我也没管那些蚂蝗。
+ 到了岸上我才把它们一条条揪下来用火烧死。
+ 烧得它们一条条发软起泡。
+ 忽然间我感到很烦很累，不像二十一岁的人。
+ 我想，这样下去很快就会老了。
+ 后来我遇上了勒都。
+ 他告诉我说，他们把那条河岔里的鱼都捉到手了。
+ 我那一份已经晒成了鱼干，在他姐姐手里。
+ 他姐姐叫我去。
+ 他姐姐和我也很熟，是个微黑俏丽的小姑娘。
+ 我说一时去不了。
+ 我把那一包包子都给了勒都，叫他给我到十五队送个信，告诉陈清扬，我用她给我的钱买了一条枪。
+ 勒都去了十五队，把这话告诉陈清扬，她听了很害怕，觉得我会把军代表打死。
+ 这种想法也不是没有道理，傍晚时我就想打军代表一枪。
+ 傍晚时分我在河边打鹭鸶，碰上了军代表。
+ 像往常一样，我一声不吭，他喋喋不休。
+ 我很愤怒，因为已经有半个多月了，他一直对我喋喋不休，说着同样的话：我很坏，需要思想改造。
+ 对我一刻也不能放松。
+ 这样的话我听了一辈子，从来没有像那天晚上那么火。
+ 后来他又说，今天他有一个特大好消息，要向大家公布。
+ 但是他又不说是什么，只说我和我的“臭婊子”陈清扬今后的日子会很不好过。
+ 我听了这话格外恼火，想把他就地掐死，又想听他说出是什么好消息以后再下手。
+ 他却不说，一直卖着关子，只说些没要紧的话，到了队里以后才说，晚上你来听会吧，会上我会宣布的。
+ 晚上我没去听会，在屋里收拾东西，准备逃上山去。
+ 我想一定发生了什么大事，以致军代表有了好办法来收拾我和陈清扬，至于是什么事我没想出来，那年头的事很难猜。
+ 我甚至想到可能中国已经复辟了帝制，军代表已经当上了此地的土司。
+ 他可以把我锤骟掉，再把陈清扬拉去当妃子。
+ 等我收拾好要出门，才知道没有那么严重。
+ 因为会场上喊口号，我在屋里也能听见。
+ 原来是此地将从国营农场改做军垦兵团。
+ 军代表可能要当个团长。
+ 不管怎么说，他不能把我阉掉，也不能把陈清扬拉走。
+ 我犹豫了几分钟，还是把装好的东西背上了肩，还用砍刀把屋里的一切都砍坏，并且用木炭在墙上写了：“XXX（军代表名），操你妈！”
+ 然后出了门，上山去了。
+ 我从十四队逃跑的事就是这样。
+ 这些经过我也在交待材料里写了。
+ 概括地说，是这样的：我和军代表有私仇，这私仇有两个方面：
+ 一是我在慰问团面前说出了曾经被打晕的事，叫军代表很没面子；二是争风吃醋，所以他一直修理我。
+ 当他要当团长时，我感到不堪忍受，逃到山上去了。
+ 我到现在还以为这是我逃上山的原因。
+ 但是人家说，军代表根本就没当上团长，我逃跑的理由不能成立。
+ 所以人家说，这样的交待材料不可信。
+ 可信的材料应该是，我和陈清扬有私情。
+ 俗话说，色胆包天，我们什么事都能干出来。
+ 这话也有一点道理，可是我从队里逃出来时，原本不打算找陈清扬，打算一走算了。
+ 走到山边上才想到，不管怎样，陈是我的一个朋友，该去告别。
+ 谁知陈清扬说，她要和我一起逃跑。
+ 她还说，假如这种事她不加入，那伟大友谊岂不是喂了狗。
+ 于是她匆匆忙忙收拾了一些东西跟我走了。
+ 假如没有她和她收拾的东西，我一定会病死在山上。
+ 那些东西里有很多治疟疾的药，还有大量的大号避孕套。
+ 我和陈清扬逃上山以后，农场很惊慌了一阵。
+ 他们以为我们跑到缅甸去了。
+ 这件事传出去对谁都没好处，所以就没向上报告，只是在农场内部通缉王二和陈清扬。
+ 我们的样子很好认，还带了一条别人没有的双筒猎枪，很容易被人发现，可是一直没人找到我们。
+ 直到半年后以后，我们自己回到农场来，各回各的队，又过了一个多月，才被人保组叫去写交待。
+ 也是我们流年不利，碰上了一个运动，被人揭发了出来。
+ 人保组的房子在场部的路口上，是一座孤零零的土坯房。
+ 你从很远的地方就能看见，因为它粉刷得很白，还因为它在高岗上。
+ 大家到场部赶街，老远就看见那间房子。
+ 它周围是一片剑麻地，剑麻总是睛绿色，剑麻下的土总是鲜红色。
+ 我在那里交待问题，把什么都交待了。
+ 我们上了山，先在十五队后山上种玉米，那里土不好，玉米有一半没出苗。
+ 我们就离开，昼伏夜行，找别的地方定居。
+ 最后想起山上有个废水碾，那里有很大一片丢荒了的好地。
+ 水碾里住了一个麻疯寨跑出来的刘大爹。
+ 谁也不到那里去，只有陈清扬有一回想起自己是大夫，去看过一回。
+ 我们最后去了刘大爹那里，住在水碾背后的山洼里，陈清扬给刘大爹看病，我给刘大爹种地。
+ 过了一些时候，我到清平赶街，遇上了同学。
+ 他们说，军代表调走了，没人记着我们的事。
+ 我们就回来。
+ 整个事情就是这样的。
+ 我在人保组里呆了很长时间。
+ 有一段时间，气氛还好，人家说，问题清楚了，你准备写材料。
+ 后来忽然又严重起来，怀疑我们去了境外，勾结了敌对势力，领了任务回来。
+ 于是他们把陈清扬也叫到人保组，严加审讯。
+ 问她时，我往窗外看。
+ 天上有很多云。
+ 人家叫我交待偷越国境的事。
+ 其实这件事上，我也不是清白无辜。
+ 我确实去过境外。
+ 我曾经打扮成老傣的模样，到对面赶过街。
+ 我在那里买了些火柴和盐。
+ 但是这没有必要说出来。
+ 没必要说的话就不说。
+ 后来我带人保组的人到我们住过的地方去勘查。
+ 我在十五队后山上搭的小草房已经漏了顶，玉米地招来很多鸟。
+ 草房后面有很多用过的避孕套，这是我们在此住过的铁证。
+ 当地人不喜欢避孕套，说那东西阻断了阴阳交流，会使人一天天弱下去。
+ 其实当地那种避孕套，比我后来用过的任何一种都好。
+ 那是百分之百的天然橡胶。
+ 后来我再不肯带他们去那些地方看，反正我说我没去国外，他们不信。
+ 带他们去看了，他们还是不信。
+ 没必要做的事就别做。
+ 我整天一声不吭。
+ 陈清扬也一声不吭。
+ 问案的人开头还在问，后来也懒得吭声。
+ 街子天里有好多老傣、老景颇背着新鲜的水果蔬菜走过，问案的人也越来越少。
+ 最后只剩了一个人。
+ 他也想去赶街，可是不到放我们回去的时候，让我们呆在这里无人看管，又不合规定。
+ 他就到门口去喊人，叫过路的大嫂站住。
+ 但是人家经常不肯站住，而是加快了脚步。
+ 见到这种情况，我们就笑起来。
+ 人保组的同志终于叫住了一个大嫂。
+ 陈清扬站起来，整理好头发，把衬衣领子折起来，然后背过手去。
+ 那位大嫂就把她捆起来，先捆紧双手，再把绳子在脖子和胳膊上扣住。
+ 那大嫂抱歉地说，捆人我不会啦。
+ 人保组的同志说，可以了。
+ 然后他再把我捆起来，让我们在两张椅子上背靠背坐好，用绳子拦腰捆上一道，然后他锁上门，也去赶集。
+ 过了好半天他才回来，到办公桌里拿东西，问道：要不要上厕所？
+ 时间还早，一会回来放你们。
+ 然后又出去。
+ 到他最后来放开我们的时候，陈清扬活动一下手指，整理好头发，把身上的灰土掸干净，我们俩回招待所去。
+ 我们每天都到人保组去，每到街子天就被捆起来，除此之外，有时还和别人一道到各队去挨斗。
+ 他们还一再威胁说，要对我们采取其它专政手段——我们受审查的事就是这样的。
+ 后来人家又不怀疑我们去了国外，开始对她比较客气，经常叫她到医院去，给参谋长看前列腺炎。
+ 那时我们农场来了一大批军队下来的老干部，很多人有前列腺炎。
+ 经过调查，发现整个农场只有陈清扬知道人身上还有前列腺。
+ 人保组的同志说，要我们交待男女关系问题。
+ 我说，你怎知我们有男女关系问题？
+ 你看见了吗？
+ 他们说，那你就交待投机倒把问题。
+ 我又说，你怎知我有投机倒把问题？
+ 他们说，那你还是交待投敌叛变的问题。
+ 反正要交待问题，具体交待什么，你们自己去商量。
+ 要是什么都不交待，就不放你。
+ 我和陈清扬商量以后，决定交待男女关系问题。
+ 她说，做了的事就不怕交待。
+ 于是我就像作家一样写起交待材料来。
+ 首先交待的就是逃跑上山那天晚上的事。
+ 写了好几遍，终于写出陈清扬像考拉熊。
+ 她承认她那天心情非常激动，确实像考拉熊。
+ 因为她终于有了机会，来实践她的伟大友谊。
+ 于是她腿圈住我的腰，手抓住我的肩膀，把我想像成一棵大树，几次想爬上去。
+ 后来我又见到陈清扬，已经到了九十年代。
+ 她说她离了婚和女儿住在上海，到北京出差。
+ 到了北京就想到，王二在这里，也许能见到。
+ 结果真的在龙潭湖庙会上见到了我。
+ 我还是老样子，饿纹入嘴，眼窝下乌青，穿过了时的棉袄，蹲在地上吃不登大雅之堂的卤煮火烧。
+ 唯一和过去不同的是手上被硝酸染得焦黄。
+ 陈清扬的样子变了不少，她穿着薄呢子大衣，花格呢裙子，高跟皮靴，戴金丝眼镜，像个公司的公关职员，她不叫我，我绝不敢认。
+ 于是我想到每个人都有自己的本质，放到合适的地方就大放光彩。
+ 我的本质是流氓土匪一类，现在做个城里的市民，学校的教员，就很不像样。
+ 陈清扬说，她女儿已经上了大二，最近知道了我们的事，很想见我。
+ 这事的起因是这样的：她们医院想提拔她，发现她档案里还有一堆东西。
+ 领导上讨论之后，认为是文革时整人的材料，应予撤销。
+ 于是派人到云南外调，花了一万元差旅费，终于把它拿了出来。
+ 因为是本人写的，交还本人。
+ 她把它拿回家去放着，被女儿看见了。
+ 该女儿说，好哇，你们原来是这么造的我！
+ 其实我和她女儿没有任何关系。
+ 她女儿产生时，我已经离开云南了。
+ 陈清扬也是这么解释的，可是那女孩说，我可以把精液放到试管里，寄到云南让陈清扬人工授精。
+ 用她原话来说就是：你们两个混蛋什么干不出来。
+ 我们逃进山里的第一个夜晚，陈清扬兴奋得很。
+ 天明时我睡着了，她又把我叫起来，那时节大雾正从墙缝里流进来。
+ 她让我再干那件事，别戴那捞什子。
+ 她要给我生一窝小崽子，过几年就耷拉到这里。
+ 同时她揪住乳头往下拉，以示耷拉之状。
+ 我觉得耷拉不好看，就说，咱们还是想想办法，别叫它耷拉。
+ 所以我还是戴着那捞什子。
+ 以后她对这件事就失去了兴趣。
+ 后来我再见陈清扬时，问道，怎么样，耷拉了吧？
+ 她说可不是，耷拉得一塌糊涂。
+ 你想不想看看有多耷拉。
+ 后来我看见了，并没有一蹋糊涂。
+ 不过她说，早晚要一塌糊涂，没有别的出路。
+ 我写了这篇交待材料交上去，领导上很欣赏。
+ 有个大头儿，不是团参谋长就是政委，接见了我们，说我们的态度很好。
+ 领导上相信我们没有投敌叛变。
+ 今后主要的任务就是交待男女关系问题。
+ 假如交待得好，就让我们结婚。
+ 但是我们并不想结婚。
+ 后来又说，交待得好，就让我调回内地。
+ 陈清扬也可以调上级医院。
+ 所以我在招待所写了一个多月交待材料，除了出公差，没人打搅，我用复写纸写，正本是我的，副本是她的。
+ 我们有一模一样的交待材料。
+ 后来人保组的同志找我商量，说是要开个大的批斗会。
+ 所有在人保组受过审查的人都要参加，包括投机倒把分子，贪污犯，以及各种坏人。
+ 我们本该属于同一类，可是团领导说了，我们年轻，交待问题的态度好，所以又可以不参加。
+ 但是有人攀我们，说都受审查，他们为什么不参加。
+ 人保组也难办。
+ 所以我们必须参加。
+ 最后的决定是来做工作，动员我们参加。
+ 据说受受批斗，思想上有了震动，以后可以少犯错误。
+ 既然有这样的好处，为什么不参加。
+ 到了开会的日子，场部和附近生产队来了好几千人。
+ 我们和好多别的人站到台上去。
+ 等了好半天，听了好几篇批判稿，才轮到我们王陈二犯。
+ 原来我们的问题是思想淫乱，作风腐败，为了逃避思想改造，逃到山里去。
+ 后来在党的政策感召下，下山弃暗投明。
+ 听了这样的评价，我们心情激动，和大家一起振臂高呼：打倒王二！
+ 打倒陈清扬！
+ 斗过这一台，我们就算没事了。
+ 但是还得写交待，因为团领导要看。
+ 在十五队后山上，陈清扬有一回很冲动，要给我生一群小崽子，我没要。
+ 后来我想，生生也不妨，再跟她说，她却不肯生了。
+ 而且她总是理解成我要干那件事。
+ 她说，要干就干，没什么关系。
+ 我想纯粹为我，这样太自私了，所以就很少干。
+ 何况开荒很累，没力气干。
+ 我所能交待的事就是在地头休息时摸她的乳房。
+ 旱季里开荒时，到处是热风，身上没有汗，可是肌肉干疼。
+ 最热时，只能躺在树下睡觉。
+ 枕着竹筒，睡在棕皮蓑衣上。
+ 我奇怪为什么没人让我交待蓑衣的事。
+ 那是农场的劳保用品，非常贵。
+ 我带进山两件，一件是我的，一件是从别人门口顺手拿来的。
+ 一件也没拿回来。
+ 一直到我离开云南，也没人让我交还蓑衣。
+ 我们在地头休息时，陈清扬拿斗笠盖住脸，敞开衬衣的领口，马上就睡着了。
+ 我把手伸进去，有很优美的浑圆的感觉。
+ 后来我把扣子又解开几个，看见她的皮肤是浅红色。
+ 虽然她总穿着衣服干活，可是阳光透过了薄薄的布料。
+ 至于我，总是光膀子，已经黑得像鬼一样。
+ 陈清扬的乳房是很结实的两块，躺着的时候给人这样的感觉。
+ 但是其它地方很纤细。
+ 过了二十多年，大模样没怎么变，只是乳头变得有点大，有点黑。
+ 她说这是女儿做的孽。
+ 那孩子刚出世，像个粉红色的小猪，闭着眼一口叼住她那个地方狠命地吃，一直把她吃成个老太太，自己却长成个漂亮大姑娘，和她当年一样。
+ 年纪大了，陈清扬变得有点敏感。
+ 我和她在饭店里重温旧情，说到这类话题，她就有恐慌之感。
+ 当年不是这样。
+ 那时候在交待材料里写到她的乳房，我还有点犹豫。
+ 她说，就这么写。
+ 我说，这样你就暴露了。
+ 她说，暴露就暴露，我不怕！
+ 她还说是自然长成这样，又不是她捣了鬼。
+ 至于别人听说了有什么想法，不是她的问题。
+ 过了这么多年我才发现，陈清扬是我的前妻哩。
+ 交待完问题人家叫我们结婚。
+ 我觉得没什么必要了。
+ 可是领导上说，不结婚影响太坏，非叫去登记不可。
+ 上午登记结婚，下午离婚。
+ 我以为不算呢。
+ 乱秧秧的，人家忘了把发的结婚证要回去。
+ 结果陈清扬留了一张。
+ 我们拿这二十年前发的破纸头登记了一间双人房。
+ 要是没有这东西，就不许住在一间房子里。
+ 二十年前不这样。
+ 二十年前他们让我们住在一间房子里写交待材料，当时也没这个东西。
+ 我写了我们住在后山上的事。
+ 团领导要人保组的人带话说，枝节问题不要讲太多，交待下一个案子罢。
+ 听了这话，我发了犟驴脾气：妈妈的，这是案子吗？
+ 陈清扬开导我说：这世界上有多少人，每天要干多少这种事，又有几个有资格成为案子。
+ 我说其实这都是案子，只不过领导上查不过来。
+ 她说既然如此，你就交待罢。
+ 所以我交待道：那天夜里，我们离开了后山，向做案现场进发。
+
+ Later I saw Chen Qingyang again.
+ We registered for a room at a hotel, went in together, and then I helped her take off her coat.
+ Chen Qingyang said, Wang Er has become civilized.
+ It meant I had changed a lot.
+ In the old days, I did not just look ferocious, but also acted ferociously.
+ Chen Qingyang and I committed the crime one more time in the hotel.
+ The room was well heated, and the windows were glazed with tea-colored panes.
+ I sat on the sofa, and she sat in the bed.
+ We chatted for a while, and then the criminal atmosphere began to build.
+ I said, Didn't you want me to see how they sag now?
+ Let me take a look!
+ So she got to her feet and took off her sweater—she had on a flowery shirt underneath.
+ Then she sat back and said, It's still early.
+ After a while, the attendant brought us boiling water.
+ They had keys, so they just came in without even knocking on the door.
+ I asked, What would the attendant say if he came in right in the middle of things?
+ She said she had never gotten caught in the act, but she had heard that the attendant would slam the door shut and curse, Motherfuckers!
+ Disgusting!
+ Before Chen Qingyang and I escaped into the mountains, I cooked pig feed for a while.
+ At the time I had to tend the fire, chop the pig feed (the so-called pig feed consisted of things like sweet potato vine and water hyacinth), and add chaff and water to the wok all by myself.
+ As I bustled around doing several things at once, the military deputy stood beside me, talking his head off.
+ He went on nagging about how bad I was, and how bad Chen Qingyang was, even asking me to pass the message to my "stinking whore" Chen Qingyang.
+ All of a sudden, I flew into a fury.
+ I grabbed a machete and slashed at a bottle gourd used for storing pumpkin seeds that hung on the beam, cutting it in half.
+ Frightened, the military deputy leaped out of the room.
+ If he had kept scolding, I would have cut his head off.
+ I appeared especially ferocious, because I didn't speak.
+ Later, in the public security office, I didn't talk much either, even when they were tying me up.
+ So my hands often turned dark blue.
+ Chen Qingyang talked all the time.
+ She would say something like this: Big sister, it hurts! or, Big sister, can you tuck a handkerchief under the rope?
+ There is a handkerchief holding my hair.
+ She cooperated at every point, which was why she suffered much less than I did.
+ We were different in every way.
+ Chen Qingyang said that back then I wasn't very civilized.
+ When we went back to the public security office, people untied us.
+ The rope left lines of smudge on her shirt, which was because the rope was stored in a kitchen shed and picked up ash from the bottom of woks and bits of firewood.
+ She tried to flick the ashes off with her stiff fingers, but could only do the front, not the back.
+ By the time she wanted to ask me to help her, I had already strode out of the room.
+ She followed out the door, but I had gone pretty far.
+ I walked very fast, never looking back.
+ Because of these things, she didn't love me at all; she didn't even like me.
+ According to the leaders, what we did on the back slope was not considered a primary offense—except the time that she looked like a koala bear.
+ For example, the thing we did while cultivating the wilderness was just a secondary offense.
+ So I didn't finish my confession.
+ There was actually something more.
+ A hot wind blew really hard at the time and Chen Qingyang slept soundly with her arms under her head.
+ I unbuttoned all the buttons on her shirt so she was half naked.
+ It looked like she had done it herself.
+ The sky was so blue and bright that you could even see blue light in the shadows.
+ All of a sudden, I felt tenderness in my heart, so I bent over her reddened body.
+ I'd forgotten what I did then.
+ When I mentioned this to Chen Qingyang, I thought she'd have forgotten.
+ But she said, "I remember, I remember.
+ I was already awake by that time.
+ You kissed my belly button, right?
+ I was just on the edge—I almost fell in love with you at that moment."
+ Chen Qingyang said that she had just awakened in time to see my tousled head on her belly, and then she felt a gentle touch on her navel.
+ For a moment she could hardly restrain herself, but she still pretended to sleep, waiting to see what else I would do.
+ But I didn't do anything.
+ I raised my head and looked around.
+ And then I walked away.
+ My confession says that on that night, we left the back slope and set off for the crime scene.
+ We carried pots and pans on our backs and planned to settle down on the mountain in the south.
+ Over there the soil was so much richer that the grasses on both sides of the road stood as tall as people, unlike the back slope of the fifteenth team where they were about half a foot.
+ The moon shone that night.
+ We even walked on the road for a while.
+ By the time fog rose at daybreak, we had walked twelve miles and went up to the mountain in the south.
+ To be more specific, we arrived at the grassland to the south of Zhang Feng village and the forest wasn't far off.
+ We camped under a huge green tree, picking up two pieces of cow dung to start a fire, and spread a plastic sheet on the ground.
+ Then we took off all our clothes (the clothes were drenched by then), cuddled into each other, wrapped ourselves in three blankets, and then fell asleep.
+ We woke up frozen after an hour.
+ The three layers of blankets were all soaked, and the dung fire had died out, too.
+ Dewdrops fell from the trees in a downpour, and even the drops floating in the air were as big as mung beans.
+ This was in January, the coldest days of the dry season.
+ The shady side of the mountain could be that damp.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she woke up she heard my teeth chattering like a machine gun by her ear.
+ The upper teeth were clicking against the lower more than once a second.
+ I already had a temperature.
+ Once I caught a cold, it would be hard to recover unless I got a shot.
+ So she sat up and said, Enough.
+ Both of us will get sick this way.
+ Hurry, we have to do the thing.
+ Not wanting to move, I said, Hold on for a bit.
+ The sun is coming out soon.
+ After a few minutes I said, Do you think I have energy to do it now?
+ That was the situation prior to the offense.
+ The offense went as follows: Chen Qingyang rode my body, up and down; behind her back was a broad expanse of white fog.
+ It didn't feel that cold anymore, and the sound of buffalo bells floated all around.
+ Since Thai people here didn't pen their buffaloes, they would ramble at daybreak.
+ Hung with wooden bells, the buffaloes would make clunking sounds as they walked.
+ A hulk suddenly turned up beside us, with dewdrops dangling from a hairy ear.
+ It was a white buffalo, who turned its head and stared at us with one of its eyes.
+ A white buffalo's horn can be used to make a knife handle, glittering and crystal clear, very pretty.
+ But its texture is brittle, easy to crack.
+ I used to have a dagger with a white-horn handle that didn't have any cracks, which was very unusual.
+ The blade was also made of excellent materials.
+ Unfortunately public security confiscated it.
+ I asked them to return it to me after my case was cleared.
+ They said they couldn't find it.
+ They didn't return my hunting gun either.
+ Old Guo from the public security section promised shamelessly to buy it, but he only wanted to pay fifty yuan.
+ In the end I got nothing back, not my gun or my knife.
+ Chen Qingyang and I chatted for a long time before we committed our crime in the hotel room.
+ Finally, she took off her shirt, but still wore her skirt and leather boots.
+ I went over to sit next to her and moved her hair back; some of it had turned gray.
+ Chen Qingyang had permed her hair.
+ She said she used to have excellent hair and didn't want to perm it.
+ Now it didn't matter anymore.
+ As the assistant head of the hospital, she was very busy and couldn't even find time to wash her hair every day.
+ Other than that, the corners of her eyes and her neck had begun to crease.
+ She said her daughter suggested that she have plastic surgery, but she couldn't find time to do it.
+ At last she said, OK, now take a look at them.
+ So she started to undo her bra.
+ I wanted to help her, but I couldn't.
+ The clasp was in the front, but I reached around to her back.
+ She said, Looks like you haven't learned what it takes to be bad.
+ And then she turned to let me see her breasts.
+ I looked carefully at them for a while, and gave her my opinion.
+ For some reason, her face blushed a little.
+ She said, Well, you've seen them.
+ What else do you want to do?
+ As she said this, she began to put her bra back on.
+ I said, What's the hurry?
+ Leave them out.
+ She said, What?
+ Still want to study my anatomy?
+ I said, Of course.
+ But let's not rush.
+ We can talk a little longer.
+ The color in her face deepened.
+ She said, Wang Er, you'll never learn how to be good.
+ You'll always be a bastard!
+ When I was detained in the public security section, Luo Xiaosi came to see me.
+ He leaned on the windowsill and found me tied up like a package.
+ Believing that my case was very serious and I might be shot soon, he tossed a box of cigarettes in from the window and said, Brother Er, just a little gift.
+ Then he burst into tears.
+ Luo Xiaosi was a sentimental man, easily touched.
+ I asked him to light a cigarette and hand it to me through the window.
+ He did as I asked, almost dislocating his shoulder to reach me.
+ After that he asked me what else he could do for me.
+ I said nothing else.
+ I also said, Don't bring a crowd to see me.
+ He promised he wouldn't.
+ After he was gone, a gang of boys climbed up to the window ledge to see me.
+ Right then the cigarette smoke choked me, and with one eye open and the other closed I looked terrible.
+ The leader of the boys couldn't help crying out: Hooligan!
+ I answered back, Your father and mother are hooligans!
+ If they're not hooligans, where did a little hooligan like you come from?
+ The boy grabbed some dirt and flung it at me.
+ After I was released, I went to see the boy's father and said: Today I was in the public security office.
+ I was hog-tied.
+ Your son is young, but he has great ambition.
+ He took the opportunity to fling dirt at me.
+ After hearing this, the man grabbed his son and beat the shit out of the little bastard.
+ I didn't leave until I witnessed the whole episode.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this, she commented, Wang Er, you're a bastard!
+ Actually I'm not always a bastard.
+ Now that I have a wife and family, I have learned a lot about how to be good.
+ After finishing the cigarette, I drew her to me, fondled her breasts skillfully for a while, and then wanted to take off her skirt.
+ She said, No rush.
+ Let's talk a little more.
+ Give me a cigarette too.
+ So I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and handed it to her.
+ Chen Qingyang said on Mount Zhang Feng, when she rode up and down on my body, she looked far and near, and saw nothing but gray, watery fog floating in the air.
+ All of a sudden, she felt very alone, very lonely.
+ Even though a part of me was rubbing inside her body, she still felt sad and lonely.
+ After a while I came back to life and said: Let's switch.
+ Here we go.
+ So I rolled over onto her body.
+ She said, That time, you were a bigger bastard than ever.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was a bigger bastard than ever, she meant that I suddenly noticed her feet were cute and pretty.
+ I said, Old Chen, I've decided to be a foot fetishist.
+ Then I raised her legs and started to kiss the soles of her feet.
+ Chen Qingyang lay on the grass with her arms spread out and her hands grabbing the grass, and then she turned her head aside, her hair covering her face, and moaned.
+ In my confession I wrote: I let go of her legs and parted the hair on her face.
+ She struggled violently to break free, tears rolling down from her eyes, but she didn't slap me.
+ There were two unhealthy red spots on her cheeks.
+ After a while, she no longer struggled and said, You bastard!
+ What are you going to do with me?
+ I said, What's wrong?
+ She smiled and said, Nothing.
+ Keep going.
+ So I raised her legs again.
+ She lay like that motionless, her arms spread out, teeth biting her lower lip without uttering a sound.
+ If I looked at her again, she smiled back.
+ I remember her face was extremely pale, and her hair was especially dark.
+ That's how the whole thing went.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she lay in the cold rain that time, she felt the chill penetrate every pore.
+ She felt an endless flow of sorrow.
+ Just then a huge surge of orgasm sliced through her body.
+ Cold fog and icy rain both seeped into her body.
+ For a moment she wanted to die.
+ She couldn't stand it; she wanted to cry out.
+ But at the sight of me she changed her mind.
+ There was no man in this world who could make her scream in front of him.
+ She felt disconnected from everyone.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she was deeply troubled every time I made love to her.
+ In the depth of her heart, she wanted to cry out, hug me, and kiss me passionately, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
+ She didn't want to love other people, not even one.
+ But still, when I kissed the soles of her feet that time, a sharp feeling still bored its way into her heart.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I made love on Mount Zhang Feng, an old buffalo alongside us watched.
+ Later it lowed and ran away, leaving the two of us alone there.
+ After a long while, the sky gradually lightened and the fog began to disappear from above us.
+ Chen Qingyang's body glistened with dew.
+ I let go of her and rose to my feet, to find that we were actually not far from the village.
+ So I said, Let's go.
+ We left that place and never went back.
+ In my confession, I admitted that Chen Qingyang and I had committed crimes on numerous occasions on Grandpa Liu's back mountain.
+ This was because Grandpa Liu's fields had already been cultivated and didn't need much work.
+ So our life was relatively easy there.
+ And since we didn't have to worry about food and shelter, we thought more about sex.
+ There was nobody else on that part of the mountain, and Grandpa Liu lay on his deathbed.
+ The mountain was either rainy or foggy.
+ Chen Qingyang fastened my belt around her waist, with a knife dangling from it.
+ She wore high boots, and nothing else.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she had made only one friend in her life, and that was me.
+ She said all that happened came about because I talked about great friendship in my small house by the river.
+ A person had to accomplish a few things in life and this was one of them.
+ After that she didn't have deep relationships with other people.
+ It's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ I've had a feeling about this all along.
+ So whenever I asked her for sex, I would say, Old pal, how about strengthening our great friendship now?
+ Married couples have a code of ethics to strengthen, and we don't have that, so we can only strengthen our friendship.
+ She said, No problem.
+ How do you want to strengthen it, from the front or from the back?
+ I said, From the back.
+ We were at the edge of the field then.
+ Because it was from the back, we had to spread two palm-bark rain capes on the ground.
+ She knelt on her hands and knees, like a horse, and said, You'd better hurry.
+ It's time to give Grandpa Liu a shot.
+ I wrote all these things in my confessions, but the leaders wanted me to confess in response to the following: 1. Who is Comrade Strain-thing Eh-thics?
+ 2. What does "strengthening the great friendship" mean?
+ 3. What is strengthening it from the back?
+ And what is strengthening it from the front?
+ After I cleared things up, the leaders told me not to play word games.
+ Whatever my crimes were, they said, I needed to confess them.
+ While we were strengthening our great friendship on the mountain, white breath puffed from our mouths.
+ It was not that cold, but very humid.
+ You could grab a handful of air and wring water out of it.
+ Worms wriggled next to our palm-bark rain capes.
+ That piece of land was really rich.
+ Later on, before the corn fully ripened, we picked the ears and ground the kernels in a mortar.
+ The Jingpos in the mountains prepared corn cakes that way, and they weren't bad at all.
+ Storing them in cold water could preserve them for a long time.
+ As Chen Qingyang crouched on her hands and knees in the cold rain, her breasts felt like cool apples.
+ Her skin all over was as smooth as a piece of burnished marble.
+ After a while I pulled my little Buddha out and ejaculated onto the field.
+ She looked back at this with a surprised and fearful expression.
+ I told her that it would fertilize the land.
+ She said, I know.
+ And a moment later she asked, Will a little Wang Er grow out of the land?— Does this sound like something a doctor would say?
+ When the rainy season passed, we dressed like Thais and went to Qingping market.
+ As I've already written before, I met a classmate in Qingping.
+ Although I was dressed like a Thai, he still recognized me on sight.
+ I was too tall to be a Thai.
+ He said, Hi, brother Er, where have you been?
+ I said, I'm hopeless at speaking Mandarin.
+ Despite the fact that I tried very hard to speak in a weird accent, it still sounded like the Beijing dialect.
+ That one sentence gave me away.
+ It was her idea to go back to the farm.
+ Since I myself had decided to go up the mountain, I was determined not to go back.
+ She'd come to the mountains for the sake of our great friendship, so I couldn't refuse to go down the mountain with her.
+ Actually, we could have left anytime, but she didn't want to.
+ She said our current life was fun.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said life on the mountain was also fun.
+ When cold mist drifted over the mountain, she would tuck a knife into her belt, put on a pair of rain boots, and enter the drizzle.
+ But it's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ That was why she still wanted to come down the mountain, to put up with the torment of human society.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I relived our great friendship in the hotel room, we spoke of the time we came down the mountain and reached a junction of roads.
+ There were four byroads at that place, and each of them led in a single direction.
+ East, west, south, north didn't really matter.
+ One led abroad, to an unknown place; one to the interior; one to the farm; and one back to where we came from, and that road also led to Husha.
+ In Husha there were a lot of Ahcang blacksmiths, who had passed on the skill from generation to generation.
+ Though I didn't come from a family of smiths, I could have been a blacksmith.
+ I knew those people very well; they all admired my skill.
+ Ahcang women were all very pretty, their bodies adorned with many bronze bracelets and necklaces and silver coins.
+ That kind of dress fascinated Chen Qingyang, and she wanted to go up to the mountains and become one of them.
+ At the time, the rainy season had just passed, and clouds rose up from every direction.
+ Threads of sunshine flashed in the sky.
+ We could have made any choice and set off in any direction.
+ So I stood at the crossroads for a long time.
+ Later when I was going back to the interior, waiting for the bus by the road, I also had two choices: I could keep waiting, or return to the farm.
+ When I walked along one path, I often thought about things that might happen on another path.
+ Then I would feel confused.
+ Chen Qingyang once said I was a man of average intelligence but with skillful hands, and very nutty, which all meant something.
+ Her saying my intelligence was only average, I didn't agree with; her saying I was nutty, I couldn't deny because it's a fact; as to my skillful hands, she probably knew that from her own body.
+ My hands are indeed very skillful, which wasn't just shown by how I touched women.
+ My palms are not big, but my fingers are unusually long and able to perform any delicate and complex task.
+ Those Ahcang blacksmiths on the mountain were better than me at forging blades, but for etching designs on a knife no one could match me.
+ So, at least twenty blacksmiths invited us to move in with them.
+ Each suggested that he would forge the blades and I would etch the designs, and we would make a good team.
+ If I had moved in then, I probably would have forgotten how to speak Mandarin.
+ If I had moved in with an Ahcang big brother, I would be etching designs on Husha knives in that dark, deep blacksmith shop now.
+ In the muddy backyard of his house, there would be a brood of little children, comprised of four combinations: 1. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and me; 2. Those produced by Ahcang big brother and Ahcang big sister; 3. Those produced by Ahcang big sister and me; 4. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and Ahcang big brother.
+ When Chen Qingyang would come down from the mountain with firewood on her back, she would pull up her clothes, revealing her full and firm breasts, and, without making any distinction, feed one of the babies.
+ If I had returned to the mountains then, that would have happened.
+ Chen Qingyang said such things wouldn't happen because they didn't happen.
+ What really happened was that we returned to the farm, wrote confessions, and went on denouncement trips.
+ Even though we could have run away at any minute, we never did.
+ That was what really happened.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was of average intelligence, she obviously didn't consider my literary talent.
+ Everyone loved to read the confessions I wrote.
+ When I first started writing those things, I was dead set against it.
+ But as I wrote more, I became obsessed, clearly because the things I wrote all happened.
+ Things that really happen have incomparable charm.
+ I wrote down almost every detail in my confessions except the things that happened below: On the back mountain of the fifteenth team, after making love in our thatched hut, Chen Qingyang and I went to a creek to play in the water.
+ The water from the mountain had washed away the red soil, exposing the blue clay underneath.
+ We lay on the blue clay to sun ourselves.
+ After I recovered my warmth, my little Buddha stood up again.
+ Since he had been relieved not long before, I was not as eager as a sex maniac.
+ So I lay on my side behind her, pillowed on her long hair and entered her body from behind.
+ Later in the hotel room, we relived our great friendship in the same way.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on our sides on the blue clay, it was getting dark and the wind had cooled a bit.
+ It felt very peaceful lying together, and sometimes we moved a little.
+ I've heard that dolphins had two ways of doing it, one for procreation and the other for entertainment, which is to say that dolphins also have the great friendship.
+ Chen Qingyang and I were connected, just like a pair of dolphins.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on the blue clay with our eyes closed, we felt like a pair of dolphins swimming in the sea.
+ It was getting darker and the sunlight gradually reddened.
+ A cloud came over the horizon, pale as countless dead fish bellies turned up and countless dead fish eyes gaping.
+ A current of wind slipped down the mountain without a sound, without a breath, and a sadness in the air filled every space between the sky and the earth.
+ Chen Qingyang shed a lot of tears.
+ She said the scene depressed her.
+ I still keep the duplicates of my confessions from back then.
+ Once, I showed them to a friend who majored in English and American literature.
+ He said they were all very good, with the charm of Victorian underground novels.
+ As for the details I had cut out, he said it was a good idea to cut them out, because those details destroyed the unity of the story.
+ My friend is really erudite.
+ I was very young when I wrote the confessions and didn't have any learning (I still don't have much learning), or any idea what Victorian underground novels were.
+ What I had in my mind was that I shouldn't be an instigator.
+ Many people would read my confessions.
+ If after reading them they couldn't help screwing damaged goods, that wasn't so bad; but if they learned the other thing, that would be really bad.
+ I also left out the facts that follow, for the same reason mentioned above.
+ We had committed many errors and deserved execution.
+ But the leaders decided to save us, making me write confessions.
+ How forgiving of them!
+ So I made up my mind that I would only write about how bad we were.
+ When we lived on Grandpa Liu's back slope, Chen Qingyang made a Thai skirt for herself, disguising herself as a Thai woman so she could go to Qingping on market days.
+ But after putting the skirt on she could barely walk.
+ South of Qingping, we ran into a river.
+ The mountain water was ice-cold, and green as marinated mustard.
+ The water reached to my waist, and the current was very swift.
+ I walked over to her, hoisted her onto my shoulder, went right across the river, and then put her down.
+ Her waist was exactly the width of my shoulder.
+ I remember her face turning deep red then.
+ I said, I could carry you to Qingping and back, faster than your swishy walking.
+ She said, Go take a crap.
+ A Thai skirt is like a cloth sheath.
+ The hem is only about a foot around.
+ People who know how to wear them can do all kinds of things with them on, including peeing on the street without squatting down.
+ Chen Qingyang said she could never learn that trick.
+ After conducting an observation for a while in Qingping market, she drew the conclusion that if she wanted to disguise herself like someone, she would rather be an Ahcang woman.
+ On the way back, the mountain road was all uphill, and she was exhausted, too.
+ So whenever we needed to jump over a ditch or cross a ridge, she would find a stump, gracefully mount it, and let me carry her.
+ So on the way home I carried her on my shoulder climbing the hills.
+ The dry season had just arrived, white clouds coasted through the sky, and the sun gave brilliant light.
+ But in the mountains it would drizzle from time to time.
+ The red clay was very slippery.
+ Walking on slabs of red mud was like learning to skate for the first time.
+ So with my right hand locked around her thighs and my left hand carrying the rifle, not to mention the basket on my back, I could hardly manage the slippery incline.
+ All of a sudden, I slipped to the left, and was about to fall into the valley.
+ Fortunately I had a rifle, which I used to hold me up.
+ I tensed my whole body and struggled to keep us from going over.
+ But the idiot picked that moment to give me trouble, flopping around on my back and demanding that I put her down.
+ We almost lost our lives that time.
+ As soon as I caught my breath, I switched the rifle to my right hand, raised my left hand, and slapped her bottom really hard.
+ Through the layer of thin cloth, it felt unusually smooth.
+ Her bottom was very round.
+ Fuck, I felt terrific.
+ She immediately behaved herself after getting spanked.
+ She became very submissive, not saying another word.
+ Of course, it was wrong to slap her bottom, but I thought this kind of thing might not be what other damaged goods and their lovers get into.
+ So the incident seemed beside the point and I didn't write about it.
+
+ 我后来又见到陈清扬，和她在饭店里登记了房间，然后一起到房间里去，我伸手帮她脱下大衣。
+ 陈清扬说，王二变得文明了。
+ 这说明我已经变了很多。
+ 以前我不但相貌凶恶，行为也很凶恶。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里又做了一回案。
+ 那里暖气烧得很暖，还装着茶色玻璃。
+ 我坐在沙发上，她坐在床上，聊了一会儿天， 逐渐有了犯罪的气氛。
+ 我说，不是让我看有多耷拉吗，我看看。
+ 她就站起来，脱了外衣，里面穿着大花的衬衫。
+ 然后她又坐下去，说，还早一点。
+ 过一会服务员来送开水。
+ 他们有钥匙，连门都不敲就进来了。
+ 我问她，碰上了人家怎么说？
+ 她说，她没被碰上过。
+ 但是听说人家会把门一摔，在外面说：真他妈的讨厌！
+ 我和陈清扬逃进山以前，有一次我在猪场煮猪食。
+ 那时我要烧火，要把猪菜切碎（所谓猪菜，是番薯藤、水葫芦一类东西），要往锅里加糠添水。
+ 我同时做着好几样事情。
+ 而军代表却在一边碟碟不休，说我是如何之坏。
+ 他还让我去告诉我的“臭婊子”陈清扬，她是如何之坏。
+ 忽然间我暴怒起来，抡起长勺，照着粱上挂的盛南瓜籽的葫芦劈去，把它劈成两半。
+ 军代表吓得一步跳出房去。
+ 如果他还要继续数落我，我就要砍他脑袋了。
+ 我是那样凶恶，因为我不说话。
+ 后来在人保组，我也不大说话，包括人家捆我的时候。
+ 所以我的手经常被捆得乌青。
+ 陈清扬经常说话。
+ 她说：大嫂，捆疼了。
+ 或者：大嫂，给我拿手绢垫一垫。
+ 我头发上系了一块手绢。
+ 她处处与人合作，苦头吃得少。
+ 我们处处都不一样。
+ 陈清扬说，以前我不够文明。
+ 在人保组里，人家给我们松了绑。
+ 那条绳子在她的衬衣上留下了很多道痕迹。
+ 这是因为那绳子平时放在烧火的棚子里，沾上了锅灰和柴草沫。
+ 她用不灵活的手把痕迹掸掉，只掸了前面，掸不了后面。
+ 等到她想叫我来掸时，我已经一步跨出门去。
+ 等到她追出门去，我已经走了很远，我走路很快，而且从来不回头看。
+ 就因为这些原因，她根本就不爱我，也说不上喜欢。
+ 照领导定的性，我们在后山上干的事，除了她像考拉那次之外，都不算案子。
+ 像我们在开荒时干的事，只能算枝节问题。
+ 所以我没有继续交待下去。
+ 其实还有别的事。
+ 当时热风正烈，陈清扬头枕双臂睡得很熟。
+ 我把她的衣襟完全解开了。
+ 这样她袒露出上身，好像是故意的一样。
+ 天又蓝又亮，以致阴影里都是蓝黝黝的光。
+ 忽然间我心里一动，在她红彤彤的身体上俯身下去。
+ 我都忘了自己干了些什么了。
+ 我把这事说了出来，以为陈清扬一定不记得。
+ 可是她说，“记得记得！
+ 那会儿我醒了。
+ 你在我肚脐上亲了一下吧？
+ 好危险，差一点爱上你。”
+ 陈清扬说，当时她刚好醒来，看见我那颗乱蓬蓬的头正在她肚子上，然后肚脐上轻柔的一触。
+ 那一刻她也不能自持。
+ 但是她还是假装睡着，看我还要干什么。
+ 可是我什么都没干，抬起头来往四下看看，就走开了。
+ 我写的交待材料里说，那天夜里，我们离开后山，向做案现场进发，背上背了很多坛坛罐罐，计划是到南边山里定居。
+ 那边土地肥沃，公路两边就是一人深的草。
+ 不像十五队后山，草只有半尺高。
+ 那天夜里有月亮，我们还走了一段公路，所以到天明将起雾时，已经走了二十公里，上了南面的山。
+ 具体地说，到了章风寨南面的草地上，再走就是森林。
+ 我们在一棵大青树下露营，拣了两块干牛粪生了一堆火，在地上铺了一块塑料布。
+ 然后脱了一切衣服（衣服已经湿了），搂在一起，裹上三条毯子，滚成一个球，就睡着了。
+ 睡了一个小时就被冻醒。
+ 三重毯子都湿透了，牛粪火也灭了。
+ 树上的水滴像倾盆大雨往下掉。
+ 空气里漂着的水点有绿豆大小。
+ 那是在一月里，旱季最冷的几天。
+ 山的阴面就有这么潮。
+ 陈清扬说，她醒时，听见我在她耳边打机关枪。
+ 上牙碰下牙，一秒钟不只一下。
+ 而且我已经有了热度。
+ 我一感冒就不容易好，必须打针。
+ 她就爬起来说，不行，这样两个人都要病。
+ 快干那事。
+ 我不肯动，说道：忍忍罢。
+ 一会儿就出太阳。
+ 后来又说：你看我干得了吗？
+ 案发前的情况就是这样的。
+ 案发时的情形是这样：陈清扬骑在我身上，一起一落，她背后的天上是白茫茫的雾气。
+ 这时好像不那么冷了，四下里传来牛铃声。
+ 这地方的老傣不关牛，天一亮水牛就自己跑出来。
+ 那些牛身上拴着木制的铃裆，走起来发出闷闷的响声。
+ 一个庞然大物骤然出现在我们身边，耳边的刚毛上挂着水珠。
+ 那是一条白水牛，它侧过头来，用一只眼睛看我们。
+ 白水牛的角可以做刀把，晶莹透明很好看。
+ 可是质脆容易裂。
+ 我有一把匕首，也是白牛角把，却一点不裂，很难得。
+ 刃的材料也好，可是被人保组收走了。
+ 后来没事了，找他们要，却说找不到了。
+ 还有我的猎枪，也不肯还我。
+ 人保组的老郭死乞白咧地说要买，可是只肯出五十块钱。
+ 最后连枪带刀，我一样也没要回来。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里做案之前聊了好半天。
+ 最后她把衬衣也脱下来，还穿着裙子和皮靴。
+ 我走过去坐在她身边，把她的头发撩了起来。
+ 她的头发有不少白的了。
+ 陈清扬烫了头。
+ 她说，以前她的头发好，舍不得烫。
+ 现在没关系了。
+ 她现在当了副院长，非常忙，也不能每天洗头。
+ 除此之外，眼角脖子下有不少皱纹。
+ 她说，女儿建议她去做整容手术。
+ 但是她没时间做。
+ 后来她说，好啦，看罢。
+ 就去解乳罩。
+ 我想帮她一把，也没帮上。
+ 扣在前面，我把手伸到后面去了。
+ 她说看来你没学坏，就转过身来让我看。
+ 我仔细看了一阵，提了一点意见。
+ 不知为什么，她有点脸红，说，好啦，看也看过了。
+ 还要干什么？
+ 就要把乳罩戴上。
+ 我说，别忙，就这样罢。
+ 她说，怎么，还要研究我的结构？
+ 我说，那当然。
+ 现在不着急，再聊一会。
+ 她的脸更红了，说道：王二，你一辈子学不了好，永远是个混蛋。
+ 我在人保组，罗小四来看我，趴窗户一看，我被捆得像粽子一样。
+ 他以为案情严重，我会被枪毙掉，把一盒烟从窗里扔进来，说道：二哥，哥们儿一点意思。
+ 然后哭了。
+ 罗小四感情丰富，很容易哭。
+ 我让他点着了烟从窗口递进来，他照办了，差点肩关节脱臼才递到我嘴上。
+ 然后他问我还有什么事要办，我说没有。
+ 我还说，你别招一大群人来看我。
+ 他也照办了。
+ 他走后，又有一帮孩子爬上窗台看，正看见我被烟熏的睁一眼闭一眼，样子非常难看。
+ 打头的一个不禁说道：耍流氓。
+ 我说，你爸你妈才耍流氓，他们不流氓能有你？
+ 那孩子抓了些泥巴扔我。
+ 等把我放开，我就去找他爸，说道：今天我在人保组，被人像捆猪一样捆上。
+ 令郎人小志大，趁那时朝我扔泥巴。
+ 那人一听，揪住他儿子就揍。
+ 我在一边看完了才走。
+ 陈清扬听说这事，就有这种评价：王二，你是个混蛋。
+ 其实我并非永远是混蛋。
+ 我现在有家有口，已经学了不少好。
+ 抽完了那根烟，我把她抱过来，很熟练地在她胸前爱抚一番，然后就想脱她的裙子。
+ 她说：别忙，再聊会儿。
+ 你给我也来支烟。
+ 我点了一支烟，抽着了给她。
+ 陈清杨说，在章风山她骑在我身上一上一下，极目四野，都是灰蒙蒙的水雾。
+ 忽然间觉得非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 虽然我的一部分在她身体里磨擦，她还是非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 后来我活过来了，说道：换换，你看我的，我就翻到上面去。
+ 她说， 那一回你比哪回都混蛋。
+ 陈清扬说，那回我比哪回都混蛋，是指我忽然发现她的脚很小巧好看。
+ 因此我说，老陈，我准备当个拜脚狂。
+ 然后我把她两腿捧起来，吻她的脚心。
+ 陈清扬平躺在草地上，两手摊开，抓着草。
+ 忽然她一晃头，用头发盖住了脸，然后哼了一声。
+ 我在交待材料里写道，那时我放开她的腿，把她脸上的头发抚开。
+ 陈清扬猛烈地挣扎，流着眼泪，但是没有动手。
+ 她脸上有两点很不健康的红晕。
+ 后来她不挣扎了，对我说，混蛋，你要把我怎么办。
+ 我说，怎么了。
+ 她又笑，说道：不怎么。
+ 接着来。
+ 所以我又捧起她的双腿。
+ 她就那么躺着不动，双手平摊，牙咬着下唇，一声不响。
+ 如果我多看她一眼，她就笑笑。
+ 我记得她脸特别白，头发特别黑，整个情况就是这样的。
+ 陈清扬说，那一回她躺在冷雨里，忽然觉得每一个毛孔都进了冷雨。
+ 她感到悲从中来，不可断绝。
+ 忽然间一股巨大的快感劈进来。
+ 冷雾，雨水，都沁进了她的身体。
+ 那时节她很想死去。
+ 她不能忍耐，想叫出来，但是看见了我她又不想叫出来。
+ 世界上还没有一个男人能叫她肯当着他的面叫出来。
+ 她和任何人都格格不入。
+ 陈清扬后来和我说，每回和我做爱都深受折磨。
+ 在内心深处她很想叫出来，想抱住我狂吻，但是她不乐意。
+ 她不想爱别人，任何人都不爱；尽管如此，我吻她脚心时，一股辛辣的感觉还是钻到她心里来。
+ 我和陈清扬在章风山上做爱，有一只老水牛在一边看。
+ 后来它哞了一声跑开了，只剩我们两人。
+ 过了很长时间，天渐渐亮了。
+ 雾从天顶消散。
+ 陈清扬的身体沾了露水，闪起光来。
+ 我把她放开，站起来，看见离寨子很近，就说：走。
+ 于是离开了那个地方，再没回去过。
+ 我在交待材料里说，我和陈清扬在刘大爹后山上作案无数。
+ 这是因为刘大爹的地是熟地，开起来不那么费力。
+ 生活也安定，所以温饱生淫欲。
+ 那片山上没人，刘大爹躺在床上要死了。
+ 山上非雾即雨，陈清扬腰上束着我的板带，上面挂着刀子。
+ 脚上穿高筒雨靴，除此之外不着一丝。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她一辈子只交了我一个朋友。
+ 她说，这一切都是因为我在河边的小屋里谈到伟大友谊。
+ 人活着总要做几件事情，这就是其中之一。
+ 以后她就没和任何人有过交情。
+ 同样的事做多了没意思。
+ 我对此早有预感。
+ 所以我向她要求此事时就说：老兄，咱们敦敦伟大友谊如何？
+ 人家夫妇敦伦，我们无伦可言，只好敦友谊。
+ 她说好。
+ 怎么敦？
+ 正着敦反着敦？
+ 我说反着敦。
+ 那时正在地头上。
+ 因为是反着敦，就把两件蓑衣铺在地上，她趴在上面，像一匹马，说道：你最好快一点，刘大爹该打针了。
+ 我把这些事写进了交待材料，领导上让我交待：1. 谁是“郭伦”；2. 什么叫“郭郭”伟大友谊；3 .什么叫正着郭，什么叫反着郭。
+ 把这些都说清以后，领导上又叫我以后少掉文，是什么问题就交待什么问题。
+ 在山上敦伟大友谊时，嘴里喷出白气。
+ 天不那么凉，可是很湿，抓过一把能拧出水来。
+ 就在蓑衣旁边，蚯蚓在爬。
+ 那片地真肥。
+ 后来玉米还没熟透，我们就把它放在捣臼里捣，这是山上老景颇的做法。
+ 做出的玉米粑粑很不坏。
+ 在冷水里放着，好多天不坏。
+ 陈清扬趴在冷雨里，乳房摸起来像冷苹果。
+ 她浑身的皮肤绷紧，好像抛过光的大理石。
+ 后来我把小和尚拔出来，把精液射到地里。
+ 她在一边看着，面带惊恐之状。
+ 我告诉她：这样地会更肥。
+ 她说：我知道。
+ 后来又说：地里会不会长出小王二来——这像个大夫说的话吗？
+ 雨季过去后，我们化装成老傣，到清平赶街。
+ 后来的事我已经写过，我在清平遇上了同学。
+ 虽然化了装，人家还是一眼就认出我来。
+ 我的个子太高，装不矮。
+ 人家对我说：二哥，你跑哪儿去了？
+ 我说：我不会讲汉话哟！
+ 虽然尽力加上一点怪腔，还是京片子。
+ 一句就露馅了。
+ 回到农场是她的主意。
+ 我自己既然上了山，就不准备下去。
+ 她和我上山，是为了伟大友谊。
+ 我也不能不陪她下去。
+ 其实我们随时可以逃走，但她不乐意。
+ 她说现在的生活很有趣。
+ 陈清扬后来说，在山上她也觉得很有趣。
+ 漫山冷雾时，腰上别着刀子，足蹬高统雨靴，走到雨丝里去。
+ 但是同样的事做多了就不再有趣。
+ 所以她还想下山，忍受人世的摧残。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里重温伟大友谊，说到那回从山上下来，走到岔路口上。
+ 那地方有四条岔路，各通一方。
+ 东西南北没有关系，一条通到国外，是未知之地； 一条通到内地；一条通到农场； 一条是我们来的路。
+ 那条路还通到户撒。
+ 那里有很多阿伧铁匠，那些人世世代代当铁匠。
+ 我虽然不是世世代代，但我也能当铁匠。
+ 我和那些人熟得很，他们都佩服我的技术。
+ 阿伧族的女人都很漂亮，身上挂了很多铜箍和银钱。
+ 陈清扬对那种打扮十分神往，她很想到山上去当个阿伧。
+ 那时雨季刚过，云从四面八方升起来。
+ 天顶上闪过一缕缕阳光。
+ 我们有各种选择，可以到各方向去。
+ 所以我在路口上站了很久。
+ 后来我回内地时，站在公路上等汽车，也有两种选择，可以等下去，也可以回农场去。
+ 当我沿着一条路走下去的时候，心里总想着另一条路上的事。
+ 这种时候我心里很乱。
+ 陈清扬说过，我天资中等，手很巧，人特别混。
+ 这都是有所指的。
+ 说我天资中等，我不大同意。
+ 说我特别混，事实俱在，不容抵赖。
+ 至于说我手巧，可能是自己身上体会出来的。
+ 我的手的确很巧，不光表现在摸女人方面。
+ 手掌不大，手指特长，可以做任何精细的工作。
+ 山上那些阿伧铁匠打刀刃比我好，可是要比在刀上刻花纹，没有任何人能比得上。
+ 所以起码有二十个铁匠提出过，让我们搬过去，他打刀刃我刻花纹，我们搭一伙。
+ 假如当初搬了过去，可能现在连汉话都不会说了。
+ 假如我搬到一位阿伧大哥那里去住，现在准在黑洞洞的铁匠铺里给户撒刀刻花纹。
+ 在他家泥泞的后院里，准有一大窝小崽子，共有四种组合形式：1. 陈清扬和我的；2. 阿伧大哥和阿伧大嫂的；3. 我和阿伧大嫂的；4. 陈清扬和阿伧大哥的。
+ 陈清扬从山上背柴回来，撩起衣裳，露出极壮硕的乳房，不分青红皂白，就给其中一个喂奶。
+ 假如当初我退回山上去，这样的事就会发生。
+ 陈清扬说，这样的事不会发生，因为它没有发生，实际发生的是，我们回了农场，写交待材料出斗争差。
+ 虽然随时都可以跑掉，但是没有跑。
+ 这是真实发生了的事。
+ 陈清扬说，我天资平常，她显然没把我的文学才能考虑在内。
+ 我写的交待材料人人都爱看。
+ 刚开始写那些东西时，我有很大抵触情绪。
+ 写着写着就入了迷。
+ 这显然是因为我写的全是发生过的事。
+ 发生过的事有无比的魅力。
+ 我在交待材料里写下了一切细节，但是没有写以下已经发生的事情：我和陈清扬在十五队后山上，在草房里干完后，到山涧里戏水。
+ 山上下来的水把红土剥光，露出下面的蓝粘土来。
+ 我们爬到蓝粘土上晒太阳。
+ 暖过来后，小和尚又直立起来。
+ 但是刚发泄过，不像急色鬼。
+ 于是我侧躺在她身后，枕着她的头发进入她的身体。
+ 我们在饭店里，后来也是这么重温伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬侧躺在蓝粘土上，那时天色将晚，风也有点凉。
+ 躺在一起心平气和，有时轻轻动一下。
+ 据说海豚之间有生殖性的和娱乐性的两种搞法，这就是说，海豚也有伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬连在一起，好像两只海豚一样。
+ 我和陈清扬在蓝粘土上，闭上眼睛，好像两只海豚在海里游动。
+ 天黑下来，阳光逐渐红下去。
+ 天边起了一片云，惨白惨白，翻着无数死鱼肚皮，瞪起无数死鱼眼睛。
+ 山上有一股风，无声无息地吹下去。
+ 天地间充满了悲惨的气氛。
+ 陈清扬流了很多眼泪。
+ 她说是触景伤情。
+ 我还存了当年交待材料的副本，有一回拿给一位搞英美文学的朋友看，他说很好，有维多利亚时期地下小说的韵味。
+ 至于删去的细节，他也说删得好，那些细节破坏了故事的完整性。
+ 我的朋友真有大学问。
+ 我写交待材料时很年轻，没什么学问（到现在也没有学问），不知道什么是维多利亚时期地下小说。
+ 我想的是不能教会了别人。
+ 我这份交待材料不少人要看，假如他们看了情不自禁，也去搞破鞋，那倒不伤大雅，要是学会了这个，那可不大好。
+ 我在交待材料里还漏掉了以下事实，理由如前所述。
+ 我们犯了错误，本该被枪毙，领导上挽救我们，让我写交待材料，这是多么大的宽大！
+ 所以我下定决心，只写出我们是多么坏。
+ 我们俩在刘大爹后山上时，陈清扬给自己做了一件筒裙，想穿了它化装成老傣，到清平去赶街。
+ 可是她穿上以后连路都走不了啦。
+ 走到清平南边遇到一条河，山上下来的水像冰一样凉，像腌雪里一样绿。
+ 那水有齐腰深，非常急。
+ 我走过去，把她用一个肩膀扛起来，径直走过河才放下来。
+ 我的一边肩膀正好和陈清扬的腰等宽，记得那时她的脸红得厉害。
+ 我还说，我可以把你扛到清平去，再扛回来，比你扭扭捏捏地走更快。
+ 她说，去你妈的吧。
+ 筒裙就像个布筒子，下口只有一尺宽。
+ 会穿的人在里面可以干各种事，包括在大街上撒尿，不用蹲下来。
+ 陈清扬说，这一手她永远学不会。
+ 在清平集上观摩了一阵，她得到了要扮就扮阿伧的结论。
+ 回来的路是上山，而且她的力气都耗光了。
+ 每到跨沟越坎之处，她就找个树墩子，姿仪万方地站上去，让我扛她。
+ 回来的路上扛着她爬坡。
+ 那时旱季刚到，天上白云纵横，阳光灿烂。
+ 可是山里还时有小雨。
+ 红土的大板块就分外地滑。
+ 我走上那块烂泥板，就像初次上冰场。
+ 那时我右手扣住她的大腿，左手提着猎枪，背上还有一个背篓，走在那滑溜溜的斜面上，十分吃力。
+ 忽然间我向左边滑动，马上要滑进山沟，幸亏手里有条枪，拿枪拄在地上。
+ 那时我全身绷紧，拼了老命，总算支持住了。
+ 可这个笨蛋还来添乱，在我背上扑腾起来，让我放她下去。
+ 那一回差一点死了。
+ 等我刚能喘过气来，就把枪带交到右手，抡起左手在她屁股上狠狠打了两巴掌。
+ 隔了薄薄一层布，倒显得格外光滑。
+ 她的屁股很圆。
+ 鸡巴，感觉非常之好的啦！
+ 她挨了那两下登时老实了。
+ 非常地乖，一声也不吭。
+ 当然打陈清扬屁股也不是好事，但是我想别的破鞋和野汉子之间未必有这样的事。
+ 这件事离了题，所以就没写。
+
+ When we relived our great friendship later in the hotel room, we talked about all kinds of things.
+ We talked about everything we could have done back then, the confessions I wrote, and even the little Buddha of mine.
+ As soon as the thing heard people talking about him, he became excited and began to stir.
+ So I concluded: back then they'd wanted to hammer us but failed.
+ I was still as hard as ever.
+ For the sake of our great friendship, I would even run three times around the block, bare assed.
+ A person like me never cares much about saving face.
+ After all, that was my golden age, even though I was considered a hooligan.
+ I knew a lot of people there, including the nomads in caravans, the old Jingpos living on the mountains, and so on.
+ When you mentioned Wang Er who knew how to fix watches, everyone knew who he was.
+ I could sit with them by the fire and drink the kind of wine that only costs twenty fen for half a gallon.
+ I could drink a lot.
+ I was very popular there.
+ Other than those people, the pigs in the farm also liked me.
+ That was because when I fed them, I used three times more bran than others did.
+ Because of that I fought with the mess chief.
+ I said, at least our pigs should have enough food.
+ I always had a lot of friendship, and would have liked to share it with everyone.
+ Since they didn't want my friendship, I unloaded all of it on Chen Qingyang.
+ The strengthening of our great friendship that Chen Qingyang and I did while in the hotel room was of the recreational sort.
+ I pulled out once in the middle of it and found my little Buddha smeared with blood.
+ She said, An older woman's insides get a bit thin, don't push too hard.
+ She also said she'd stayed in the south so long that her hands cracked when she came to the north.
+ The quality of skin cream had declined and it was no use putting it on her hands.
+ After saying this, she took out a small bottle of glycerin and applied some to my little Buddha.
+ Then we did it from the front so we could keep talking.
+ I felt like a wedge for splitting wood, lying between her widely opened legs.
+ In the lamplight, the network of fine lines on Chen Qingyang's face looked like pieces of golden thread.
+ I kissed her mouth, and she didn't object—that is to say her lips were soft and parted.
+ She hadn't let me kiss her mouth before, only letting me kiss the line between her chin and her neck.
+ She said this would arouse her.
+ Then we continued to talk about things past.
+ Chen Qingyang said that was also her golden age.
+ Even though people called her damaged goods, she was innocent.
+ She was still innocent now.
+ After hearing this, I laughed.
+ But she said, what we're doing now doesn't count as a sin.
+ We had a great friendship, ran away, went on denouncement trips together, and now that we met again after twenty years' separation, of course she would open her legs to let me crawl in.
+ So even if it were considered a sin, she didn't know where the sin lay.
+ More importantly, she had no knowledge of this sin.
+ Then once again, she began to breathe heavily.
+ Her face turned scarlet, her legs locked me tightly, and her body beneath me tensed while again and again muffled screams came through her clenched teeth.
+ Only after a long while did she relax.
+ Then she said it was not bad at all.
+ After the "not bad at all," she still said it was no sin.
+ Because she was like Socrates, ignorant of everything.
+ Even though she had lived more than forty years, the world before her eyes still appeared miraculous and new.
+ She didn't know why they dispatched her to a desolate place like Yunnan, nor did she know the reason for letting her return; she didn't know why they accused her of being damaged goods and escorted her to the stage to be denounced, nor could she figure out why they said she was not damaged goods and removed the confessions she had written from her file.
+ There were all kinds of explanations for these things, but she understood none of them.
+ She was so ignorant that she had to be innocent.
+ So it is written in all the law books.
+ Chen Qingyang said, People live in this world to suffer torment until they die.
+ Once you figure this out, you'll be able to bear everything calmly.
+ To explain how she came to this realization, we need to go all the way back to the time I returned from the hospital and left for the mountains from her place.
+ I asked her to come to see me and she hesitated for a long time.
+ When she finally decided and walked through the hot noon air to my thatched hut, many beautiful images went through her mind during those moments.
+ Then she entered the thatched hut and saw my little Buddha sticking up like an ugly instrument of torture.
+ She cried out then and abandoned all hope.
+ Chen Qingyang said, twenty years earlier, on a winter day, she walked into her courtyard.
+ She had on a cotton coat then, and climbed across the threshold clumsily.
+ A grain of sand suddenly got into her eye.
+ It was so painful and the cold wind was so cutting that her tears kept rolling down.
+ She couldn't bear it and wept, as if she were in her little bed trying to cry herself awake.
+ This was an old habit born with her, deeply rooted, that we are wailing our way from one dream into another—this was the extravagant hope that we all have.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she went to look for me, golden flies danced in the woods.
+ The wind blew from every direction, penetrating her clothes and climbing her body.
+ The place I lived could be called an empty mountain without a human trace.
+ The burning sunlight dropped from the heights like shattered bits of mica.
+ Beneath her thin, white smock, she had stripped off all her underwear.
+ At that moment her heart, too, was full of extravagant hope.
+ After all, it was also her golden age, even though she was called damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went into the mountains to look for me, she climbed over a bare hill.
+ Wind blew in from below and caressed her sensitive parts.
+ And the desire she felt then was as unpredictable as wind.
+ It dispersed just like the wild mountain wind.
+ She thought about our great friendship, thought about how I hurried down the mountain.
+ She also remembered my head of tousled hair; how directly I stared at her when I proved she was damaged goods.
+ She felt she needed me, and we could become one, female and male in a single body, just as when she crawled over the threshold as a child and felt the wind outside.
+ The sky was so blue, the sunshine so bright, and there were pigeons flying around in the sky.
+ The whistling of those pigeons you would remember for the rest of your life.
+ She wanted to talk to me at that moment, just as she longed to merge with the outside world, to dissolve into the sky and the earth.
+ If there were only one person—only her—in this world, she would feel too lonely.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went to my little thatched hut, she thought about everything except the little Buddha.
+ That thing was too ugly to appear in her musing.
+ Chen Qingyang wanted to wail then, but she couldn't cry out, as if someone were choking her.
+ This is the so-called truth.
+ The truth is that you can't wake up.
+ That was the moment she finally figured out what the world was made of; and the next moment she made up her mind: she stepped forward to accept the torment.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang also said, just then, she once again remembered the moment she cried without restraint in the doorway.
+ She cried and cried, but couldn't awaken from crying, and the agony was undiminished.
+ She cried for a long time, but she didn't want to give up hope, not until twenty years later when she faced the little Buddha.
+ It was not the first time that she faced the little Buddha.
+ But before then she didn't believe there was such a thing in the world.
+ Chen Qingyang said, facing this ugly thing, she remembered our great friendship.
+ When she was in the university, she had a female classmate who was as ugly as a devil (or to put it in these terms, she looked like my little Buddha).
+ But the girl insisted on sharing a bed with her.
+ What was more, when everyone fell fast sleep, the girl would kiss her mouth and fondle her breasts.
+ To tell the truth, she didn't have this particular hobby, but tolerated it for the sake of their friendship.
+ Now, here was this thing baring its teeth and unsheathing its claws, and wanting exactly the same thing.
+ Then let it be satisfied, which in addition can be a way to make friends.
+ So she stepped forward, burying its ugliness deep inside her.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang said until then she still believed she was innocent, even after she ran away into the heart of the mountains and strengthened our great friendship almost every day.
+ She said this wouldn't prove she was bad at all because she didn't know why my little Buddha and I wanted to do this.
+ She did it for our great friendship.
+ Great friendship is a promise.
+ Keeping a promise is certainly no sin.
+ She had promised to help me in every respect.
+ But I spanked her bottom in the midst of the mountains, which completely tarnished her innocence.
+ I wrote confessions for a long time.
+ The leaders always said that I didn't confess thoroughly enough and needed to continue.
+ So I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life confessing.
+ Finally, Chen Qingyang wrote a confession without letting me see it and turned it into the public security office.
+ After that, no one asked us to write confessions or go on denouncement trips anymore.
+ What was more, Chen Qingyang began to distance herself from me.
+ I lived a listless existence for a while and went back to the interior alone.
+ What she wrote in the end, I hadn't a clue.
+ I lost everything when I came back from Yunnan: my gun, my knife, and my tools.
+ I gained one thing: a bulging file of confessions.
+ From then on, wherever I went, people would know that I was a hooligan.
+ One benefit I got was that I returned to the city earlier than the other city students.
+ But what was the good of returning earlier?
+ I still had to be reeducated in the countryside near Beijing.
+ When I went to Yunnan, I had brought a full set of tools with me: wrench, small vise, and so on.
+ Besides a set of fitter's tools, I also had a set of watchmaker's tools.
+ I used them to fix watches while living on Grandpa Liu's back slope.
+ Even though the mountain was empty and lonely, some bands of horsemen passed by from time to time.
+ Some of them let me appraise the smuggled watches.
+ Whatever the value I suggested, that would be the price, the watch would be worth that much.
+ Of course I didn't do it for free.
+ So I lived quite comfortably in the mountains.
+ If I hadn't come down, I'd be a millionaire by now.
+ As for that double-barreled shotgun, it was a treasure as well.
+ It turned out that the locals didn't value carbines and rifles much, but the double-barreled shotgun was a rarity to them.
+ The barrel was so heavy, plus there were two.
+ I could really scare people off with it.
+ Otherwise we would have been robbed long ago.
+ Nobody wanted to rob me or Grandpa Liu, but they might want to take Chen Qingyang away.
+ As for my knife, I always fastened it on a cowhide belt, and the cowhide belt was always fastened around Chen Qingyang's waist.
+ She wouldn't take it off even when she was sleeping or making love to me.
+ She thought it was charming to carry a knife with her.
+ So you can say that the knife actually belonged to Chen Qingyang.
+ As I mentioned before, both the knife and gun were confiscated by the public security office.
+ I didn't bring my tools with me when I came down the mountains; I left them on the mountain in case things didn't go smoothly.
+ By the time I went back to Beijing, I was in a hurry and didn't have time to fetch the tools.
+ That was how I was reduced to a complete zero.
+ I told Chen Qingyang that I could never figure out what she wrote in her last confession.
+ She said she couldn't tell me right then.
+ She wanted to wait until we said goodbye to each other.
+ She was going back to Shanghai the next day.
+ She asked me to see her off at the train station.
+ Chen Qingyang was different from me in every respect.
+ After daybreak, she took a cold shower (the hot water had run out), and then began to dress up.
+ From underwear to outfit, she was a perfumed lady.
+ I, on the other hand, was a genuine local hooligan from underwear to outfit.
+ No wonder people took the confessions out of her file but left mine.
+ That is to say, her hymen had grown back.
+ As for me, I never had that thing anyway.
+ Besides that, I also committed the crime of instigation.
+ We had committed many errors together and since she didn't know what her sin was, it had to be counted as mine.
+ We checked out and walked in the street.
+ Now I began to think that the last confession of hers must be extremely obscene.
+ Those who read our confessions were people with stone hearts and high political consciousness.
+ If they couldn't bear reading it, it had to be pretty bad.
+ Chen Qingyang said, in that confession, she wrote nothing but her true sin.
+ Chen Qingyang said that by her true sin she meant the incident on Mount Qingping.
+ She was being carried on my shoulder then, wearing the Thai skirt that bound her legs tightly together, and her hair hung down to my waist.
+ The white cloud in the sky hurried on its journey, and there were only two of us in the midst of mountains.
+ I had just smacked her bottom; I spanked her really hard.
+ The burning feeling was fading.
+ After that I cared about nothing else but continuing to climb the mountain.
+ Chen Qingyang said that moment she felt limp all over, so she let go of herself, hanging over my shoulder.
+ That moment she felt like a spring vine entangling a tree, or a young bird clinging to its master.
+ She no longer cared about anything else, and at that moment she had forgotten everything.
+ At that moment she fell in love with me, and that would never change.
+ At the train station, Chen Qingyang told me when she submitted this confession, the regimental commander read it immediately.
+ And after he finished reading his face was red all over, just like your little Buddha.
+ People who read this confession later all blushed too, like the little Buddha.
+ Afterward the public security people approached her several times, asking her to rewrite it.
+ But she said, This is what really happened.
+ Not a word should be changed.
+ They had no choice but to place it into her file.
+ Chen Qingyang said, admitting this amounts to admitting all her sins.
+ When she was in the public security office, they showed her all kinds of confessions, just to let her know what she couldn't write in her confession.
+ But she insisted on writing in this way.
+ She said that the reason that she wanted to write about it was because it was worse than anything else she had done.
+ She admitted before that she opened her legs; now she added that the reason she had done it was because she liked it.
+ Doing something is very different from liking it.
+ The former warranted going on denouncement trips; and the latter warranted being torn apart by five running horses or being minced by thousands of knives.
+ But no one had the power to tear us apart with five horses, so they had no choice but to set us free.
+ After Chen Qingyang told me this, the train roared away.
+ From that moment on, I never saw her again.
+
+ 后来我们在饭店里重温伟大友谊，谈到各种事情。
+ 谈到了当年的各种可能性，谈到了我写的交待材料，还谈到了我的小和尚。
+ 那东西一听别人谈到它，就激昂起来，蠢动个不停。
+ 因此我总结道，那时人家要把我们锤掉，但是没有锤动。
+ 我到今天还强硬如初。
+ 为了伟大友谊，我还能光着屁股上街跑三圈。
+ 我这个人，一向不大知道要脸。
+ 不管怎么说，那是我的黄金时代。
+ 虽然我被人当成流氓。
+ 我认识那里好多人，包括赶马帮的流浪汉，山上的老景颇等等。
+ 提起会修表的王二，大家都知道。
+ 我和他们在火边喝那种两毛钱一斤的酒，能喝很多。
+ 我在他们那里大受欢迎。
+ 除了这些人，猪场里的猪也喜欢我，因为我喂猪时，猪食里的糠比平时多三倍。
+ 然后就和司务长吵架，我说，我们猪总得吃饱吧。
+ 我身上带有很多伟大友谊，要送给一切人。
+ 因为他们都不要，所以都发泄在陈清扬身上了。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里敦伟大友谊，是娱乐性的。
+ 中间退出来一次，只见小和尚上血迹斑斑。
+ 她说，年纪大了，里面有点薄，你别那么使劲。
+ 她还说，在南方待久了，到了北方手就裂。
+ 而蛤蜊油的质量下降，抹在手上一点用都不管。
+ 说完了这些话，她拿出一小瓶甘油来，抹在小和尚上面。
+ 然后正着敦，说话方便。
+ 我就像一根待解的木料，躺在她分开的双腿中间。
+ 陈清扬脸上有很多浅浅的皱纹，在灯光下好像一条条金线。
+ 我吻她的嘴，她没反对。
+ 这就是说，她的嘴唇很柔软，而且分开了。
+ 以前她不让我吻她嘴唇，让我吻她下巴和脖子交界的地方。
+ 她说，这样刺激性欲。
+ 然后继续谈到过去的事。
+ 陈清扬说，那也是她的黄金时代。
+ 虽然被人称做破鞋，但是她清白无辜。
+ 她到现在还是无辜的。
+ 听了这话，我笑起来。
+ 但是她说，我们在干的事算不上罪孽。
+ 我们有伟大友谊，一起逃亡，一起出斗争差，过了二十年又见面，她当然要分开两腿让我趴进来。
+ 所以就算是罪孽，她也不知罪在何处。
+ 更主要的是，她对这罪恶一无所知。
+ 然后她又一次呼吸急促起来。
+ 她的脸变得赤红，两腿把我用力夹紧，身体在我下面绷紧，压抑的叫声一次又一次穿过牙关，过了很久才松驰下来。
+ 这时她说很不坏。
+ 很不坏之后，她还说这不是罪孽。
+ 因为她像苏格拉底，对一切都一无所知。
+ 虽然活了四十多岁，眼前还是奇妙的新世界。
+ 她不知道为什么人家要把她发到云南那个荒凉的地方，也不知为什么又放她回来。
+ 不知道为什么要说她是破鞋，把她押上台去斗争，也不知道为什么又说她不是破鞋，把写好的材料又抽出来。
+ 这些事有过各种解释，但没有一种她能听懂。
+ 她是如此无知，所以她无罪。
+ 一切法律书上都是这么写的。
+ 陈清扬说，人活在世上，就是为了忍受摧残，一直到死。
+ 想明了这一点，一切都能泰然处之。
+ 要说明她怎会有这种见识，一切都要回溯到那一回我从医院回来，从她那里经过进了山。
+ 我叫她去看我，她一直在犹豫。
+ 等到她下定了决心，穿过中午的热风，来到我的草房前面，那一瞬间，她心里有很多美丽的想像。
+ 等到她进了那间草房，看见我的小和尚直挺挺，像一件丑恶的刑具。
+ 那时她惊叫起来，放弃了一切希望。
+ 陈清扬说，在此之前二十多年前一个冬日，她走到院子里去。
+ 那时节她穿着棉衣，艰难地爬过院门的门槛。
+ 忽然一粒砂粒钻进了她的眼睛，那么的疼，冷风又是那样的割脸，眼泪不停地流。
+ 她觉得难以忍受，立刻大哭起来，企图在一张小床上哭醒。
+ 这是与生俱来的积习，根深蒂固。
+ 放声大哭从一个梦境进入另一个梦境，这是每个人都有的奢望。
+ 陈清扬说，她去找我时，树林里飞舞着金蝇。
+ 风从所有的方向吹来，穿过衣襟，爬到身上。
+ 我待的那个地方可算是空山无人。
+ 炎热的阳光好像细碎的云母片，从天顶落下来。
+ 在一件薄薄的白大褂下，她已经脱得精光。
+ 那时她心里也有很多奢望。
+ 不管怎么说，那也是她的黄金时代，虽然那时她被人叫作破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她到山里找我时，爬过光秃秃的山岗。
+ 风从衣服下面吹进来，吹过她的性敏感带，那时她感到的性欲，就如风一样捉摸不定。
+ 它放散开，就如山野上的凤。
+ 她想到了我们的伟大友谊，想起我从山上急匆匆地走下去。
+ 她还记得我长了一头乱蓬蓬的头发，论证她是破鞋时，目光笔直地看着她。
+ 她感到需要我，我们可以合并，成为雄雌一体。
+ 就如幼小时她爬出门槛，感到了外面的风。
+ 天是那么蓝，阳光是那么亮，天上还有鸽子在飞。
+ 鸽哨的声音叫人终身难忘。
+ 此时她想和我交谈，正如那时节她渴望和外面的世界合为一体，溶化到天地中去。
+ 假如世界上只有她一个人，那实在是太寂寞了。
+ 陈清扬说，她到我的小草房里去时，想到了一切东西，就是没想到小和尚。
+ 那东西太丑，简直不配出现在梦幻里。
+ 当时陈清扬也想大哭一场，但是哭不出来，好像被人捏住了喉咙。
+ 这就是所谓的真实。
+ 真实就是无法醒来。
+ 那一瞬间她终于明白了在世界上有些什么，下一瞬间她就下定了决心，走上前来，接受摧残，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬还说，那一瞬间，她又想起了在门槛上痛哭的时刻。
+ 那时她哭了又哭，总是哭不醒。
+ 而痛苦也没有一点减小的意思。
+ 她哭了很久，总是不死心。
+ 她一直不死心，直到二十年后面对小和尚。
+ 这已经不是她第一次面对小和尚。
+ 但是以前她不相信世界上还有这种东西。
+ 陈清扬说，她面对这丑恶的东西，想到了伟大友谊。
+ 大学里有个女同学，长得丑恶如鬼（或者说，长得也是这个模样），却非要和她睡一个床。
+ 不但如此，到夜深入静的时候，还要吻她的嘴，摸她的乳房。
+ 说实在的，她没有这方面的嗜好。
+ 但是为了交情，她忍住了。
+ 如今这个东西张牙舞爪，所要求的不过是同一种东西。
+ 就让它如愿以尝，也算是交友之道。
+ 所以她走上前来，把它的丑恶深深埋葬，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬说，到那时她还相信自己是无辜的。
+ 甚至直到她和我逃进深山里去，几乎每天都敦伟大友谊。
+ 她说这丝毫也不能说明她有多么坏，因为她不知道我和我的小和尚为什么要这样。
+ 她这样做是为了伟大友谊，伟大友谊是一种诺言。
+ 守信肯定不是罪孽。
+ 她许诺过要帮助我，而且是在一切方面。
+ 但是我在深山里在她屁股上打了两下，彻底玷污了她的清白。
+ 我写了很长时间交待材料，领导上总说，交待得不彻底，还要继续交待。
+ 所以我以为，我的下半辈子要在交待中度过。
+ 最后陈清扬写了一篇交待材料，没给我看，就交到了人保组。
+ 此后就再没让我们写材料。
+ 不但如此，也不叫我们出斗争差。
+ 不但如此，陈清扬对我也冷淡起来。
+ 我没情没绪地过了一段时间，自己回了内地。
+ 她到底写了什么，我怎么也猜不出来。
+ 从云南回来时我损失了一切东西：我的枪，我的刀，我的工具，只多了一样东西，就是档案袋鼓了起来。
+ 那里面有我自己写的材料，从此不管我到什么地方，人家都能知道我是流氓。
+ 所得的好处是比别人早回城，但是早回来没什么好，还得到京郊插队。
+ 我到云南时，带了很全的工具，桌拿子、小台钳都有。
+ 除了钳工家具，还有一套修表工具。
+ 住在刘大爹后山上时，我用它给人看手表。
+ 虽然空山寂寂，有些马帮却从那里过。
+ 有人让我鉴定走私表，我说值多少就值多少。
+ 当然不是白干。
+ 所以我在山上很活得过。
+ 要是不下来，现在也是万元户。
+ 至于那把双筒猎枪，也是一宝。
+ 原来当地卡宾枪老套筒都不希罕，就是没见过那玩意。
+ 筒子那么粗，又是两个管，我拿了它很能唬人。
+ 要不人家早把我们抢了。
+ 我，特别是刘老爹，人家不会抢，恐怕要把陈清扬抢走。
+ 至于我的刀，老拴在一条牛皮大带上。
+ 牛皮大带又老拴陈清扬腰上。
+ 睡觉做爱都不摘下来。
+ 她觉得带刀很气派。
+ 所以这把刀可以说已经属于陈清扬。
+ 枪和刀我已说过，被人保组要走了。
+ 我的工具下山时就没带下来，就放在山上，准备不顺利时再往山上跑。
+ 回来时行色匆匆，没顾上去拿，因此我成了彻底的穷光蛋。
+ 我对陈清扬说，我怎么也想不出来在最后一篇交待里她写了什么。
+ 她说，现在不能告诉我。
+ 要告诉我这件事，只能等到了分手的时候。
+ 第二天她要回上海，她叫我送她上车站。
+ 陈清扬在各个方面都和我不同。
+ 天亮以后，洗了个冷水澡（没有热水了），她穿戴起来。
+ 从内衣到外衣，她都是一个香喷喷的LADY。
+ 而我从内衣到外衣都是一个地道的土流氓。
+ 无怪人家把她的交待材料抽了出来，不肯抽出我的。
+ 这就是说，她那破裂的处女膜长了起来。
+ 而我呢，根本就没长过那个东西。
+ 除此之外，我还犯了教唆之罪，我们在一起犯了很多错误，既然她不知罪，只好都算在我账上。
+ 我们结了账，走到街上去。
+ 这时我想，她那篇交待材料一定淫秽万分。
+ 看交待材料的人都心硬如铁，水平无比之高，能叫人家看了受不住，那还好得了？
+ 陈清扬说，那篇材料里什么也没写，只有她真实的罪孽。
+ 陈清扬说她真实的罪孽，是指在清平山上。
+ 那时她被架在我的肩上，穿着紧裹住双腿的筒裙，头发低垂下去，直到我的腰际。
+ 天上白云匆匆，深山里只有我们两个人。
+ 我刚在她屁股上打了两下，打得非常之重，火烧火撩的感觉正在飘散。
+ 打过之后我就不管别的事，继续往山上攀登。
+ 陈清扬说，那一刻她感到浑身无力，就瘫软下来，挂在我肩上。
+ 那一刻她觉得如春藤绕树，小鸟依人。
+ 她再也不想理会别的事，而且在那一瞬间把一切都遗忘。
+ 在那一瞬间她爱上了我，而且这件事永远不能改变。
+ 在车站上陈清扬说，这篇材料交上去，团长拿起来就看。
+ 看完了面红耳赤，就像你的小和尚。
+ 后来见过她这篇交待材料的人，一个个都面红耳赤，好像小和尚。
+ 后来人保组的人找了她好几回，让她拿回去重写，但是她说，这是真实情况，一个字都不能改。
+ 人家只好把这个东西放进了我们的档案袋。
+ 陈清扬说，承认了这个，就等于承认了一切罪孽。
+ 在人保组里，人家把各种交待材料拿给她看，就是想让她明白，谁也不这么写交待。
+ 但是她偏要这么写。
+ 她说，她之所以要把这事最后写出来，是因为它比她干过的一切事都坏。
+ 以前她承认过分开双腿，现在又加上，她做这些事是因为她喜欢。
+ 做过这事和喜欢这事大不一样。
+ 前者该当出斗争差，后者就该五马分尸千刀万剐。
+ 但是谁也没权力把我们五马分尸，所以只好把我们放了。
+ 陈清扬告诉我这件事以后，火车就开走了。
+ 以后我再也没见过她。
+
+ Along a coastal road somewhere south of the Yangtze River, a detachment of soldiers, each of them armed with a halberd, was escorting a line of seven prison carts, trudging northwards in the teeth of a bitter wind.
+ In each of the first three carts a single male prisoner was caged, identifiable by his dress as a member of the scholar class.
+ One was a white-haired old man.
+ The other two were men of middle years.
+ The four rear carts were occupied by women, the last of them by a young mother holding a baby girl at her breast.
+ The little girl was crying in a continuous wail which her mother's gentle words of comfort were powerless to console.
+ One of the soldiers marching alongside, irritated by the baby's crying, aimed a mighty kick at the cart.
+ 'Stop it!
+ Shut up!
+ Or I'll really give you something to cry about!'
+ The baby, startled by this sudden violence, cried even louder.
+ Under the eaves of a large house, some hundred yards from the road, a middle-aged scholar was standing with a ten- or eleven-year-old boy at his side.
+ He was evidently affected by this little scene, for a groan escaped his lips and he appeared to be very close to tears.
+ 'Poor creatures!' he murmured to himself.
+ 'Papa,' said the little boy, 'what have they done wrong?'
+ 'What indeed!' said the man, bitterly.
+ 'During these last two days they must have made more than thirty arrests.
+ All our best scholars.
+ And all of them innocents, caught up in the net,' he added in an undertone, for fear that the soldiers might hear him.
+ That girl's only a baby,' said the boy.
+ 'What can she possibly be guilty of?
+ It's very wrong.'
+ 'So you understand that what the Government soldiers do is wrong,' said the man.
+ 'Good for you, my son!'
+ He sighed.
+ 'They are the cleaver and we are the meat.
+ They are the cauldron and we are the deer.'
+ 'You explained "they are the cleaver and we are the meat" the other day, papa,' said the boy.
+ 'It's what they say when people are massacred or beheaded.
+ Like meat or fish being sliced up on the chopping-board.
+ Does "they are the cauldron and we are the deer" mean the same thing?'
+ 'Yes, more or less,' said the man; and since the train of soldiers and prison carts was now fast receding, he took the boy by the hand.
+ 'Let's go indoors now,' he said.
+ 'It's too windy for standing outside.'
+ Indoors the two of them went, and into his study.
+ The man picked up a writing-brush and moistened it on the ink-slab, then, on a sheet of paper, he wrote the character for a deer.
+ 'The deer is a wild animal, but although it is comparatively large, it has a very peaceable nature.
+ It eats only grass and leaves and never harms other animals.
+ So when other animals want to hurt it or to eat it, all it can do is run away.
+ If it can't escape by running away, it gets eaten.'
+ He wrote the characters for 'chasing the deer' on the sheet of paper.
+ 'That's why in ancient times they often used the deer as a symbol of Empire.
+ The common people, who are the subjects of Empire, are gentle and obedient.
+ Like the deer's, it is their lot to be cruelly treated and oppressed.
+ In the History of the Han Dynasty it says "Qin lost the deer and the world went chasing after it".
+ That means that when the Qin Emperor lost control of the Empire, ambitious men rose up everywhere and fought each other to possess it.
+ In the end it was the first Han Emperor who got this big, fat deer by defeating the Tyrant King of Chu.'
+ 'I know,' said the boy.
+ 'In my story-books it says "they chased the deer on the Central Plain".
+ That means they were all fighting each other to become Emperor.'
+ The scholar nodded, pleased with his young son's astuteness.
+ He drew a picture of a cauldron on the sheet of paper.
+ 'In olden times they didn't use a cooking-pot on the stove to cook their food in, they used a three-legged cauldron like this and lit a fire underneath it.
+ When they caught a deer they put it in a cauldron to seethe it.
+ Those ancient Emperors and great ministers were very cruel.
+ If they didn't like somebody, they would pretend that they had committed some crime or other, and then they would put them in a cauldron and boil them.
+ In the Records of an Historian Lin Xiangru says to the King of Qin, "Deceiving Your Majesty was a capital offence.
+ I beg to approach the cauldron."
+ What he meant was, "I deserve to die.
+ Put me in the cauldron and boil me."'
+ 'Often in my story-books I've seen the words "asking about the cauldrons in the Central Plain",' said the boy.
+ 'It seems to mean the same thing as "chasing the deer in the Central Plain".'
+ 'It does,' said the man.
+ 'King Yu of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty that ever was, collected metal from all the nine provinces of the Empire and used it to cast nine great cauldrons with.
+ "Metal" in those days meant bronze.
+ Each of these bronze cauldrons had the name of one of the nine provinces on it and a map showing the mountains and rivers of that province.
+ In later times whoever became master of the Empire automatically became the guardian of these cauldrons.
+ In The Chronicle of Zuo it says that when the Viscount of Chu was reviewing his troops on Zhou territory and the Zhou king sent Prince Man to him with his royal compliments, the Viscount questioned Prince Man about the size and weight of the cauldrons.
+ Of course, as ruler of the whole Empire, only the Zhou king had the right to be guardian of the cauldrons.
+ For a mere Viscount like the ruler of Chu to ask questions about them showed that he was planning to seize the Empire for himself.'
+ 'So "asking about the cauldrons" and "chasing the deer" both mean wanting to be Emperor, ' said the boy.
+ 'And "not knowing who will kill the deer" means not knowing who is going to be Emperor.'
+ 'That's right,' said the man.
+ 'As time went by these expressions came to be applied to other situations as well, but originally they were only used in the sense of wanting to be Emperor.'
+ He sighed.
+ 'For the common people though, the subjects of Empire, our role is to be the deer.
+ It may be uncertain who will kill the deer, but the deer gets killed all right.
+ There's no uncertainty about that.'
+ He walked over to the window and gazed outside.
+ The sky had now turned a leaden hue showing that snow was on its way.
+ He sighed again, 'He must be a cruel God up there.
+ Those hundreds of poor, innocent souls on the roads in this freezing weather.
+ The snow will only add to their sufferings.'
+ Two figures caught his eye, moving along the highway from the south.
+ They walked close together, side by side, each of them wearing a coolie hat and a rain-cape.
+ As they drew nearer, he recognized them with a cry of pleasure.
+ 'It's Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu,' he said to the boy as he hurried out to greet them.
+ 'Zongxi, Yanwu, what good wind blows you hither?' he called out to them.
+ The one he addressed as 'Zongxi' was a somewhat portly man with a plentiful beard covering the lower half of his face.
+ His full name was Huang Zongxi and he, like his host, was a man of Zhejiang Province.
+ The other one, a tall, thin man with a swarthy complexion, was Gu Yanwu, a native of Kunshan in Jiangsu Province.
+ Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu were two of the foremost scholars of their day.
+ Both of them, from patriotic motives, had gone into retirement when the Ming Empire collapsed, being unwilling to take office under a foreign power.
+ Gu Yanwu drew a little closer before replying.
+ 'Liuliang, we have something serious to discuss with you.
+ That's what brings us here today.'
+ Liuliang was the man's name, then—Lü Liuliang.
+ His family had lived for generations in Chongde, a prefecture in the Hangzhou district of Zhejiang Province.
+ Like Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu, to whom you have just been introduced, he is an historical personage, famous among those Southern gentlemen who, during the last days of the Ming dynasty and the early days of the Manchu conquest, buried themselves away on their estates and refused to take part in public life.
+ Lü Liuliang observed the grave expression on his visitors' faces.
+ Knowing of old how unfailingly Gu Yanwu's political judgement was to be trusted, he realized that what the latter had referred to as 'something serious' must be very serious indeed.
+ He clasped his hands and bowed to his guest politely.
+ 'Come inside,' he said.
+ 'Drink a few cups of wine first, to warm yourselves up a bit.'
+ As he ushered them into the study, he gave an order to the boy.
+ 'Baozhong, tell your mother that Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu are here.
+ Ask her to slice a couple of platefuls of that goat's meat pate to go with our wine.'
+ In a minute or two the boy came in again, accompanied by his younger brother.
+ They were carrying three sets of chopsticks and wine-cups which they laid on the study table.
+ An old servant followed them carrying a wine-kettle and balancing some plates of cold meat.
+ Lü Liuliang waited until the two boys and the servant were outside the room and closed the study door.
+ 'Come, my friends, ' he said.
+ 'Wine first.'
+ Huang Zongxi declined gloomily with a brief shake of the head; but Gu Yanwu, helping himself unceremoniously from the wine-kettle, downed half a dozen of the tiny cupfuls in quick succession.
+ 'I suppose your visit has something to do with this Ming History business,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ 'Precisely, ' said Huang Zongxi.
+ Gu Yanwu raised his wine-cup and, in ringing tones, recited the following couplet:
+ The cool wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the bright moon still shines everywhere.
+ 'That's a splendid couplet of yours, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'Whenever I drink wine now, I have to recite it—and do it justice, too,' he added, with a ceremonious flourish of his wine-cup.
+ In spite of Lü Liuliang's patriotic unwillingness to serve, a local official, impressed by what he had heard of Lü's reputation, had once sought to recommend him as a 'hidden talent' meriting a summons to the Manchu Court for suitable employment; but Lü had made it clear that he would die rather than accept such a tones, recited summons, and the matter had been dropped.
+ Some time later, however, when another high-ranking official sent forward his name as a 'distinguished scholar of exceptional merit', Lü realized that his continued refusal would be construed by the Court as an open slight, with fatal consequences for himself and perhaps his family.
+ Accordingly he had had himself tonsured (though not in fact with any intention of becoming a real monk), whereupon the Government officials were finally convinced of his determination and ceased urging him to come out of his retirement.
+ Gu Yanwu's enthusiasm for Lü's somewhat pedestrian couplet sprang from the fact that it contained a hidden message.
+ In Chinese the word for 'cool' is qing (the word chosen by the Manchus for their new 'Chinese' dynasty) and the word for 'bright' is ming (the name of the old Chinese dynasty they had supplanted).
+ So the couplet Gu had recited could be understood to mean: The Qing wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the Ming moon still shines everywhere.
+ In other words, 'I will never bow to the Manchus, however they may threaten and cajole.
+ For me the Empire is still the Ming Empire, whose loyal subject I remain.'
+ Although the poem in which these lines occurred could not be published, they were familiar to all the like-minded scholars of Lü's wide acquaintance, and Huang, hearing them recited now by Gu, responded to the challenge by raising a wine-cup in homage.
+ 'Yes, it is a very good poem,' he said, and drained it off at a gulp.
+ 'Thank you both, but it doesn't deserve your praise,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ Chancing to glance upwards at that moment, Gu Yanwu found his attention caught by a large painting which was hanging on one of the walls.
+ It must have measured near enough four feet from top to bottom and well over three yards horizontally.
+ It was a landscape, so magnificently conceived and boldly executed that he could not forbear a cry of admiration.
+ The sole inscription on this enormous painting was the phrase 'This Lovely Land' written in very large characters at the top.
+ 'From the brushwork I should say this must be Erzhan's work,' he said.
+ 'You are absolutely right,' said Lü.
+ This Erzhan's real name was Zha Shibiao.
+ He was a well-known painter in the late Ming, early Manchu period and a good friend of the three men present.
+ 'How is it that so fine a painting lacks a signature?' said Huang.
+ Lü sighed.
+ The painting had a message, ' he said.
+ 'But you know what a stolid, careful person Erzhan is.
+ He wouldn't sign it and he wouldn't write any inscription.
+ He painted it for me on a sudden impulse when he was staying with me a month or so ago.
+ Why don't you two write a few lines on it?'
+ Gu and Huang got up and went over to examine the painting more closely.
+ It was a picture of the Yangtze, the Great River, rolling majestically eastwards between innumerable peaks, with a suitable garnishing of gnarled pines and strange misshapen rocks: a very beautiful landscape were it not for the all-pervading mist and cloud which seemed calculated to create an oppressive feeling of gloom in anyone looking at it.
+ 'This lovely land under the heel of the barbarian!' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'And we have to swallow our humiliation and go on living in it.
+ It makes my blood boil.
+ Why don't you do an inscription, Liuliang — a poem that will give voice to what Erzhan had in mind to say?'
+ 'Very well,' said Lü Liuliang, and he took the huge scroll carefully down from the wall and spread it out on the desk, while Huang Zongxi set about grinding him some ink.
+ He picked up a writing-brush and for some minutes could be observed muttering to himself in the throes of composition; then, writing straight on to the painting and with pauses only for moistening the brush, he quickly completed the following poem:
+ Is this the same of Great Song's south retreat, This lovely land that hides its face in shame?
+ Or is it after Mount Yai's fateful leap? This lovely land then scarce dared breathe its name.
+ Now that I seem to read the painter's mind, My bitter teardrops match his drizzling rain.
+ Past woes I see reborn in present time: This draws the groans that no gag can restrain.
+ Methinks the painter used poor Gaoyu's tears To mix his colours and his brush to wet.
+ 'This Lovely Land' was commentary enough; No need was there for other words to fret.
+ The blind would see, the lame would walk again, Could we but bring, back Hong Wu's glorious days.
+ With what wild joy we'd look down from each height And see the landscape free of mist and haze!
+ He threw the brush on the floor as he finished and burst into tears.
+ 'It says all there is to say, ' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'Masterly!'
+ 'It lacks subtlety, ' said Lü.
+ 'In no way could you call it a good poem.
+ I merely wanted to put Erzhan's original idea into writing so that anyone looking at the picture in days to come will know what it is about.'
+ 'When China does eventually emerge from this time of darkness, ' said Huang, 'we shall indeed "see the landscape free of mist and haze".
+ When that time comes, we shall gaze at even the poorest, meanest, most barren landscape with a feeling of joyful liberation.
+ Then, indeed, we shall look down with "wild joy . . . from each height"!'
+ 'Your conclusion is excellent, ' said Gu.
+ 'When we do eventually rid our country of this foreign scum, the feeling of relief will be infinitely greater than the somewhat arid satisfaction we get from occasionally uncorking our feelings as we do now.'
+ Huang carefully rolled up the painting.
+ 'You won't be able to hang this up any more now, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'You'd better put it away somewhere safe.
+ If some evil-intentioned person like Wu Zhirong were to set eyes on it, you'd soon have the authorities round asking questions and the consequences could be serious not only for you but probably for Erzhan as well.'
+ That vermin Wu Zhirong!' said Gu Yanwu, smiting the desk with his hand.
+ 'I could willingly tear his flesh with my teeth!'
+ 'You said when you came that you had something serious to discuss with me, ' said Lü, 'yet here we are, like typical scholars, frittering our time away on poetry and painting instead of attending to business.
+ What was it, exactly, that brought you here?'
+ 'It has to do with Erzhan's kinsman Yihuang, ' said Huang.
+ The day before yesterday Gu and I learned that he has now been named in connection with the Ming History affair.'
+ 'Yihuang?' said Lü.
+ 'You mean he's been dragged into it too?'
+ 'I'm afraid so, ' said Huang.
+ 'As soon as we heard, the two of us hurried as quickly as we could to his home in Yuanhua Town, but he wasn't there.
+ They said he'd gone off to visit a friend.
+ In view of the urgency, Yanwu advised the family to make their getaway as soon as it was dark.
+ Then, remembering that Yihuang was a good friend of yours, we thought we'd come and look for him here, '
+ 'No, ' said Lü, 'no, he's not here.
+ I don't know where he can have gone.'
+ 'If he had been here, he would have shown himself by now, ' said Gu.
+ 'I left a poem for him on his study wall.
+ If he goes back home, he will understand when he reads the poem that he is to go and hide.
+ What I'm afraid of, though, is that he may not have heard the news yet and may expose himself unnecessarily outside and get himself arrested.
+ That would be terrible, '
+ 'Practically every scholar in West Zhejiang has fallen victim to this wretched Ming History business,' said Huang.
+ 'The Manchu Court has obviously got it in for us.
+ You are too well known.
+ Gu and I both think that you ought to leave here — for the time being, at any rate.
+ Find somewhere away from here where you can shelter from the storm, '
+ Lü Liuliang looked angry.
+ 'Let the Tartar Emperor have me arrested and carried off to Peking!' he said.
+ 'If I could curse him to his face and get rid of some of the anger that is pent up inside me, I think I should die happy, even though it meant having the flesh cut slice by slice from my bones!'
+ 'I admire your heroic spirit,' said Gu, 'but I don't think there's much likelihood of your meeting the Tartar Emperor face to face.
+ You would die at the hands of miserable slaves.
+ Besides, the Tartar Emperor is still a child who knows nothing about anything.
+ The Government is in the hands of the all-powerful minister Oboi.
+ Huang and I are both of the opinion that Oboi is at the back of this Ming History affair.
+ The reason they are making such a song and dance about it and pursuing it with such ferocity is that he sees in it a means of breaking the spirit of the Southern gentry.'
+ 'I'm sure you are right,' said Lü.
+ 'When the Manchu troops first came inside the Wall, they had pretty much of a free run in the whole of Northern China.
+ It wasn't till they came south that they found themselves running into resistance everywhere.
+ The scholars in particular, as guardians of Chinese culture, have given them endless trouble.
+ So Oboi is using this business to crush the Southern gentry, is he?
+ Humph!
+ What does the poet say?
+ The bush fire cannot burn them out. For next year's spring will see them sprout. —Unless, that is, he plans to wipe out the lot of us!'
+ 'Quite,' said Huang.
+ 'If we are to carry on the struggle against the Tartars, we need anyone who can be of use to stay alive.
+ Indulging in heroics at this juncture might be satisfying, but would be merely falling into their trap.'
+ Lü suddenly understood.
+ It was not only to look for Zha Yihuang that his friends had made their journey to him in the bitter cold.
+ They had come because they wanted to persuade him to escape.
+ They knew how impetuous he was and were afraid that he might throw his life away to no purpose.
+ This was true friendship and he felt grateful for it.
+ 'You give me such good advice, ' he said, 'I can hardly refuse to follow it.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll leave with the family first thing tomorrow.'
+ Huang and Gu were visibly delighted and chorused their approval of his decision, but Lü looked uncertain.
+ 'But where can we go?'
+ The whole world belonged to the Tartars now, it seemed.
+ Not a single patch of land was free of their hated presence.
+ He thought of the poet Tao Yuanming's story about the fisherman who, by following a stream that flowed between flowering peach trees, had stumbled on an earthly paradise—a place where refugees from ancient tyranny had found a haven.
+ 'Ah, Peach Tree Stream,' he murmured, 'if I could but find you!'
+ 'Come,' said Gu, 'even if there were such a place, we cannot, as individuals, opt out altogether.
+ In times like these—'
+ Before he could finish, Lü struck the desk with his hand and jumped to his feet, loudly disclaiming his own weakness, 'You do right to rebuke me, Yanwu.
+ The citizen of a conquered country still has his duty.
+ It's all very well to take temporary refuge, but to live a life of ease in some Peach Tree Haven while millions are suffering under the iron heel of the Tartars would be less than human.
+ I spoke without thinking.'
+ Gu Yanwu smiled.
+ 'I've knocked about a great deal during these last few years,' he said, 'and made friends with an extraordinary variety of people.
+ And wherever I've been, north or south of the River, I've discovered that it isn't only among educated people like ourselves that resistance to the Tartars is to be found.
+ Many of our most ardent patriots are small tradesmen, Yamen runners, or market folk—people belonging to the very lowest ranks of society.
+ If you'd care to join us, the three of us could travel to Yangzhou together.
+ I have a number of contacts there I could introduce you to.
+ What do you think?'
+ 'But that would be wonderful,' said Lü Liuliang delightedly.
+ 'We leave for Yangzhou tomorrow, then.
+ If the two of you will just sit here for a moment, I'll go and tell my wife to start getting things ready.'
+ He hurried off to the inner quarters, but was back in the study again after only a few minutes.
+ 'About this Ming History business,' he said.
+ 'I've heard a good deal of talk about it outside, but you can't believe everything people say; and in any case they conceal a lot of what they do know out of fear.
+ I'm so isolated here, I have no means of finding out the truth.
+ Tell me, how did it all begin?'
+ Gu Yanwu sighed.
+ 'We've all seen this Ming History.
+ There are, inevitably, passages in it which are not very complimentary to the Tartars.
+ It was written by Zhu Guozhen, who, as you know, was a former Chancellor at the Ming Court.
+ When he came to write about the "antics of the Paramount Chief of the Jianzhou tribe", which is how the Ming Court used to refer to the Tartars, it's a bit hard to see how he could have been polite.'
+ Lü nodded: 'I heard somewhere that a member of the Zhuang family of Huzhou paid one of Chancellor Zhu's heirs a thousand taels of silver for the manuscript and published it under his own name— never dreaming, of course, that it would lead to such terrible consequences.'
+ Gu went on to tell him the whole story.
+
+ 北风如刀，满地冰霜。
+ 江南近海滨的一条大路上，一队清兵手执刀枪，押着七辆囚车，冲风冒寒，向北而行。
+ 前面三辆囚车中分别监禁的是三个男子，都作书生打扮，一个是白发老者，两个是中年人。
+ 后面四辆囚车中坐的是女子，最后一辆囚车中是个少妇，怀中抱着个女婴。
+ 女婴啼哭不休。
+ 她母亲温言相呵，女婴只是大哭。
+ 囚车旁一清兵恼了，伸腿在车上踢了一脚，喝道：“再哭，再哭！
+ 老子踢死你！”
+ 那女婴一惊，哭得更加响了。
+ 离开道路数十丈处有座大屋，屋檐下站着一个中年文士，一个十一二岁的小孩。
+ 那文士见到这等情景，不禁长叹一声，眼眶也红了，说道：“可怜，可怜！”
+ 那小孩问道：“爹爹，他们犯了什么罪？”
+ 那文士道：“又犯了什么罪？
+ 昨日和今朝已逮去了三十几人，都是我们浙江有名的读书人，个个都是无辜株连。”
+ 他说到“无辜株连”四子，声音压得甚低，生怕给押囚车的官兵听见了。
+ 那小孩道：“那个小女孩还在吃奶，难道也犯了罪么？
+ 真没道理。”
+ 那文士道：“你懂得官兵没道理，真是好孩子。
+ 哎，人为刀俎，我为鱼肉，人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿！”
+ 那小孩道：“爹，你前几天教过我， ‘人为刀俎，我为鱼肉’，就是给人家斩割屠杀的意思。
+ 人家是切菜刀，是砧板，我们就是鱼和肉。
+ “人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿”这两句话，意思也差不多么？”
+ 那文士道：“正是！”
+ 眼见官兵和囚车已经去远，拉着小孩的手道：“外面风大，我们回屋里去。”
+ 当下父子二人走进书房。
+ 那文士提笔蘸上了墨，在纸上写了个“鹿”字，说道：“鹿这种野兽，虽是庞然大物，性子却极为平和，只吃青草和树叶，从来不伤害别的野兽。
+ 凶猛的野兽要伤它吃它，它只有逃跑，倘若逃不了，那只有给人家吃了。”
+ 又写了“逐鹿”两字，说道：“因此古人常常拿鹿来比喻天下。
+ 世上百姓都温顺善良，只有给人欺压残害的份儿。
+ 《汉书》上说：‘秦失其鹿，天下共逐之。’
+ 那就是说，秦朝失了天下，群雄并起，大家争夺，最后汉高祖打败了楚霸王，就得了这只又肥又大的鹿。”
+ 那小孩点头道：“我明白了。
+ 小说书上说‘逐鹿中原’，就是大家争着要作皇帝的意思。”
+ 那文士甚是喜欢，点了点头，在纸上画了一只鼎的图形，道：“古人煮食，不用灶头锅子，用这样三只脚的鼎，下面烧柴，捉到了鹿，就在鼎里煮来吃。
+ 皇帝和大官都很残忍，心里不喜欢谁，就说他犯了罪，把他放在鼎里活活煮熟。
+ 《史记》中记载蔺相如对秦王说：‘臣知欺大王之罪当诛也，臣请就鼎锅。’
+ 就是说：‘我该死，将我在鼎里烧死了罢！’”
+ 那小孩道：“小说书上又常说‘问鼎中原’，这跟‘逐鹿中原’好像意思差不多。”
+ 那文士道：“不错。
+ 夏禹王收九州之金，铸了九大鼎。
+ 当时所谓的“金”其实是铜。
+ 每一口鼎上铸了九州的名字和山川图形，后世为天下之主的，便保有九鼎。
+ 《左传》上说：‘楚子观兵于周疆。
+ 定王使王孙满劳楚子。
+ 楚子问鼎之大小轻重焉。’
+ 只有天下之主，方能保有九鼎。
+ 楚子只是楚国的诸侯，他问鼎的轻重大小，便是心存不轨，想取周王之位而代之。”
+ 那小孩道：“所以‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’便是想做皇帝。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，就是不知哪一个做成了皇帝。”
+ 那文士道：“正是。
+ 到得后来，‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’，这四个字，也可借用于别处，但原来的出典，是专指做皇帝而言。”
+ 说到这里，叹了口气，道：“咱们做百姓的，总是死路一条。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，只不过未知是谁来杀了这头鹿，这头鹿，却是死定了的。”
+ 他说着走到窗边，向窗外望去， 只见天色沉沉的，似要下雪，叹道：“老天爷何其不仁，数百个无辜之人，在这冰霜遍地的道上行走。
+ 下起雪来，可又多受一番折磨了。”
+ 忽见南边大道上两个人戴着斗笠，并肩而来，走到近处，认出了面貌。
+ 那文士大喜，道：“是你黄伯伯、顾伯伯来了！”
+ 快步迎将出去，叫道：“梨洲兄、亭林兄，哪一阵好风，吹得你二位光临？”
+ 右首一人身形微胖，颏下一部黑须，姓黄名宗羲，字梨洲，浙江余姚人士。
+ 左首一人又高又瘦，面目黝黑，姓顾名炎武，字亭林，江苏昆山人士。
+ 黄顾两人都是当世大儒，明亡之后，心伤国变，隐居不仕，这日连袂来到崇德。
+ 顾炎武走上几步，说道：“晚村兄，有一件要紧的事，特来和你商议。”
+ 这文士姓吕名留良，号晚村，世居浙江府崇德县，也是明末、清初一位极有名的隐士。
+ 他眼见黄顾二人脸色凝重，又知顾炎武向来极富机变，临事镇定，既说是要紧事，自然非同小可， 拱手道：“两位请进去先喝三杯，解解寒气。”
+ 当下请二人进屋，吩咐那小孩道：“葆中，去跟娘说，黄伯伯、顾伯伯到了，先切两盘羊膏来下酒。”
+ 不多时，那小孩吕葆中和兄弟毅中搬出三副杯筷，布在书房桌上。
+ 一名老仆奉上酒菜。
+ 吕留良待三人退出，关上了书房门，说道：“黄兄，顾兄，先喝三杯！”
+ 黄宗羲神色惨淡，摇了摇头。
+ 顾炎武却自斟自饮，一口气连干了六七杯。
+ 吕留良道：“二位此来，可是和‘明史’一案有关吗？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“正是。”
+ 顾炎武举起酒杯，高声吟道：
+ “‘清风虽细难吹我，明月何尝不照人？’
+ 晚村兄，你这两句诗，真是绝唱！
+ 我每逢饮酒，必诵此诗，必浮大白。”
+ 吕留良心怀故国，不肯在清朝做官。
+ 当地大吏仰慕他声名，保荐他为“山林隐逸”，应征赴朝为官，吕留良誓死相拒，大吏不敢再逼。
+ 后来又有一名大官保荐他为“博学鸿儒”，吕留良眼见若再相拒，显是轻侮朝廷，不免有杀身之祸，于是削发为僧，做了假和尚。
+ 地方官员见他意坚，从此不再劝他出山。
+ “清风、明月”这两句诗，讥刺满清，怀念前明， 虽然不敢刊行，但在志同道合的朋辈之间传诵已遍，此刻顾炎武又读了出来。
+ 黄宗羲道：“真是好诗！”
+ 举起酒杯，也喝了一杯。
+ 吕留良道：“两位谬赞了。”
+ 顾炎武一抬头，见到壁上挂着一幅高约五尺，宽约丈许的大画，绘的是一大片山水，笔势纵横，气象雄伟，不禁喝了声采，画上只题了四个大字：“如此江山”， 说道：“看这笔路，当是二瞻先生的丹青了。”
+ 留良道：“正是。”
+ 那“二瞻”姓查，名士标，是明末清初的一位大画家，也和顾黄吕诸人交好。
+ 黄宗羲道：“这等好画，如何却无题跋？”
+ 吕留良叹道：“二瞻先生此画，颇有深意。
+ 只是他为人稳重谨慎，既不落款，亦无题跋。
+ 他上个月在舍间盘桓，一时兴到，画送了我，两位便题上几句如何？”
+ 顾黄二人站起身来，走到画前仔细观看，只见大江浩浩东流，两岸峰峦无数，点缀着奇松怪石，只是画中云气弥漫，山川虽美，却令人一见之下，胸臆间顿生郁积之气。
+ 顾炎武道：“如此江山，沦于夷狄。
+ 我辈忍气吞声，偷生其间，实令人悲愤填膺。
+ 晚村兄何不便题诗一首，将二瞻先生之意，表而出之？”
+ 吕留良道：“好！”
+ 当即取下画来，平铺于桌。
+ 黄宗羲研起了墨。
+ 吕留良提笔沉吟半晌，便在画上振笔直书。
+ 顷刻诗成，诗云：
+ “ 其为宋之南渡耶？ 如此江山真可耻。
+ 其为崖山以后耶？ 如此江山不忍视。
+ 吾今始悟作画意， 痛哭流涕有若是。
+ 以今视昔昔犹今， 吞声不用枚衔嘴。
+ 画将皋羽西台泪， 研入丹青提笔泚。
+ 所以有画无诗文， 诗文尽在四字里。
+ 尝谓生逢洪武初，如瞽忽瞳跛可履。
+ 山川开霁故璧完，何处登临不狂喜？”
+ 书完，掷笔于地，不禁泪下。
+ 顾炎武道：“痛快淋漓，真是绝妙好辞。”
+ 吕留良道：“这诗殊无含蓄，算不得好，也只是将二瞻先生之原意写了出来，好教观画之人得知。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“何日故国重光，那时‘山川开霁故璧完’，纵然穷山恶水，也令人观之大畅胸怀，真所谓‘何处登临不狂喜’ 了！”
+ 顾炎武道：“此诗结得甚妙！
+ 终有一日驱除胡虏，还我大汉河山，比之徒抒悲愤，更加令人气壮。”
+ 黄宗羲慢慢将画卷了起来，说道：“这画是挂不得了，晚村兄得须妥为收藏才是。
+ 倘若给吴之荣之类的奸人见到，官府查究起来，晚村兄固然麻烦，还牵连了二瞻先生。”
+ 顾炎武拍桌骂道：“吴之荣这狗贼，我真恨不得生食其肉。”
+ 吕留良道：“二位枉顾，说道有件要紧事。
+ 我辈书生积习，作诗题画，却搁下了正事。
+ 不知究竟如何？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“我二人来此，乃是为了二瞻先生的那位本家伊璜先生。
+ 小弟和顾兄前日得到讯息，原来这场‘明史’大案，竟将伊璜先生也牵连在内。”
+ 吕留良惊道：“伊璜兄也受了牵连？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 我二人前日晚上匆匆赶到海宁袁花镇，伊璜先生并不在家，说是出外访友去了。
+ 炎武兄眼见事势紧急，忙瞩伊璜先生家人连夜躲避；想起伊璜先生和晚村兄交好，特来探访。”
+ 吕留良道：“他…… 他却没有来。
+ 不知到了何处。”
+ 顾炎武道：“他如在府上，这会儿自已出来相见。
+ 我已在他的书房的墙壁上提诗一首，他若归家，自然明白，知所趋避，怕的是不知讯息，在外露面，给公人拿住，那可糟了。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“这‘明史’一案，令我浙西名士几乎尽遭毒手。
+ 清廷之意甚恶，晚村兄名头太大，亭林兄和小弟之意，要劝晚村兄暂且离家远游，避一避风头。”
+ 吕留良气愤道：“清廷皇帝倘若将我捉到北京，拼着千刀万剐，好歹也要痛骂他一场，出了胸中这口恶气，才痛痛快快的就死。”
+ 顾炎武道：“晚村兄豪气干云，令人好生敬佩。
+ 怕的是见不到鞑子皇帝，却死于一般的下贱奴才手里。
+ 再说，鞑子皇帝只是个小孩子，什么也不懂，朝政大权，尽操于权臣鳌拜之手。
+ 兄弟和梨洲兄推想，这次‘明史’一案所以如此大张旗鼓，雷厉风行，当是鳌拜意欲挫折我江南士人之气。”
+ 吕留良道：“两位所见甚是。
+ 清兵入关以来，在江北横行无阻，一到江南，却处处遇到反抗，尤其读书人知道华夷之防，不断跟他们捣乱。
+ 鳌拜乘此机会，对我江南士子大加镇压。
+ 哼，野火烧不尽，春风吹又生，除非他把咱们江南读书人杀得干干净净。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 因此咱们要留着有用之身，和鞑子周旋到底，倘若逞了一时血气之勇，反是堕入鞑子的算中了。”
+ 吕留良登时省悟，黄顾二人冒寒枉顾，一来固是寻觅查伊璜，二来是劝自己出避，生怕自己一时按奈不住，枉自送了性命，良友苦心，实深感激，说道：“二位金石良言，兄弟那敢不遵？
+ 明日一早，兄弟全家便出去避一避。”
+ 顾黄二人大喜，齐声道：“自该如此。”
+ 吕留良沉吟道：“却不知避向何处才好？”
+ 只觉天涯茫茫，到处是鞑子的天下，真无一片干净土地，沉吟道：“桃源何处，可避暴秦？
+ 桃源何处，可避暴秦？”
+ 顾炎武道：“当今之世，便真有桃源乐土，咱们也不能独善其身，去躲了起来……”
+ 吕留良不等他辞毕，拍案而起，大声道：“亭林兄此言责备得是。
+ 国家兴亡，匹夫有责，暂时避祸则可，但若去躲在桃花源里，逍遥自在，忍令亿万百姓在鞑子铁蹄下受苦，于心何安？
+ 兄弟失言了。”
+ 顾炎武微笑道：“兄弟近年浪迹江湖，着实结交了不少朋友。
+ 大江南北，见闻所及，不但读书人反对鞑子，而贩夫走卒、屠沽市井之中，也到处有热血满腔的豪杰。
+ 晚村兄要是有意，咱三人结伴同去扬州，兄弟给你引见几位同道中人如何？”
+ 吕留良大喜，道：“妙极，妙极！
+ 咱们明日便去扬州，二位少坐，兄弟去告知拙荆，让她收拾收拾。”
+ 说着匆匆入内。
+ 不多时吕留良回到书房，说道：“‘明史’一案，外间虽传说纷纷，但一来传闻未必确实，二来说话之人又顾忌甚多，不敢尽言。
+ 兄弟独处蜗居，未知其详，到底是何起因？”
+ 顾炎武叹了口气，道：“这部明史，咱们大家都是看过的了，其中对鞑子不大恭敬，那也是有的。
+ 此书本是出于我大明朱国桢相国之手，说到关外建州卫之事，又如何会对鞑子客气？”
+ 吕留良点头道：“听说湖州庄家花了几千两银子，从朱相国后人手中将明史原稿买了来，以己名刊行，不想竟然酿此大祸。”
+ 顾炎武道：“此中详情，兄弟倒曾打听明白。”
+ 于是将“明史案”的前因后果，原本说出来。
+
+ When Old Hai asked what he had been doing that day, Trinket told him that he had been helping supervise the confiscation of Oboi's estate.
+ He concluded his account—which of course omitted any mention of the dagger and various other valuables that he had pocketed for himself—by telling him about the two copies of the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections that had been discovered in Oboi's house.
+ The old eunuch jumped up in surprise.
+ 'Did you say there were two copies at Oboi's place?'
+ 'Yes,' said Trinket.
+ 'We were told to look for them by the Empress Dowager; otherwise I could have brought them to you without anyone knowing.'
+ Old Hai's face fell, but he soon recovered his composure.
+ 'Hm, in the Empress Dowager's hands now, are they?' he said grimly.
+ 'Well, it could be worse.'
+ Shortly after this their evening meal was brought in from the Imperial kitchens.
+ After eating barely half a bowl of rice, the old eunuch sat back, turned up his pale, unseeing eyes towards the ceiling, and appeared to be lost in thought.
+ When he had finished his own meal, Trinket decided to get a little sleep in before going to his midnight assignation with the maid-in-waiting.
+ Not wishing to disturb the old eunuch, who was still sitting motionless in his chair, he slipped over to his bed, lay down on it fully clothed, and was soon asleep.
+ After sleeping fitfully for what must have been several hours, he got up silently, stuffed the box of cakes inside his breast pocket,and made his way on tiptoe across the room, pausing at each step for fear the old eunuch might waken.
+ Then, slowly and gently, he slid back the door-bar and opened one of the leaves of the door.
+ At that very moment he heard the old eunuch's voice calling out from behind him.
+ 'Laurie, where are you going?'
+ 'I'm . . . I'm going out for a piss.'
+ 'Why can't you piss in the pot?'
+ 'I can't get to sleep,' said Trinket.
+ 'I thought I'd walk around in the garden for a bit.'
+ No point in standing there talking, he thought; better get off quickly, before the Old Devil could stop him.
+ But just as his foot crossed the threshold, he felt a tightening around the throat.
+ 'Ow!' he hollered.
+ The old eunuch had him by the collar and was propelling him back into the room.
+ 'Damn!' thought Trinket, 'Damn!' as the old man threw him down on the bed.
+ 'The Old Devil knows I want to go and see that little maid and now he's going to stop me.'
+ 'Is this to test my reactions, Goong-goong?' he said, forcing a laugh.
+ 'It's a long time since you've taught me any kungfu.
+ What do you call that grip?'
+ 'Catching a Turtle in a Jar, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Little turtle!'
+ 'Turtle yourself!' thought Trinket, but didn't dare say it out loud.
+ His eyes were darting all round him, looking for some means of escape; but the old eunuch sat himself down beside him on the bed and began addressing him in a low, almost mournful voice.
+ 'You're bold but not careless,' he said.
+ 'You're a sharp, intelligent lad.
+ You haven't shown much willingness to exert yourself, but if I could have taken you in hand and knocked you into some sort of shape, you might have made quite a promising little fighter.
+ It seems such a pity.'
+ 'What does, Goong-goong?'
+ Trinket asked.
+ 'What seems a pity?'
+ The old eunuch ignored his question and heaved a sigh.
+ After a pause he said: 'Your Peking accent is almost perfect now.
+ If your voice had sounded like this a few months ago, without a trace of the Yangzhou twang in it, I might have been taken in.'
+ Shock raised the fine hairs on Trinket's body.
+ An uncontrollable shivering took possession of him and his teeth began chattering.
+ Nevertheless he managed a nervous laugh.
+ 'G-g-goong-goong, you're speaking very—ha ha!—s-strangely tonight.'
+ The old eunuch heaved another sigh.
+ 'How old are you, child?'
+ He was speaking so calmly that Trinket's terror was somewhat allayed.
+ 'About fourteen, I think.'
+ 'If you're thirteen, you're thirteen; if you're fourteen, you're fourteen.
+ What do you mean, you "think"?'
+ 'My mother's not sure herself,' said Trinket.
+ 'I can't say exactly.'
+ This was true.
+ His mother had always been vague when asked about his age.
+ The old eunuch nodded and coughed for a bit.
+ 'A few years ago I overtaxed my body in some way while I was training.
+ It brought on this cough which just seems to get worse and worse.
+ This last year I've begun to realize there's no hope for me.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know,' said Trinket, not quite sure where this conversation was heading.
+ 'I thought your cough was getting a bit better lately.'
+ 'Better?' said the old eunuch shaking his head.
+ 'It's not the least bit better.
+ I've got a terrible pain in my chest all the time.
+ What would you know about it?'
+ 'What's it like at the moment?' said Trinket.
+ 'Would you like me to get you some of your medicine?'
+ Again the old man sighed.
+ 'I've already lost my eyesight.
+ Medicine has to be taken in the proper doses.'
+ Trinket almost stopped breathing.
+ Did this mean that the Old Devil had guessed about that as well?
+ 'You've got a lucky streak,' the old eunuch continued.
+ 'Getting yourself into the Emperor's graces like that—it could have been very useful.
+ You haven't been purified, of course, but that's no problem.
+ I could have done the cutting for you.
+ Ah, it's a pity.
+ Too late.
+ Just too late.'
+ Trinket had no idea what 'purified' meant; but everything the old eunuch was saying tonight seemed to have something odd about it.
+ 'Goong-goong,' he said, 'it's very late.
+ Shouldn't you be getting some sleep?'
+ 'Sleep?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Sleep?
+ There's plenty of sleeping to come: sleeping all day, sleeping all night, sleeping and never waking up again.
+ No more getting up in the morning, no more pains in the chest, no more coughing.
+ What do you think, boy?
+ Don't you think it would be nice?'
+ Trinket was too frightened to answer.
+ Tell me, boy,' said the old eunuch, 'who else is there besides you in your family?'
+ The question was straightforward enough and seemed to have been asked without sinister intent, yet Trinket did not know how to answer it.
+ He hadn't the faintest idea what family the late Laurie had had and feared that almost any answer he gave was likely to betray his ignorance; yet he had to say something.
+ He settled for a modified version of the truth, hoping that Old Hai himself knew nothing about Laurie's family.
+ 'My mother's the only one at home,' he said.
+ 'What's happened to the rest of the family during these past few years, I'd rather not say.'
+ 'Only a mother,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'And what word do you use for "mother" in the Fujian dialect?'
+ Here was another surprise for Trinket.
+ 'Could the real Laurie have been a Fujianese?' he wondered.
+ 'I thought he said just now that I used to have a Yangzhou accent.
+ Perhaps . . . perhaps he does know that I blinded him.'
+ Some seconds elapsed while his brain raced through a number of possibilities.
+ His final response was a lame one.
+ 'I... I—why do you ask?'
+ There was another sigh from the old eunuch.
+ 'So young and yet so wicked!
+ I wonder where you get it from.
+ Who do you most resemble, your father or your mother?'
+ 'I don't think I'm like anyone,' said Trinket.
+ 'Anyway, I'm not all that bad.
+ I may not be very good, but I don't think I'm wicked.'
+ 'I haven't always been a eunuch,' the old man said after a few more coughs.
+ 'I was already a grown man when I was purified.'
+ Trinket was horrified.
+ 'So that's what being "purified" means: having your piss-pipe and the other bits cut off.
+ I hope he doesn't think he's going to purify me.
+ Holy ding-a-ling dongs!'
+ But the old man's thoughts were on another track.
+ 'I had a son once,' he said.
+ 'Unfortunately he died when he was only eight years old.
+ If he'd lived, I might have had a grandson today of about your age.
+ Tell me, is that Whiskers Mao your father?'
+ 'No.
+ No, he's not.
+ Hot-piece momma, of course he's not!'
+ 'I didn't think he was,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'If you were my son and you were trapped here in the Palace, I would find the means of getting you out somehow, whatever the danger.'
+ Trinket forced a smile.
+ 'Pity you're not my father,' he said.
+ 'I could do with a nice, kind father like you.'
+ 'Those two kinds of Martial Art I was teaching you, the Greater Catch-Can and the Merciful Guanyin,' said the old eunuch, '—I'd only started you on them: you couldn't be said to have more than a smattering of either.'
+ 'You ought to teach me them properly, Goong-goong,' said Trinket.
+ 'You're a world champion.
+ You ought to have someone to carry on the tradition when you're gone.
+ Teach me, so that one day I can make you famous: that's what you ought to do.'
+ The old man shook his head.
+ 'I'm not a "world champion".
+ There are any number of kungfu Masters in the world as highly qualified as I am.
+ In any case, you couldn't master my two kinds of kungfu if you spent a whole lifetime studying them.'
+ After a moment he said: 'Put your fingers on your belly about three inches to the left of your navel and press.
+ Hard.
+ Tell me what you feel.'
+ Trinket did as he said.
+ A pain shot through his vitals, so intense that he cried out loud.
+ He found himself panting, and the sweat stood out on his brow.
+ As a matter of fact, for several weeks now he had from time to time been conscious of a slight pain in his left side which he put down to indigestion.
+ Since it had invariably gone away after a bit, he had not paid it much attention.
+ He had certainly never imagined that pressure on the source of this pain could produce such agony.
+ 'Interesting, isn't it!' said the old eunuch with ill-disguised satisfaction.
+ Trinket cursed him inwardly: 'Hateful Old Devil!
+ Stinking Old Turtle!'
+ But all he said was: 'It hurts a bit.
+ I wouldn't have said it was interesting exactly.'
+ 'Every morning when they deliver our food from the kitchens, you're still not back from gambling with your friends or wrestling with the Emperor, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'I noticed some time ago that the soup they serve is in need of seasoning, so every day I've been getting out one of the little bottles from my medicine chest and tipping a little of the powder in the soup to give it a bit of flavour.
+ Only a tiny bit.
+ Too much of the poison would have too obvious an effect.
+ A smart lad like you doesn't miss much; but as I had been careful never to take soup myself anyway, you didn't suspect anything.'
+ Trinket could feel his skin crawling.
+ 'But. . . but...
+ I thought you didn't like soup,' he said.
+ 'You said it made you cough.'
+ 'I'm very fond of soup as a matter of fact,' said the old eunuch, 'but when the soup's poisoned, even if there's only a minute amount of poison in it, the effect of drinking it day after day could in the end become a little dangerous, don't you think?'
+ 'I should say it could!' said Trinket indignantly.
+ 'You think of everything, Goong-goong, don't you!'
+ 'Oh, I don't know, ' said the old eunuch with a sigh.
+ 'I'd originally been planning to let "you take the poison for about three months and then set you free so that it would have a nice long time to work on you.
+ To start with you'd just have about half-an-hour's pain every day, not very severe.
+ Then, as time went by, it would get gradually worse and the periods when you felt it would get longer.
+ After about a year you would be in pain continuously, night and day, and the pain would get so terrible that in the end you would be dashing your head against walls and tearing the flesh of your arms and legs with your teeth, '
+ He sighed again.
+ 'Unfortunately my health is getting so bad that I doubt if I can wait that long.
+ Now then, no one else has an antidote for this poison but me, so why don't you be a good little boy and tell me who you are working for?
+ Who was it that put you up to blinding me?
+ If you will give me an honest answer to that question, I promise to give you the antidote this minute. '
+ The question was unanswerable because there was no such person; but Trinket, though young, was not so naive as to believe that the old eunuch would spare his life even if he answered it.
+ 'The person I'm working for?' he said.
+ 'You'd get a nasty shock if I told you.
+ So you knew all along that I wasn't Laurie and you thought this trick up to make me suffer?
+ Well—ha ha ha!— you're the one who's been tricked.
+ Ha ha ha!
+ You've been had good and proper.'
+ He kept up the artificial laughter in order to cover up the wriggling of his body.
+ While he was talking and laughing he had managed to draw up his right leg so that he could get his hand on the dagger in his boot and draw it from its sheath.
+ Any slight sound that this operation might have given rise to was masked by his idiotic cachinnation.
+ 'What do you mean?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'How have I been had?'
+ Trinket had to go on talking in order to keep the old man's attention distracted.
+ Any old nonsense would do.
+ 'I could tell there was something funny about that soup the very first day I tasted it, ' he said.
+ 'I asked Misty about it and he told me you were trying to poison me . . .'
+ The old eunuch was clearly startled by this.
+ 'The Emperor knew this?'
+ 'Of course he did, ' said Trinket, '—though I didn't realize at the time that he was the Emperor.
+ Misty advised me not to let on that I knew.
+ He said pretend to drink the soup but don't swallow it; then afterwards you can spit it back in the bowl.
+ So that's what I did.
+ It wasn't very difficult to fool you because you couldn't see.'
+ All the while he was saying this, he was raising the dagger inch by inch and aiming it at the pit of the old man's stomach.
+ He knew that in order to succeed he would have to kill him instantly.
+ Even a correctly aimed blow, if it did not kill him at once, would cost him his own life.
+ The old eunuch wasn't sure whether to believe him or not.
+ 'If you didn't drink the soup, ' he said, 'how is it that it hurt so badly when you pressed your belly?'
+ Trinket affected a sigh.
+ 'I suppose it's because I didn't rinse my mouth after spitting it out.
+ Some of the poison must still have got into my stomach.'
+ While he was saying this he managed to move the dagger a few inches nearer.
+ 'Good!' said the old eunuch.
+ The important thing is, there's no cure; so though you've had a lighter dose, all that means is that the poison will act more slowly and you will have that much longer to suffer.'
+ Trinket began laughing loudly again.
+ Under cover of his laughter he made a tremendous stab, concentrating all the strength of his body into his right arm and aiming at a place he had chosen just beneath the old man's ribs.
+ He had worked out in advance that, after driving the dagger home, he would roll towards the corner of the bed, crawl out from under the foot of it, and make for the still open door.
+ But at that very moment the old eunuch sensed a slight coldness of the air caused by the proximity of the metal.
+ Surprised but, because of a lifetime of training, never totally off his guard, he raised his left hand almost automatically to fend off an attack—though of what nature, he had no time to think—while his right hand followed with a blow of such giant force that it knocked Trinket flying through the papered lattice of the bedside window and into the garden outside.
+ Almost at the same time the old eunuch became aware of an agonizing pain in his left hand.
+ The dagger had severed all four of the fingers on it.
+ The old man calculated that the blow must have killed Trinket instantaneously and that he was probably already dead when he crashed through the window.
+ 'Pity!' he muttered to himself, smiling grimly.
+ The little devil didn't deserve to die so quickly.'
+ When he had recovered somewhat from the shock of his own gruesome accident, he went to his medicine chest and got out some wound-powder to put on the bleeding stumps; then he tore a strip off the bed-sheet to bind up his left hand with, continuing to mutter to himself as he did so.
+ 'Where on earth could the little devil have got hold of a blade like that?
+ I've never come across anything so sharp in my life before.'
+ Forcing himself to endure the excruciating pain in his hand, he jumped through the broken window into the garden, groped his way to the place where he thought Trinket must have fallen, and began feeling around for this extraordinary weapon; but though he searched for a long time, he could not find it.
+ Because he had come to know the garden so well while he still had his sight, he retained a clear memory of where each rock and shrub was situated.
+ According to his calculation, Trinket must have fallen into the bed of peonies.
+ He could understand that the weapon might have flown from his hand and be lying at quite some distance away, but where was the body?
+ The blow that Trinket sustained had knocked all the air out of his lungs and caused an agonizing pain in his chest, coupled with the feeling that every bone in his body had been broken.
+ When he hit the ground, he very nearly fainted; but somewhere at the back of his fading consciousness there was an awareness that to lie where he was would mean certain death, for the old eunuch had not been killed and would certainly come after him to finish him off.
+ Making a supreme effort, he struggled to his feet, but after staggering no more than a couple of steps, his legs gave way and he collapsed once more onto the ground.
+ Fortunately the place where he had fallen was the beginning of a fairly steep declivity in an open part of the garden, so instead of lying where he fell, he began rolling downwards.
+ If the old eunuch had not been so distracted by pain, he would probably have heard something; though so certain was he that the boy was dead, that even if he had, he would probably have attributed the sound to some other cause.
+ The slope was a long one and Trinket must have rolled a dozen yards or more before his body came to rest.
+ He struggled to his feet and began walking again in the same direction.
+ This time, though his whole body hurt unbearably, he did not fall.
+ Incredibly, he was still holding the dagger tightly in his hand.
+ 'I think I must have a lucky streak,' he said to himself when he became aware of this.
+ 'After being knocked through the window and rolling down the bank and everything, it's a miracle I didn't cut myself.'
+ He stopped for a moment to put the dagger back inside his boot.
+ 'Well, the cat's really out of the bag now, ' he thought.
+ 'If the Old Devil knows I'm not what I'm pretending to be, I can't stay in the Palace a moment longer.
+ Pity about that half a million taels though.
+ Fancy winning all that money in a single go and then losing the lot in an evening!
+ That's what I call real style!'
+ A few minutes before this he had been nearly dead, but now, after a little boasting, he was on top of the world.
+ 'That little maid will be wondering what's become of me,' he thought.
+ 'I can't get out of the Palace anyway in the middle of the night, so I might as well still go and see her. —Aiyo!'
+ Fishing it out from inside his gown, he found that the box of honey-cakes had, as he feared, been squashed completely flat.
+ 'Better take this as evidence, in case she's feeling cross because I've kept her waiting so long, ' he thought.
+ 'I'll tell her I had a fall.
+ Ha!
+ Some fall!
+ It's turned the cakes into a cow-pat.'
+ He sampled a small piece of the sticky mess.
+ 'Hot-piece tamardy, this is really nice!
+ Have you ever eaten a piece of cow-pat?
+ Do try some, it's delicious!'
+ As he started walking again, this time in the direction of the Hall of Maternal Tranquillity, the Empress Dowager's compound, he was feeling so cock-a-hoop that he was stepping out at quite a pace.
+ The result was a most frightful pain in his chest which at once slowed him down to a shuffle.
+ When he reached his goal, however, he found the gate tightly closed.
+ 'Damn!' he thought.
+ 'I didn't think this one would be shut.
+ Now how the devil am I going to get inside?'
+ Just as he was wondering what to do next, the gate suddenly opened a bit and a girl's head popped out which he recognized in the moonlight as Blossom's.
+ She smiled at him and beckoned to him to come in.
+ He complied happily, and when he had slipped inside, she fastened the gate after him.
+ 'I thought I'd better wait here in case you had trouble getting in,' she said softly in his ear.
+ 'I've been waiting ever such a long time.'
+ 'I know, I'm late,' Trinket whispered back, 'but I had a fall on the way.
+ I tripped over a horrible old turtle.'
+ 'I didn't know there were any in the Palace,' said Blossom.
+ 'I've never seen one.
+ Did you hurt yourself?'
+ The effort of getting to this appointment had absorbed so much of his attention that it had almost taken his mind off the pain; but as soon as she asked the question he became aware that he was hurting dreadfully all over and groaned in spite of himself.
+ Blossom seized his hand in her own.
+ 'Where does it hurt?' she asked in an anxious whisper.
+ As Trinket was on the point of answering her, a shadow appeared on the ground and he looked up to see a dark figure like a great eagle floating down from the top of the garden wall and softly alighting at the foot of it.
+ He was so startled that he almost called out.
+ While he watched, the monstrous bird-shape transformed itself into a much taller, thinner shape which he could see now, in the light of the moon, was no eagle but a man—a tall, thin man with hunched shoulders and a rounded back: none other, in fact, than Old Hai the eunuch.
+ Blossom, who had her face towards Trinket and away from the wall, had not seen this apparition; but when Trinket fell silent and turned to stare at something with a startled look on his face, she turned to look as well.
+ The next moment Trinket had his hand over her mouth, holding it perhaps rather tighter than was necessary for fear she might cry out.
+ At the same time he signalled to her with his other hand to keep quiet.
+ When she nodded to show that she understood, he slowly withdrew the hand from her mouth, though all the time keeping his eyes on the old eunuch.
+ Old Hai had now straightened himself up and was standing rather stiffly with his head cocked to one side as if listening for something.
+ After a while he began, very slowly, to move forwards.
+ Trinket breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw that he was not walking in his direction.
+ 'Who'd have thought the Old Turtle would be able to follow me all the way here in spite of being blind?' he thought.
+ 'Still, provided neither of us makes any noise, he isn't likely to find me.'
+ After taking a few steps forwards, the old eunuch made a sudden leap sideways which brought him right in front of Trinket; then, shooting out his right arm, he grasped Blossom round the neck.
+ She tried to scream, but because of the pressure on her throat, it was only a little smothered sound that came out.
+ 'It's me he's after, not this girl,' thought Trinket.
+ 'I don't think he'll kill her.'
+ He was only a couple of feet away from the old man and so scared that he was nearly wetting himself, but he dared not budge an inch, knowing that if he made the slightest movement he would be heard.
+ 'Don't make any noise,' the old eunuch hissed to Blossom.
+ 'If you don't do as I tell you, I shall strangle you.
+ Now tell me, but keep your voice down, who are you?'
+ 'I. . . I. . .' Blossom began.
+ The old eunuch ran his hand over her head, then over her face.
+ ''You're one of the maids-in-waiting, aren't you?' he said.
+ 'Yes,' said Blossom in a little voice.
+ 'So what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?'
+ 'I'm just. . . just playing,' said Blossom.
+ A faint smile appeared on the face of the old eunuch which the dim moonlight transformed into a ghastly leer.
+ 'Who is here with you?'
+ He cocked his head to listen.
+ What had enabled him to tell where Blossom was standing was the fact that she did not know how to control her breathing and had been breathing rather heavily because she was frightened.
+ He hadn't been aware of Trinket's presence because Trinket's breathing was more restrained.
+ When Trinket heard the old eunuch's question, he wanted to signal to Blossom not to let on that he was there, but dared not risk even moving his hand.
+ Fortunately Blossom's quick wits had already sensed that the old man was blind and she said 'no one' without needing to be told.
+ 'Where are the Empress Dowager's rooms?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Take me to her!'
+ 'Goong-goong, please, ' said Blossom pleadingly, 'please don't tell her.
+ I... I promise never to do this again.'
+ She assumed that he intended to report her for being caught wandering outside at an unauthorized hour.
+ 'No use bleating,' said the old eunuch.
+ Take me to her, or I'll strangle you this minute.'
+ He increased the pressure on her throat so that she could no longer breathe and her face became swollen and purple.
+ Trinket was so frightened that he lost control of his bladder and piss soaked through his trousers and began falling drip after drip on the ground.
+ Fortunately the faint sound it made was not detected by the old eunuch; or if it was, he must have assumed that it was the little maid of honour who was wetting herself.
+ He released the pressure on her throat.
+ 'Come on!
+ Take me there!'
+ Blossom had no choice but to obey, but before they went, she shot a look full of tenderness at Trinket which seemed to say, 'Go, quickly!
+ I promise I won't give you away.'
+ 'That's the Empress Dowager's bedroom, over there,' she whispered, temporarily forgetting that the old man couldn't see.
+ She began walking, very slowly, in the direction she had indicated.
+ The old eunuch walked beside her, his right hand still encircling her throat.
+ 'The Old Devil's going to tell the Empress Dowager about me,' thought Trinket.
+ 'He'll tell her everything—how I killed Laurie and dressed up in his clothes, and how I made him blind, and he'll ask her to have me arrested.
+ But I wonder why he doesn't tell the Emperor?
+ I suppose it's because he knows the Emperor likes me and is afraid he might not do anything about it.
+ Oh help!
+ What am I going to do?
+ I have to get out of this Palace as quickly as possible.
+ Aiyo, I can't though!
+ The gates will have been shut long ago.
+ It won't be long now before the Empress Dowager gives orders for my arrest.
+ I shan't get away then, even if I grow wings.'
+
+ 海老公问起今日做了什么事，韦小宝说了到鳌拜家中抄家，至于吞没珍宝、金银、匕首等事，自然绝口不提，最后道：“太后命我到鳌拜家里拿两部《四十二章经》……”
+ 海老公突然站起，问道：“鳌拜家有两部《四十二章经》？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊。
+ 是太后和皇上吩咐去取的，否则的话，我拿来给了你，别人也未必知道。”
+ 海老公脸色阴沉，哼了一声，冷冷的道：“落入了太后手里啦，很好，很好！”
+ 待会厨房中送了饭来，海老公只吃了小半碗便不吃了，翻着一双无神的白眼，仰起了头只是想心事。
+ 韦小宝吃完饭，心想我先睡一会，到三更时分再去和那小宫女说话玩儿，见海老公呆呆的坐着不动，便和衣上床而睡。
+ 他迷迷糊糊的睡了一会，悄悄起身，把那盒蜜饯糕饼揣在怀里，生怕惊醒海老公，慢慢一步步的蹑足而出，走到门边，轻轻拔开了门闩，再轻轻打开了一扇门，突然听得海老公问道：“小桂子，你去哪里？”
+ 韦小宝一惊，说道：“我…… 我小便去。”
+ 海老公道：“干么不在屋里小便？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我睡不着，到花园里走走。”
+ 生怕海老公阻拦，也不多说，拔步往外便走，左足刚踏出一步，只觉后领一紧，已给海老公抓住，提了回来。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声，尖叫了出来，当下便有个念头：“糟糕，糟糕，老乌龟知道我要去见那小宫女，不许我去。”
+ 念头还未转完，已给海老公摔在床上。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“公公，你试我武功么？
+ 好几天没教我功夫了，这一抓是什么招式？”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“这叫做‘瓮中抓鳖’，手到擒来。
+ 鳖便是甲鱼，捉你这只小甲鱼。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“老甲鱼捉小甲鱼！”
+ 可是毕竟不敢说出口，眼珠骨溜溜的乱转，寻思脱身之计。
+ 海老公坐在他床沿上，轻轻的道：“你胆大心细，聪明伶俐，学武虽然不肯踏实，但如果由我来好好琢磨琢磨，也可以算得是可造之材，可惜啊可惜。”
+ 韦小宝问道：“公公，可惜什么？”
+ 海老公不答，只叹了口气，过了半晌，说道：“你的京片子学得也差不多了。
+ 几个月之前，倘若就会说这样的话，不带丝毫扬州腔调，倒也不容易发觉。”
+ 韦小宝大吃一惊，霎时之间全身寒毛直竖，忍不住身子发抖，牙关轻轻相击，强笑道：“公公，你…… 你今儿晚上的说话，真是…… 嘻嘻…… 真是奇怪。”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，问道：“孩子，你今年几岁啦？”
+ 韦小宝听他语气甚和，惊惧之情渐减，道：“我…… 我是十四岁罢。”
+ 海老公道：“十三岁就十三岁，十四岁就十四岁，为什么是‘十四岁罢？’”
+ 韦小宝道：“我妈妈也记不大清楚，我自己可不知道。”
+ 这一句倒是真话，他妈妈胡里胡涂，小宝到底几岁，向来说不大准。
+ 海老公点了点头，咳嗽了几声，道：“前几年练功夫，练得走了火，惹上了这咳嗽的毛病，越咳越厉害，近年来自己知道是不大成的了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我…… 我觉得你近来…… 近来咳得好了些。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“好什么？
+ 一点也没好。
+ 我胸口痛得好厉害，你又怎知道？”
+ 韦小宝道：“现下怎样？
+ 要不要我拿些药给你吃？”
+ 海老公叹道：“眼睛瞧不见，药是不能乱服的了。”
+ 韦小宝大气也不敢透，不知他说这些话是什么用意。
+ 海老公又道：“你机缘挺好，巴结上了皇上，本来嘛，也可以有一番大大的作为。
+ 你没净身，我给你净了也不打紧，只不过，唉，迟了，迟了。”
+ 韦小宝不懂“净身”是什么意思，只觉他今晚话说的语气说不出的古怪，轻声道：“公公，很晚了，你这就睡罢。”
+ 海老公道：“睡罢，睡罢！
+ 唉，睡觉的时候以后可多着呢，朝也睡，晚也睡，睡着了永远不醒。
+ 孩子，一个人老是睡觉，不用起身，不会心口痛，不会咳嗽得难过，那不是挺美么？”
+ 韦小宝吓得不敢作声。
+ 海老公道：“孩子，你家里还有些什么人？”
+ 这平平淡淡一句问话，韦小宝却难以回答。
+ 他可不知那死了的小桂子家中有些什么人，胡乱回答，多半立时便露出马脚，但又不能不答，只盼海老公本来不知小桂子家中底细，才这样问，便道：“我家里只有个老娘，其余的人，这些年来，唉，那也不用提了。”
+ 话中拖上这样个尾巴，倘若小桂子还有父兄姊弟，就不妨用“那也不用提了”这六字来推搪。
+ 海老公道：“只有个老娘。
+ 你们福建话，叫娘是叫什么的？”
+ 韦小宝又是一惊：“什么福建话？
+ 莫非小桂子是福建人？
+ 他说我以前的说话中有扬州腔调，恐怕…… 恐怕…… 那么他眼睛给我弄瞎这回事，他知不知道？”
+ 刹那之间，心中转过了无数念头，含含糊糊的道：“这个…… 这个…… 你问这个干么？”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，说道：“你年纪小小，就这样坏，嘿，到底是像你爹呢，还是像你妈？”
+ 韦小宝嘻嘻一笑，说道：“我是谁也不像。
+ 好是不大好，坏也不算挺坏。”
+ 海老公咳了几声，道：“我是成年之后，才净身做太监的……”
+ 韦小宝暗暗叫苦：“原来做太监要净身，那就是割去小便的东西。
+ 他说知道我没净身，要是来给我净身，那可乖乖龙的东……”
+ 只听海老公续道：“我本来有个儿子，只可惜在八岁那年就死了。
+ 倘若活到今日，我的孙儿也该有你这般大了。
+ 那个姓茅的茅十八，不是你爹爹罢？”
+ 韦小宝颤声道：“不…… 不是！
+ 辣块妈妈的，当…… 当然不是。”
+ 心中一急，扬州话冲口而出。
+ 海老公道：“我也想不是的。
+ 倘若你是我儿子，失陷在皇宫之中，就算有天大危险，我也会来救你出去。”
+ 韦小宝苦笑道：“就可惜我没你这个好爹爹。”
+ 海老公道：“我教过你两套武功，第一套‘大擒拿手’，第二套‘大慈大悲千叶手’，这两套功夫，我都没教全，你自然也没学会，只学了这么一成半成，嘿嘿，嘿嘿。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊，你老人家最好将这两套功夫教得我学全了。
+ 你这样天下第一的武功，总算有个人传了下来，给你老人家扬名，那才成话。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“‘天下第一’四个字，哪里敢当？
+ 世上武功高强的，可不知有多少。
+ 我这两套功夫，你这一生一世也来不及学得全了。”
+ 他顿了一顿，说道：“你吸一口气，摸到左边小腹，离开肚脐眼三寸之处，用力掀一掀，且看怎样？”
+ 韦小宝依言摸到他所说之处，用力一掀，登时痛澈心肺，不由得“啊”的一声，大叫出来，霎时间满头大汗，不住喘气。
+ 近半个多月来，左边小腹偶然也隐隐作痛，只道吃坏了肚子，何况只痛得片刻，便即止歇，从来没放在心上，不料对准了一点用力掀落，竟会痛得这等厉害。
+ 海老公阴恻恻的道：“很有趣罢？”
+ 韦小宝肚中大骂：“死老乌龟，臭老乌龟！”
+ 说道：“有一点点痛，也没什么有趣。”
+ 海老公道：“你每天早上去赌钱，又去跟皇上练武，你还没回来，饭菜就送来了。
+ 我觉得这汤可不够鲜，每天从药箱之中，取了一瓶药出来，给你在汤里加上些料。
+ 只加这么一点儿，加得多了，毒性太重，对你身子不大妥当。
+ 你这人是很细心的，可是我从来不喝汤，你一点也不疑心吗？”
+ 韦小宝毛骨悚然，道：“我…… 我以为你不爱喝汤。
+ 你…… 你又说喝了汤，会…… 会…… 咳…… 咳嗽……”
+ 海老公道：“我本来很爱喝汤的，不过汤里有了毒药，虽然份量极轻，可是天天喝下去，时日久了，总有点危险，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝愤然道：“是极，是极！
+ 公公，你当真厉害。”
+ 海老公叹了口气，道：“也不见得。
+ 本来我想让你再服三个月毒药，这才放你出宫，那时你就慢慢肚痛了。
+ 先是每天痛半个时辰，痛得也不很凶，以后越痛越厉害，痛的时刻也越来越长，大概到一年以后，那便日夜不停的大痛，要痛到你将自己脑袋到墙上去狠狠的撞，痛得将自己手上、腿上的肉，一块块咬下来。”
+ 说到这里，叹道：“可惜我身子越来越不成了，恐怕不能再等。
+ 你身上中的毒，旁人没解药，我终究是有的。
+ 小娃娃，你到底是受了谁的指使，想这计策来弄瞎我眼睛？
+ 你老实说了出来，我立刻给你解药。”
+ 韦小宝年纪虽小，也知道就算自己说了指使之人出来，他也决不能饶了自己性命，何况根本就无人指使，说道：“指使之人自然有的，说出来只怕吓你一大跳。
+ 原来你早知道我不是小桂子，想了这个法子来折磨我，哈哈，哈哈，你这可上了我的大当啦！
+ 哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 纵声大笑，身子跟着乱动，右腿一曲，右手已抓住了匕首柄，极慢极慢的从剑鞘中拔出，不发出丝毫声息，就算有了些微声，也教笑声给遮掩住了。
+ 海老公道：“我上了你什么大当啦？”
+ 韦小宝胡说八道，原是要教他分心，心想索性再胡说八道一番，说道：“汤里有毒药，第一天我就尝了出来。
+ 我跟小玄子商量，他说你在下毒害我……”
+ 海老公一惊，道：“皇上早知道了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“怎么会不知道？
+ 只不过那时我可还不知他是皇上，小玄子叫我不动声色，留神提防，喝汤之时只喝入口中，随后都吐在碗里，反正你又瞧不见。”
+ 一面说，一面将匕首半寸半寸的提起，剑尖缓缓对准了海老公心口，心想若不是一下子便将他刺死，纵然刺中了，他一掌击下来，自己还是没命。
+ 海老公将信将疑，冷笑道：“你如没喝汤，干么一按左边肚子，又会痛得这么厉害？”
+ 韦小宝叹道：“想是我虽将汤吐了出来，差着没漱口，毒药还是吃进了肚里。”
+ 说着又将匕首移近数寸。
+ 只听海老公道：“那也很好啊。
+ 反正这毒药是解不了的，你中毒浅些，发作得慢些，吃的苦头只有更大。”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，长笑声中，全身力道集于右臂，猛力戳出，直指海老公心口，只待一刀刺入，便即滚向床角，从床脚边窜出逃走。
+ 海老公陡觉一阵寒气扑面，微感诧异，只知对方已然动手，更不及多想他是如何出手，左手挥出，便往戳来的兵刃上格去，右掌随出，砰的一声，将韦小宝打得飞身而起，撞破窗格，直摔入窗外的花园，跟着只觉左手剧痛，四根手指已被匕首切断。
+ 若不是韦小宝匕首上寒气太盛，他事先没有警兆，这一下非戳中心口不可。
+ 但如是寻常刀剑，二人功力相差太远，虽然戳中心口，也不过皮肉之伤，他内劲到处，掌缘如铁，击在刀剑之上，震飞刀剑，也不会伤到自己手掌。
+ 但这匕首实在太过锋锐，海老公苦练数十年的内劲，竟然不能将之震飞脱手，反而无声息的切断了四根手指。
+ 可是他右手一掌结结实实的打在韦小宝胸口，这一掌开碑裂石，非同小可，料得定韦小宝早已五脏俱碎，人在飞出窗外之前便已死了。
+ 他冷笑一声，自言自语：“死得这般容易，可便宜了这小鬼。”
+ 定一定神，到药箱中取出金创药敷上伤口，撕下床单，包扎了左掌，喃喃的道：“这小鬼用的是什么兵刃，怎地如此厉害？”
+ 强忍手上剧痛，跃出窗去，伸手往韦小宝跌落处摸去，要找那柄自己闻所未闻、见所未见的宝刀利刃。
+ 哪知摸索良久，竟什么也没摸到。
+ 他于眼睛未瞎之时，窗外的花园早看得熟了，何处有花，何处有石，无不了然于胸。
+ 明明听得韦小宝是落在一株芍药花旁，这小鬼手中的宝剑或许已震得远远飞出，可是他的尸体怎会突然不见？
+ 韦小宝中了这掌，当时气为之窒，胸口剧痛，四肢百骸似乎都已寸寸碎裂，一摔下地，险些便即晕去。
+ 他知此刻生死系于一线，既然没能将海老公刺死，老乌龟定会出来追击，当即奋力爬起，只走得两步，脚下一软，又即摔倒，骨碌碌的从一道斜坡上直滚下去。
+ 海老公倘若手指没给割断，韦小宝滚下斜坡之声自然逃不过他耳朵，只是他重伤之余，心烦意乱，加之做梦也想不到这小鬼中了自己这一掌竟会不死，虽然听到声音，却全没想到其中缘由。
+ 这条斜坡好长，韦小宝直滚出十余丈，这才停住。
+ 他挣扎着站起，慢慢走远，周身筋骨痛楚不堪，幸好匕首还是握在手中，暗自庆幸：“刚才老乌龟将我打出窗外，我居然没将匕首插入自己身体，当真运气好极。”
+ 将匕首插入靴筒，心想：“西洋镜已经拆穿，老乌龟既知我是冒牌货，宫中是不能再住了。
+ 只可惜四十五万两银子变成了一场空欢喜。
+ 他奶奶的，一个人哪有这样好运气，横财一发便是四十五万两？
+ 总而言之，老子有过四十五万两银子的身家，只不过老子手段阔绰，一晚之间就花了个精光。
+ 你说够厉害了罢？”
+ 肚里吹牛，不禁得意起来。
+ 又想：“那小宫女还巴巴的在等我，反正三更半夜也不能出宫，我这就瞧瞧她去，啊哟……”
+ 一摸怀中那只纸盒，早已压得一塌胡涂，心道：“我还是拿去给她看看，免她等得心焦。
+ 就说我摔了一交，将蜜饯糖果压得稀烂，变成了一堆牛粪，不过这堆牛粪又甜又香，滋味挺美。
+ 哈哈，辣块妈妈，又甜又香的牛粪你吃过没有？
+ 老子就吃过。”
+ 他想想觉得好玩，加快脚步，步向太后所住的慈宁宫，只走快几步，胸口随即剧痛，只得又放慢了步子。
+ 来到慈宁宫外，见宫门紧闭，心想：“糟糕，可没想到这门会关着，那怎么进去？”
+ 正没做理会处，宫门忽然无声无息的推了开来，一个小姑娘的头探出来，月光下看得分明，正是蕊初。
+ 只见她微笑着招手，韦小宝大喜，轻轻闪身过门。
+ 蕊初又将门掩上了，在他耳畔低声道：“我怕你进不来，已在这里等了许久。”
+ 韦小宝也低声道：“我来迟啦。
+ 我在路上绊到了一只又臭又硬的老乌龟，摔了一交。”
+ 蕊初道：“花园里有大海龟吗？
+ 我倒没见过。
+ 你…… 你可摔痛了没有？”
+ 韦小宝一鼓作气的走来，身上的疼痛倒也可以耐得，给蕊初这么一问，只觉得全身筋骨无处不痛，忍不住哼了一声。
+ 蕊初拉住他手，低声问：“摔痛了哪里？”
+ 韦小宝正要回答，忽见地下有个黑影掠过，一抬头，但见一只硕大无朋的大鹰从墙头飞了进来，轻轻落地。
+ 他大吃一惊，险些骇呼出声，月光下只见那大鹰人立起来，原来不是大鹰，却是一人。
+ 这人身材瘦削，弯腰曲背，却不是海老公是谁？
+ 蕊初本来面向着他，没见到海老公进来，但见韦小宝转过了头，瞪目而视，脸上满是惊骇之色，也转过身来。
+ 韦小宝左手一探，已按住了她的嘴唇，出力奇重，竟不让她发出半点声音，跟着右手急摇，示意不可作声。
+ 蕊初点了点头。
+ 韦小宝这才慢慢放开了左手，目不转睛的瞧着海老公。
+ 只见海老公僵立当地，似在倾听动静，过了一会，才慢慢向前走去。
+ 韦小宝见他不是向自己走来，暗暗舒了口气，心道：“老乌龟好厉害，眼睛虽然瞎了，居然能追到这里。”
+ 又想：“只要我和这小宫女不发出半点声音，老乌龟就找不到我。”
+ 海老公向前走了几步，突然跃起，落在韦小宝跟前，左手一探，扠住了蕊初的脖子。
+ 蕊初“啊”的一声叫，但咽喉被卡，这一声叫得又低又闷。
+ 韦小宝心念电转：“老乌龟找的是我，又不是找这小宫女，不会杀死她的。”
+ 此时和海老公相距不过两尺，吓得几乎要撒尿，却一动也不动，知道只要自己动上一根手指，就会给他听了出来。
+ 海老公低声道：“别作声！
+ 不听话就卡死你。
+ 轻轻回答我的话。
+ 你是谁？”
+ 蕊初低声道：“我…… 我……”
+ 海老公伸出右手，摸了摸她头顶，又摸了摸她脸蛋，道：“你是个小宫女，是不是？”
+ 蕊初道：“是，是！”
+ 海老公道：“三更半夜的，在这里干什么？”
+ 蕊初道：“我…… 我在这里玩儿！”
+ 海老公脸上露出一丝微笑，在惨淡的月光下看来，反显得更加阴森可怖，问道：“还有谁在这里？”
+ 侧过了头倾听。
+ 适才蕊初不知屏息凝气，惊恐之下呼吸粗重，给海老公听出了她站立之处。
+ 韦小宝和他相距虽近，呼吸极微，他一时便未察觉。
+ 韦小宝想要打手势叫她别说，却又不敢移动手臂。
+ 幸好蕊初乖觉，发觉他双眼已盲，说道：“没…… 没有了。”
+ 海老公道：“皇太后住在哪里？
+ 你带我去见她。”
+ 蕊初惊道：“公公，你…… 你别跟皇太后说，下次…… 下次我再也不敢了。”
+ 她只道这老太监捉住了自己，要去禀报太后。
+ 海老公道：“你求也没用。
+ 不带我去，立刻便扠死你。”
+ 手上微一使劲，蕊初气为之窒，一张小脸登时胀得通红。
+ 韦小宝惊惶之下，终于撒出尿来，从裤裆里一滴一滴的往下直流，幸好海老公没留神，就算听到了，也道是蕊初吓得撒尿。
+ 海老公慢慢松开左手，低声道：“快带我去。”
+ 蕊初无奈，只得道：“好！”
+ 侧头向韦小宝瞧了一眼，脸上神色示意他快走，自己决不供他出来，低声道：“太后寝宫在那边！”
+ 慢慢移动脚步。
+ 海老公的左手仍是抓住她咽喉，和她并肩而行。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“老乌龟定是去跟皇太后说，我是冒充的小太监，小桂子是给我杀死的，他自己的眼睛是给我弄瞎的，要太后立刻下令捉拿。
+ 他为甚么不去禀报皇上？
+ 是了，他知道皇上对我好，告状多半告不进。
+ 那…… 那便如何是好？
+ 我须得立即逃出宫去。
+ 啊哟，不好，这时候宫门早闭，又怎逃得出去？
+ 只要过得片刻，太后传下命令，更是插翅难飞了。”
+
+ Trinket accompanied Big Beaver, Brother Li, and the other leaders to the main gate.
+ Outside they found the members of the Lodge already waiting, between two and three hundred of them, spread out in V-shaped formation on either side of the gate, all with eager, expectant looks on their faces.
+ After a while the same two big fellows came out carrying Whiskers between them in his hammock.
+ 'Mao, old fellow,' said Brother Li, 'you don't need to wait out here with us.
+ You're our guest.'
+ 'Just hearing about the Helmsman has always been an inspiration to me,' said Whiskers.
+ 'Now that there's a chance to actually see him, I wouldn't miss it for the world.'
+ Because of his extreme weakness his voice was still faint, but there was a flush of excitement on his pallid cheeks.
+ Presently the sound of galloping grew nearer and a party of some ten or so horsemen could be seen approaching in a little cloud of dust.
+ The three foremost of them jumped lightly from their horses while they were still at some distance from the gate.
+ Brother Li and the other leaders went forward to meet them and there was much exchange of handclasps and friendly greetings.
+ Trinket overheard one of the horsemen saying that the Helmsman was waiting somewhere 'ahead' and wanted Brother Li, Big Beaver, and one or two other seniors to come and see him.
+ After standing there some minutes in discussion, six leading members of the Lodge—Brother Li, Big Beaver, Tertius, Father Obscurus, and two others whom Trinket didn't know by name—got on to waiting horses and galloped off with the other riders.
+ 'Isn't the Helmsman coming here then?' asked Whiskers, dreadfully disappointed.
+ None of those waiting had the heart to answer him, since they were all feeling equally disappointed.
+ 'What's the matter with you all?' thought Trinket.
+ 'Anyone would think someone had borrowed ten thousand taels off you and wouldn't pay it back, or you'd lost your wife's trousers gambling or something.
+ What a miserable-looking lot!'
+ After a good while longer, another horseman arrived and read out the names of thirteen Lodge-members who were to go for interviews with the Helmsman.
+ The thirteen men, with rapturous expressions on their faces, dashed to the ready-waiting horses, jumped into the saddle, and galloped away.
+ 'Whiskers,' Trinket asked his stricken friend, 'is this Helmsman a very old man?'
+ 'I... I've never met him,' said Whiskers.
+ 'On River and Lake there's no one who doesn't look up to him, but I do know that to actually get to meet him is very, very difficult.'
+ 'Tamardy!' thought Trinket.
+ 'What a big-head!
+ Well, you don't impress me, Mr Big Shot Helmsman.
+ It's all the same to me whether I see you or not.'
+ By this time it was beginning to look as if most members of the Lodge were definitely not going to get a glimpse of their beloved leader; nevertheless they continued to stand there outside the gate, nursing a faint hope that he might after all appear.
+ Some of them, tired of standing, sat on the ground.
+ One of them urged Whiskers to go indoors and rest.
+ 'If the Helmsman does come,' he told Whiskers, 'I promise to let you know straight away.'
+ But Whiskers shook his head.
+ 'No, no, I'd rather wait here.
+ If the Helmsman did come and I wasn't waiting here outside, it would be very—well, disrespectful.'
+ He sighed wistfully.
+ 'I wonder if it will be my luck to see him before I die.'
+ In his conversations with Trinket on the long journey from Yangzhou to Peking there was hardly a well-known practitioner of the Martial Arts whom Whiskers had not at one time or other disparaged.
+ Chen Jinnan, the Helmsman, appeared to be the only expert in these matters for whom he had unqualified respect.
+ Listening to Whiskers now, Trinket could not help absorbing a little of his enthusiasm, to the extent that he now stopped thinking of rude things to say about this paragon who seemed so conscious of his own worth.
+ Suddenly there was a sound of hoofbeats once more and another party of horsemen came riding up.
+ Those Triads who had been sitting on the ground leaped to their feet and everyone craned forward, hoping that this time the summons would be for him.
+ There were four messengers this time.
+ Their leader, having dismounted from his horse, clasped his hands together respectfully: 'The Helmsman requests Mr Mao and Mr Wei to favour him with their company.'
+ Whiskers leaped up with a joyful cry, then almost immediately sank back into the hammock with a groan.
+ 'Let's go!' he said to his bearers.
+ 'Hurry!'
+ Trinket, for his part, was extremely tickled to be called 'Mr Wei'.
+ Even his surname—his mother's actually, since his paternity was unknown—was seldom used; but never in his life before had anyone called him 'Mr'.
+ Well!' he thought.
+ 'I've heard plenty of "Goong-goongs" recently; but not "Mr".
+ Ha ha!
+ Now I'm "Mr Trinket Wei".'
+ Two of the mounted men took charge of Whiskers, supporting the ends of the carrying-pole from which his hammock was suspended on their saddle-bows and riding along in parallel very slowly and carefully.
+ Another of them gave up his horse to Trinket and found himself another horse on which he rode along behind.
+ The little party of six walked their horses along the road for about a mile before taking a right-hand turn into a little side-road.
+ Along this, every few hundred yards, were little knots of two or three men, some sitting, some walking to and fro, all evidently lookouts, since the leading horseman, on seeing them, would make a sign, stretching out the last three fingers of his right hand and pointing with them downwards, whereupon the men would nod and silently answer him with some mysterious signal of their own.
+ Trinket observed that the signals they made were all different, but was unable to guess their significance.
+ After they had been riding along this side-road for about four miles, they came to a large farmhouse or grange.
+ As they arrived at the entrance, a guard on the door shouted to the people inside, 'The guests have arrived,' whereupon the door opened and out came Brother Li, Big Beaver, and two other men whom Trinket hadn't seen before.
+ One of these last clasped his hands politely and welcomed them in: 'Mr Mao, Mr Wei, welcome!
+ Our Society's Helmsman looks forward to meeting you.'
+ Trinket was thrilled.
+ The 'Mr' seemed to be sticking.
+ Whiskers struggled to get up.
+ 'I can't see the Helmsman like this.
+ It's too . . . it's too . . .' but the effort to raise himself once more ended in a groan.
+ 'You're a wounded man,' said Brother Li.
+ 'You don't need to stand on ceremony.'
+ He ushered Trinket and Whiskers' bearers into the main reception room.
+ A man offered Trinket some tea and asked him to wait there a while as the Helmsman wanted to speak to Mr Mao first.
+ Whiskers was carried through an inner door for his interview.
+ While Trinket was drinking his cup of tea, a servant came in with four plates on which were various cakes and dimsum.
+ His reaction on sampling these was unfavourable.
+ 'These aren't a patch on the ones they do in the Palace,' he thought.
+ They're not even as good as the ones they used to serve in the brothel.'
+ His estimation of the Helmsman at once went down a couple of notches.
+ However, he was feeling empty, and in quite a short time had made considerable inroads into the eatables on all four of the plates.
+ After about the time it would take to consume an average meal, Brother Li and the other three came in again, and one of the two Trinket didn't know by name, an old man with a grizzled beard, told him that the Helmsman was now ready to see him.
+ At some risk of choking, he swallowed the large mouthful he had been chewing, brushed off the crumbs with his hands, and followed the four men into one of the wings of the building which, together with the main reception room, enclosed a large courtyard on three sides.
+ There, stopping outside a doorway, the old man with the grizzled beard lifted up the door-curtain and announced them.
+ 'Mr Trinket Wei, the Little White Dragon to see you.'
+ Trinket was surprised and a little flattered that they should somehow have got hold of his made-up nom de guerre.
+ This must be Whiskers' doing, he concluded.
+ A man in his thirties dressed in the costume of a scholar rose to his feet as they entered, smiling a welcome.
+ Trinket walked in and stood for a moment darting questioning glances around him.
+ 'This is the Helmsman,' said Big Beaver.
+ Trinket stole a glance at the scholar.
+ He had a mild and gentle face, but there was a force in his flashing eyes which seemed to bore right through him and made him gasp.
+ Almost unconsciously he sank to his knees and began to kowtow; but the scholar bent down to stop him.
+ 'No, no, that's not necessary,' he said with a laugh.
+ Trinket could feel the scholar's strong hands on his arms.
+ A warm sensation passed through his body, followed by a little tremor of excitement.
+ He abandoned his kowtow and got up.
+ 'By arresting and killing Oboi, the Manchu Champion,' said the scholar, speaking to the four older men but keeping his eyes on Trinket, 'our young hero here has avenged the deaths of countless numbers of our fellow-countrymen.
+ In the course of a few days his name has become a household word.
+ To have won such fame, and so early in life too, is an almost unparalleled achievement.'
+ Although Trinket had enough cheek to shame the devil and would normally, if anyone else had praised him like this, have treated it as an excuse to show off, he found himself, in the presence of this Helmsman with his gentleness and his air of quiet authority, completely tongue-tied.
+ 'Sit down!'
+ The Helmsman pointed to a chair and sat down himself.
+ Trinket followed his example but noticed that the four older men remained standing, their arms held respectfully at their sides.
+ 'I gather that your career as a strategist began very early,' said the Helmsman, smiling.
+ 'Mr Mao tells me that already, near Victory Hill, when you were still not far from Yangzhou, you killed a Manchu officer by means of a ruse.
+ I still haven't heard how you managed to arrest Oboi though.'
+ Lifting his head slightly, Trinket caught a glimpse of those dazzling eyes and felt his heart beating faster.
+ All desire to indulge in his customary trumpet-blowing drained from him on the instant and he found himself for once giving a completely honest account of what he had done.
+ He told the Helmsman how he had become Kang Xi's favourite; how Oboi had threatened and insulted the young Emperor; and how he and the Emperor had joined forces to take Oboi prisoner.
+ Out of a sense of loyalty to Kang Xi, he said nothing about Kang Xi stabbing Oboi in the back; but he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he had blinded Oboi with incense-ash and then hit him on the head with a bronze brazier, although he was fully aware that to a man of honour like the Helmsman this would seem, if not a third-rate, certainly a pretty second-rate way of overcoming an enemy.
+ The Helmsman listened to all that Trinket had to say without making a single interruption.
+ When at last Trinket had finished, he nodded.
+ 'I see.
+ Well, clearly you didn't learn your technique from Mr Mao.
+ Who was your teacher?'
+ 'I've had a little training,' said Trinket, 'but I didn't have a proper teacher.
+ What the Old Devil taught me wasn't real Martial Arts, it was just rubbish.'
+ 'The Old Devil?'
+ The Helmsman's vast knowledge did not encompass any practitioner with that nom de guerre.
+ Trinket burst out laughing.
+ 'Old Devil is what I used to call the old eunuch Hai-goong—among other things.
+ His real name was Hai Dafu.
+ He's the one who captured me and Mao Eighteen and brought us into the Palace . . .'
+ He suddenly realized that this flatly contradicted what he had said previously.
+ He had told the Triad members that he and Mao Eighteen had been captured and taken into the Palace by Oboi.
+ To a practised liar like Trinket, however, this presented little difficulty.
+ The old eunuch was acting on Oboi's orders.
+ I suppose Oboi, being so important, was too grand to do the dirty work himself.'
+ But the Helmsman appeared to be deep in thought.
+ 'Hai Dafu?
+ Hai Dafu?
+ Is there a eunuch with that name in the Tartar Palace?'
+ He turned to Trinket.
+ 'Show me a few of the things he taught you, little brother,' he said.
+ However immune to self-criticism Trinket might be, he knew that what he liked to call his Martial Arts training was really a joke.
+ 'The Old Devil only pretended to teach me,' he said.
+ 'He hated me because I made him blind, so he did everything in his power to harm me.
+ The sort of things he taught me were not the sort of things you'd want anyone else to see.'
+ The Helmsman nodded and made a little gesture with his left hand.
+ At once Big Beaver and the other three older men left the room, closing the door after them as they went.
+ 'Now,' said the Helmsman, 'what did you mean when you said you made the old eunuch go blind?'
+ In the presence of this heroic individual Trinket found it harder to tell his habitual lies than to tell the truth—a sensation he had never experienced before.
+ He now found himself telling the Helmsman how the massive dose of medicine he had put in the old eunuch's cup had caused him to go blind and how he had killed the little eunuch Laurie and taken his place.
+ The Helmsman, having heard this last piece of information with amusement and some surprise, felt with his left hand between Trinket's legs and satisfied himself that he was indeed equipped with those parts which eunuchs lack but ordinary little boys possess.
+ Then he gave what to Trinket sounded very much like a sigh of relief.
+ 'Good,' he said with a little smile.
+ 'If you haven't been mutilated and you aren't a eunuch, this suggests a way out of a difficulty that has been bothering me for some time.'
+ He tapped the table lightly with his left hand and continued speaking, apparently to himself.
+ 'Yes, of course.
+ This is obviously the solution.
+ It gives Brother Yin a successor and the Green Wood Lodge a Master.'
+ Trinket didn't understand what he was talking about, but he could tell from his pleased expression that some great weight had been lifted from his mind and couldn't help feeling pleased on his behalf.
+ The Helmsman walked to and fro in the room, his hands clasped behind him, muttering to himself.
+ 'Everything this Society has ever done has been unprecedented.
+ All innovation lies ultimately in the hands of the individual.
+ We must be bold enough to ignore the censures of the vulgar and the loud outcries of those to whom every novelty is shocking.'
+ To Trinket this book-language of the Helmsman's was even more incomprehensible than what he had said before.
+ 'Look,' said the Helmsman to Trinket, 'there are only two of us here now, so you've no need to feel embarrassed.
+ Never mind whether what Hai Dafu taught you was the real thing or not; just give me a demonstration of what it was.'
+ Trinket now realized that it was to spare him the embarrassment of making a fool of himself in front of the others that he had sent them out of the room.
+ There seemed to be nothing for it but to comply.
+ 'Well, it's what the Old Devil taught me,' he said, 'so it's not my fault how bad it is.
+ If it looks really ridiculous, you must put the blame on him.'
+ The Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Don't worry about that; just get on with it.'
+ So Trinket struck up an attitude and began to go through the motions of the Merciful Guanyin repertoire—the rather limited parts of it, that is, that the old eunuch had taught him.
+ He had already forgotten some bits of it, but could remember enough to put on some sort of performance.
+ The Helmsman watched him with fixed attention and nodded when he had finished.
+ 'From what you've just been doing,' he said, 'it looks as though you may have been taught a little bit of the Shaolin School of Catch-Can.
+ Am I right?'
+ The Greater Catch-Can is what Trinket had learned first, before he even started on the Merciful Guanyin method of self-defence.
+ He knew he must be even worse at Catch-Can than at the Merciful Guanyin stuff and had been hoping to conceal his inadequacy by keeping quiet about it; but there was no concealing anything from the Helmsman, who appeared to know everything: there was nothing for it but to go on making a fool of himself.
+ 'Yes, ' he said.
+ 'The Old Devil taught me a bit of Catch-Can to use in my wrestling-bouts with the Emperor.'
+ And he proceeded to demonstrate as much as he could remember of the Greater Catch-Can.
+ Once again the Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Not bad!'
+ 'I knew all along it would only make you laugh,' said Trinket.
+ 'I wasn't laughing at you,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'I was smiling because I was pleased to see that your memory and comprehension are so good.
+ That White Pony Kick you couldn't quite bring off I think Hai Dafu must have deliberately taught you incorrectly; but instead of letting it fluster you, you used your own imagination and initiative to develop it into a Carp-Fin Flick.
+ I thought that was very good.'
+ Trinket guessed that the Helmsman was a far greater Master of the Martial Arts than the Old Devil had been and the thought suddenly struck him how wonderful it would be if the Helmsman were willing to take him on as a disciple, to be his teacher, his Shifu.
+ Then, surely, he could become a real hero, not the fake one he was at present.
+ He glanced shyly in the Helmsman's direction and found that cold, electric gaze directed at him.
+ Trinket was a shameless young blackguard and could look even the formidable Empress Dowager in the eye without blenching; but the Helmsman was somehow different.
+ In the Helmsman's presence he had become suddenly terrified of misbehaving and as soon as their eyes met had quickly to avert his own.
+ 'Do you know what the Triad Society is for?' the Helmsman asked him, speaking very slowly and deliberately.
+ 'The Triad Society wants to drive out the Qing and restore the Ming,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's for helping the Chinese and killing Tartars.'
+ The Helmsman nodded.
+ 'Exactly.
+ Would you like to join the Triad Society and become a Brother?'
+ That would be terrific,' said Trinket delightedly.
+ In his mind every member of the Triad Society was a hero.
+ It had not occurred to him that he might ever become one himself.
+ But then he reflected that Whiskers wasn't a member, and it was absurd to imagine that he could be better-qualified than Whiskers; so he said, 'I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid I'm not good enough.'
+ His eyes, which for a moment had been shining, were now full of disappointment.
+ It was too much to hope that the Helmsman's offer had been serious.
+ He must have been joking.
+ 'If you want to be a member you can,' said the Helmsman, 'only you must remember that this is a very important business we are engaged in.
+ We have to put our country first, even before our lives.
+ Then again, the rules are very strict and the penalties for breaking them very heavy.
+ You need to think carefully before you decide.'
+ 'I don't need to think,' said Trinket.
+ 'Whatever your rules are, I'll keep them.
+ If you'll let me join, Helmsman, I'll be the happiest boy in the world.'
+ The Helmsman's smile gave way to a more grave expression.
+ 'This is an extremely serious business, involving matters of life and death.
+ We're not talking about children's games.'
+ 'I know that,' said Trinket.
+ 'I've heard lots about the Triad Society.
+ It fights for Honour and Justice.
+ It does all sorts of amazing things.
+ Of course it isn't a children's game.'
+ The Helmsman smiled.
+ 'Well, as long as you know.
+ There are thirty-six rules that everyone joining the Society must swear to follow.
+ The rules include ten absolute prohibitions, each with a very severe punishment laid down for anyone who breaks it.'
+ His face became grave again.
+ 'Some of the rules don't apply in your case yet, because you're too young; but there's one of them against dishonesty.
+ It says, "Every Brother must be honest in all his dealings.
+ He must not lie or cheat."
+ Do you think you are capable of keeping that rule?'
+ Trinket was slightly taken aback.
+ 'I'd never tell you a lie, Helmsman,' he said, 'but with the other Brothers, would I have to tell them the truth—all the time?'
+ 'Perhaps not in minor matters,' said the Helmsman, 'but in important ones, yes.'
+ 'Well that's all right,' said Trinket.
+ 'What about gambling?
+ If I'm gambling with other members of the Society, am I allowed to cheat a bit?'
+ The Helmsman was unprepared for a question of this nature.
+ 'Gambling is not a good thing,' he said with the faintest of smiles, 'but there is nothing in the rules which forbids it.
+ Of course, if you cheated them and they found out, they would probably beat you up, and there's no rule against that either: so you'd probably be well advised not to try.'
+ They wouldn't find out,' said Trinket, grinning.
+ 'Actually, though, I don't need to cheat.
+ When I gamble, nine times out of ten I win anyway.'
+ Since most members of the Society came from a travelling background in which gambling and drunken brawling were accepted as normal behaviour, the Helmsman was inclined to turn a blind eye on these matters.
+ He looked at Trinket intently for some moments as if trying to make his mind up about something.
+ 'Would you like to be my apprentice?'
+ What happiness!
+ Trinket fell at once to his knees and began kowtowing.
+ 'Shifu!'
+ This time the Helmsman made no effort to raise him up, but let him knock his head a dozen or more times on the floor before he stopped him.
+ 'All right, that's enough.'
+ Trinket got up again, smiling delightedly.
+ 'Now that I have become your Shifu, you had better know my real name,' said the Helmsman, 'but you are not to tell anyone.
+ My surname is Chen.
+ I expect you know that already.
+ But Chen Jinnan is only the name I am known by on River and Lake.
+ It is not my real name.
+ My real name is Chen Yonghua.'
+ 'I'll remember that,' said Trinket.
+ 'And I promise not to tell anyone.'
+ The Helmsman contemplated his new disciple for some moments in silence.
+ 'Now that we are Shifu and apprentice, ' he said gravely 'we have to be completely open with each other.
+ I don't mind telling you that I find you both glib-tongued and sly.
+ Your nature is a very different one from my own, and I must admit that I am not at all happy about this.
+ In taking you on as my apprentice, it's more the interests of the Society than anything else that I have in mind.'
+ 'From now on I'll do my best to change,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's easier for the earth to leave its moorings than for a man to change his nature,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'You won't be able to change very much.
+ On the other hand you're still young and comparatively unformed; and so far you don't seem to have done anything particularly bad.
+ In future you'll just have to keep reminding yourself all the time to do as I tell you.
+ I believe in being very strict with my apprentices, so if I find that you have been breaking the Society's rules or plotting mischief or doing anything really bad, I shall kill you without mercy.
+ And remember: I can kill you any time, as easily as breaking an egg.'
+ As if to demonstrate, he tapped the table with his left hand and then seized the corner of it in his grasp.
+ There was a crunching sound as it broke off.
+ Then he took the broken-off piece between his palms and rubbed it until it fell in a shower of tiny slivers on the floor.
+ Trinket stuck his tongue out in amazement and it was some time before he could put it back in again.
+ Yet his overriding feeling was not of amazement but of happiness that he had got this heroic strong man for his teacher.
+ 'I promise you I won't ever do anything bad,' he said.
+ 'I wouldn't want my Shifu to crunch my head up!
+ And besides, if I did do a few bad things, and you did crunch me up, with me gone, who'd there be to pass on your secrets!'
+ 'Not "a few bad things"!' said the Helmsman.
+ 'One!
+ Just one bad thing, and I shall no longer consider you my apprentice.'
+ 'What about two bad things?' said Trinket.
+ The Helmsman's face looked stern.
+ 'You're being flippant.
+ When I say one bad thing I mean one.
+ Do you think this is something you can haggle about?'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket; but a rebellious little voice inside him was saying, 'What about half a bad thing?'
+ 'You are my fourth apprentice,' said the Helmsman, 'and probably you will be my last.
+ The Triad Society keeps me so busy that I don't have much time for apprentices.
+ Of your three Brother-apprentices, two died fighting against the Tartars and the third was killed in Marshal Zheng's campaign to retake Taiwan.
+ All three were brave young men who gave their lives for their country.
+ Apart from that I have my own reputation to keep up and I don't want you disgracing me.'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket.
+ 'But. . . but—'
+ 'But what?' said the Helmsman.
+ 'Sometimes things that might disgrace you seem to happen to me when I can't help it,' said Trinket.
+ 'Like being captured by someone bigger and stronger than me and shut up in a barrel of dates and pushed around like goods to market.
+ You mustn't blame me for things like that.'
+ The Helmsman found he didn't quite know whether to be angry or amused.
+ Finally he gave a sigh.
+ 'I'm beginning to think that taking you on as my apprentice may prove to be the biggest mistake of my life.
+ There's so much that hangs on this though, I just have to take the chance.
+ Now listen, Trinket.
+ There's going to be some important business presently.
+ Just keep quiet, do everything I tell you, and don't talk a lot of nonsense, and you'll be all right.
+ Is that understood?'
+ 'Yes, sir,' said Trinket.
+ Observing that Trinket appeared to be hesitating, the Helmsman asked him if there was something else he wanted to say.
+ 'It's only that what I say always does seem sensible to me, ' said Trinket.
+ 'I never mean to talk nonsense.
+ So when you tell me I'm talking nonsense, it seems unfair.'
+ 'In that case the best thing is not to talk at all,' said the Helmsman.
+ But what he thought was, 'How many men of valour and reputation have I seen behaving like submissive flunkeys and hardly daring to breathe in my presence, yet this two-faced, shifty little urchin can stand here and give me all this lip!'
+ He got up and strode towards the door.
+ 'Come on,' he said.
+ 'Follow me.'
+ Trinket rushed to open it for him and held up the door-curtain for him to go through.
+ Then he followed him to the hall.
+
+ 韦小宝随着关安基、李力世等群豪来到大门外，只见二三百人八字排开，脸上均现兴奋之色。
+ 过了一会，两名大汉抬着担架，抬了茅十八出来。
+ 李力世道：“茅兄，你是客人，不用这么客气。”
+ 茅十八道：“久仰陈总舵主大名，当真如雷贯耳，今日得能拜见，就算…… 就算即刻便死，那…… 那也是不枉了。”
+ 他说话仍是有气没力，但脸泛红光，极是高兴。
+ 耳听得马蹄声渐近，尘头起处，十骑马奔了过来。
+ 当先三骑马上乘客，没等奔近便翻身下马。
+ 李力世等迎将上去，与那三人拉手说话，十分亲热。
+ 韦小宝听得其中一人说道：“总舵主在前面相候，请李大哥、关夫子几位过去……”
+ 几个人站着商量了几句，李力世、关安基、祁彪清、玄贞道人等六人便即上马，和来人飞驰而去。
+ 茅十八好生失望，问道：“陈总舵主不来了吗？”
+ 对他这句问话，没一人回答得出，各人见不到总舵主，个个垂头丧气。
+ 韦小宝心道：“人家欠了你们一万两银子不还吗？
+ 还是赌钱输掉了老婆裤子？
+ 你奶奶的，脸色这等难看！”
+ 过了良久，有一人骑马驰来传令，点了十三个人的名字，要他们前去会见总舵主。
+ 那十三人大喜，飞身上马，向前疾奔。
+ 韦小宝问茅十八道：“茅大哥，陈总舵主年纪很老了罢？”
+ 茅十八道：“我…… 我便是没…… 没见过。
+ 江湖之上，人人都仰慕陈总舵主，但要见上他…… 他老人家一面，可当真艰难得很。”
+ 韦小宝嘿了一声，心中却道：“哼，他妈的，好大架子，有什么希罕？
+ 老子才不想见呢。”
+ 群豪见这情势，总舵主多半是不会来了，但还是抱着万一希望，站在大门外相候，有的站得久了，便坐了下来。
+ 有人劝茅十八道：“茅爷，你还是到屋里歇歇。
+ 我们总舵主倘若到了，尽快来请茅爷相见。”
+ 茅十八摇头道：“不！
+ 我还是在这里等着。
+ 陈总舵主大驾光临，在下不在门外相候，那…… 那可太也不恭敬了。
+ 唉，也不知我茅十八这一生一世，有没福份见他老人家一面。”
+ 韦小宝跟着茅十八从扬州来到北京，一路之上，听他言谈之中，对武林中人物都不大瞧在眼内，但对这个陈总舵主却一直十分敬重，不知不觉的受了感染，心中也不敢再骂人了。
+ 忽听得蹄声响动，又有人驰来，坐在地下的会众都跃起身来，大家伸长了脖子张望，均盼总舵主又召人前去相会，这次有自己的份儿。
+ 果然来的又是四名使者，为首一人下马抱拳，说道：“总舵主相请茅十八茅爷、韦小宝韦爷两位，劳驾前去相会。”
+ 茅十八一声欢呼，从担架中跳起身来，但“哎唷”一声，又跌在担架之中，叫道：“快去，快去！”
+ 韦小宝也是十分高兴，心想：“人家叫我‘公公’的叫得多了，倒没什么人叫我‘韦爷’，哈哈，老子是‘韦小宝韦爷’。”
+ 两名使者在马上接过担架，双骑相并，缓缓而行。
+ 另一名使者将坐骑让给了韦小宝，自己另乘一马，跟随在后。
+ 六个人沿着大路行不到三里，便转入右边的一条小路。
+ 一路之上都有三三两两的汉子，或坐或行，巡视把守。
+ 为首的使者伸出中指、无名指、小指三根手指往地下一指，把守二人点点头，也伸手做个暗号。
+ 韦小宝见这些人所发暗号各各不同，也不知是何用意。
+ 又行了十二三里，来到一座庄院之前。
+ 守在门口的一名汉子大声叫道：“客人到！”
+ 跟着大门打开，李力世、关安基，还有两名没见过面的汉子出来，抱拳说道：“茅爷、韦爷，大驾光临，敝会总舵主有请。”
+ 韦小宝大乐，心想：“我这个‘韦爷’毕竟走不了啦！”
+ 茅十八挣扎着想起来，说道：“我这么去见陈总舵主，实在，实在…… 哎唷……”
+ 终于支撑不住，又躺倒在担架上。
+ 李力世道：“茅爷身上有伤，不必多礼。”
+ 让着二人进了大厅。
+ 一名汉子向韦小宝道：“韦爷请到这里喝杯茶，总舵主想先和茅爷谈谈。”
+ 当下将茅十八抬了进去。
+ 韦小宝喝得一碗茶，仆役拿上四碟点心，韦小宝吃了一块，心想：“这点心比之皇宫里的，可差得太远了，还及不上丽春院的。”
+ 对这个总舵主的身份，不免有了一点瞧不起。
+ 但肚中正饿，还是将这些瞧不在眼里的点心吃了不少。
+ 过了一顿饭时分，李力世等四人又一起出来，其中一个花白胡子老者道：“总舵主有请韦爷。”
+ 韦小宝忙将口中正在咀嚼的点心用力吞落了肚，双手在衣襟上擦了擦，跟着四人入内，来到一间厢房之外。
+ 那老者掀起门帷，说道：“‘小白龙’韦小宝韦爷到！”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，心想：“他居然知道我这个杜撰的外号，定然是茅大哥说的了。”
+ 房中一个文士打扮的中年书生站起身来，笑容满脸，说道：“请进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进房去，两只眼睛骨碌碌的乱转。
+ 关安基道：“这位是敝会陈总舵主。”
+ 韦小宝微微仰头向他瞧去，见这人神色和蔼，但目光如电，直射过来，不由得吃了一惊，双膝一曲，便即拜倒。
+ 那书生俯身扶起，笑道：“不用多礼。”
+ 韦小宝双臂被他一托，突然间全身一热，打了个颤，便拜不下去。
+ 那书生笑道：“这位小兄弟擒杀满洲第一勇士鳌拜，为我无数死在鳌拜手里的汉人同胞报仇雪恨，数日之间，名震天下。
+ 成名如此之早，当真古今罕有。”
+ 韦小宝本来脸皮甚厚，倘若旁人如此称赞，便即跟着自吹自擂一番，但在这位不怒自威的总舵主面前，竟然讷讷的不能出口。
+ 总舵主指着一张椅子，微笑道：“请坐！”
+ 自己先坐了，韦小宝便也坐下。
+ 李力世等四人却垂手站立。
+ 总舵主微笑道：“听茅十八茅爷说道，小兄弟在扬州得胜山下，曾用计杀了一名清军军官黑龙鞭史松，初出茅庐第一功，便已不凡。
+ 但不知小兄弟如何擒拿鳌拜。”
+ 韦小宝抬起头来，和他目光一触，一颗心不由得突突乱跳，满腹大吹法螺的胡说八道霎时间忘得干干净净，一开口便是真话，将如何得到康熙宠幸、鳌拜如何无礼、自己如何和小皇帝合力擒他之事说了。
+ 只是顾全对康熙的义气，不提小皇帝在鳌拜背后出刀子之事。
+ 但这样一来，自己撒香炉灰迷眼、举铜香炉砸头，明知不是下三滥、便是下二滥的手段，却也无法再行隐瞒了。
+ 总舵主一言不发的听完，点头道：“原来如此。
+ 小兄弟的武功和茅爷不是一路，不知尊师是哪一位？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我学过一些功夫，可算不得有什么尊师。
+ 老乌龟不是真的教我武功，他教我的都是假功夫。”
+ 总舵主纵然博知广闻，“老乌龟”是谁，却也不知，问道：“老乌龟？”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“老乌龟便是海老公，他名字叫作海大富。
+ 茅十八大哥和我，就是给他擒进宫里去的……”
+ 说到这里，突然惊觉不对，自己曾对天地会的人说，茅十八和自己是给鳌拜擒去的，这会儿却说给海老公擒进宫去，岂不是前言不对后语？
+ 好在他撒谎圆谎的本领着实不小，跟着道：“这老儿奉了鳌拜之命，将我二人擒去，想那鳌拜是个极大的大官，自然不能轻易出手。”
+ 总舵主沉吟道：“海大富？
+ 海大富？
+ 鞑子宫内的太监之中，有这样一号人物？
+ 小兄弟，他教你的武功，你演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝脸皮再厚，也知自己的武功实在太不高明，说道：“老乌龟教我的都是假功夫。
+ 他恨我毒瞎了他眼睛，因此想尽办法来害我。
+ 这些功夫是见不得人的。”
+ 总舵主点了点头，左手一挥，关安基等四人都退出房去，反手带上了门。
+ 总舵主问道：“你怎样毒瞎了他眼睛？”
+ 在这位英气逼人的总舵主面前，韦小宝只觉说谎十分辛苦，还是说真话舒服得多，这种情形那可是从所未有，当下便将如何毒瞎海老公、如何杀死小桂子、如何冒充他做小太监等情形说了。
+ 总舵主又是吃惊，又是好笑，左手在他胯下一拂，发觉他阳具和睾丸都在，并未净身，的的确确不是太监，不由得吁了口长气，微笑道：“好极，好极！
+ 我心中正有个难题，好久拿不定主意，原来小兄弟果然不是给净了身，做了太监！”
+ 左手在桌上轻轻一拍，道：“定当如此！
+ 尹兄弟后继有人，青木堂有主儿了。”
+ 韦小宝不明白他说些什么，只是见他神色欢愉，确是解开了心中一件极为难之事，也不禁代他高兴。
+ 总舵主负着双手，在室内走来走去，自言自语：“我天地会所作所为，无一不是前人从所未行之事。
+ 万事开创在我，骇人听闻，物议沸然，又何足论？”
+ 他文绉绉的说话，韦小宝更加不懂了。
+ 总舵主道：“这里只有你我二人，不用怕难为情。
+ 那海大富教你的武功，不论真也好，假也好，你试演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝这才明白，他命关安基等四人出去，是为了免得自己怕丑，眼见无可推托，说道：“是老乌龟教的，可不关我事，如果太也可笑，你骂他好了。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“放手练好了，不用担心！”
+ 韦小宝于是拉开架式，将海老公所教的小半套“大慈大悲千叶手”使了一遍，其中有些忘了，有些也还记得。
+ 总舵主凝神观看，待韦小宝使完后，点了点头，道：“从你出手中看来，似乎你还学过少林寺的一些擒拿手，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝学“大擒拿手”在先，自然知道这门功夫更加不行，原想藏拙，但总舵主似乎什么都知道，只得道：“老乌龟还教过我一些擒拿法，是用来和小皇帝打架的。”
+ 于是将“大擒拿手”中的一些招式也演了一遍。
+ 总舵主微微而笑，说道：“不错！”
+ 韦小宝道：“我早知你见了要笑。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“不是笑你！
+ 我见了心中喜欢，觉得你记性、悟性都不错，是个可造之材。
+ 那一招‘白马翻蹄’，海大富故意教错了，但你转到‘鲤鱼托鳃’之时，能自行略加变化，并不拘泥于死招。
+ 那好得很！”
+ 韦小宝灵机一动，寻思：“总舵主的武功似乎比老乌龟又高得多，如果他肯教我武功，我韦小宝定能成为一个真英雄，不再是冒牌货的假英雄。”
+ 斜头向他瞧去，便在这时，总舵主一双冷电似的目光也正射了过来。
+ 韦小宝向来惫懒，纵然皇太后如此威严，他也敢对之正视，但在这位总舵主跟前，却半点不敢放肆，目光和他一触，立即收了回来。
+ 总舵主缓缓的道：“你可知我们天地会是干什么的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“天地会反清复明，帮汉人，杀鞑子。”
+ 总舵主点头道：“正是！
+ 你愿不愿意入我天地会做兄弟？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“那可好极了。”
+ 在他心目中，天地会会众个个是真正英雄好汉，想不到自己也能为会中兄弟，又想：“连茅大哥也不是天地会的兄弟，我难道比他还行？”
+ 说道：“就怕…… 就怕我够不上格。”
+ 霎时间眼中放光，满心尽是患得患失之情，只觉这笔天外飞来的横财，多半不是真的，不过总舵主跟自己开开玩笑而已。
+ 总舵主道：“你要入会，倒也可以。
+ 只是我们干的是反清复明的大事，以汉人的江山为重，自己的身家性命为轻。
+ 再者，会里规矩严得很，如果犯了，处罚很重，你须得好好想一想。”
+ 韦小宝道：“不用想，你有什么规矩，我守着便是。
+ 总舵主，你如许我入会，我可快活死啦。”
+ 总舵主收起了笑容，正色道：“这是极要紧的大事，生死攸关，可不是小孩子们的玩意。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我当然知道。
+ 我听人说，天地会行侠仗义，做得都是惊天动地的大事，怎么会是小孩子的玩意？”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“知道了就好，本会入会时有誓词三十六条，又有十禁十刑的严规。”
+ 说到这里，脸色沉了下来，道：“有些规矩，你眼前年纪还小，还用不上，不过其中有一条：‘ 凡我兄弟，须当信实为本，不得谎言诈骗。’
+ 这一条，你能办到么？”
+ 韦小宝微微一怔，道：“对你总舵主，我自然不敢说谎。
+ 可是对其余兄弟，难道什么事也都要说真话？”
+ 总舵主道：“小事不论，只论大事。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是了。
+ 好比和会中兄弟们赌钱，出手段骗人可不可以？”
+ 总舵主没想到他会问及此事，微微一笑，道：“赌钱虽不是好事，会规倒也不禁。
+ 可是你骗了他们。
+ 他们知道了要打你，会规也不禁止，你岂不挨打吃亏？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“他们不会知道的，其实我不用欺骗，赢钱也是十拿九稳。”
+ 天地会的会众多是江湖豪杰，赌钱酗酒，乃是天性，向来不以为非，总舵主也就不再理会，向他凝视片刻，道：“你愿不愿拜我为师？”
+ 韦小宝大喜，立即扑翻在地，连连磕头，口称：“师父！”
+ 总舵主这次不再相扶，由他磕了十几个头，道：“够了！”
+ 韦小宝喜孜孜的站起身来。
+ 总舵主道：“我姓陈，名叫陈近南。
+ 这‘陈近南’三字，是江湖上所用。
+ 你今日既拜我为师，须得知道为师的真名。
+ 我真名叫作陈永华，永远的永，中华之华。”
+ 说到自己真名时压低了声音。
+ 韦小宝道：“是，徒弟牢牢记在心中，不敢泄漏。”
+ 陈近南又向他端相半晌，缓缓说道：“你我既成师徒，相互间什么都不隐瞒。
+ 我老实跟你说，你油腔滑调，狡猾多诈，跟为师的性格十分不合，我实在并不喜欢，所以收你为徒，其实是为了本会的大事着想。
+ “韦小宝道：“徒儿以后好好的改。”
+ 陈近南道：“江山易改，本性难移，改是改不了多少的。
+ 你年纪还小，性子浮动些，也没做了什么坏事。
+ 以后须当时时记住我的话。
+ 我对徒儿管教极严，你如犯了本会的规矩，心术不正，为非作歹，为师的要取你性命，易如反掌，也决不怜惜。”
+ 说着左手一探，擦的一声响，将桌子角儿抓了一块下来，双手搓了几搓，木屑纷纷而下。
+ 韦小宝伸出了舌头，半天缩不进去，随即喜欢得心痒难搔，笑道：“我一定不做坏事。
+ 一做坏事，师父你就在我头上这么一抓，这么一搓。
+ 再说，只消做得几件坏事，师父你这手功夫便不能传授徒儿了。”
+ 陈近南道：“不用几件，只是一件坏事，你我便无师徒之份。”
+ 韦小宝道：“两件成不成？”
+ 陈近南脸一板，道：“你给我正正经经的，少油嘴滑舌。
+ 一件便是一件，这种事也有讨价还价的？”
+ 韦小宝应道：“是！”
+ 心中却说：“我做半件坏事，却又如何？”
+ 陈近南道：“你是我的第四个徒儿，说不定便是我的关门弟子。
+ 天地会事务繁重，我没功夫再收弟子。
+ 你的三个师兄，两个在与鞑子交战时阵亡，一个死于国姓爷光复台湾之役，都是为国捐躯的大好男儿。
+ 为师的在武林中位份不低，名声不恶，你可别替我丢脸。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！
+ 不过…… 不过……”
+ 陈近南道：“不过什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“有时我并不想丢脸，不过真要丢脸，也没有法子。
+ 好比打不过人家，给人捉住了，关在枣子桶里，当货物一般给搬来搬去，师父你可别见怪。”
+ 陈近南皱起眉头，又好气，又好笑，叹了口长气，说道：“收你为徒，只怕是我生平所作的一件大错事。
+ 但以天下大事为重，只好冒一冒险。
+ 小宝，待会另有要务，你一切听我吩咐行事，少胡说八道，那就不错。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！”
+ 陈近南见他欲言又止，问道：“你还想说什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“徒儿说话，总是自以为有理才说。
+ 我并不想胡说八道，你却说我胡说八道，那岂不冤枉么？”
+ 陈近南不愿再跟他多所纠缠，说道：“那你少说几句好了。”
+ 心想：“天下不知多少成名的英雄好汉，在我面前都是恭恭敬敬，大气也不敢透一声，这个刁蛮古怪的顽童，偏有这许多废话。”
+ 站起身来，走向门口，道：“你跟我来。”
+ 韦小宝抢着开门，掀开门帷，让陈近南出去，跟着他来到大厅。
+
+ Returning to the Imperial kitchens from his duties with Kang Xi in the Upper Library, Trinket did not have long to wait for Butcher Qian's arrival.
+ This time the butcher had four assistants with him, carrying between them the neatly butchered, immaculately clean carcasses of two large, fat pigs, each, at a rough estimate, representing not less than three hundred catties of pork.
+ 'Laurie Goong-goong,' he told Trinket, 'to get the most value out of this China-root pork, you want to eat some each day, as soon as you get up in the morning.
+ It's best if you cut only as much as you need at one time and roast it straight away.
+ I'll have one of these pigs carried to your quarters now.
+ You'll be able to cut some off yourself and roast it first thing tomorrow.
+ What you can't eat yourself you can get the folk in the kitchen here to make salt pork of.'
+ Realizing that there must be some hidden purpose behind all this, Trinket thanked him for the advice and offered to show him the way, whereupon Butcher Qian, leaving one of the carcasses and its two bearers in the kitchen, accompanied him to his room, followed by the other two assistants carrying the second pig.
+ The Manager's quarters in the Imperial Catering Department were not very far from the Imperial kitchens.
+ As soon as they were inside, Trinket ordered a young eunuch to take the two assistants back to the kitchens, with instructions that they were to wait for their master there with the other two, and closed the door after them.
+ 'Master,' said Butcher Qian, speaking in a low voice, 'is there anyone else in this apartment?'
+ Seeing Trinket shake his head, he crouched down over the pig's carcass and gently turned it on its back again so that its legs were pointing upwards.
+ It was now possible to see that the slit-open underbelly of the animal had been drawn together and was being held in place by strips of pig-skin sewn across the slit.
+ It was obvious that something very out of the ordinary must be concealed inside.
+ Trinket could feel his heart thumping as he reflected that this might well be weapons which the Triads were smuggling in to be used in a killing spree inside the Palace.
+ He watched as Butcher Qian tore off the strips, opened out the carcass, and very gently lifted a large object out in his cradled arms.
+ 'Coo!' he gasped.
+ It was a human body.
+ Butcher Qian laid the body on the floor.
+ It was small and slight with an abundance of hair.
+ To his astonishment Trinket found himself looking down at a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl.
+ She was dressed in the flimsiest of summer garments, her eyes were tightly closed, and her body was completely motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
+ 'Who is this girl?' he asked softly.
+ 'Why have you brought her here?'
+ 'She's the Little Countess,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mu Family's Little Countess.'
+ Trinket's eyes grew round with astonishment.
+ 'The Mu Family's Little Countess?'
+ 'Young Lord Mu's little sister,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mus have kidnapped our Brother Xu, so we've grabbed her as a hostage, just to make sure they don't do Brother Xu any harm.'
+ 'Brilliant!' said Trinket, his surprise now mixed with pleasure.
+ 'But how did you get hold of her?'
+ 'Yesterday, after we found that Brother Xu had disappeared,' said Butcher Qian, 'while you and the others went back to Willow Lane, I went off on my own to make a few enquiries.
+ First of all I wanted to find out whether the Mu Family had any other places in the city besides the Willow Lane one where they might be holding him; and secondly I wanted to know how many more of them there are, so that we have some idea what we are up against if it comes to a fight-out.
+ Well—huh!—I can tell you the answer to the second question straight away.
+ A lot.
+ The young Lord Mu himself has come to the Capital and he's brought some of their best fighting-men with him.'
+ Trinket frowned.
+ 'Tamardy!
+ How many Triads have we got altogether in the Green Wood Lodge?
+ Enough to fight them ten to one?'
+ 'No need for you to worry, Master,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The reason the Mu Family is here now is not because they want to fight us Triads.
+ It's because the traitor Wu Sangui's son, Wu Yingxiong, is in town.'
+ Trinket nodded.
+ 'They've come to assassinate the Little Traitor, you mean?'
+ 'Right first time, Master, ' said the butcher.
+ 'I always said you were a smart one.
+ As long as the Old Traitor and the Little Traitor are in Yunnan, they can't touch them; but as soon as one of them leaves Yunnan, it gives them an opportunity.
+ The only thing is, the Little Traitor is taking no chances with his security: he's brought a whole lot of first-rate fighting-men to protect him, so they won't find it an easy job to kill him.
+ I found out that those Mu folk do have another place in the city, but when I went to have a look there, the menfolk all seemed to have gone out, and there wasn't any sign of Brother Xu there either.
+ The only people I found there were this girl and a couple of maids looking after her.
+ It seemed too good a chance to miss, so—'
+ 'So you went to catch a sheep, but while you were about it you thought you might as well take a pig,' said Trinket, slightly reconstructing the proverb.
+ Butcher Qian laughed.
+ 'That's about it.
+ Although she's only a young girl, she means all the world to the Mu folk.
+ As long as their Little Countess is in our hands, Brother Xu will be safe as houses.
+ There's absolutely no fear of their not looking after him properly.'
+ 'Brother Qian,' said Trinket admiringly, 'this is a major achievement.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Butcher Qian coyly.
+ 'Anyway, thank you, Master.'
+ 'So now we've got this Little Countess,' said Trinket, 'what are we going to do with her?'
+ While they were talking, he had been stealing glances at the recumbent figure on the floor.
+ She was very beautiful—though he phrased it to himself mentally in the debased language of the brothel.
+ 'It's a tricky business, this,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'I was thinking it was one for the Master himself to decide.'
+ 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ Trinket asked presently, as if he had been mulling the matter over in his mind.
+ He hadn't been with the Triads very long, but long enough by now to know the drill.
+ It was all 'Master this' and 'Master that' and respectfully waiting to be told by the Master what they should do; but invariably they had already decided what they wanted to do and only wanted the Master's approval for doing it, so that if there was any question about it later, the Master would have sole responsibility for what they had done.
+ And so his invariable response to the invariable question was to turn it back on them: 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ 'Well, for the present,' said Butcher Qian, 'we've got to hide her somewhere safe and somewhere where the Mu people can't find her.
+ There are a lot of them around in the Capital right now, and though it's to assassinate the Little Traitor that they're here, now that we've killed one of their people and they've kidnapped Brother Xu, you can be sure they're keeping a close watch on anywhere in the city where there are Triads.
+ From now on we shan't be able to take a piss or a shit without their knowing about it.'
+ Trinket laughed.
+ Here at last was someone who spoke his language.
+ 'Sit down, Brother Qian,' he said.
+ 'Let's take our time over this.'
+ 'Thank you, Master,' said Butcher Qian, seating himself in one of the chairs and continuing.
+ 'There were really two reasons why I hid the Little Countessinside this pig's carcass.
+ One was to get her past the Palace Guard: they always search everyone at the gate.
+ But it was also to get her past any of the Mu Family spies who might be out watching for us.
+ There are some really dangerous people among that Mu lot, you can't afford to take any chances.
+ If she's hidden anywhere other than in the Palace, there's no guaranteeing they wouldn't try to get her back.'
+ 'So you're proposing to hide her in the Palace?' said Trinket.
+ 'Well, that's not really for me to say,' said the butcher.
+ 'It's entirely up to you, Master.
+ Mind you, look anywhere you like, you'll never find a safer place than this.
+ However many of their ace fighters the Mu Family may have got in the city, they're not going to take on the Palace Guard.
+ Not that they'd ever guess she was in the Palace, anyway.
+ But even suppose—it's very unlikely, but just suppose—they did find out she was here, they'd never try getting in here to rescue her.
+ If they could get in to do that, they could just as well get in to carry off the Tartar Emperor, and they've never tried to do that yet because they know it's out of the question.
+ Of course, it was rather a nerve, taking it on myself to bring the Little Countess in here without consulting you.
+ It means a lot of danger for you, Master.
+ And trouble.
+ I deserve to be hung.'
+ 'You say yourself that you deserve to be hung,' thought Trinket, 'but you know damn well that you won't be.
+ Still, it does seem the best plan to hide her in here.
+ As he says, it's the one place they will never think of looking; and they'd never be able to get her out of here, even if they did.
+ Well, Mister Butcher Qian, if you had the nerve to kidnap her and smuggle her into the Palace, I suppose I ought to have the nerve to keep her here.'
+ He gave the man a smile.
+ 'It's a very good idea,' he said.
+ 'We'll hide her here then.'
+ 'If you think it's all right, I'm sure it will be,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'There's this to be said too, for hiding her here.
+ When this business is over and the Little Countess is back with her own people again, it won't be any disgrace to her if they know that she's been kept all the time in the Palace; whereas if I were to keep her in the basement of my slaughterhouse—well, what with the stink of blood and offal round her all the time, it wouldn't be very nice for a person of her quality.'
+ 'Unless you fed her on China-root and gave her Shaoxing wine to drink,' said Trinket mischievously.
+ Butcher Qian laughed at the interruption before continuing: 'Besides, although the Little Countess is only a girl, being a member of the fair sex it wouldn't do much for her good name if she was kept with a lot of rough men; whereas being kept with you, Master, it won't matter.'
+ 'Why's that?' said Trinket in some surprise.
+ 'Well,' said Butcher Qian, 'you're young too, and besides . . . besides . . . you work in the Palace, so of course ...
+ I mean . . . it's all right.'
+ The butcher was clearly embarrassed, and Trinket had to think for some moments before he saw why.
+ 'Oh, I see.
+ You mean because I'm a eunuch.
+ If I'm the one guarding her, it won't do any harm to her reputation.
+ But I'm only a pretend eunuch, you know.'
+ It was because he wasn't a real eunuch that he hadn't grasped sooner what the embarrassed butcher was getting at.
+ 'Is your bedroom in there, Master?' asked the butcher.
+ Trinket nodded.
+ Butcher Qian took up the Little Countess in his arms, carried her into the bedroom, and laid her down on the bed.
+ There was just the one large bed there.
+ Previously there had been a smaller one as well in which Trinket used to sleep, but after the death of Old Hai, he had had it moved out.
+ He had too many secrets to want a young eunuch attendant living with him in his apartment.
+ 'Before I brought her in, I closed the Holy Hall and Yang Cord points on her back and the Pillar of Heaven one on her neck so that she couldn't move or speak,' said the butcher.
+ 'If you want her to eat anything, you'll have to open them up again; but before you do that, I'd advise you to first close the Ring Jump points on her legs so that she can't run away.
+ The Mu people are all very skilled in the Martial Arts, and though a young girl like this isn't likely to know much about that sort of thing, it isn't worth taking any chances.'
+ Trinket wanted to ask him where the Holy Hall and Ring Jump vital points were and how you closed and opened them; but then he remembered that, as Master of the Green Wood Lodge and a disciple of the great Helmsman, he was probably expected to know about these things and felt sure his subordinates would despise him if they found out that he was totally ignorant of these matters; so he just nodded and said that he would.
+ 'Anyway, ' he thought, 'I shouldn't have any difficulty in handling her.
+ She's only a girl.'
+ 'Could you lend me a knife, Master?' said Butcher Qian.
+ Trinket wondered nervously what he wanted it for, but stooped down nevertheless and extracted the dagger from inside his boot.
+ Butcher Qian took it from him and made an incision in the back of the pig's carcass.
+ Unaware of the blade's incomparable sharpness, he was somewhat surprised at the ease with which it sank in, at once burying itself up to the hilt and slicing through fat and flesh as if it were bean curd.
+ 'This is a good weapon you've got here,' he said admiringly.
+ In no time at all he had cut off the two forelegs and two large collops from the back.
+ ''You can keep these to roast and eat yourself, Master, ' he said.
+ The rest you can give to the little Goong-goongs to carry back to the kitchens.
+ I'll take my leave now.
+ If there's any business in the Society to report, I'll let you know straight away, '
+ 'Right, ' said Trinket.
+ He glanced towards the Little Countess lying on the bed: 'This girl—she's sleeping very soundly.'
+ He'd wanted to say, 'This girl better not stay here long.
+ It's terribly dangerous having her here.
+ If anyone were to find out, I'd really be in the shit, '
+ But then he reflected that all members of the Triad Society were heroes who laughed at danger and would despise him if they heard him uttering such craven words.
+ As soon as Butcher Qian had gone back to the kitchens, Trinket barred the door and checked the window to make sure there were no chinks or slits in the paper through which anyone could peep into the room, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, he inspected the Little Countess.
+ She was staring fixedly at the top of the bedstead, and when she saw Trinket approach, she closed her eyes fast.
+ He laughed.
+ 'You can't talk and you can't move!
+ All you can do is just lie there like a good little girl!'
+ Her dress was still clean, and Trinket reflected that Butcher Qian must have done a good job of cleaning out the inside of the carcass.
+ He threw a coverlet over her.
+ From the snowy pallor of her cheeks, drained of all their colour, and the fluttering of her long eyelashes, he could tell that she was very frightened.
+ 'Don't be afraid,' he said.
+ 'I'm not going to kill you.
+ Just wait a few days and I'll be setting you free again.'
+ The Little Countess opened her eyes wide, looked at him for a moment, and then quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket thought of the great awe in which the Mu Family were held by all the Brotherhood of River and Lake; of their stuck-up henchman the elder Bo—now dead, fortunately, struck down by one of his Triads—and his younger brother who had raged at him and nearly broken his wrist.
+ (The bruise was still there, he saw on inspecting it, and only slightly fainter.)
+ 'And now their Little Countess is in my hands,' he thought.
+ 'I can beat her and curse her as much as I want to, and she won't be able to move a muscle.'
+ The thought was so gratifying that it made him laugh out loud, causing the Little Countess to open her eyes to see what he was laughing at.
+ 'Call yourself a countess, do you?' said Trinket.
+ 'I suppose you think you're very superior.
+ Well, to me you're nobody.'
+ He grasped her right ear and gave it a few pulls, then he pinched her nose between finger and thumb and twisted it a couple of times, laughing as he did so.
+ The Little Countess had shut her eyes again, but two fat tears escaped from under their lids and coursed down her cheeks.
+ 'Don't cry!'
+ Trinket shouted at her.
+ 'I forbid you to cry.'
+ But the Little Countess's tears ran even faster.
+ 'Hot-piece momma!' said Trinket exasperatedly.
+ 'Being stubborn, are we?
+ Open your eyes and look at me, you smelly little tart!'
+ But the Little Countess closed her eyes even tighter.
+ 'Huh!
+ Think you're on your Mu Family estate still, do you?' said Trinket.
+ Think you've got your tamardy Paladins to look after you?
+ Grandmother's!
+ What's so tamardy wonderful about them?
+ I tell you this: if they ever come my way, I'll chop them into little bits, each one of them.'
+ No response.
+ 'Open your eyes!' he hollered at the top of his voice.
+ But all the Little Countess's strength seemed to go into closing them tighter.
+ 'All right,' he said.
+ 'If you won't open your lousy eyes, you won't be needing them any more.
+ I might as well cut them out.
+ They'll make a nice little snack for me next time I'm having a drink.'
+ He took out his dagger and slid the flat of the blade a couple of times over her eyelids.
+ A shudder ran through her whole body, but she still would not open her eyes.
+ Trinket was at his wit's end to know what to do with her.
+ 'You don't want to open your eyes but I want you to open them,' he said.
+ 'All right, we'll play a little game and see who comes out best, the high and mighty Little Countess or the nasty little beggar-boy.
+ For the time being I'm not going to cut your eyes out.
+ I'll cut a little turtle on your left cheek and a cow-pat on the right one.
+ Then, when the cuts have scarred over and you go out into the street, people will come crowding round in thousands to gaze at the sight.
+ "Oh, look!" they'll say.
+ "How beautiful!
+ The beautiful Mu Countess with a turtle on one cheek and a cow-pat on the other!"
+ Now will you open your eyes?'
+ The poor Little Countess, mistress of herself only in the ability to open or close her eyes, now closed them even tighter.
+ 'I see,' said Trinket, pretending to be talking to himself.
+ The little tart knows she's not good-looking.
+ She's decided she wants a bit of decoration on her face to improve her looks.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.'
+ He took the lid off an inkstone that was on the table, ground some ink in it, and dabbled the tip of a writing-brush in it until it was well soaked.
+ The brush, the inkstone, and the ink-stick had all been the property of Old Hai.
+ Trinket had never had a writing-brush in his hand before and held it like a chopstick.
+ Carrying it over to the bed, he proceeded to draw a small turtle with it on the Little Countess's left cheek.
+ Her tears continued to flow, turning the drawing into an inky streak.
+ 'I'm doing the pattern with the brush first,' he said.
+ 'I'll be going over it with a knife afterwards.
+ That's what they do when they make seals, isn't it?
+ Ah, yes, Little Countess, I know what.
+ When the carving's ready, I'll be able to take you out into Changan Street and set up there as a print-seller.
+ "Roll up, roll up!"
+ I'll say.
+ "Buy a nice turtle print, three cash a sheet!"
+ I'll have your face ready painted over with black ink, then as soon as a customer gives me his three cash: sheet of white paper, rub it over, peel it off, and there's a little turtle!
+ Won't take a moment.
+ I ought to be able to do a hundred in a day.
+ That's three hundred cash.
+ Quite a tidy little sum!'
+ All the time he was gabbling this nonsense, her eyelids never ceased to flutter.
+ He could tell that she was both very angry and very frightened.
+ This gave him great satisfaction and inspired him to further idiocy.
+ 'Hm, a cow-pat on the right cheek—no, I don't think anyone's going to pay good money for that.
+ A fat pig would be better—a great big, fat, stupid-looking pig.
+ That would sell.'
+ He moved round to the other side with his brush and executed a crude drawing on her right cheek: a creature with four legs and a tail which could perhaps have been a pig but might equally well have been a cat or a dog.
+ Then he laid the brush down and took up a pair of silver-shears, the point of which he applied lightly to her left cheek.
+ 'Now, if you don't open your eyes, I'll start cutting.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.
+ The pig can wait till later.'
+ The Little Countess's tears were now welling through the closed lids in streams, but still she wouldn't open her eyes.
+ And since Trinket was unwilling to admit defeat, there was nothing for it but to begin moving the point around on her cheek.
+ Although she had the most delicate complexion imaginable, the point was so blunt that it made not the slightest mark on her skin; but so great was her fear, that she imagined this horrible boy really was cutting patterns on her face and, from excess of emotion, she fainted clean away.
+ Trinket got a shock when he saw the change that had come over her and wondered for a moment if she really had died of fright; but when he held his hand against her nostrils, he was relieved to find that she was still breathing.
+ 'Little tart!' he said.
+ 'You're only shamming dead.'
+ It was by now obvious that she would die sooner than open her eyes for him, but he was damned if he was going to admit defeat.
+ 'As the man reading the songbook while he rode his mule said, "We'll work something out as we go along,"' he thought: 'Old Trink's not going to be beaten by a smelly little girl like you.'
+ He took a wet cloth and wiped the ink-marks from her cheeks.
+ They came off fairly easily, revealing once more the beauty of her delicate, rather aristocratic features.
+ She had fine eyebrows, long lashes, a small mouth and a slightly aquiline nose.
+ But Trinket was unimpressed.
+ 'Little Countess Lah-di-dah,' he said.
+ 'I expect you look down on a little eunuch like me.
+ Well, I don't think much of you either, so that makes us quits.'
+ After a while the Little Countess began to regain consciousness and presently opened her eyes.
+ Startled to see Trinket bending over her, staring, with far from friendly eyes, from barely a foot away, she quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket laughed gleefully.
+ 'Ha ha!
+ You've opened your eyes now and looked at me.
+ I've won, admit it!'
+ It was agreeable to have won, but it rather took the gloss off his victory that she couldn't speak.
+ He would have liked to open the vital points that would enable her to do so, but he didn't know how.
+ 'Now that your vital points are closed, you can't eat,' he said.
+ 'If they're not opened, you'll just starve to death.
+ I was thinking of opening them for you, but though I did once learn the method, it's such a long while ago that I can't remember it.
+ Do you know how it's done?
+ If you don't know, just lie there perfectly still.
+ If you do know, blink your eyes three times.'
+ He watched her intently as she lay there, inert and unblinking.
+ After a long pause, very slowly and deliberately, she blinked her eyes three times.
+ 'Thank heavens for that!' said Trinket delightedly.
+ 'I was beginning to think all of you Mu people were dead from the neck up.'
+ He lifted her up in his arms and sat her down in a chair.
+ 'Now look,' he said, 'I'm going to start pointing to places on your body.
+ If I point to the right place, blink three times; if it isn't right, just keep your eyes open and don't move.
+ When I've found the right vital point, I'll open it up for you.
+ Understand?'
+ The Little Countess blinked three times.
+
+ 韦小宝从上书房侍候了康熙下来，又到御膳房去。
+ 过不多时，钱老板带着四名伙计，抬了两口洗剥得干干净净的大肥猪到来，每一口净肉便有三百来斤，向韦小宝道：“桂公公，你老人家一早起身，吃这茯苓花雕猪最有补益，最好是现割现烤。
+ 小人将一口猪送到你老人家房中，明儿一早，你老人家就可割来烤了吃，吃不完的，再命厨房里做成咸肉。”
+ 韦小宝知他必有深意，便道：“你倒想得周到。
+ 那就跟我来。”
+ 钱老板将一口光猪留在厨房，另一口抬到韦小宝屋中。
+ 尚膳监管事太监的住处和御厨相近，那肥猪抬入房中之后，韦小宝命小太监带领抬猪的伙计到厨房中等候，待三人走后，便掩上了门。
+ 钱老板低声问道：“韦香主，屋中没旁人吗？”
+ 韦小宝摇了摇头。
+ 钱老板俯身轻轻将光猪翻了过来，只见猪肚上开膛之处，横贴着几条猪皮，封住了割缝。
+ 韦小宝心想：“这肥猪肚中定是藏着什么古怪物事，莫非是兵器之类，天地会想在皇宫中杀人大闹？”
+ 不由得心中怦怦而跳。
+ 果见钱老板撕下猪皮，双手拉开猪肚，轻轻抱了一团物事出来。
+ 韦小宝“咦”的一声惊呼，见他抱出来的竟是一个人。
+ 钱老板将那人横放在地下。
+ 只见这人身体瘦小，一头长发，却是个十四五岁的少女，身上穿了薄薄的单衫，双目紧闭，一动也不动，只是胸口微微起伏。
+ 韦小宝大奇，低声问道：“这小姑娘是谁？
+ 你带她来干什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“这是沐王府的郡主。”
+ 韦小宝更是惊奇，睁大了眼睛，道：“沐王府的郡主？”
+ 钱老板道：“正是。
+ 沐王府小公爷的嫡亲妹子。
+ 他们掳了徐三哥去，我们就捉了这位郡主娘娘来抵押，教他们不敢动徐三哥一根寒毛。”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，说道：“妙计，妙计！
+ 怎地捉她来的？”
+ 钱老板道：“昨天徐天川徐三哥给人绑了去，韦香主带同众位哥哥，二次去杨柳胡同评理，属下便出去打探消息，想知道沐王府那些人，除了杨柳胡同之外，是不是还有别的落脚所在，徐三哥是不是给他们囚禁在那里，想知道他们在京城里还有哪些人，当真要动手，咱们心里可也得先有个底子。
+ 这一打探，嘿，沐王府来得人可还当真不少，沐家小公爷带头，率领了王府的大批好手。”
+ 韦小宝皱起了眉头，说道：“他妈的！
+ 咱们青木堂在京里有多少兄弟？
+ 能不能十个打他们一个？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主不用担心。
+ 沐王府这次来到北京，不是为跟咱们天地会打架。
+ 原来大汉奸吴三桂的大儿子吴应熊，来到了京城。”
+ 韦小宝点头道：“沐王府要行刺这姓吴的小汉奸？”
+ 钱老板道：“是啊。
+ 韦香主料事如神。
+ 大汉奸、小汉奸在云南，动不了他们的手，一离云南，便有机可乘了。
+ 但这小汉奸自然防备周密，身边有不少武功高手保护，要杀他可也不是易事。
+ 沐王府那些人果然另有住处，属下过去查看，那些人都不在家，屋里却也没徐三哥的踪迹，只有这小丫头和两个服侍她的女人留在屋里，那可是难得的良机……”
+ 韦小宝道：“于是你就顺手牵羊，反手牵猪，将她捉了来？”
+ 钱老板微笑道：“正是。
+ 这小姑娘年纪虽小，沐王府却当她是凤凰一般，只要这小郡主在咱们手里，徐三哥便稳如泰山，不怕他们不好好服侍。”
+ 韦小宝道：“钱大哥这件功劳倒大得紧呢。”
+ 钱老板道：“多谢韦香主夸奖。”
+ 韦小宝道：“咱们拿到了小郡主，却又怎样？”
+ 说着向躺在地下的那少女瞧了几眼，心道：“这小娘皮长得可挺美啊。”
+ 钱老板道：“这件事说大不大，说小不小，要听韦香主的意思办理。”
+ 韦小宝沉吟道：“你说怎么办？”
+ 他跟天地会的人相处的时候虽暂，却已摸到了他们的脾气。
+ 这些人嘴里尊称自己是香主，满口什么静候香主吩咐云云，其实各人肚里早就有了主意，只盼得到自己赞同，于是一切便推在韦香主头上，日后他们就不会担当重大干系。
+ 他对付的法子是反问一句：“你说怎么办？”
+ 钱老板道：“眼下只有将这个郡主藏在一个稳妥所在，让沐王府的人找不到。
+ 这次沐家来到京城的着实不少，虽说是为了杀小汉奸吴应熊，但咱们杀了他们的人，徐大哥又给他们拿了去，这会儿咱们天地会每一处落脚之地，一定能给他们钉得紧紧的。
+ 我们便拉一泡尿，放一个屁，只怕沐王府的人也都知道了。”
+ 韦小宝嗤的一笑，觉得这钱老板谈吐可喜，很合自己脾胃，笑道：“钱大哥，咱们坐下来慢慢商量。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，多谢香主。”
+ 在一张椅上坐了，续道：“属下将小郡主藏在猪肚里带进宫来，一来是为瞒过宫门侍卫的重重搜检，二来是要瞒过沐王府众人的耳目。
+ 他奶奶的，沐公爷手下，只怕真有几个厉害人物，不可不防。
+ 小郡主若不是藏在宫里，难保不给他们抢了回去。”
+ 韦小宝道：“你说要将小郡主藏在宫里？”
+ 钱老板道：“属下可不敢这么说，一切全凭韦香主作主。
+ 藏在宫里，当然是普天下最稳妥的所在。
+ 沐王府的高手再多，总敌不过大内侍卫。
+ 小郡主竟会在皇宫之中，别说他们决计想不到，查不出，就算知道了，又怎有能耐冲进皇宫来救人？
+ 他们如能进宫来将小郡主救出去，那么连鞑子皇帝也能绑架去了。
+ 天下决没这个道理。
+ 不过属下胆大妄为，事先没向韦香主请示，擅自将小郡主带进宫来，给韦香主增添不少危险，不少麻烦，实在该死之极。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“你将人带都带进来了，自己说该死，却也没死。
+ 把小郡主藏在宫里，果然是好计，沐王府的人一来想不到，二来救不出。
+ 你胆大妄为，难道我胆子就小了？”
+ 笑道：“你这计策很好，我将小郡主藏在这里好了。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，韦香主说这件事行得，那定然行得。
+ 属下又想，将来事情了结之后，小郡主总是要放还给他们的。
+ 他们得知郡主娘娘这些日子是住在宫里，也不辱没了她身份，倘若老是关在小号屠宰房的地窖之中，闻那牛血猪血的腥气，未免太对不起人。”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“每天喂她吃些茯苓、党参、花雕、鸡蛋，也就是了。”
+ 钱老板嘿嘿一笑，说道：“再说，小郡主年纪虽然幼小，总是女子，跟我们这些臭男人住在一起，于名声未免有碍，跟韦香主在一起，就不要紧了。”
+ 韦小宝一怔，问道：“为什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主年纪也轻，何况又是…… 又是在宫里办事的，自然…… 自然没什么。”
+ 言语吞吞吐吐，有些不便出口。
+ 韦小宝见他神色忸怩，想了一想，这才明白：“原来你说我是太监，因此小郡主交我看管，于她声名无碍。
+ 你可不知我这太监是冒牌货。”
+ 只因他并不是真的太监，这才要想了一想之后方能明白，否则钱老板第一句话他就懂了。
+ 钱老板问道：“韦香主的卧室在里进罢？”
+ 韦小宝点点头。
+ 钱老板俯身抱起小郡主，走到后进，放在床上。
+ 房中本来有大床、小床各一，海大富死后，韦小宝已叫人将小床抬了出去。
+ 他隐秘之事甚多，没要小太监住在屋里服侍。
+ 钱老板道：“属下带小郡主进宫来时，已点了她背心上的神堂穴、阳纲穴，还点了她后颈的天柱穴，让她不能动弹，说不出话。
+ 韦香主要放她吃饭，就可解开她穴道，不过最好先点她腿上环跳穴，免得她逃跑。
+ 沐王府的人武功甚高，这小姑娘倒不会多少武功，却也不可不防。”
+ 韦小宝想问他什么叫神堂穴、环跳穴，如何点穴、解穴，但转念一想，自己是青木堂香主，又是总舵主的弟子，连点穴、解穴也不会，岂不是让下属们太也瞧不起？
+ 反正对付一个小姑娘总不是什么难事，点头道：“知道了。”
+ 钱老板道：“请韦香主借一把刀使。”
+ 韦小宝心想：“你要刀干什么？”
+ 从靴桶中取出匕首，递了给他。
+ 钱老板接了过来，在猪背上一划，没料到这匕首锋利无匹，割猪肉如切豆腐，一剑下去，直没至柄。
+ 钱老板吃了一惊，赞道：“好剑！”
+ 割下两片脊肉，两只前腿，道：“韦香主留着烧烤来吃，余下的吩咐小公公们抬回厨房去罢。
+ 属下这就告辞，会里的事情，属下随时来向韦香主禀告。”
+ 韦小宝接过匕首，说道：“好！”
+ 向卧在床上的小郡主瞧了一眼，道：“这小娘皮睡得倒挺安稳。”
+ 他本来想说：“这小姑娘在宫里耽得久了，太过危险，倘若给人发觉，那可糟糕之极。”
+ 但想天地会的英雄好汉岂有怕危险的？
+ 这等话说出口来，不免给人小觑了。
+ 待钱老板回去厨房，韦小宝忙闩上了门，又查看窗户，一无缝隙，这才坐到床边，去看那小郡主，只见她正睁着圆圆的眼睛，望着床顶，见韦小宝过来，忙闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你不会说话，不会动弹，安安静静的躺在这里，最乖不过。”
+ 见她身上衣衫也不污秽，想是钱老板将那口肥猪的肚里洗得十分干净，不留丝毫血渍，于是拉过被来，盖在她身上。
+ 只见她脸颊雪白，没半分血色，长长的睫毛不住颤动，想是心中十分害怕，笑道：“你不用怕，我不会杀了你的。
+ 过得几天，就放你出去。”
+ 小郡主睁开眼来，瞧了他一眼，忙又闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“你沐王府在江湖上好大威风，那日苏北道上，你家那白寒松好大架子，丝毫没将老子瞧在眼里，这当儿还不是让我手下的人打死了。
+ 他奶奶的……”
+ 想到此处，伸起手来，见手腕上黑黑一圈乌青兀自未退，隐隐还感疼痛，心道：“那白寒枫死了哥哥，没处出气，捏得老子骨头也险些断了。
+ 想不到沐王府的郡主娘娘却落在我手里，老子要打便打，要骂便骂，你半分动弹不得，哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 想到得意处，不禁笑出声来。
+ 小郡主听到笑声，睁开眼来，要看他为什么发笑。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你是郡主娘娘，很了不起，是不是？
+ 你奶奶的，老子才不将你放在眼里呢！”
+ 走上前去，抓住她右耳，提了三下，又捏住她鼻子，扭了两下，哈哈大笑。
+ 小郡主闭着的双眼中流出眼泪，两行珠泪从腮边滚了下来。
+ 韦小宝喝道：“不许哭！
+ 老子叫你不许哭，就不许哭！”
+ 小郡主的眼泪却流得更加多了。
+ 韦小宝骂道：“辣块妈妈，臭小娘皮，你还倔强！
+ 睁开眼睛来，瞧着我！”
+ 小郡主双眼闭得更紧。
+ 韦小宝道：“哈，你还道这里是你沐王府，你奶奶的，你家里刘白方苏四大家将，有他妈的什么了不起，终有一日撞在老子手里，一个个都斩成了肉酱。”
+ 大声吆喝：“你睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主又用力闭了闭眼睛。
+ 韦小宝道：“好，你不肯睁眼，要这一对臭眼珠子有什么用？
+ 不如挖了出来，让老子下酒。”
+ 提起匕首，平放刃锋，在她眼皮上拖了几拖。
+ 小郡主全身打个冷战，仍不睁开眼睛。
+ 韦小宝倒拿她没有法子，说道：“你不睁眼，我偏偏要你睁眼，咱哥儿俩耗上了，倒要瞧瞧是你郡主娘娘厉害，还是我这小流氓、小叫化子厉害。
+ 我暂且不来挖你的眼珠，挖了眼珠，倒算是你赢了，永远不能瞧我。
+ 我要在你脸蛋上用尖刀子雕些花样，左边脸上刻只小乌龟，右边脸上刻一堆牛粪。
+ 等到将来结了疤，你到街上去之时，成千成万的人围拢来瞧西洋镜，大家都说：‘美啊，美啊，来看沐王府的小美人儿，左边脸上一只王八，右边脸上一堆牛粪。
+ ’你到底睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主全身难动，只有睁眼闭眼能自拿主意，听得韦小宝这么说，眼睛越闭越紧。
+ 韦小宝自言自语：“原来这臭花娘嫌自己脸蛋儿不美，想要我在她脸上装扮装扮，好，我先刻一只乌龟！”
+ 打开桌上砚台，磨了墨，用笔蘸了墨。
+ 这些笔墨砚台都是海老公之物，韦小宝一生从未抓过笔杆，这时拿笔便如拿筷子，提笔在小郡主左脸画了一只乌龟。
+ 小郡主的泪水直流下来，在乌龟的笔划上流出了一道墨痕。
+ 韦小宝道：“我先用笔打个样子，然后用刀子来刻，就好像人家刻图章。
+ 对，对，郡主娘娘，咱们刻好之后，我牵了你去长安门大街，大叫：‘哪一位客官要印乌龟？
+ 三文钱印一张！’
+ 我用黑墨涂了你脸，有人给三文钱，就用张白纸在你脸上一印，便是一只乌龟，快得很！
+ 一天准能印上一百张。
+ 三百文铜钱，够花的了。”
+ 他一面胡扯，一面偷看小郡主的脸色，见她睫毛不住颤动，显然又是愤怒，又是害怕。
+ 他甚是得意，说道：“嗯，右脸刻一堆牛粪，可没人出钱来买牛粪的，不如刻只猪，又肥又蠢，生意一定好。”
+ 提起笔来，在她右边脸颊上干划一通，画的东西有四只脚，一条尾巴就是了，也不知像猫还是像狗。
+ 他放下毛笔，取过一把剪银子的剪刀，将剪刀轻轻放在小郡主左颊，喝道：“你再不睁眼，我要刻花了！
+ 我先刻乌龟，肥猪可不忙刻。”
+ 小郡主泪如泉涌，偏偏就是不肯睁眼。
+ 韦小宝无可奈何，不肯认输，便将剪尖在她脸上轻轻划来划去。
+ 这剪尖其实甚钝，小郡主肌肤虽嫩，却也没伤到她丝毫，可是她惊惶之下，只道这小恶人真的用刀子在自己脸上雕花，一阵气急，便晕了过去。
+ 韦小宝见她神色有异，生怕是给自己吓死了，倒吃了一惊，忙伸手去探她鼻息，幸好尚有呼吸，便道：“臭小娘装死！”
+ 寻思：“你死也不肯睁眼，难道我便输了给你？
+ 咱们骑驴看唱本，走着瞧，韦小宝总不会折在你臭小娘手里。”
+ 拿了块湿布来，抹去她两颊上黑墨，直抹了三把，才抹得干净。
+ 但见她眉淡睫长，嘴小鼻挺，容颜着实秀丽，自言自语：“你是郡主娘娘，心中一定瞧不起我这小太监，我也瞧不起你，大家还不是扯直？”
+ 过了一会，小郡主慢慢醒转，一睁开眼，只见韦小宝一双眼睛和她双目相距不过一尺，正狠狠的瞪着她，不由得吃了一惊，急忙闭眼。
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“你终于睁开眼来，瞧见我了，是老子赢了，是不是？”
+ 他自觉得胜，心下高兴，只是小郡主不会说话，未免有些扫兴，要想去解她穴道，却又不知其法，说道：“你给人点了穴道，倘若解不开，不能吃饭，岂不饿死了？
+ 我本想给你解开，不过解穴的法门，从前学过，现下可忘了。
+ 你会不会？
+ 你如不会，那就躺着做僵尸，一动也别动，要是会的，眼睛眨三下。”
+ 他目不转睛的望着小郡主，只见她眼睛一动不动，过了好一会，突然双眼缓缓的连眨三下。
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“我只道沐王府中的人既然姓沐，一定个个是木头，呆头呆脑，什么都不会，原来你这小木头还会解穴。”
+ 将她抱起，坐在椅上，说道：“你瞧着，我在你身上各个部位指点，倘若指得对的，你就眨三下眼睛，指得不对，眼睛睁得大大的，一动也不能动。
+ 我找到解穴的部位，就给你解开穴道，懂不懂？
+ 懂的就眨眼。”
+ 小郡主眨了三下眼睛。
+
+ GENTLE READER, What, you may ask, was the origin of this book?
+ Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye.
+ Long ago, when the goddess Nǚ-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square.
+ She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned mountains.
+ Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers.
+ It could move about at will and could grow or shrink to any size it wanted.
+ Observing that all the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and lamentation.
+ One day, in the midst of its lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great distance, each of them remarkable for certain eccentricities of manner and appearance.
+ When they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat down on the ground and began to talk.
+ The monk, catching sight of a lustrous, translucent stone—it was in fact the rejected building block which had now shrunk itself to the size of a fan-pendant and looked very attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm of his hand and addressed it with a smile: 'Ha, I see you have magical properties!
+ But nothing to recommend you.
+ I shall have to cut a few words on you so that anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special.
+ After that I shall take you to a certain brilliant successful poetical cultivated aristocratic elegant delectable luxurious opulent locality on a little trip.'
+ The stone was delighted.
+ 'What words will you cut?
+ Where is this place you will take me to?
+ I beg to be enlightened.'
+ 'Do not ask,' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'You will know soon enough when the time comes.'
+ And with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off at a great pace with the Taoist.
+ But where they both went to I have no idea.
+ Countless aeons went by and a certain Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the secret of immortality chanced to be passing below that same Greensickness Peak in the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a large stone standing there, on which the characters of a long inscription were clearly discernible.
+ Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape and been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist illuminate Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out the life of a man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to the other shore.
+ The inscription named the country where it had been born, and went into considerable detail about its domestic life, youthful amours, and even the verses, mottoes and riddles it had written.
+ All it lacked was the authentication of a dynasty and date.
+ On the back of the stone was inscribed the following quatrain:
+ Found unfit to repair the azure sky Long years a foolish mortal man was I.
+ My life in both worlds on this stone is writ: Pray who will copy out and publish it?
+ From his reading of the inscription Vanitas realized that this was a stone of some consequence.
+ Accordingly he addressed himself to it in the following manner: 'Brother Stone, according to what you yourself seem to imply in these verses, this story of yours contains matter of sufficient interest to merit publication and has been carved here with that end in view.
+ But as far as I can see (a) it has no discoverable dynastic period, and (b) it contains no examples of moral grandeur among its characters—no statesmanship, no social message of any kind.
+ All I can find in it, in fact, are a number of females, conspicuous, if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling talent or insignificant virtue.
+ Even if I were to copy all this out, I cannot see that it would make a very remarkable book.'
+ 'Come, your reverence,' said the stone (for Vanitas had been correct in assuming that it could speak) 'must you be so obtuse?
+ All the romances ever written have an artificial period setting—Han or Tang for the most part.
+ In refusing to make use of that stale old convention and telling my Story of the Stone exactly as it occurred, it seems to me that, far from depriving it of anything, I have given it a freshness these other books do not have.
+ 'Your so-called "historical romances", consisting, as they do, of scandalous anecdotes about statesmen and emperors of bygone days and scabrous attacks on the reputations of long-dead gentlewomen, contain more wickedness and immorality than I care to mention.
+ Still worse is the "erotic novel", by whose filthy obscenities our young folk are all too easily corrupted.
+ And the "boudoir romances", those dreary stereotypes with their volume after volume all pitched on the same note and their different characters undistinguishable except by name (all those ideally beautiful young ladies and ideally eligible young bachelors)— even they seem unable to avoid descending sooner or later into indecency.
+ "The trouble with this last kind of romance is that it only gets written in the first place because the author requires a framework in which to show off his love-poems.
+ He goes about constructing this framework quite mechanically, beginning with the names of his pair of young lovers and invariably adding a third character, a servant or the like, to make mischief between them, like the chou in a comedy.
+ 'What makes these romances even more detestable is the stilted, bombastic language— inanities dressed in pompous rhetoric, remote alike from nature and common sense and teeming with the grossest absurdities.
+ 'Surely my "number of females", whom I spent half a lifetime studying with my own eyes and ears, are preferable to this kind of stuff?
+ I do not claim that they are better people than the ones who appear in books written before my time; I am only saying that the contemplation of their actions and motives may prove a more effective antidote to boredom and melancholy.
+ And even the inelegant verses with which my story is interlarded could serve to entertain and amuse on those convivial occasions when rhymes and riddles are in demand.
+ 'All that my story narrates, the meetings and partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded exactly as they happened.
+ I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture.
+ 'My only wish is that men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business worries or a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental refreshment but even perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon their vain and frivolous pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration of their vital forces.
+ What does your reverence say to that?'
+ For a long time Vanitas stood lost in thought, pondering this speech.
+ He then subjected the Story of the stone to a careful second reading.
+ He could see that its main theme was love; that it consisted quite simply of a true record of real events; and that it was entirely free from any tendency to deprave and corrupt.
+ He therefore copied it all out from beginning to end and took it back with him to look for a publisher.
+ As a consequence of all this, Vanitas, starting off in the Void (which is Truth) came to the contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and from Form engendered Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again into Form; and from Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth).
+ He therefore changed his name from Vanitas to Brother Amor, or the Passionate Monk, (because he had approached Truth by way of Passion), and changed the title of the book from The Story of the S tone to The Tale of Brother Amor.
+ Old Kong Mei-xi from the homeland of Confucius called the book A Mirror for the Romantic.
+ Wu Yu-feng called it A Dream of Golden Days.
+ Cao Xueqin in his Nostalgia Studio worked on it for ten years, in the course of which he rewrote it no less than five times, dividing it into chapters, composing chapter headings, renaming it The Twelve Beauties of Jinling, and adding an introductory quatrain.
+ Red Inkstone restored the original title when he recopied the book and added his second set of annotations to it.
+ This, then, is a true account of how The Story of the Stone came to be written.
+ Pages full of idle words Penned with hot and bitter tears:
+ All men call the author fool; None his secret message hears.
+ The origin of The Story of the Stone has now been made clear.
+ The same cannot, however, be said of the characters and events which it recorded.
+ Gentle reader, have patience!
+ This is how the inscription began: Long, long ago the world was tilted downwards towards the south-east; and in that lower-lying south-easterly part of the earth there is a city called Soochow; and in Soochow the district around the Chang-men Gate is reckoned one of the two or three wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men.
+ Outside the Chang-men Gate is a wide thorough-fare called Worldly Way; and somewhere off Worldly Way is an area called Carnal Lane.
+ There is an old temple in the Carnal Lane area which, because of the way it is bottled up inside a narrow cul-de-sac, is referred to locally as Bottle-gourd Temple.
+ Next door to Bottle-gourd Temple lived a gentleman of private means called Zhen Shi-yin and his wife Feng-shi, a kind, good woman with a profound sense of decency and decorum.
+ The household was not a particularly wealthy one, but they were nevertheless looked up to by all and sundry as the leading family in the neighbourhood.
+ Zhen Shi-yin himself was by nature a quiet and totality unambitious person.
+ He devoted his time to his garden and to the pleasures of wine and poetry.
+ Except for a single flaw, his existence could, indeed, have been described as an idyllic one.
+ The flaw was that, although already past fifty, he had no son, only a little girl, just two years old, whose name was Ying-lian.
+ Once, during the tedium of a burning summer's day, Shi-yin was sitting idly in his study.
+ The book had slipped from his nerveless grasp and his head had nodded down onto the desk in a doze.
+ While in this drowsy state he seemed to drift off to some place he could not identify, where he became aware of a monk and a Taoist walking along and talking as they went.
+ 'Where do you intend to take that thing you are carrying?' the Taoist was asking.
+ 'Don't you worry about him!' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'There is a batch of lovesick souls awaiting incarnation in the world below whose fate is due to be decided this very day.
+ I intend to take advantage of this opportunity to slip our little friend in amongst them and let him have a taste of human life along with the rest.'
+ 'Well, well, so another lot of these amorous wretches is about to enter the vale of tears,' said the Taoist.
+ 'How did all this begin?
+ And where are the souls to be reborn?'
+ 'You will laugh when I tell you,' said the monk.
+ 'When this stone was left unused by the goddess, he found himself at a loose end and took to wandering about all over the place for want of better to do, until one day his wanderings took him to the place where the fairy Disenchantment lives.
+ 'Now Disenchantment could tell that there was something unusual about this stone, so she kept him there in her Sunset Glow Palace and gave him the honorary title of Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow.
+ 'But most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the banks of the Magic River.
+ There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful Crimson Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to watering her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of life.
+ 'Crimson Pearl's substance was composed of the purest cosmic essences, so she was already half-divine; and now, thanks to the vitalizing effect of the sweet dew, she was able to shed her vegetable shape and assume the form of a girl.
+ 'This fairy girl wandered about outside the Realm of Separation, eating the Secret Passion Fruit when she was hungry and drinking from the Pool of Sadness when she was thirsty.
+ The consciousness that she owed the stone something for his kindness in watering her began to prey on her mind and ended by becoming an obsession.
+ '"I have no sweet dew here that I can repay him with," she would say to herself.
+ "The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in the world below."
+ 'Because of this strange affair, Disenchantment has got together a group of amorous young souls, of which Crimson Pearl is one, and intends to send them down into the world to take part in the great illusion of human life.
+ And as today happens to be the day on which this stone is fated to go into the world too, I am taking him with me to Disenchantment's tribunal for the purpose of getting him registered and sent down to earth with the rest of these romantic creatures.'
+ 'How very amusing!' said the Taoist.
+ 'I have certainly never heard of a debt of tears before.
+ Why shouldn't the two of us take advantage of this opportunity to go down into the world ourselves and save a few souls?
+ It would be a work of merit.'
+ 'That is exactly what I was thinking,' said the monk.
+ 'Come with me to Disenchantment's palace to get this absurd creature cleared.
+ Then, when this last batch of romantic idiots goes down, you and I can go down with them.
+ At present about half have already been born.
+ They await this last batch to make up the number.'
+ 'Very good, I will go with you then,' said the Taoist.
+ Shi-yin heard all this conversation quite clearly, and curiosity impelled him to go forward and greet the two reverend gentlemen.
+ They returned his greeting and asked him what he wanted.
+ 'It is not often that one has the opportunity of listening to a discussion of the operations of karma such as the one I have just been privileged to overhear,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'Unfortunately I am a man of very limited understanding and have not been able to derive the full benefit from your conversation.
+ If you would have the very great kindness to enlighten my benighted understanding with a somewhat fuller account of what you were discussing, I can promise you the most devout attention.
+ I feel sure that your teaching would have a salutary effect on me and—who knows—might save me from the pains of hell.'
+ The reverend gentlemen laughed.
+ 'These are heavenly mysteries and may not be divulged.
+ But if you wish to escape from the fiery pit, you have only to remember us when the time comes, and all will be well.'
+ Shi-yin saw that it would be useless to press them.
+ 'Heavenly mysteries must not, of course, be revealed.
+ But might one perhaps inquire what the "absurd creature" is that you were talking about?
+ Is it possible that I might be allowed to see it?'
+ 'Oh, as for that,' said the monk: 'I think it is on the cards for you to have a look at him,' and he took the object from his sleeve and handed it to Shi-yin.
+ Shi-yin took the object from him and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one side of which were carved the words 'Magic Jade'.
+ There were several columns of smaller characters on the back, which Shi-yin was just going to examine more closely when the monk, with a cry of 'Here we are, at the frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him and disappeared, with the Taoist, through a big stone archway above which THE LAND OF ILLUSION was written in large characters.
+ A couplet in smaller characters was inscribed vertically on either side of the arch:
+ Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-teal where the unreal's real.
+ Shi-yin was on the point of following them through the archway when suddenly a great clap of thunder seemed to shake the earth to its very foundations, making him cry out in alarm.
+ And there he was sitting in his study, the contents of his dream already half forgotten, with the sun still blazing on the ever-rustling plantains outside, and the wet-nurse at the door with his little daughter Ying-lian in her arms.
+ Her delicate little pink-and-white face seemed dearer to him than ever at that moment, and he stretched out his arms to take her and hugged her to him.
+ After playing with her for a while at his desk, he carried her out to the front of the house to watch the bustle in the street.
+ He was about to go in again when he saw a monk and a Taoist approaching, the monk scabby-headed and barefoot, the Taoist tousle-haired and limping.
+ They were behaving like madmen, shouting with laughter and gesticulating wildly as they walked along.
+ When this strange pair reached Shi-yin's door and saw him standing there holding Ying-lian, the monk burst into loud sobs.
+ 'Patron,' he said, addressing Shi-yin, 'what are you doing, holding in your arms that ill-fated creature who is destined to involve both her parents in her own misfortune?'
+ Shi-yin realized that he was listening to the words of a madman and took no notice.
+ But the monk persisted: 'Give her to me!
+ Give her to me!'
+ Shi-yin was beginning to lose patience and clasping his little girl tightly to him, turned on his heel and was about to re-enter the house when the monk pointed his finger at him, roared with laughter, and then proceeded to intone the following verses:
+ 'Fond man, your pampered child to cherish so— That caltrop-glass which shines on melting snow!
+ Beware the high feast of the fifteenth day, When all in smoke and fire shall pass away!'
+ Shi-yin heard all this quite plainly and was a little worried by it.
+ He was thinking or asking the monk what lay behind these puzzling words when he heard the Taoist say, 'We don't need to stay tether.
+ Why don't we part company here and each go about his own business?
+ Three kalpas from now I shall wait far you on Bei-mang Hill.
+ Having joined forces again there, we can go together to the Land of Illusion to sign off.'
+ 'Excellent!' said the other.
+ And the two if them went off and soon were both lost to sight.
+ 'There must have been something behind all this,' thought Shi-yin to himself. 'I really ought to have asked him what he meant, but now it is too late.'
+ He was still standing outside his door brooding when Jia Yu-cun, the poor student who lodged at the Bottle-gourd Temple next door, came up to him.
+ Yu-cun was a native of Hu-zhou and came from a family of scholars and bureaucrats which had, however, fallen on bad times when Yu-cun was born.
+ The family fortunes on both his father's and mother's side had all been spent, and the members of the family had themselves gradually died off until only Yu-cun was left.
+ There were no prospects for him in his home town, so he had set off for the capital, in search of fame and fortune.
+ Unfortunately he had got no further than Soochow when his funds ran out, and he had now been living there in poverty for a year, lodging in this temple and keeping himself alive by working as a copyist.
+ For this reason Shi-yin saw a great deal of his company.
+ As soon as he caught sight of Shi-yin, Yu-cun clasped his hands in greeting and smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I could see you standing there gazing, sir.
+ Has anything been happening in the street?'
+ 'No, no,' said Shi-yin.
+ 'It just happened that my little girl was crying, so I brought her out here to amuse her.
+ Your coming is most opportune, dear boy.
+ I was beginning to feel most dreadfully bored.
+ Won't you come into my little den, and we can help each other to while away this tedious hot day?'
+ So saying, he called for a servant to take the child indoors, while he himself took Yu-cun by the hand and led him into his study, where his boy served them both with tea.
+ But they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words before one of the servants rushed in to say that 'Mr Yan had come to pay a call.'
+ Shi-yin hurriedly rose up and excused himself: 'I seem to have brought you here under false pretences.
+ I do hope you will forgive me.
+ If you don't mind sitting on your own here for a moment, I shall be with you directly.'
+ Yu-cun rose to his feet too.
+ 'Please do not distress yourself on my account, sir.
+ I am a regular visitor here and can easily wait a bit.'
+ But by the time he had finished saying this, Shi-yin was already out of the study and on his way to the guest-room.
+ Left to himself, Yu-cun was flicking through some of Shi-yin's books of poetry in order to pass the time, when he heard a woman's cough outside the window.
+ Immediately he jumped up and peered out to see who it was.
+ The cough appeared to have come from a maid who was picking flowers in the garden.
+ She was an unusually good-looking girl with a rather refined face: not a great beauty, by any means, but with something striking about her.
+ Yu-cun gazed at her spellbound.
+ Having now finished picking her flowers, this anonymous member of the Zhen household was about to go in again when, on some sudden impulse, she raised her head and caught sight of a man standing in the window.
+ His hat was frayed and his clothing threadbare; yet, though obviously poor, he had a fine, manly physique and handsome, well-proportioned features.
+ The maid hastened to remove herself from this male presence; but as she went she thought to herself, 'What a fine-looking man!
+ But so shabby!
+ The family hasn't got any friends or relations as poor as that.
+ It must be that Jia Yu-cun the master is always on about.
+ No wonder he says that he won't stay poor long.
+ I remember hearing him say that he's often wanted to help him but hasn't yet found an opportunity.'
+ And thinking these thoughts she could not forbear to turn back for another peep or two.
+ Yu-cun saw her turn back and, at once assuming that she had taken a fancy to him, was beside himself with delight.
+ What a perceptive young woman she must be, he thought, to have seen the genius underneath the rags!
+ A real friend in trouble!
+ After a while the boy came in again and Yu-cun elicited from him that the visitor in the front room was now staying to dinner.
+ It was obviously out of the question to wait much longer, so he slipped down the passage-way at the side of the house and let himself out by the back gate.
+ Nor did Shi-yin invite him round again when, having at last seen off his visitor, he learned that Yu-cun had already left.
+ But then the Mid Autumn festival arrived and, after the family convivialities were over, Shi-yin had a little dinner for two laid out in his study and went in person to invite Yu-cun, walking to his temple lodgings in the moonlight.
+ Ever since the day the Zhens' maid had, by looking back twice over her shoulder, convinced him that she was a friend, Yu-cun had had the girl very much on his mind, and now that it was festival time, the full moon of Mid Autumn lent an inspiration to his romantic impulses which finally resulted in the following octet:
+ 'Ere on ambition's path my feet are set, Sorrow comes often this poor heart to fret.
+ Yet, as my brow contracted with new care, Was there not one who, parting, turned to stare?
+ Dare I, that grasp at windows in the wind, Hope, underneath the moon, a friend to find?
+ Bright orb, if with my plight you sympathize, Shine first upon the chamber where she lies.'
+ Having delivered himself of this masterpiece, Yu-cun's thoughts began to run on his unrealized ambitions and, after much head-scratching and many heavenward glances accompanied by heavy sighs, he produced the following couplet, reciting it in a loud, ringing voice which caught the ear of Shi-yin, who chanced at that moment to be arriving:
+ 'The jewel in the casket bides till one shall come to buy.
+ The jade pin in the drawer hides, waiting its time to fly.'
+ Shi-yin smiled.
+ 'You are a man of no mean ambition, Yu-cun.'
+ 'Oh no!'Yu-cun smiled back deprecatingly.
+ 'You are too flattering.
+ I was merely reciting at random from the lines of some old poet.
+ But what brings you here, sir?'
+ 'Tonight is Mid Autumn night,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'People call it the Festival of Reunion.
+ It occurred to me that you might be feeling rather lonely here in your monkery, so I have arranged for the two of us to take a little wine together in my study.
+ I hope you will not refuse to join me.'
+ Yu-cun made no polite pretence of declining.
+ 'Your kindness is more than I deserve,' he said.
+ 'I accept gratefully.'
+ And he accompanied Shi-yin back to the study next door.
+ Soon they had finished their tea.
+ Wine and various choice dishes were brought in and placed on the table, already laid out with cups, plates, and so forth, and the two men took their places and began to drink.
+ At first they were rather slow and ceremonious; but gradually, as the conversation grew more animated, their potations too became more reckless and uninhibited.
+ The sounds of music and singing which could now be heard from every house in the neighbourhood and the full moon which shone with cold brilliance overhead seemed to increase their elation, so that the cups were emptied almost as soon as they touched their lips, and Yu-cun, who was already a sheet or so in the wind, was seized with an irrepressible excitement to which he presently gave expression in the form of a quatrain, ostensibly on the subject of the moon, but really about the ambition he had hitherto been at some pains to conceal:
+ 'In thrice five nights her perfect O is made, Whose cold light bathes each marble balustrade.
+ As her bright wheel starts on its starry ways, On earth ten thousand heads look up and gaze.'
+ 'Bravo!' said Shi-yin loudly.
+ 'I have always insisted that you were a young fellow who would go up in the world, and now, in these verses you have just recited, I see an augury of your ascent.
+ In no time at all we shall see you up among the clouds!
+ This calls for a drink!'
+ And, saying this, he poured Yu-cun a large cup of wine.
+ Yu-cun drained the cup, then, surprisingly, sighed: 'Don't imagine the drink is making me boastful, but I really do believe that if it were just a question of having the sort of qualifications now in demand, I should stand as good a chance as any of getting myself on to the list of candidates.
+ The trouble is that I simply have no means of laying my hands on the money that would be needed for lodgings and travel expenses.
+ The journey to the capital is a long one, and the sort of money I can earn from my copying is not enough—'
+ 'Why ever didn't you say this before?' said Shi-yin interrupting him.
+ 'I have long wanted to do something about this, but on all the occasions I have met you previously, the conversation has never got round to this subject, and I haven't liked to broach it for fear of offending you.
+ Well, now we know where we are.
+ I am not a very clever man, but at least I know the right thing to do when I see it.
+ Luckily, the next Triennial is only a few months ahead.
+ You must go to the capital without delay.
+ A spring examination triumph will make you feel that all your studying has been worth while.
+ I shall take care of all your expenses.
+ It is the least return I can make for your friendship.'
+ And there and then he instructed his boy to go with all speed and make up a parcel of fifty tales of the best refined silver and two suits of winter clothes.
+ 'The almanac gives the nineteenth as a good day for travelling,' he went on, addressing Yu-cun again.
+ 'You can set about hiring a boat for the journey straight away.
+ How delightful it will be to meet again next winter when you have distinguished yourself by soaring to the top over all the other candidates!'
+ Yu-cun accepted the silver and the clothes with only the most perfunctory word of thanks and without, apparently, giving them a further moment's thought, for he continued to drink and laugh and talk as if nothing had happened.
+ It was well after midnight before they broke up.
+ After seeing Yu-cun off, Shi-yin went to bed and slept without a break until the sun was high in the sky next morning.
+ When he awoke, his mind was still running on the conversation of the previous night.
+ He thought he would write a couple of introductory letters for Yu-cun to take with him to the capital, and arrange for him to call on the family of an official he was acquainted with who might be able to put him up; but when he sent a servant to invite him over, the servant brought back word from the temple as follows:
+ 'The monk says that Mr Jia set out for the capital at five o'clock this morning, sir.
+ He says he left a message to pass on to you.
+ He said to tell you, "A scholar should not concern himself with almanacs, but should act as the situation demands," and he said there wasn't time to say good-bye.'
+ So Shi-yin was obliged to let the matter drop.
+ It is a true saying that 'time in idleness is quickly spent'.
+ In no time at all it was Fifteenth Night, and Shi-yin sent little Ying-lian out, in the charge of one of the servants called Calamity, to see the mummers and the coloured lanterns.
+ It was near midnight when Calamity, feeling an urgent need to relieve his bladder, put Ying-lian down on someone's doorstep while he went about his business, only to find, on his return, that the child was nowhere to be seen.
+ Frantically he searched for her throughout the rest of the night; but when day dawned and he had still not found her, he took to his heels, not daring to face his master and mistress, and made off for another part of the country.
+ Shi-yin and his wife knew that something must be wrong when their little girl failed to return home all night.
+ Then a search was made; but all those sent out were obliged in the end to report that no trace of her could be found.
+ The shock of so sudden a loss to a middle-aged couple who had only ever had the one daughter can be imagined.
+ In tears every day and most of the night, they almost lost the will to go on living, and after about a month like this first Shi-yin and then his wife fell ill, so that doctors and diviners were in daily attendance on them.
+ Then, on the fifteenth of the third month, while frying cakes for an offering, the monk of Bottle-gourd Temple carelessly allowed the oil to catch alight, which set fire to the paper window.
+ And, since the houses in this area all had wooden walls and bamboo fences—though also, doubtless, because they were doomed to destruction anyway-the fire leaped from house to house until the whole street was blazing away like a regular Fiery Mountain; and though the firemen came to put it out, by the time they arrived the fire was well under way and long past controlling, and roared away all night long until it had burnt itself out, rendering heaven knows how many families homeless in the process.
+ Poor Zhens!
+ Though they and their handful of domestics escaped unhurt, their house, which was only next door to the temple, was soon reduced to a heap of rubble, while Shi-yin stood by helpless, groaning and stamping in despair.
+ After some discussion with his wife, Shi-yin decided that they should move to their farm in the country; but a series of crop failures due to flooding and drought had led to widespread brigandage in those parts, and government troops were out everywhere hunting down the mutinous peasants and making arrests.
+ In such conditions it was impossible to settle on the farm, so Shi-yin sold the land and, taking only two of the maids with them, went with his wife to seek refuge with his father-in-law, Feng Su.
+
+ 看官：你道此书从何而起?
+ ——说来虽近荒唐，细玩颇有趣味。
+ 却说那女娲氏炼石补天之时，于大荒山无稽崖炼成高十二丈、见方二十四丈大的顽石三万六千五百零一块， 那娲皇只用了三万六千五百块，单单剩下一块未用，弃在青埂峰下。
+ 谁知此石自经锻炼之后，灵性已通，自去自来，可大可小。
+ 因见众石俱得补天，独自己无才不得入选，遂自怨自愧，日夜悲哀。
+ 一日正当嗟悼之际，俄见一僧一道远远而来，生得骨格不凡，丰神迥异，来到这青埂峰下，席地坐谈。
+ 见着这块鲜莹明洁的石头，且又缩成扇坠一般，甚属可爱； 那僧托于掌上，笑道：“形体倒也是个灵物了！
+ 只是没有实在的好处， 须得再镌上几个字，使人人见了便知你是件奇物，然后携你到那昌明隆盛之邦、诗礼簪缨之族、花柳繁华地、温柔富贵乡那里去走一遭。”
+ 石头听了大喜，因问：“不知可镌何字?
+ 携到何方?
+ 望乞明示。”
+ 那僧笑道：“你且莫问，日后自然明白。”
+ 说毕，便袖了，同那道人飘然而去，竟不知投向何方。
+ 又不知过了几世几劫，因有个空空道人访道求仙，从这大荒山无稽崖青埂峰下经过， 忽见一块大石，上面字迹分明，编述历历。
+ 空空道人乃从头一看，原来是无才补天、幻形入世，被那茫茫大士、渺渺真人携入红尘、引登彼岸的一块顽石；上面叙着堕落之乡、投胎之处，以及家庭琐事、闺阁闲情、诗词谜语，倒还全备。
+ 只是朝代年纪，失落无考。
+ 后面又有一偈云：
+ 无才可去补苍天，枉入红尘若许年；
+ 此系身前身后事，倩谁记去作奇传?
+ 空空道人看了一回，晓得这石头有些来历，遂向石头说道：“石兄，你这一段故事，据你自己说来，有些趣味，故镌写在此，意欲闻世传奇。
+ 据我看来：第一件，无朝代年纪可考， 第二件，并无大贤大忠、理朝廷、治风俗的善政，其中只不过几个异样女子，或情或痴，或小才微善，我纵然抄去，也算不得一种奇书。”
+ 石头果然答道：“我师何必太痴!
+ 我想历来野史的朝代，无非假借汉、唐的名色；莫如我这石头所记，不借此套，只按自己的事体情理，反倒新鲜别致。
+ 况且那野史中，或讪谤君相，或贬人妻女，奸淫凶恶，不可胜数；
+ 更有一种风月笔墨，其淫秽污臭最易坏人子弟。
+ 至于才子佳人等书，则又开口‘文君’，满篇‘子建’，千部一腔，千人一面，且终不能不涉淫滥。
+ ——在作者不过要写出自己的两首情诗艳赋来，故假捏出男女二人名姓， 又必旁添一小人拨乱其间，如戏中的小丑一般。
+ 更可厌者，‘之乎者也’，非理即文，大不近情，自相矛盾。
+ 竟不如我这半世亲见亲闻的几个女子，虽不敢说强似前代书中所有之人，但观其事迹原委，亦可消愁破闷；至于几首歪诗，也可以喷饭供酒。
+ 其间离合悲欢，兴衰际遇，俱是按迹循踪，不敢稍加穿凿，至失其真。
+ 只愿世人当那醉余睡醒之时，或避事消愁之际，把此一玩，不但是洗旧翻新，却也省了些寿命筋力，不更去谋虚逐妄了。
+ 我师意为如何？”
+ 空空道人听如此说，思忖半晌，将这《石头记》再检阅一遍。
+ 因见上面大旨不过谈情，亦只是实录其事，绝无伤时诲淫之病，方从头至尾抄写回来，闻世传奇。
+ 从此空空道人因空见色，由色生情，传情入色，自色悟空，遂改名情僧，改《石头记》为《情僧录》。
+ 东鲁孔梅溪题曰《风月宝鉴》。
+ 至吴玉峰题曰《红楼梦》。
+ 后因曹雪芹于悼红轩中，披阅十载，增删五次，纂成目录，分出章回，又题曰《金陵十二钗》，并题一绝。
+ 至脂砚斋抄阅再评，仍用《石头记》。
+ 即此便是《石头记》的缘起。
+ 诗云：满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪。
+ 都云作者痴，谁解其中味!
+ 《石头记》缘起既明，正不知那石头上面记着何人何事， 看官请听——
+ 按那石上书云：当日地陷东南，这东南有个姑苏城，城中阊门，最是红尘中一二等富贵风流之地。
+ 这阊门外有个十里街，街内有个仁清巷，巷内有个古庙，因地方狭窄，人皆呼作“葫芦庙”。
+ 庙旁住着一家乡宦，姓甄名费，字士隐；嫡妻封氏，性情贤淑，深明礼义。
+ 家中虽不甚富贵，然本地也推他为望族了。
+ 因这甄士隐禀性恬淡，不以功名为念，每日只以观花种竹、酌酒吟诗为乐，倒是神仙一流人物。
+ 只是一件不足：年过半百，膝下无儿，只有一女乳名英莲，年方三岁。
+ 一日炎夏永昼，士隐于书房闲坐，手倦抛书，伏几盹睡，不觉朦胧中走至一处，不辨是何地方。
+ 忽见那厢来了一僧一道，且行且谈。
+ 只听道人问道：“你携了此物，意欲何往？”
+ 那僧笑道：“你放心！
+ 如今现有一段风流公案，正该了结，这一干风流冤家尚未投胎入世， 趁此机会，就将此物夹带于中，使他去经历经历。”
+ 那道人道：“原来近日风流冤家又将造劫历世，但不知起于何处？
+ 落于何方？”
+ 那僧道：“此事说来好笑。
+ 只因当年这个石头，娲皇未用，自己却也落得逍遥自在，各处去游玩， 一日来到警幻仙子处，那仙子知他有些来历，因留他在赤霞宫中，名他为赤霞宫神瑛侍者。
+ 他却常在西方灵河岸上行走，看见那灵河岸上三生石畔有棵‘绛珠仙草’，十分娇娜可爱，遂日以甘露灌溉，这‘绛珠草’始得久延岁月。
+ 后来既受天地精华，复得甘露滋养，遂脱了草木之胎，幻化人形，仅仅修成女体，终日游于‘离恨天’外，饥餐‘秘情果’，渴饮‘灌愁水’。
+ 只因尚未酬报灌溉之德，故甚至五内郁结着一段缠绵不尽之意， 常说：‘自己受了他雨露之惠，我并无此水可还。
+ 他若下世为人，我也同去走一遭，但把我一生所有的眼泪还他，也还得过了。’
+ 因此一事，就勾出多少风流冤家都要下凡，造历幻缘，那绛珠仙草也在其中。
+ 今日这石正该下世，我来特地将他仍带到警幻仙子案前，给他挂了号，同这些情鬼下凡，一了此案。”
+ 那道人道：“果是好笑，从来不闻有‘还泪’之说！
+ 趁此你我何不也下世度脱几个，岂不是一场功德？”
+ 那僧道：“正合吾意。
+ 你且同我到警幻仙子宫中将这‘蠢物’交割清楚，待这一干风流孽鬼下世，你我再去。
+ ——如今有一半落尘，然犹未全集。”
+ 道人道：“既如此，便随你去来。”
+ 却说甄士隐俱听得明白，遂不禁上前施礼，笑问道：“二位仙师请了。”
+ 那僧道也忙答礼相问。
+ 士隐因说道：“适闻仙师所谈因果，实人世罕闻者；但弟子愚拙，不能洞悉明白。
+ 若蒙大开痴顽，备细一闻，弟子洗耳谛听，稍能警省，亦可免沉沦之苦了。”
+ 二仙笑道：“此乃玄机，不可预泄。
+ 到那时只不要忘了我二人，便可跳出火坑矣。”
+ 士隐听了，不便再问，因笑道：“玄机固不可泄露，但适云‘蠢物’，不知为何？
+ 或可得见否？”
+ 那僧说：“若问此物，倒有一面之缘。”
+ 说着取出递与士隐。
+ 士隐接了看时，原来是块鲜明美玉，上面字迹分明，镌着“通灵宝玉”四字。
+ 后面还有几行小字， 正欲细看时，那僧便说“已到幻境”，就强从手中夺了去，和那道人竟过了一座大石牌坊，——上面大书四字，乃是“太虚幻境”。
+ 两边又有一副对联道：
+ 假作真时真亦假，无为有处有还无。
+ 士隐意欲也跟着过去，方举步时，忽听一声霹雳若山崩地陷，士隐大叫一声，定睛看时，只见烈日炎炎，芭蕉冉冉，梦中之事，便忘了一半。
+ 又见奶母抱了英莲走来。
+ 士隐见女儿越发生得粉装玉琢，乖觉可喜，便伸手接来抱在怀中斗他玩耍一回， 又带至街前，看那过会的热闹。
+ 方欲进来时，只见从那边来了一僧一道： 那僧癞头跣足，那道跛足蓬头，疯疯癫癫，挥霍谈笑而至。
+ 及到了他门前，看见士隐抱着英莲，那僧便大哭起来，又向士隐道：“施主，你把这有命无运、累及爹娘之物抱在怀内作甚？”
+ 士隐听了，知是疯话，也不睬他。
+ 那僧还说：“舍我罢!
+ 舍我罢！”
+ 士隐不耐烦，便抱着女儿转身， 才要进去，那僧乃指着他大笑，口内念了四句言词，道是：
+ 惯养娇生笑你痴，菱花空对雪澌澌。
+ 好防佳节元宵后，便是烟消火灭时。
+ 士隐听得明白，心下犹豫，意欲问他来历。
+ 只听道人说道：“你我不必同行，就此分手，各干营生去罢。
+ 三劫后我在北邙山等你，会齐了，同往太虚幻境销号。”
+ 那僧道：“最妙，最妙！”
+ 说毕，二人一去，再不见个踪影了。
+ 士隐心中此时自忖：这两个人必有来历，很该问他一问，如今后悔却已晚了。
+ 这士隐正在痴想，忽见隔壁葫芦庙内寄居的一个穷儒，姓贾名化、表字时飞、别号雨村的走来。
+ 这贾雨村原系湖州人氏，也是诗书仕宦之族， 因他生于末世，父母祖宗根基已尽，人口衰丧，只剩得他一身一口， 在家乡无益，因进京求取功名，再整基业。
+ 自前岁来此，又淹蹇住了，暂寄庙中安身，每日卖文作字为生，故士隐常与他交接。
+ 当下雨村见了士隐，忙施礼陪笑道：“老先生倚门伫望，敢街市上有甚新闻么？”
+ 士隐笑道：“非也。
+ 适因小女啼哭，引他出来作耍。
+ ——正是无聊的很， 贾兄来得正好，请入小斋，彼此俱可消此永昼。”
+ 说着便令人送女儿进去，自携了雨村来至书房中，小童献茶。
+ 方谈得三五句话，忽家人飞报：“严老爷来拜。”
+ 士隐慌忙起身谢道：“恕诓驾之罪，且请略坐，弟即来奉陪。”
+ 雨村起身也让道：“老先生请便。
+ 晚生乃常造之客，稍候何妨。”
+ 说着士隐已出前厅去了。
+ 这里雨村且翻弄诗籍解闷，忽听得窗外有女子嗽声。
+ 雨村遂起身往外一看，原来是一个丫鬟在那里掐花儿：生的仪容不俗，眉目清秀，虽无十分姿色，却也有动人之处。
+ 雨村不觉看得呆了。
+ 那甄家丫鬟掐了花儿方欲走时，猛抬头见窗内有人：敝巾旧服，虽是贫窘，然生得腰圆背厚，面阔口方，更兼剑眉星眼，直鼻方腮。
+ 这丫鬟忙转身回避，心下自想：“这人生的这样雄壮，却又这样褴褛，我家并无这样贫窘亲友。
+ 想他定是主人常说的什么贾雨村了，怪道又说他必非久困之人，每每有意帮助周济他，只是没什么机会。”
+ 如此一想，不免又回头一两次。
+ 雨村见他回头，便以为这女子心中有意于他，遂狂喜不禁，自谓此女子必是个巨眼英豪、风尘中之知己。
+ 一时小童进来，雨村打听得前面留饭，不可久待，遂从夹道中自便门出去了。
+ 士隐待客既散，知雨村已去，便也不去再邀。
+ 一日到了中秋佳节，士隐家宴已毕，又另具一席于书房，自己步月至庙中来邀雨村。
+ 原来雨村自那日见了甄家丫鬟曾回顾他两次，自谓是个知己，便时刻放在心上。
+ 今又正值中秋，不免对月有怀，因而口占五言一律云：
+ 未卜三生愿，频添一段愁；
+ 闷来时敛额，行去几回眸。
+ 自顾风前影，谁堪月下俦?
+ 蟾光如有意，先上玉人头。
+ 雨村吟罢，因又思及平生抱负，苦未逢时，乃又搔首对天长叹，复高吟一联云：
+ 玉在椟中求善价，钗于奁内待时飞。
+ 恰值士隐走来听见，笑道：“雨村兄真抱负不凡也！”
+ 雨村忙笑道：“不敢，不过偶吟前人之句，何期过誉如此。”
+ 因问：“老先生何兴至此？”
+ 士隐笑道：“今夜中秋，俗谓团圆之节，想尊兄旅寄僧房，不无寂寥之感， 故特具小酌邀兄到敝斋一饮，不知可纳芹意否？”
+ 雨村听了，并不推辞，便笑道：“既蒙谬爱，何敢拂此盛情。”
+ 说着便同士隐复过这边书院中来了。
+ 须臾茶毕，早已设下杯盘，那美酒佳肴，自不必说。
+ 二人归坐，先是款酌慢饮，渐次谈至兴浓，不觉飞觥献斝起来。
+ 当时街坊上家家箫管，户户笙歌，当头一轮明月，飞彩凝辉， 二人愈添豪兴，酒到杯干。
+ 雨村此时已有七八分酒意，狂兴不禁，乃对月寓怀，口占一绝云：
+ 时逢三五便团圆，满把清光护玉栏。
+ 天上一轮才捧出，人间万姓仰头看。
+ 士隐听了大叫：“妙极!
+ 弟每谓兄必非久居人下者，今所吟之句，飞腾之兆已见，不日可接履于云霄之上了。
+ 可贺，可贺！”
+ 乃亲斟一斗为贺。
+ 雨村饮干，忽叹道：“非晚生酒后狂言，若论时尚之学，晚生也或可去充数挂名。
+ 只是如今行李路费一概无措，神京路远，非赖卖字撰文即能到得——”
+ 士隐不待说完，便道：“兄何不早言!
+ 弟已久有此意，但每遇兄时，并未谈及，故未敢唐突。
+ 今既如此，弟虽不才：‘义利’二字却还识得；且喜明岁正当大比，兄宜作速入都，春闱一捷，方不负兄之所学。
+ 其盘费余事，弟自代为处置，亦不枉兄之谬识矣。”
+ 当下即命小童进去速封五十两白银并两套冬衣，又云：“十九日乃黄道之期，兄可即买舟西上。
+ 待雄飞高举，明冬再晤，岂非大快之事！”
+ 雨村收了银衣，不过略谢一语，并不介意，仍是吃酒谈笑。
+ 那天已交三鼓，二人方散。
+ 士隐送雨村去后，回房一觉，直至红日三竿方醒。
+ 因思昨夜之事，意欲写荐书两封与雨村带至都中去，使雨村投谒个仕宦之家为寄身之地，因使人过去请时，那家人回来说：
+ “和尚说，贾爷今日五鼓已进京去了，也曾留下话与和尚转达老爷，说：‘读书人不在黄道黑道，总以事理为要，不及面辞了。’”
+ 士隐听了，也只得罢了。
+ 真是闲处光阴易过，倏忽又是元宵佳节。
+ 士隐令家人霍启抱了英莲，去看社火花灯。
+ 半夜中霍启因要小解，便将英莲放在一家门槛上坐着， 待他小解完了来抱时，那有英莲的踪影?
+ 急的霍启直寻了半夜， 至天明不见，那霍启也不敢回来见主人，便逃往他乡去了。
+ 那士隐夫妇见女儿一夜不归，便知有些不好；再使几人去找寻，回来皆云影响全无。
+ 夫妻二人半世只生此女，一旦失去，何等烦恼，因此昼夜啼哭，几乎不顾性命。
+ 看看一月，士隐已先得病，夫人封氏也因思女构疾，日日请医问卦。
+ 不想这日三月十五，葫芦庙中炸供，那和尚不小心，油锅火逸，便烧着窗纸。
+ 此方人家俱用竹篱木壁，也是劫数应当如此，于是接二连三牵五挂四，将一条街烧得如火焰山一般；彼时虽有军民来救，那火已成了势了，如何救得下?
+ 直烧了一夜方息，也不知烧了多少人家。
+ 只可怜甄家在隔壁，早成了一堆瓦砾场了，只有他夫妇并几个家人的性命不曾伤了，急的士隐惟跌足长叹而已。
+ 与妻子商议，且到田庄上去住，偏值近年水旱不收，贼盗蜂起，官兵剿捕，田庄上又难以安身，只得将田地都折变了，携了妻子与两个丫鬟投他岳丈家去。
+
+ Jia Rui's arrival was announced while Xi-feng and Patience were still talking about him.
+ 'Ask him in,' said Xi-feng.
+ Hearing that he was to be received, Jia Rui rejoiced inwardly.
+ He came into the room wreathed in smiles and overwhelmed Xi-feng with civilities.
+ With feigned solicitude she pressed him to be seated and to take tea.
+ He became quite ecstatic at the sight of her informal dress.
+ 'Why isn't Cousin Lian back yet?' he asked, staring with fascinated eyes.
+ 'I don't know what the reason can be,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Could it be,' Jia Rui inquired archly, 'that Someone has detained him on his way home and that he can't tear himself away?'
+ 'Men are all the same!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'They have only to set eyes on a woman to begin another affair.'
+ 'Ah, there you are wrong!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'I am not that sort of man.'
+ 'But how many men are there like you?' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I doubt you could find one in ten.'
+ At this last remark Jia Rui positively scratched his ears with pleasure.
+ 'You must find it very dull here on your own every day,' he said.
+ 'Yes, indeed!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'If only there were someone who could come and talk to me and help me to pass the time!'
+ 'Well,' said Jia Rui, 'I am always free.
+ How would it be if I were to come every day to help you pass the time?'
+ 'You must be joking!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'What would you want to come here for?'
+ 'I mean every word I say,' said Jia Rui.
+ 'May I be struck by lightning if I don't!
+ True, there was a time when I should have been scared to come, because people always told me what a holy terror you were and how dangerous it was to cross you; but now I know that in reality you are all gentleness and fun, there is nothing that could stop me coming.
+ I would come now if it cost me my life.'
+ 'It's true then,' said Xi-feng, smiling delightedly.
+ 'You really are an understanding sort of person --- so much more so than Rong or Qiang!
+ I used to think that since they were such handsome and cultured-looking young men they must be understanding as well, but they turned out to be stupid brutes without the least consideration for other people's feelings.'
+ This little speech went straight to Jia Rui's heart, and unconsciously he began edging his seat nearer to Xi-feng's.
+ He peered closely at an embroidered purse that she was wearing and expressed a strong interest in one of her rings.
+ 'Take care!' said Xi-feng in a low tone.
+ 'The servants might see you!'
+ Obedient to his goddess's command, Jia Rui quickly drew back again.
+ Xi-feng laughed.
+ 'You had better go!'
+ 'Ah no, cruel cousin!
+ Let me stay a little longer!'
+ 'Even if you stay, it's not very convenient here in broad daylight, with people coming and going all the time.
+ Go away now and come hack later when it's dark, at the beginning of the first watch.
+ You can slip into the gallery west of this apartment and wait for me there.'
+ Jia Rui received these words like someone being presented with a rare and costly jewel.
+ 'Are you sure you're not joking?' he asked hurriedly.
+ 'A lot of people must go through that way.
+ How should we avoid being seen?'
+ 'Don't worry!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I'll give the watchmen a night off.
+ When the side gates are closed, no one else can get through.'
+ Jia Rui was beside himself with delight and hurriedly took his leave, confident that the fulfilment of all he wished for was now in sight.
+ Having waited impatiently for nightfall, he groped his way into the Rong-guo mansion just before they closed the gates and slipped into the gallery, now totally deserted—as Xi-feng had promised it would be—and black as pitch.
+ The gate at the end of the alley-way opening on to Grandmother Jia's quarters had already been barred on the outer side; only the gate at the east end remained open.
+ For a long time Jia Rui listened intently, but no one came.
+ Suddenly there was a loud slam and the gate at the east end, too, banged shut.
+ Alarmed, but not daring to make a sound, Jia Rui stealthily crept out and tried it.
+ It was locked—as tight as a bucket.
+ Now even if he wanted to get out he could not, for the walls on either side of the alley-way were too high to scale.
+ Moreover the gallery was bare and draughty and this was the midwinter season when the nights are long and the bitter north wind seems to pierce into the very marrow of the bones.
+ By the end of the night he was almost dead with cold.
+ When at last morning came, Jia Rui saw the gate at the east end open and an old woman pass through to the gate opposite and call for someone to open up.
+ Still hugging himself against the cold, he sprinted out of the other gate while her back was towards him.
+ Fortunately no one was about at that early hour, and he was able to slip out of the rear entrance of the mansion and run back home unseen.
+ Jia Rui had lost both of his parents in infancy and had been brought up under the sole guardianship of his grandfather Jia Dai-ru.
+ Obsessed by the fear that once outside the house his grandson might indulge in drinking and gambling to the detriment of his studies, Dai-ru had subjected him since early youth to an iron discipline from which not the slightest deviation was tolerated.
+ Seeing him now suddenly absent himself a whole night from home, and being incapable, in his wildest imaginings, of guessing what had really happened, he took it as a foregone conclusion that he had been either drinking or gaming and had probably passed the night in some house of prostitution --- a supposition which caused the old gentleman to spend the whole night in a state of extreme choler.
+ The prospect of facing his grandfather on arrival made Jia Rui sweat.
+ A lie of some sort was indispensable.
+ 'I went to see Uncle yesterday,' he managed to say, 'and as it was getting dark, he asked me to stay the night.'
+ 'I have always told you that you are not to go out of that gate without first informing me,' said his grandfather.
+ 'Why then did you presume to go off on your own yesterday without saying a word to anybody?
+ That in itself would constitute sufficient grounds for chastisement.
+ But in addition to that you are lying!'
+ Thereupon he, forced him to the ground, and, with the utmost savagery, dealt him thirty or forty whacks with the bamboo, after which he forbade him to eat and made him kneel in the open courtyard with a book in his hand until he had prepared the equivalent of ten days' homework.
+ The exquisite torments suffered by Jia Rui, as he knelt with an empty stomach in the draughty courtyard reciting his homework after having already been frozen all night long and then beaten, can be imagined.
+ Yet even now his infatuation remained unaltered.
+ It never entered his mind that he had been made a fool of.
+ And so two days later, as soon as he had some free time, he was back once more looking for Xi-feng.
+ She deliberately reproached him for having failed her, thereby so exasperating him that he swore by the most terrible oaths that he had been faithful.
+ Seeing him hurl himself so willingly into the net, Xi-feng decided that a further lesson would be needed to cure him of his folly and proposed another assignation.
+ 'Only tonight,' she said, 'don't wait for me in that place again.
+ Wait in the empty room in the little passage-way behind this apartment.
+ But mind you don't run into anybody.'
+ 'Do you really mean this?' said Jia Rui.
+ 'If you don't believe me, don't come!'
+ 'I'll come!
+ I'll come!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'Whatever happens, I shall be there.'
+ 'Now I think you had better go.'
+ Confident of seeing her again in the evening, Jia Rui went off uncomplainingly, leaving Xi-feng time to muster her forces, brief her officers, and prepare the trap in which the luckless man was to be caught.
+ Jia Rui waited for the evening with great impatience.
+ By a stroke of bad luck some relations came on a visit and stayed to supper.
+ It was already lamplight when they left, and Jia Rui then had to wait for his grandfather to settle down for the night before he could scuttle off to the Rong mansion and make his way to the room in the little passage-way where Xi-feng had told him to go.
+ He waited there for her arrival with the frenzied agitation of an ant on a hot saucepan.
+ Yet, though he waited and waited, not a human shape appeared nor a human sound was heard, and he began to be frightened and a little suspicious: 'Surely she won't fail me?
+ Surely I shan't be made to spend another night in the cold...?'
+ As he was in the midst of these gloomy imaginings, a dark figure glided into the room.
+ Certain that it must be Xi-feng, Jia Rui cast all caution to the winds and, when the figure approached him, threw himself upon it like a hungry tiger seizing its prey or a cat pouncing on a harmless mouse.
+ 'My darling, how I have waited for you!" he exclaimed, enfolding his beloved in his arms; and carrying her to the kang, he laid her down and began kissing her and tugging at her trousers, murmuring 'my sweetest darling' and 'my honey love' and other such endearments in between kisses.
+ Throughout all of this not a single sound was uttered by his partner.
+ Jia Rui now tore down his own trousers and prepared to thrust home his hard and throbbing member.
+ Suddenly a light flashed --- and there was Jia Qiang holding aloft a candle in a candlestick which he shone around: 'Who is in this room?'
+ At this the person on the kang gave a giggle: 'Uncle Rui is trying to bugger me!'
+ Horrors!
+ The sight he saw when he looked down made Jia Rui want to sink into the ground.
+ It was Jia Rong!
+ He turned to bolt, but Jia Qiang held him fast.
+ 'Oh no you don't!
+ Auntie Lian has already told Lady Wang that you have been pestering her.
+ She asked us to keep you here while she went to tell.
+ When Lady Wang first heard, she was so angry that she fainted, but now she's come round again and is asking for you to be brought to her.
+ Come along, then!
+ Off we go!'
+ At these words Jia Rui's soul almost left its seat in his body.
+ 'My dear nephew, just tell her that you didn't find me here!' he said.
+ 'Tomorrow I will reward you handsomely.'
+ 'I suppose I could let you go easily enough,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'The question is, how big would this reward be?
+ In any case, just saying that you will give me a reward is no good.
+ I should want a written guarantee.'
+ 'But I can't put a thing like this down in writing!'
+ 'No problem there,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'Just say that you've lost money gambling and have borrowed such and such an amount to cover your losses.
+ That's all you need do.'
+ 'I could do that, certainly,' said Jia Rui.
+ Jia Qiang at once disappeared and reappeared only a moment later with paper and a writing-brush which had evidently been made ready in advance.
+ Writing at his dictation Jia Rui was compelled, in spite of protests, to put down fifty taels of silver as the amount on the IOU.
+ The document, having been duly signed, was at once pocketed by Jia Qiang, who then pretended to seek the connivance of Jia Rong.
+ But Jia Rong feigned the most obdurate incorruptibility and insisted that he would lay the matter next day before a council of the whole clan and see that justice was done.
+ Jia Rui became quite frantic and kotowed to him.
+ Finally, under pressure from Jia Qiang and in return for another IOU for fifty taels of silver made out in his favour, he allowed his scruples to be overcome.
+ 'You realize, don't you,' said Jia Qiang, 'that I'm going to get into trouble for this?
+ Now let's see.
+ The gate leading to Lady Jia's courtyard was bolted some time ago, and Sir Zheng is at the moment in the main reception room looking at some stuff that has just arrived from Nanking, so you can't go through that way.
+ The only way left would be through the back gate.
+ The trouble is, though, that if you leave now, you might run into someone on the way, and then I should get into even worse trouble.
+ You'd better let me scout around a bit first and come for you when the coast is clear.
+ In the meantime you can t hide here, though, because they will shortly be coming in to store the stuff from Nanking here.
+ I'll find somewhere else for you.'
+ He took Jia Rui by the arm, and having first blown the candle out, led him into the courtyard and groped his way round to the underside of the steps which led up to the terrace of the central building.
+ 'This hollow under the steps will do.
+ Crouch down there, and don't make a sound!
+ You can go when I come for you.'
+ Jia Qiang and Jia Rong then went off leaving him to himself.
+ Jia Rui, by now a mere automaton in the hands of his captors, obediently crouched down beneath the steps and was just beginning a series of calculations respecting his present financial predicament when a sudden slosh! signalled the discharge of a slop-pail's stinking contents immediately above his head, drenching him from top to toe with liquid filth and causing him to cry out in dismay --- but only momentarily, for the excrement covered his face and head and caused him to close his mouth again in a hurry and crouch silent and shivering in the icy cold.
+ Just then Jia Qiang came running up: 'Hurry! hurry!
+ You can go now.'
+ At the word of command Jia Rui bounded out of his hole and sprinted for dear life through the rear gate and back to his own home.
+ It was now past midnight, and he had to shout for someone to let him in.
+ When the servant who answered the gate saw the state he was in and asked him how it had happened, he had to pretend that he had been out in the darkness to ease himself and had fallen into the jakes.
+ Then rushing into his own room he stripped off his clothes and washed, his mind running all the time on how Xi-feng had tricked him.
+ The thought of her trickery provoked a surge of hatred in his soul; yet even as he hated her, the vision of her loveliness made him long to clasp her to his breast.
+ Torn by these violent and conflicting emotions, he passed the whole night without a single wink of sleep.
+ From that time on, though he longed for Xi-feng with unabated passion, he never dared to visit the Rong-guo mansion again.
+ Jia Rong and Jia Qiang, on the other hand, came frequently to his house to ask for their money, so that he was in constant dread of his grandfather finding out about the IOUs.
+ Unable, even now, to overcome his longing for Xi-feng, saddled with a heavy burden of debt, harassed during the day time by the schoolwork set him by his exacting grandfather, worn-out during the nights by the excessive hand-pumping inevitable in an unmarried man of twenty whose mistress was both unattainable and constantly in his thoughts, twice frozen, tormented and forced to flee --- what constitution could withstand so many shocks and strains without succumbing in the end to illness?
+ The symptoms of Jia Rui's illness—a palpitation in the heart, a loss of taste in the mouth, a weakness in the hams, a smarting in the eyes, feverishness by night and lassitude by day, albumen in the urine and blood-flecks in the phlegm—had all manifested themselves within less than a year.
+ By that time they had produced a complete breakdown and driven him to his bed, where he lay, with eyes tight shut, babbling deliriously and inspiring terror in all who saw him.
+ Physicians were called in to treat him and some bushels of cinnamon bark, autumn root, turtle-shell, black leek and Solomon's seal must at one time and another have been infused and taken without the least observable effect.
+ Winter went and spring came and Jia Rui's sickness grew even worse.
+ His grandfather Dai-ru was in despair.
+ Medical advice from every quarter had been taken and none of it had proved effective.
+ The most recent advice was that the patient should be given a pure decoction of ginseng without admixture of other ingredients.
+ So costly a remedy was far beyond Dai-ru's resources and he was obliged to go to the Rong-guo mansion to beg.
+ Lady Wang ordered Wang Xi-feng to weigh out two ounces for him from their own supplies.
+ 'The other day when we were making up a new lot of pills for Grandmother,' said Xi-feng, 'you told me to keep any of the remaining whole roots for a medicine you were sending to General Yang's wife.
+ I sent her the medicine yesterday, so I am afraid we haven't any left.'
+ 'Well, even if we haven't got any,' said Lady Wang, 'you can send to your mother-in-law's for some; and probably they will have some at your Cousin Zhen's.
+ Between you you ought somehow or other to be able to raise enough to give him.
+ If you can save a man's life by doing so, you will have performed a work of merit.'
+ But though Xi-feng pretended to do as Lady Wang suggested, in fact she made no such inquiries.
+ She merely scraped a few drams of broken bits together and sent them to Dai-ru with a message that 'Lady Wang had instructed her to send this, and it was all they had.'
+ To Lady Wang, however, she reported that she had asked the others and altogether obtained more than two ounces of ginseng which she had sent to Dai-ru.
+ Jia Rui now wanted desperately to live and eagerly swallowed every medicine that they offered him; but all was a waste of money, for nothing seemed to do him any good.
+ One day a lame Taoist appeared at the door asking for alms and claiming to be able to cure retributory illnesses.
+ Jia Rui, who chanced to overhear him, called out from his bed: 'Quick, tell the holy man to come in and save me!' and as he called, he kotowed with his head on the pillow.
+ The servants were obliged to bring the Taoist into the bedroom.
+ Jia Rui clung to him tenaciously.
+ 'Holy one, save me!' he cried out again and again.
+ The Taoist sighed.
+ 'No medicine will cure your sickness.
+ However, I have a precious thing here that I can lend you which, if you will look at it every day, can be guaranteed to save your life.'
+ So saying, he took from his satchel a mirror which had reflecting surfaces on both its sides.
+ The words A MIRROR FOR THE ROMANTIC were inscribed on the back.
+ He handed it to Jia Rui.
+ 'This object comes from the Hall of Emptiness in the Land of Illusion.
+ It was fashioned by the fairy Disenchantment as an antidote to the ill effects of impure mental activity.
+ It has life-giving and restorative properties and has been brought into the world for the contemplation of those intelligent and handsome young gentlemen whose hearts are too susceptible to the charms of beauty.
+ I lend it to you on one important condition: you must only look into the back of the mirror.
+ Never, never under any circumstances look into the front.
+ Three days hence I shall come again to reclaim it, by which time I guarantee that your illness will have gone.'
+ With that he left, at a surprising speed, ignoring the earnest entreaties of those present that he should stay longer.
+ 'This is intriguing!'
+ Jia Rui thought to himself when the Taoist gave him the mirror.
+ 'Let me try looking into it as he says,' and holding it up to his face he looked into the back as instructed and saw a grinning skull, which he covered up hastily with a curse:
+ 'Silly old fool, to scare me like that! ---
+ But let me see what happens when I look into the other side!'
+ He turned the mirror round and looked, and there inside was Xi-feng beckoning to him to enter, and his ravished soul floated into the mirror after her.
+ There they performed the act of love together, after which she saw him out again.
+ But when he found himself once more back in his bed he stared and cried out in horror: for the mirror, of its own accord, had turned itself round in his hand and the same grinning skull faced him that he had seen before.
+ He could feel the sweat trickling all over his body and lower down in the bed a little pool of semen that he had just ejaculated.
+ Yet still he was not satisfied, and turned the face of the mirror once more towards him.
+ Xi-feng was there beckoning to him again and calling, and again he went in after her.
+ He did this three or four times.
+ But the last time, just as he was going to return from the mirror, two figures approached him holding iron chains which they fastened round him and by which they proceeded to drag him away.
+ He cried out as they dragged him: 'Wait!
+ Let me take the mirror with me . . .!'
+ Those were the last words he ever uttered.
+ To those who stood around the bed and watched him while this was happening he appeared first to be holding up the mirror and looking into it, then to let it drop; then to open his eyes in a ghastly stare and pick it up again; then, as it once more fell from his grasp, he finally ceased to move.
+ When they examined him more closely they found that his breathing had already stopped and that underneath his body there was a large, wet, icy patch of recently ejaculated semen.
+ At once they lifted him from the bed and busied themselves with the laying-out, while old Dai-ru and his wife abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of grief.
+ They cursed the Taoist for a necromancer and ordered the servants to heap up a fire and cast the mirror upon the flames.
+ But just at that moment a voice was heard in the air saying, 'Who told him to look in the front?
+ It is you who are to blame, for confusing the unreal with the real!
+ Why then should you burn my mirror?'
+ Suddenly the mirror was seen to rise up and fly out of the room, and when Dai-ru went outside to look, there was the lame Taoist asking for it back.
+ He snatched it as it flew towards him and disappeared before Dai-ru's very eyes.
+ Seeing that there was to be no redress, Dai-yu was obliged to set about preparing for the funeral and began by announcing his grandson's death to everybody concerned.
+ Reading of the sutras began on the third day and on the seventh the coffin was drawn in procession to temporary lodging in the Temple of the Iron Threshold to await future reburial.
+ The various members of the Jia family all came in due course to offer their condolences.
+ From the Rong-guo side Jia She and Jia Zheng each gave twenty taels of silver and from the Ning-guo side Cousin Zhen also gave twenty taels.
+ The other members of the clan gave amounts varying from one to four taels according to their means.
+ A collection made among the parents of the dead man's fellow-students raised an additional twenty or thirty taels.
+ Although Dai-ru's means were slender, with so much monetary help coming in he was able to perform the whole business in considerable style.
+ Towards the end of the year in which Jia Rui's troubles started Lin Ru-hai fell seriously ill and wrote a letter asking to see Dai-yu again.
+ Though Grandmother Jia was plunged into deepest gloom by the letter, she was obliged to prepare with all possible expedition for her granddaughter's departure.
+ And Bao-yu, though he too was distressed at the prospect of Dai-yu's leaving him, could scarcely seek to interfere in a matter affecting the natural feelings of a father and his child.
+ Grandmother Jia insisted that Jia Lian should accompany Dai-yu and see her safely there and back.
+ The various gifts to be taken and the journey-money were, it goes without saying, duly prepared.
+ A suitable day on which to commence the journey was quickly determined and Jia Lian and Dai-yu took leave of all the rest and, embarking with their attendants, set sail for Yangchow.
+ If you wish for further details, you may learn them in the following chapter.
+
+ 话说凤姐正与平儿说话，只见有人回说：“瑞大爷来了。”
+ 凤姐命：“请进来罢。”
+ 贾瑞见请，心中暗喜。
+ 见了凤姐，满面陪笑，连连问好。
+ 凤姐儿也假意殷勤让坐让茶。
+ 贾瑞见凤姐如此打扮，越发酥倒，因饧了眼问道：“二哥哥怎么还不回来？”
+ 凤姐道：“不知什么缘故。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“别是路上有人绊住了脚，舍不得回来了罢？”
+ 凤姐道：“可知男人家见一个爱一个也是有的。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“嫂子这话错了，我就不是这样人。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“像你这样的人能有几个呢，十个里也挑不出一个来！”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜的抓耳挠腮。
+ 又道：“嫂子天天也闷的很。”
+ 凤姐道：“正是呢。
+ 只盼个人来说话解解闷儿。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“我倒天天闲着。
+ 若天天过来替嫂子解解闷儿，可好么？”
+ 凤姐笑道：“你哄我呢!
+ 你那里肯往我这里来？”
+ 贾瑞道：“我在嫂子面前，若有一句谎话，天打雷劈!
+ 只因素日闻得人说，嫂子是个利害人，在你跟前一点也错不得，所以唬住我了。
+ 我如今见嫂子是个有说有笑极疼人的，我怎么不来?
+ ——死了也情愿。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“果然你是个明白人，比蓉儿兄弟两个强远了。
+ 我看他那样清秀，只当他们心里明白，谁知竟是两个糊涂虫，一点不知人心。”
+ 贾瑞听这话，越发撞在心坎上，由不得又往前凑一凑，觑着眼看凤姐的荷包，又问：“戴着什么戒指？”
+ 凤姐悄悄的道：“放尊重些，别叫丫头们看见了。”
+ 贾瑞如听纶音佛语一般，忙往后退。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你该去了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“我再坐一坐儿，好狠心的嫂子！”
+ 凤姐儿又悄悄的道：“大天白日人来人往，你就在这里也不方便。
+ 你且去，等到晚上起了更你来，悄悄的在西边穿堂儿等我。”
+ 贾瑞听了，如得珍宝，忙问道：“你别哄我。
+ 但是那里人过的多，怎么好躲呢？”
+ 凤姐道：“你只放心，我把上夜的小厮们都放了假，两边门一关，再没别人了。”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜之不尽，忙忙的告辞而去，心内以为得手。
+ 盼到晚上，果然黑地里摸入荣府，趁掩门时，钻入穿堂。
+ 果见漆黑无一人来往，贾母那边去的门已倒锁了，只有向东的门未关。
+ 贾瑞侧耳听着，半日不见人来。
+ 忽听‘咯噔’一声，东边的门也关上了。
+ 贾瑞急的也不敢则声，只得悄悄出来，将门撼了撼，关得铁桶一般。
+ 此时要出去亦不能了，南北俱是大墙，要跳也无攀援。
+ 这屋内又是过堂风，空落落的，现是腊月天气，夜又长，朔风凛凛，侵肌裂骨，一夜几乎不曾冻死！
+ 好容易盼到早晨，只见一个老婆子先将东门开了进来，去叫西门，贾瑞瞅他背着脸，一溜烟抱了肩跑出来。
+ 幸而天气尚早，人都未起，从后门一径跑回家去。
+ 原来贾瑞父母早亡，只有他祖父代儒教养。
+ 那代儒素日教训最严，不许贾瑞多走一步，生怕他在外吃酒赌钱，有误学业。
+ 今忽见他一夜不归，只料定他在外非饮即赌，嫖娼宿妓，那里想到这段公案?
+ 因此也气了一夜。
+ 贾瑞也捻着一把汗，少不得回来撒谎，只说：“往舅舅家去了，天黑了，留我住了一夜。”
+ 代儒道：“自来出门非禀我不敢擅出，如何昨日私自去了?
+ 据此也该打，何况是撒谎！”
+ 因此发狠，按倒打了三四十板，还不许他吃饭，叫他跪在院内读文章，定要补出十天工课来方罢。
+ 贾瑞先冻了一夜，又挨了打，又饿着肚子，跪在风地里念文章，其苦万状。
+ 此时贾瑞邪心未改，再不想到凤姐捉弄他。
+ 过了两日，得了空儿，仍找寻凤姐。
+ 凤姐故意抱怨他失信，贾瑞急的起誓。
+ 凤姐因他自投罗网，少不的再寻别计令他知改，故又约他道：“今日晚上，你别在那里了，你在我这房后小过道儿里头那间空屋子里等我。
+ ——可别冒撞了！”
+ 贾瑞道：“果真么？”
+ 凤姐道：“你不信就别来！”
+ 贾瑞道：“必来，必来!
+ 死也要来的。”
+ 凤姐道：“这会子你先去罢。”
+ 贾瑞料定晚间必妥，此时先去了。
+ 凤姐在这里便点兵派将，设下圈套。
+ 那贾瑞只盼不到晚，偏偏家里亲戚又来了，吃了晚饭才去，那天已有掌灯时候；又等他祖父安歇，方溜进荣府，往那夹道中屋子里来等着，热锅上蚂蚁一般。
+ 只是左等不见人影，右听也没声响，心中害怕，不住猜疑道：“别是不来了，又冻我一夜不成？”
+ 正自胡猜，只见黑魆魆的进来一个人。
+ 贾瑞便打定是凤姐，不管青红皂白，那人刚到面前，便如饿虎扑食、猫儿捕鼠的一般抱住，叫道：“亲嫂子，等死我了！”
+ 说着，抱到屋里炕上就亲嘴扯裤子，满口里“亲爹”“亲娘”的乱叫起来。
+ 那人只不做声，贾瑞便扯下自己的裤子来，硬帮帮就想顶入。
+ 忽然灯光一闪，只见贾蔷举着个蜡台，照道：“谁在这屋里呢？”
+ 只见炕上那人笑道：“瑞大叔要肏我呢！”
+ 贾瑞不看则已，看了时真臊的无地可入。
+ 你道是谁?
+ 却是贾蓉。
+ 贾瑞回身要跑，被贾蔷一把揪住道：“别走!
+ 如今琏二婶子已经告到太太跟前，说你调戏他，他暂时稳住你在这里。
+ 太太听见气死过去了，这会子叫我来拿你。
+ 快跟我走罢！”
+ 贾瑞听了，魂不附体，只说：“好侄儿!
+ 你只说没有我，我明日重重的谢你！”
+ 贾蔷道：“放你不值什么，只不知你谢我多少?
+ 况且口说无凭，写一张文契才算。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这怎么落纸呢？”
+ 贾蔷道：“这也不妨，写个赌钱输了，借银若干两，就完了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这也容易。”
+ 贾蔷翻身出来，纸笔现成，拿来叫贾瑞写。
+ 他两个做好做歹，只写了五十两银子，画了押，贾蔷收起来。
+ 然后撕掳贾蓉。
+ 贾蓉先咬定牙不依，只说：“明日告诉族中的人评评理。”
+ 贾瑞急的至于磕头。
+ 贾蔷做好做歹的，也写了一张五十两欠契才罢。
+ 贾蔷又道：“如今要放你，我就担着不是。
+ 老太太那边的门早已关了。
+ 老爷正在厅上看南京来的东西，那一条路定难过去。
+ 如今只好走后门。
+ 要这一走，倘或遇见了人，连我也不好。
+ 等我先去探探，再来领你。
+ 这屋里你还藏不住，少时就来堆东西，等我寻个地方。”
+ 说毕，拉着贾瑞，仍息了灯，出至院外，摸着大台阶底下，说道：“这窝儿里好。
+ 只蹲着，别哼一声。
+ 等我来再走。”
+ 说毕，二人去了。
+ 贾瑞此时身不由己，只得蹲在那台阶下。
+ 正要盘算，只听头顶上一声响，哗喇喇一净桶尿粪从上面直泼下来，可巧浇了他一身一头。
+ 贾瑞掌不住“嗳哟”一声，忙又掩住口，不敢声张，满头满脸皆是尿屎，浑身冰冷打战。
+ 只见贾蔷跑来叫：“快走，快走！”
+ 贾瑞方得了命，三步两步从后门跑到家中，天已三更，只得叫开了门。
+ 家人见他这般光景，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 少不得撒谎说：“天黑了，失脚掉在茅厕里了。”
+ 一面即到自己房中更衣洗濯。
+ 心下方想到凤姐玩他，因此发一回狠；再想想凤姐的模样儿标致，又恨不得一时搂在怀里。
+ 胡思乱想，一夜也不曾合眼。
+ 自此虽想凤姐，只不敢往荣府去了。
+ 贾蓉等两个常常来要银子，他又怕祖父知道。
+ 正是相思尚且难禁，况又添了债务，日间工课又紧；他二十来岁的人，尚未娶亲，想着凤姐不得到手，自不免有些“指头儿告了消乏”；更兼两回冻恼奔波：因此三五下里夹攻，不觉就得了一病：
+ 心内发膨胀，口内无滋味，脚下如绵，眼中似醋，黑夜作烧，白日常倦，下溺遗精，嗽痰带血，诸如此症，不上一年都添全了。
+ 于是不能支持，一头躺倒，合上眼还只梦魂颠倒，满口胡话，惊怖异常。
+ 百般请医疗治，诸如肉桂、附子、鳖甲、麦冬、玉竹等药吃了有几十斤下去，也不见个动静。
+ 倏又腊尽春回，这病更加沉重。
+ 代儒也着了忙，各处请医疗治，皆不见效。
+ 因后来吃“独参汤”，代儒如何有这力量，只得往荣府里来寻。
+ 王夫人命凤姐秤二两给他。
+ 凤姐回说：“前儿新近替老太太配了药，那整的太太又说留着送杨提督的太太配药，偏偏昨儿我已经叫人送了去了。”
+ 王夫人道：“就是咱们这边没了，你叫个人往你婆婆那里问问，或是你珍大哥哥那里有，寻些来，凑着给人家， 吃好了，救人一命，也是你们的好处。”
+ 凤姐应了，也不遣人去寻。
+ 只将些渣末凑了几钱，命人送去，只说：“太太叫送来的，再也没了。”
+ 然后向王夫人说：“都寻了来了，共凑了二两多，送去了。”
+ 那贾瑞此时要命心急，无药不吃，只是白花钱，不见效。
+ 忽然这日有个跛足道人来化斋，口称专治冤孽之症。
+ 贾瑞偏偏在内听见了，直着声叫喊，说：“快去请进那位菩萨来救命！”
+ 一面在枕头上磕头。
+ 众人只得带进那道士来。
+ 贾瑞一把拉住，连叫“菩萨救我！”
+ 那道士叹道：“你这病非药可医。
+ 我有个宝贝与你，你天天看时，此命可保矣。”
+ 说毕，从搭裢中取出个正面反面皆可照人的镜子来，——背上錾着“风月宝鉴”四字，——递与贾瑞道：
+ “这物出自太虚幻境空灵殿上，警幻仙子所制，专治邪思妄动之症，有济世保生之功。
+ 所以带他到世上来，单与那些聪明俊秀、风雅王孙等照看。
+ 千万不可照正面，只照背面，要紧，要紧!
+ 三日后我来收取，管叫你病好。”
+ 说毕，徉长而去。
+ 众人苦留不住。
+ 贾瑞接了镜子，想道：“这道士倒有意思，我何不照一照试试？”
+ 想毕，拿起那“宝鉴”来，向反面一照， 只见一个骷髅儿，立在里面。
+ 贾瑞忙掩了，骂那道士：
+ “混帐!
+ 如何吓我!
+ 我倒再照照正面是什么？”
+ 想着，便将正面一照，只见凤姐站在里面点手儿叫他。
+ 贾瑞心中一喜，荡悠悠觉得进了镜子，与凤姐云雨一番，凤姐仍送他出来。
+ 到了床上，“嗳哟”了一声，一睁眼，镜子从新又掉过来，仍是反面立着一个骷髅。
+ 贾瑞自觉汗津津的，底下已遗了一滩精。
+ 心中到底不足，又翻过正面来，只见凤姐还招手叫他，他又进去：如此三四次。
+ 到了这次，刚要出镜子来，只见两个人走来，拿铁锁把他套住，拉了就走。
+ 贾瑞叫道：“让我拿了镜子再走——”
+ 只说这句就再不能说话了。
+ 旁边伏侍的人只见他先还拿着镜子照，落下来，仍睁开眼拾在手内，末后镜子掉下来，便不动了。
+ 众人上来看时，已经咽了气了，身子底下冰凉精湿遗下了一大滩精。
+ 这才忙着穿衣抬床， 代儒夫妇哭的死去活来，大骂道士：“是何妖道！”
+ 遂命人架起火来烧那镜子。
+ 只听空中叫道：“谁叫他自己照了正面呢!
+ 你们自己以假为真，为何烧我此镜？”
+ 忽见那镜从房中飞出。
+ 代儒出门看时，却还是那个跛足道人，喊道：“还我的‘风月宝鉴’来！”
+ 说着，抢了镜子，眼看着他飘然去了。
+ 当下代儒没法，只得料理丧事，各处去报。
+ 三日起经，七日发引，寄灵铁槛寺后。
+ 一时贾家众人齐来吊问。
+ 荣府贾赦赠银二十两，贾政也是二十两，宁府贾珍亦有二十两，其馀族中人贫富不一，或一二两、三四两不等。
+ 外又有各同窗家中分资，也凑了二三十两。
+ 代儒家道虽然淡薄，得此帮助，倒也丰丰富富完了此事。
+ 谁知这年冬底，林如海因为身染重疾，写书来特接黛玉回去。
+ 贾母听了，未免又加忧闷，只得忙忙的打点黛玉起身。
+ 宝玉大不自在，争奈父女之情，也不好拦阻。
+ 于是贾母定要贾琏送他去，仍叫带回来。
+ 一应土仪盘费，不消絮说，自然要妥贴的。
+ 作速择了日期，贾琏同着黛玉辞别了众人，带领仆从，登舟往扬州去了。
+ 要知端的，且听下回分解。
+
+ We have shown how Bao-yu was in Dai-yu's room telling her the story of the magic mice; how Bao-chai burst in on them and twitted Bao-yu with his failure to remember the 'green wax' allusion on the night of the Lantern Festival; and how the three of them sat teasing each other with good-humoured banter.
+ Bao-yu had been afraid that by sleeping after her meal Dai-yu would give herself indigestion or suffer from insomnia through being insufficiently tired when she went to bed at night, but Bao-chai's arrival and the lively conversation that followed it banished all Dai-yu's desire to sleep and enabled him to lay aside his anxiety on her behalf.
+ Just then a sudden commotion arose from the direction of Bao-yu's room, and the three of them stopped talking and turned their heads to listen.
+ Dai-yu was the first to speak: 'That's your Nannie quarrelling with Aroma,' she said.
+ 'To think how that poor girl goes out of her way to be nice to the old woman, yet still she manages to find fault with her!
+ She really must be getting senile.'
+ Bao-yu was for rushing over straight away, but Bao-chai restrained him: 'Don't go quarrelling with your Nannie, whatever you do!
+ She's only a silly old woman.
+ You have to indulge her a bit.'
+ 'Of course,' said Bao-yu and ran off.
+ He found Nannie Li leaning on her stick in the middle of the room abusing Aroma: 'Ungrateful little baggage!
+ After all I've done for you – and now when I come to call on you, you lie back there on the kang like a young madam and haven't even the grace to look up and take notice of me!
+ You and your airs and graces!
+ All you ever think about is how to win Bao-yu over to you.
+ Thanks to you he won't listen to me any more.
+ He only does what you say.
+ To think that a cheap bit of goods like you that they only paid a few taels of silver for should come along here and turn the whole place upside down!
+ The best thing they could do with you would be to marry you off to one of the boys and send you packing.
+ Then we'd see how you managed to play the siren and lead young gentlemen astray!'
+ Aroma at first thought that Nannie Li's anger arose solely on account of her failure to get up and welcome her, and had started to excuse herself on that supposition: 'I'm ill, Mrs Li.
+ I've just been sweating.
+ I didn't see you because I had my head under the clothes.'
+ But when the old woman proceeded to go on about leading young men astray and marrying her off to a servant and what not, she felt wronged and humiliated, and in spite of her efforts to restrain them, burst into tears of sheer helplessness.
+ Bao-yu had heard all this, and though too embarrassed to argue, could scarcely refrain from saying a word or two in Aroma's defence:
+ 'She's ill.
+ She's having to take medicine,' he said.
+ 'If you don't believe me, ask any of the maids.'
+ This made the old woman even angrier.
+ 'Oh yes!
+ You stick up for the little hussies!
+ You don't care about me any more!
+ And which of them am I supposed to ask, pray?
+ They will all take your side against me.
+ You are all under Aroma's thumb, every one of you.
+ I know what goes on here, don't think I don't!
+ Well, you can come along with me to see Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship about this.
+ Let them hear how you have cast me off – me that reared you at my own breast – now that you don't need my milk any more, and how you encourage a pack of snotty-nosed little maidservants to amuse themselves at my expense!'
+ She was in tears herself by now, and wept as she cursed.
+ By this time Dai-yu and Bao-chai had also arrived on the scene and did their best to calm her: 'Come, Nannie!
+ Be a bit more forbearing with them!
+ Try to forget about it!'
+ Nannie Li turned towards this new audience and proceeded to pour out her troubles in an interminable gabble in which tea and Snowpink and drinking koumiss mingled incoherently.
+ Xi-feng happened to be in Grandmother Jia's room totting up the day's scores for the final settlement when she heard this hubbub in the rear apartment.
+ She identified it immediately as Nannie Li on the rampage once more, taking out on Bao-yu's unfortunate maids some of the spleen occasioned by her recent gambling losses.
+ At once she hurried over, seized Nannie Li by the hand, and admonished her with smiling briskness: 'Now, Nannie, we mustn't lose our tempers!
+ This is the New Year holiday and Her Old Ladyship has been enjoying herself all day.
+ A person of your years ought to be stopping other people from quarrelling, not upsetting Her Old Ladyship by quarrelling yourself.
+ Surely you know better than that?
+ If anyone has been misbehaving, you have only to tell me and I'll have them beaten for you.
+ Now I've got a nice hot pheasant stew in my room.
+ You just come along with me and you shall have some of that and a drink to go with it!'
+ She proceeded to haul her off the premises, addressing a few words over her shoulder to her maid Felicity as she went: 'Felicity, bring Nannie's stick for her, there's a good girl!
+ And for goodness' sake give her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes with!'
+ Unable to hold her ground, the old Nannie was borne off in Xi-feng's wake, muttering plaintively as she went:
+ 'I wish I was dead, I really do!
+ But I'd sooner forget meself and make a scene like I have today and be shamed in front of you all than put up with the insolence of those shameless little baggages!'
+ Watching this sudden exit, Bao-chai and Dai-yu laughed and clapped their hands: 'How splendid!
+ Just the sort of wind we needed to blow the old woman away!'
+ But Bao-yu shook his head and sighed: 'I wonder what had really upset her.
+ Obviously she only picked on Aroma because she is weak and can't defend herself.
+ I wonder which of the girls had offended her to make her so...'
+ He was interrupted by Skybright: 'Why should any of us want to upset her?
+ Do you think we're mad ?
+ And even if we had offended her, we should be perfectly capable of owning up to it and not letting someone else take the blame!'
+ Aroma grasped Bao-yu's hand and wept: 'Because I offended one old nurse, you have to go offending a whole roomful of people.
+ Don't you think there's been enough trouble already without dragging other people into it?'
+ Seeing how ill she looked and realizing that distress of mind could only aggravate her condition, Bao-yu stifled his indignation and did his best to comfort her so that she might be able to settle down once more and continue sweating out the fever.
+ Her skin was burning to the touch.
+ He decided to stay with her for a while, and lying down beside her, spoke to her soothingly: 'Just try to get better, now!
+ Never mind all that other nonsense!
+ It's of no importance.'
+ Aroma smiled bitterly.
+ 'If I had allowed myself to get upset about things like that, I shouldn't have lasted in this room for five minutes!
+ Still, if we're always going to have this sort of trouble, I think in the long run I just shan't be able to stand any more.
+ You don't seem to realize.
+ You offend people on my account and the next moment you've forgotten all about it.
+ But they haven't.
+ It's all scored up against me; and as soon as something goes a bit wrong, they come out with all these horrible things about me.
+ It makes it so unpleasant for all of us.'
+ She cried weakly as she said this, but presently checked herself for fear of upsetting Bao-yu.
+ Soon the odd-job woman came in with the second infusion of Aroma's medicine.
+ Bao-yu could see that she had started sweating again and told her not to get up, holding the medicine for her himself and supporting her while she drank it.
+ Then he told one of the junior maids to make up a bed for her on the kang.
+ 'Whether you're going to eat there or not,' Aroma said to him, 'you'd better go and sit with Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship for a bit and play a while with the young ladies before you come back here again.
+ I shall be all right if I lie here quietly on my own.'
+ Bao-yu thought he had better do as she said, and after waiting until she had taken off her ornaments and was lying tucked up in bed, he went to the front apartment and took his dinner with Grandmother Jia.
+ After dinner Grandmother Jia wanted to go on playing cards with some of the old stewardesses.
+ Bao-yu, still worrying about Aroma, returned to his own room, where he found her sleeping fitfully.
+ He thought of going to bed himself, but it was still too early.
+ Skybright, Mackerel, Ripple and Emerald had gone off in quest of livelier entertainment, hoping to persuade Grandmother Jia's maids, Faithful and Amber, to join them in a game.
+ Only Musk was left in the outer room, playing Patience under the lamp with a set of dominoes.
+ Bao-yu smiled at her.
+ 'Why don't you go off to join the others?'
+ 'I haven't got any money.'
+ 'There's a great pile of money under the bed.
+ Isn't that enough for you to lose?'
+ 'If we all went off to play,' said Musk, 'who would look after this room?
+ There's her sick inside.
+ And lamps and stoves burning everywhere.
+ The old women were practically dead on their feet after waiting on you all day; I had to let them go and rest.
+ And the girls have been on duty all day, too.
+ You could scarcely grudge them some time off now for amusement.
+ -Which leaves only me to look after the place.'
+ 'Another Aroma,' thought Bao-yu to himself and gave her another smile.
+ 'I'll sit here while you're away.
+ There's nothing to worry about here if you'd like to go.'
+ 'There's even less excuse for going if you are here,' said Musk.
+ 'Why can't we both sit here and talk?'
+ 'What can we do?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Just sitting here talking is going to be rather dull.
+ I know!
+ You were saying this morning that your head was itchy.
+ As you haven't got anything else to do now, I'll comb it for you.'
+ 'All right,' said Musk, and fetching her toilet-box with the mirror on top she proceeded to take off her ornaments and shake her hair out.
+ Bao-yu took a comb and began to comb it for her.
+ But he had not drawn it more than four or five times through her hair, when Skybright came bursting in to get some more money.
+ Seeing the two of them together, she smiled sarcastically: 'Fancy!
+ Doing her hair already – before you've even drunk the marriage-cup!'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'Come here!
+ I'll do yours for you too, if you like!'
+ 'I wouldn't presume, thanks all the same!'
+ She took the money, and with a swish of the door-blind was gone.
+ Bao-yu was standing behind Musk as she sat looking at herself in the mirror.
+ Their eyes met in the glass and they both laughed.
+ 'Of all the girls in this room she has the sharpest tongue,' said Bao-yu.
+ Musk signalled to him agitatedly in the glass with her hand.
+ Bao-yu took her meaning; but it was too late.
+ With another swish of the door-blind, Skybright had already darted in again.
+ 'Oh!
+ Sharp-tongued, am I?
+ Perhaps you'd like to say a bit more on that subject?'
+ 'Get along with you!' laughed Musk.
+ 'Don't go starting any more arguments!'
+ 'And don't you go sticking up for him!' said Skybright gaily.
+ 'I know what you're up to, you two.
+ You don't deceive me with your goings-on.
+ I'll have something to say to you about this when I get back later.
+ Just wait until I've won some of my money back!'
+ With that she darted off once more.
+ When Bao-yu had finished combing her hair, he asked Musk to help him get to bed – very quietly, so as not to disturb Aroma.
+ And that ends our account of that day.
+ First thing next morning Aroma awoke to find that she had sweated heavily during the night and that her body felt very much lighter; but she would take only a little congee for breakfast in order not to tax her system too soon.
+ Bao-yu saw that there was no further cause for concern, and after his meal drifted off to Aunt Xue's apartment in search of amusement.
+ Now this was the prime of the year, when the schoolroom is closed for the New Year holiday and the use of the needle is forbidden to maidenly fingers throughout the whole of the Lucky Month, so that boys and girls alike are all agreeably unemployed, and Bao-yu's half-brother Jia Huan, on holiday like all the rest, had also drifted over to Aunt Xue's place in search of amusement.
+ He found Bao-chai, Caltrop and Oriole there playing a game of Racing Go, and after watching them for a bit, wanted to play too.
+ Bao-chai had always behaved towards Jia Huan in exactly the same way as she did towards Bao-yu and made no distinctions between them.
+ Consequently, when he asked to play, she at once made a place for him and invited him to join them on the kang.
+ They played for stakes of ten cash each a game.
+ Jia Huan won the first game and felt very pleased.
+ But then, as luck would have it, he lost several times in a row and began to get somewhat rattled.
+ It was now his turn to throw the dice.
+ He needed seven to win, and if he threw anything less than seven, the dice would go next to Oriole, who needed only three.
+ He hurled them from the pot with all his might.
+ One of them rested at two.
+ The other continued rather erratically to roll about.
+ 'Ace!
+ Ace!
+ Ace!' cried Oriole, clapping her hands.
+ 'Six!
+ Seven!
+ Eight!' shouted Jia Huan glaring at Oriole and commanding the die to perform the impossible.
+ But the perverse wanderer finally came to rest with the ace uppermost, making a grand total of three.
+ With the speed of desperation Jia Huan reached out and snatched it up, claiming, as he did so, that it was a six.
+ 'It was an ace,' said Oriole, 'as plain as anything!'
+ Bao-chai could see that Jia Huan was rattled, and darting a sharp look at Oriole, commanded her to yield.
+ 'You grow more unmannerly every day,' she told her.
+ 'Surely you don't think one of the masters would cheat you?
+ Come on!
+ Put your money down!'
+ Oriole smarted with the injustice of this, but her mistress had ordered it, so she had to pay up without arguing.
+ She could not, however, forbear a few rebellious mutterings: 'Huh!
+ One of the masters!
+ Cheating a maid out of a few coppers!
+ Even I should be ashamed!
+ Look how much money Bao-yu lost when he was playing with us the other day, yet he didn't mind.
+ Even when some of the maids took all he had left, he only laughed...'
+ She would have gone on, but Bao-chai checked her angrily.
+ 'How can I hope to compete with Bao-yu?' said Jia Huan, beginning to blubber.
+ 'You're all afraid of him.
+ You all take his part against me because I'm only a concubine's son.'
+ Bao-chai was shocked: 'Please don't say things like that, Cousin!
+ You'll make yourself ridiculous.'
+ Once more she rebuked Oriole.
+ Just at that moment Bao-yu walked in, and seeing the state that Jia Huan was in, asked him what was the matter.
+ But Jia Huan dared not say anything.
+ Bao-chai, familiar with the state of affairs, normal in other families, which places the younger brother in fearful subjection to the elder, assumed that Jia Huan was afraid of Bao-yu.
+ She was unaware that Bao-yu positively disliked anyone being afraid of him.
+ 'We are both equally subject to our parents' control,' he would say of himself and Jia Huan.
+ 'Why should I create a greater distance between us by trying to control him myself – especially when I am the wife's son and he is the concubine's?
+ People already talk behind our backs, even when I do nothing.
+ It would be ten times worse if I were to start bossing him about.'
+ But there was another, zanier, notion which contributed to this attitude.
+ Let us try to explain it.
+ Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls.
+ There were his sisters Yuan-chun and Tan-chun, his cousins of the same surname Ying-chun and Xi-chun, and his distaff-cousins Shi Xiang-yun, Lin Dai-yu and Xue Bao-chai.
+ As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings.
+ To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well not have existed.
+ Only in the case of his father, uncles and brother, where rudeness and disobedience were expressly forbidden by the teachings of Confucius, did he make an exception – and even then the allowances he made in respect of the fraternal bond were extremely perfunctory.
+ It certainly never occurred to him that his own maleness placed him under any obligation to set an example to the younger males in his clan.
+ The latter – Jia Huan included – reciprocated with a healthy disrespect only slightly tempered by their fear of his doting grandmother.
+ But Bao-chai was ignorant of all this; and fearing that Bao-yu might embarrass them all by delivering a big brother's telling-off, she hastened to Jia Huan's defence.
+ 'What are you crying about in the middle of the New Year holidays?' said Bao-yu to Jia Huan, ignoring Bao-chai's excuses.
+ 'If you don't like it here, why don't you go somewhere else?
+ I think your brains must have been addled by too much study.
+ Can't you see that if there is something you don't like, there must be something else you do like, and that all you've got to do is leave the one and go after the other?
+ Not hang on to it and cry.
+ Crying won't make it any better.
+ You came here to enjoy yourself, didn't you?
+ And now you're here you're miserable, right?
+ Then the thing to do is to go somewhere else, isn't it?'
+ In the face of such an argument Jia Huan could not very well remain.
+ When he got back to his own apartment, his real mother, 'Aunt' Zhao (Lady Wang was his mother only in name) observed the dejected state he was in.
+ 'Who's been making a doormat of you this time?' she asked him, and, obtaining no immediate reply, asked again.
+ 'I've just been playing at Bao-chai's.
+ Oriole cheated me and Bao-yu turned me out.'
+ Aunt Zhao spat contemptuously: 'Nasty little brat!
+ That's what comes of getting above yourself.
+ Who asked you to go playing with that lot?
+ You could have gone anywhere else to play.
+ Asking for trouble!'
+ Just at that moment Xi-feng happened to be passing by outside, and hearing what she said, shouted back at her through the window: 'What sort of language is that to be using in the middle of the New Year holiday?
+ He's only a child.
+ He hasn't done anything terrible.
+ What do you want to go carrying on at him like that for?
+ No matter where he's been, Sir Zheng and Lady Wang are quite capable of looking after him themselves.
+ There's no cause for you to go biting his head off!
+ After all, he is one of the masters.
+ If he's misbehaved himself, you should leave the telling-off to those whose job it is.
+ It's no business of yours.
+ Huan!
+ Come out here!
+ Come and play with me!'
+ Jia Huan had always been afraid of Xi-feng – more even than he was of Lady Wang – and hearing her call him, came running out immediately.
+ Aunt Zhao dared not say a word.
+ 'You're a poor-spirited creature!'
+ Xi-feng said to him.
+ 'How many times have I told you that you can eat and drink and play with any of the boys and girls you like?
+ But instead of doing as I say, you hang about with these other people and let them warp your mind for you and fill it up with mischief.
+ You've no self-respect, that's your trouble.
+ Can't keep away from the gutter.
+ You insist on making yourself disagreeable and then you complain that people are prejudiced against you!
+ Fancy making a fuss like that about losing a few coppers!
+ How much did you lose?'
+ 'One or two hundred,' Jia Huan muttered abjectly.
+ 'All this fuss about one or two hundred cash!
+ And you one of the masters!'
+ She turned to Felicity.
+ 'Go and get a string of cash for him, Felicity, and take him round to the back where Miss Ying and the girls are playing!
+ And if I have any more of this nonsense from you in future, young man,' she went on to Jia Huan, 'I'll first give you a good hiding myself and then send someone to tell the school about you and see if they can knock a bit of sense into you!
+ It sets your Cousin Lian's teeth on edge to see you so wanting in self-respect.
+ He'd have disembowelled you by now I shouldn't wonder, if I hadn't kept his hands off you!
+ Now be off with you!'
+ 'Yes,' said Jia Huan meekly and went off with Felicity.
+ When he had got his money, he took himself off to play with Ying-chun and the girls.
+ And there we must leave him.
+ While Bao-yu was enjoying himself with Bao-chai, a servant announced that Miss Shi had arrived, and he hurriedly got up to go.
+ 'Wait!' said Bao-chai.
+ 'Let's go and see her together!'
+ She got down from the kang as she said this, and accompanied him round to Grandmother Jia's apartment.
+ Shi Xiang-yun was already there, laughing and chattering away nineteen to the dozen, but rose to greet them as they entered.
+ Dai-yu was there too.
+ 'Where have you been?' she asked Bao-yu.
+ 'Bao-chai's.'
+ 'I see' (very frostily).
+ 'I thought something must have been detaining you.
+ Otherwise you would have come flying here long since.'
+ 'Is one only allowed to play with you,' said Bao-yu, 'and keep you amused?
+ I just happened to be visiting her.
+ Why should you start making remarks like that?'
+ 'How thoroughly disagreeable you are!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'What do I care whether you go to see her or not?
+ And I'm sure I never asked to be kept amused.
+ From now on you can ignore me completely, as far as I'm concerned.'
+ With that she went back to her own room in a temper.
+ Bao-yu came running after.
+ 'What on earth are you upset about this time?
+ Even if I've said anything wrong, you ought, out of simple courtesy, to sit and talk with the others for a bit!'
+ 'Are you telling me how to behave?'
+ 'Of course not.
+ It's just that you destroy your health by carrying on in this way.'
+ 'That's my affair.
+ If I choose to die, I don't see that it's any concern of yours.'
+ 'Oh, really, really!
+ Here we are in the middle of the New Year holiday, and you have to start talking about death!'
+ 'I don't care.
+ I'll talk about death if I like, Death!
+ Death!
+ Death!
+ I'm going to die this minute.
+ If you're so afraid of death, I wish you long life.
+ A hundred years, will that satisfy you?'
+ 'Do you think I'm afraid of dying when all you will do is quarrel?
+ I wish I were dead.
+ It would be a relief.'
+ 'Exactly!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If I were to die, it would be a relief from all this quarrelling!'
+ 'I said if I were to die,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Don't twist my words.
+ It isn't fair.'
+ Just then Bao-chai came hurrying in.
+ 'Cousin Shi's waiting for you!'
+ She took hold of Bao-yu's hand and pulled him after her, to the great mortification of Dai-yu, who sat with her face to the window and shed tears of pure rage.
+ After about as long as it would take to drink two cups of tea, Bao-yu came back again.
+ During his absence Dai-yu's sobs seemed to have redoubled in intensity.
+ Seeing the state she was in he realized that it would need careful handling and began turning over in his mind all kinds of soft and soothing things to coax her with.
+ But before he could get his mouth open, she had anticipated him:
+ 'What have you come for this time?
+ Why can't you just leave me here to die in peace?
+ After all, you've got a new playmate now – one who can read and write and compose and laugh and talk to you much better than I can.
+ Oh yes, and drag you off to be amused if there's any danger of your getting upset!
+ I really can't imagine what you have come back here for!'
+ '"Old friends are best friends and close kin are kindest,"'said Bao-yu, coming over to where she sat and speaking very quietly.
+ 'You're too intelligent not to know that.
+ Even a simpleton like me knows that much!
+ Take kinship first: you are my cousin on Father's side; Cousin Bao is only a mother-cousin.
+ That makes you much the closer kin.
+ And as for length of acquaintance: it was you who came here first.
+ You and I have practically grown up together – eaten at the same table, even slept in the same bed.
+ Compared with you she's practially a new arrival.
+ Why should I ever be any less close to you because of her?'
+ 'Whatever do you take me for?
+ Do you think I want you to be any less close to her because of me?
+ It's the way I feel that makes me the way I am.'
+ 'And it's the way I feel,' said Bao-yu, 'that makes me the way I am!
+ Do you mean to tell me that you know your own feelings about me but still don't know what my feelings are about you?'
+ Dai-yu lowered her head and made no reply.
+ After a pause she said:
+ 'You complain that whatever you do people are always getting angry with you.
+ You don't seem to realize how much you provoke them by what you do.
+ Take today, for instance.
+ It's obviously colder today than it was yesterday.
+ Then why of all days should you choose today to leave your blue cape off?'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'I didn't.
+ I was wearing it this morning the same as usual; but when you started quarrelling just now, I got into such a sweat that I had to take it off.'
+ 'Next thing you'll be catching a cold,' said Dai-yu with a sigh, 'and then Heaven knows what grumblings and scoldings there will be!'
+ Just then Xiang-yun burst in on them and reproved them smilingly for abandoning her: 'Couthin Bao, Couthin Lin: you can thee each other every day.
+ It'th not often I get a chanthe to come here; yet now I have come, you both ignore me!'
+ Dai-yu burst out laughing: 'Lisping doesn't seem to make you any less talkative!
+ Listen to you: "Couthin!"
+ "Couthin!"
+ Presently, when you're playing Racing Go, you'll be all "thicktheth" and "theventh" !'
+ 'You'd better not imitate her,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'It'll get to be a habit.
+ You'll be lisping yourself before you know where you are.'
+ 'How you do pick on one!' said Xiang-yun.
+ 'Always finding fault.
+ Even if you are tho perfect yourthelf, I don't thee why you have to go making fun of everyone elthe.
+ But I can show you thomeone you won't dare to find fault with.
+ I shall certainly think you a wonder if you do.'
+ 'Who's that?' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If you can find any shortcomings in Cousin Bao-chai', said Xiang-yun, 'you must be very good indeed.'
+ 'Oh her,' said Dai-yu coldly.
+ 'I wondered whom you could mean.
+ I should never dare to find fault with her.'
+ But before she could say any more, Bao-yu cut in and hurriedly changed the subject.
+ 'I shall never be a match for you as long as I live,' Xiang-yun said to Dai-yu with a disarming smile.
+ 'All I can thay ith that I hope you marry a lithping huthband, tho that you have "ithee-withee" "ithee-withee" in your earth every minute of the day.
+ Ah, Holy Name!
+ I think I can thee that blethed day already before my eyeth!'
+ Bao-yu could not help laughing; but Xiang-yun had already turned and fled.
+ If you wish to know the conclusion of this scene, you must read the following chapter.
+
+ 话说宝玉在黛玉房中说“耗子精”，宝钗撞来，讽刺宝玉元宵不知“绿蜡”之典，三人正在房中互相取笑。
+ 那宝玉恐黛玉饭后贪眠，一时存了食，或夜间走了困，身体不好；幸而宝钗走来，大家谈笑，那黛玉方不欲睡，自己才放了心。
+ 忽听他房中嚷起来，大家侧耳听了一听，黛玉先笑道：“这是你妈妈和袭人叫唤呢。
+ 那袭人待他也罢了，你妈妈再要认真排揎他，可见老背晦了。”
+ 宝玉忙欲赶过去，宝钗一把拉住道：“你别和你妈妈吵才是呢!
+ 他是老糊涂了，倒要让他一步儿的是。”
+ 宝玉道：“我知道了。”
+ 说毕走来。
+ 只见李嬷嬷拄着拐杖，在当地骂袭人：“忘了本的小娼妇儿!
+ 我抬举起你来，这会子我来了，你大模厮样儿的躺在炕上，见了我也不理一理儿。
+ 一心只想妆狐媚子哄宝玉，哄的宝玉不理我，只听你的话。
+ 你不过是几两银子买了来的小丫头子罢咧，这屋里你就作起耗来了!
+ 好不好的，拉出去配一个小子，看你还妖精似的哄人不哄！”
+ 袭人先只道李嬷嬷不过因他躺着生气，少不得分辩说：“病了，才出汗，蒙着头，原没看见你老人家。”
+ 后来听见他说“哄宝玉”，又说“配小子”，由不得又羞又委屈，禁不住哭起来了。
+ 宝玉虽听了这些话，也不好怎样，少不得替他分辩，说“病了，吃药”，又说：“你不信，只问别的丫头。”
+ 李嬷嬷听了这话，越发气起来了，说道：“你只护着那起狐狸，那里还认得我了呢?
+ 叫我问谁去?
+ 谁不帮着你呢?
+ 谁不是袭人拿下马来的?
+ 我都知道那些事!
+ 我只和你到老太太、太太跟前去讲讲：把你奶了这么大，到如今吃不着奶了，把我扔在一边儿，逞着丫头们要我的强！”
+ 一面说，一面哭。
+ 彼时黛玉宝钗等也过来劝道：“妈妈，你老人家担待他们些就完了。”
+ 李嬷嬷见他二人来了，便诉委屈，将当日吃茶，茜雪出去，和昨日酥酪等事，唠唠叨叨说个不了。
+ 可巧凤姐正在上房算了输赢帐，听见后面一片声嚷，便知是李嬷嬷老病发了，又值他今儿输了钱，迁怒于人，排揎宝玉的丫头。
+ 便连忙赶过来拉了李嬷嬷，笑道：“妈妈别生气。
+ 大节下，老太太刚喜欢了一日。
+ 你是个老人家，别人吵，你还要管他们才是；难道你倒不知规矩，在这里嚷起来，叫老太太生气不成?
+ 你说谁不好，我替你打他。
+ 我屋里烧的滚热的野鸡，快跟了我喝酒去罢。”
+ 一面说，一面拉着走，又叫：“丰儿，替你李奶奶拿着拐棍子、擦眼泪的绢子。”
+ 那李嬷嬷脚不沾地，跟了凤姐儿走了，一面还说：“我也不要这老命了，索性今儿没了规矩，闹一场子，讨了没脸，强似受那些娼妇的气！”
+ 后面宝钗黛玉见凤姐儿这般，都拍手笑道：“亏他这一阵风来，把个老婆子撮了去了。”
+ 宝玉点头叹道：“这又不知是那里的帐，只拣软的欺负!
+ 又不知是那个姑娘得罪了，上在他帐上了。”
+ 一句未完，晴雯在旁说道：“谁又没疯了，得罪他做什么?
+ 既得罪了他，就有本事承任，犯不着带累别人！”
+ 袭人一面哭，一面拉着宝玉道：“为我得罪了一个老奶奶，你这会子又为我得罪这些人，这还不够我受的，还只是拉扯人！”
+ 宝玉见他这般病势，又添了这些烦恼，连忙忍气吞声，安慰他仍旧睡下出汗。
+ 又见他汤烧火热，自己守着他，歪在旁边劝他：“只养病，别想那些没要紧的事。”
+ 袭人冷笑道：“要为这些事生气，这屋里一刻还住得了?
+ 但只是天长日久，尽着这么闹，可叫人怎么过呢!
+ 你只顾一时为我得罪了人，他们都记在心里，遇着坎儿，说的好说不好听的，大家什么意思呢？”
+ 一面说，一面禁不住流泪，又怕宝玉烦恼，只得又勉强忍着。
+ 一时杂使的老婆子端了二和药来。
+ 宝玉见他才有点汗儿，便不叫他起来，自己端着给他就枕上吃了，即令小丫鬟们铺炕。
+ 袭人道：“你吃饭不吃饭，到底老太太、太太跟前坐一会子，和姑娘们玩一会子，再回来。
+ 我就静静的躺一躺也好啊。”
+ 宝玉听说，只得依他，看着他去了簪环躺下，才去上屋里跟着贾母吃饭。
+ 饭毕，贾母犹欲和那几个老管家的嬷嬷斗牌。
+ 宝玉惦记袭人，便回至房中，见袭人朦胧睡去。
+ 自己要睡，天气尚早。
+ 彼时晴雯、绮霞、秋纹、碧痕都寻热闹，找鸳鸯、琥珀等耍戏去了。
+ 见麝月一人在外间屋里灯下抹骨牌。
+ 宝玉笑道：“你怎么不和他们去？”
+ 麝月道：“没有钱。”
+ 宝玉道：“床底下堆着钱，还不够你输的？”
+ 麝月道：“都乐去了，这屋子交给谁呢?
+ 那一个又病了，满屋里上头是灯，下头是火，那些老婆子们都‘老天拔地’，伏侍了一天，也该叫他们歇歇儿了。
+ 小丫头们也伏侍了一天，这会子还不叫玩玩儿去吗?
+ 所以我在这里看着。”
+ 宝玉听了这话，公然又是一个袭人了。
+ 因笑道：“我在这里坐着，你放心去罢。”
+ 麝月道：“你既在这里，越发不用去了。
+ 咱们两个说话儿不好？”
+ 宝玉道：“咱们两个做什么呢?
+ 怪没意思的。
+ 也罢了，早起你说头上痒痒，这会子没什么事，我替你篦头罢。”
+ 麝月听了道：“使得。”
+ 说着，将文具镜匣搬来，卸去钗镮，打开头发，宝玉拿了篦子替他篦。
+ 只篦了三五下儿，见晴雯忙忙走进来取钱，一见他两个，便冷笑道：“哦!
+ 交杯盏儿还没吃，就上了头了！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你来，我也替你篦篦。”
+ 晴雯道：“我没这么大造化。”
+ 说着，拿了钱，摔了帘子，就出去了。
+ 宝玉在麝月身后，麝月对镜，二人在镜内相视而笑。
+ 宝玉笑着道：“满屋里就只是他磨牙。”
+ 麝月听说，忙向镜中摆手儿。
+ 宝玉会意，忽听“唿”一声帘子响，晴雯又跑进来问道：“我怎么磨牙了?
+ 咱们倒得说说！”
+ 麝月笑道：“你去你的罢，又来拌嘴儿了。”
+ 晴雯也笑道：“你又护着他了!
+ 你们瞒神弄鬼的，打量我都不知道呢!
+ 等我捞回本儿来再说。”
+ 说着，一径去了。
+ 这里宝玉通了头，命麝月悄悄的伏侍他睡下，不肯惊动袭人。
+ 一宿无话。
+ 次日清晨，袭人已是夜间出了汗，觉得轻松了些，只吃些米汤静养。
+ 宝玉才放了心，因饭后走到薛姨妈这边来闲逛。
+ 彼时正月内，学房中放年学，闺阁中忌针黹，都是闲时，因贾环也过来玩。
+ 正遇见宝钗、香菱、莺儿三个赶围棋作耍，贾环见了也要玩。
+ 宝钗素日看他也如宝玉，并没他意，今儿听他要玩，让他上来，坐在一处玩。
+ 一注十个钱。
+ 头一回，自己赢了，心中十分喜欢。
+ 谁知后来接连输了几盘，就有些着急。
+ 赶着这盘正该自己掷骰子，若掷个七点便赢了，若掷个六点，下该莺儿掷个三点就赢了。
+ 因拿起骰子来狠命一掷，一个坐定了二，那一个乱转。
+ 莺儿拍着手儿叫“么！”
+ 贾环便瞪着眼，“六！” “七！” “八！” 混叫。
+ 那骰子偏生转出么来。
+ 贾环急了，伸手便抓起骰子来，就要拿钱，说是个六点。
+ 莺儿便说：“明明是个么！”
+ 宝钗见贾环急了，便瞅了莺儿一眼，说道：“越大越没规矩!
+ 难道爷们还赖你?
+ 还不放下钱来呢。”
+ 莺儿满心委屈，见姑娘说，不敢出声，只得放下钱来，口内嘟囔说：“一个做爷的，还赖我们这几个钱，连我也瞧不起!
+ 前儿和宝二爷玩，他输了那些也没着急，下剩的钱还是几个小丫头子们一抢，他一笑就罢了。”
+ 宝钗不等说完，连忙喝住了。
+ 贾环道：“我拿什么比宝玉?
+ 你们怕他，都和他好，都欺负我不是太太养的！”
+ 说着便哭。
+ 宝钗忙劝他：“好兄弟，快别说这话，人家笑话。”
+ 又骂莺儿。
+ 正值宝玉走来，见了这般景况，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 贾环不敢则声。
+ 宝钗素知他家规矩，凡做兄弟的怕哥哥。
+ 却不知那宝玉是不要人怕他的。
+ 他想着：“兄弟们一并都有父母教训，何必我多事，反生疏了。
+ 况且我是正出，他是庶出，饶这样看待，还有人背后谈论，还禁得辖治了他？”
+ 更有个呆意思存在心里。
+ 你道是何呆意?
+ 因他自幼姐妹丛中长大，亲姊妹有元春探春，叔伯的有迎春惜春，亲戚中又有湘云、黛玉、宝钗等人，他便料定天地间灵淑之气，只钟于女子，男儿们不过是些渣滓浊沫而已。
+ 因此把一切男子都看成浊物，可有可无。
+ 只是父亲、伯叔、兄弟之伦，因是圣人遗训，不敢违忤，所以弟兄间亦不过尽其大概就罢了，并不想自己是男子，须要为子弟之表率。
+ 是以贾环等都不甚怕他，只因怕贾母不依，才只得让他三分。
+ 现今宝钗生怕宝玉教训他，倒没意思，便连忙替贾环掩饰。
+ 宝玉道：“大正月里，哭什么?
+ 这里不好，到别处玩去。
+ 你天天念书，倒念糊涂了。
+ 譬如这件东西不好，横竖那一件好，就舍了这件取那件。
+ 难道你守着这件东西哭会子就好了不成?
+ 你原是要取乐儿，倒招的自己烦恼。
+ 还不快去呢！”
+ 贾环听了，只得回来。
+ 赵姨娘见他这般，因问：“是那里垫了踹窝来了？”
+ 一问不答，再问时，贾环便说：“同宝姐姐玩来着。
+ 莺儿欺负我，赖我的钱； 宝玉哥哥撵了我来了。”
+ 赵姨娘啐道：“谁叫你上高台盘了?
+ 下流没脸的东西!
+ 那里玩不得?
+ 谁叫你跑了去讨这没意思？”
+ 正说着，可巧凤姐在窗外过，都听到耳内，便隔着窗户说道：“大正月里，怎么了?
+ 兄弟们小孩子家，一半点儿错了，你只教导他，说这样话做什么?
+ 凭他怎么着，还有老爷太太管他呢，就大口家啐他?
+ 他现是主子，不好，横竖有教导他的人，与你什么相干?
+ 环兄弟，出来!
+ 跟我玩去。”
+ 贾环素日怕凤姐比怕王夫人更甚，听见叫他，便赶忙出来。
+ 赵姨娘也不敢出声。
+ 凤姐向贾环道：“你也是个没性气的东西呦!
+ 时常说给你：要吃，要喝，要玩，你爱和那个姐姐妹妹哥哥嫂子玩，就和那个玩。
+ 你总不听我的话，倒叫这些人教的你歪心邪意、狐媚魇道的。
+ 自己又不尊重，要往下流里走，安着坏心，还只怨人家偏心呢。
+ 输了几个钱，就这么个样儿！”
+ 因问贾环：“你输了多少钱？”
+ 贾环见问，只得诺诺的说道：“输了一二百钱。”
+ 凤姐啐道：“亏了你还是个爷，输了一二百钱就这么着！”
+ 回头叫：“丰儿，去取一吊钱来； 姑娘们都在后头玩呢，把他送了去。
+ 你明儿再这么狐媚子，我先打了你，再叫人告诉学里，皮不揭了你的!
+ 为你这不尊贵，你哥哥恨得牙痒痒，不是我拦着，窝心脚把你的肠子还窝出来呢！”
+ 喝令：“去罢！”
+ 贾环诺诺的，跟了丰儿得了钱，自去和迎春等玩去，不在话下。
+ 且说宝玉正和宝钗玩笑，忽见人说：“史大姑娘来了。”
+ 宝玉听了，连忙就走。
+ 宝钗笑道：“等着，咱们两个一齐儿走，瞧瞧他去。”
+ 说着，下了炕，和宝玉来至贾母这边。
+ 只见史湘云大说大笑的，见了他两个，忙站起来问好。
+ 正值黛玉在旁，因问宝玉：“打那里来？”
+ 宝玉便说：“打宝姐姐那里来。”
+ 黛玉冷笑道：“我说呢!
+ 亏了绊住，不然，早就飞了来了。”
+ 宝玉道：“只许和你玩，替你解闷儿；不过偶然到他那里，就说这些闲话。”
+ 黛玉道：“好没意思的话!
+ 去不去，管我什么事?
+ 又没叫你替我解闷儿!
+ 还许你从此不理我呢！”
+ 说着，便赌气回房去了。
+ 宝玉忙跟了来，问道：“好好儿的又生气了!
+ 就是我说错了，你到底也还坐坐儿，合别人说笑一会子啊？”
+ 黛玉道：“你管我呢！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我自然不敢管你，只是你自己遭塌坏了身子呢。”
+ 黛玉道：“我作践了我的身子，我死我的，与你何干？”
+ 宝玉道：“何苦来?
+ 大正月里，‘死’了‘活’了的。”
+ 黛玉道：“偏说‘死’!
+ 我这会子就死!
+ 你怕死，你长命百岁的活着，好不好？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“要像只管这么闹，我还怕死吗?
+ 倒不如死了干净。”
+ 黛玉忙道：“正是了，要是这样闹，不如死了干净！”
+ 宝玉道：“我说自家死了干净，别错听了话，又赖人。”
+ 正说着，宝钗走来，说：“史大妹妹等你呢。”
+ 说着，便拉宝玉走了。
+ 这黛玉越发气闷，只向窗前流泪。
+ 没两盏茶时，宝玉仍来了。
+ 黛玉见了，越发抽抽搭搭的哭个不住。
+ 宝玉见了这样，知难挽回，打叠起百样的款语温言来劝慰。
+ 不料自己没张口，只听黛玉先说道：“你又来作什么?
+ 死活凭我去罢了!
+ 横竖如今有人和你玩：比我又会念，又会作，又会写，又会说会笑，又怕你生气，拉了你去哄着你。
+ 你又来作什么呢？”
+ 宝玉听了，忙上前悄悄的说道：“你这么个明白人，难道连‘亲不隔疏，后不僭先’也不知道?
+ 我虽糊涂，却明白这两句话。
+ 头一件，咱们是姑舅姐妹，宝姐姐是两姨姐妹，论亲戚也比你远。
+ 第二件，你先来，咱们两个一桌吃，一床睡，从小儿一处长大的，他是才来的，岂有个为他远你的呢？”
+ 黛玉啐道：“我难道叫你远他?
+ 我成了什么人了呢?
+ 我为的是我的心！”
+ 宝玉道：“我也为的是我的心。
+ 你难道就知道你的心，不知道我的心不成？”
+ 黛玉听了，低头不语，半日说道：“你只怨人行动嗔怪你，你再不知道你怄的人难受。
+ 就拿今日天气比，分明冷些，怎么你倒脱了青肷披风呢？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“何尝没穿?
+ 见你一恼，我一暴燥，就脱了。”
+ 黛玉叹道：“回来伤了风，又该讹着吵吃的了。”
+ 二人正说着，只见湘云走来，笑道：“爱哥哥，林姐姐，你们天天一处玩，我好容易来了，也不理我理儿。”
+ 黛玉笑道：“偏是咬舌子爱说话，连个‘二’哥哥也叫不上来，只是‘爱’哥哥‘爱’哥哥的。
+ 回来赶围棋儿，又该你闹‘么爱三’了。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你学惯了，明儿连你还咬起来呢。”
+ 湘云道：“他再不放人一点儿，专会挑人。
+ 就算你比世人好，也不犯见一个打趣一个。
+ 我指出个人来，你敢挑他，我就服你。”
+ 黛玉便问：“是谁？”
+ 湘云道：“你敢挑宝姐姐的短处，就算你是个好的。”
+ 黛玉听了冷笑道：“我当是谁，原来是他。
+ 我可那里敢挑他呢？”
+ 宝玉不等说完，忙用话分开。
+ 湘云笑道：“这一辈子我自然比不上你。
+ 我只保佑着明儿得一个咬舌儿林姐夫，时时刻刻你可听‘爱’呀‘厄’的去!
+ 阿弥陀佛，那时才现在我眼里呢！”
+ 说的宝玉一笑，湘云忙回身跑了。
+ 要知端详，且听下回分解。
+
+ By the time the thirty-three days' convalescence had ended, not only were Bao-yu's health and strength completely restored, but even the burn-marks on his face had vanished, and he was allowed to move back into the Garden.
+ It may be recalled that when Bao-yu's sickness was at its height, it had been found necessary to call in Jia Yun with a number of pages under his command to take turns in watching over him.
+ Crimson was there too at that time, having been brought in with the other maids from his apartment.
+ During those few days she and Jia Yun therefore had ample opportunity of seeing each other, and a certain familiarity began to grow up between them.
+ Crimson noticed that Jia Yun was often to be seen sporting a handkerchief very much like the one she had lost.
+ She nearly asked him about it, but in the end was too shy.
+ Then, after the monk's visit, the presence of the menfolk was no longer required and Jia Yun went back to his tree-planting.
+ Though Crimson could still not dismiss the matter entirely from her mind, she did not ask anyone about it for fear of arousing their suspicions.
+ A day or two after their return to Green Delights, Crimson was sitting in her room, still brooding over this handkerchief business, when a voice outside the window inquired whether she was in.
+ Peeping through an eyelet in the casement she recognized Melilot, a little maid who belonged to the same apartment as herself.
+ 'Yes, I'm in,' she said.
+ 'Come inside!'
+ Little Melilot came bounding in and sat down on the bed with a giggle.
+ 'I'm in luck!' she said.
+ 'I was washing some things in the yard when Bao-yu asked for some tea to be taken round to Miss Lin's for him and Miss Aroma gave me the job of taking it.
+ When I got there, Miss Lin had just been given some money by Her Old Ladyship and was sharing it out among her maids, so when she saw me she just said "Here you are!" and gave me two big handfuls of it.
+ I've no idea how much it is.
+ Will you look after it for me, please?'
+ She undid her handkerchief and poured out a shower of coins.
+ Crimson carefully counted them for her and put them away in a safe place.
+ 'What's been the matter with you lately?' said Melilot.
+ 'If you ask me, I think you ought to go home for a day or two and call in a doctor.
+ I expect you need some medicine.'
+ 'Silly!' said Crimson.
+ 'I'm perfectly all right.
+ What should I want to go home for?'
+ 'I know what, then,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Lin's very weakly.
+ She's always taking medicine.
+ Why don't you ask her to give you some of hers?
+ It would probably do just as well.'
+ 'Oh, nonsense!' said Crimson.
+ 'You can't take other people's medicines just like that!'
+ 'Well, you can't go on in this way,' said Melilot, 'never eating or drinking properly.
+ What will become of you?
+ 'Who cares?' said Crimson.
+ 'The sooner I'm dead the better!'
+ 'You shouldn't say such things,' said Melilot, 'It isn't right.'
+ 'Why not?' said Crimson.
+ 'How do you know what is on my mind?'
+ Melilot shook her head sympathetically.
+ 'I can't say I really blame you,' she said.
+ 'Things are very difficult here at times.
+ Take yesterday, for example.
+ Her Old Ladyship said that as Bao-yu was better now and there was to be a thanksgiving for his recovery, all those who had the trouble of nursing him during his illness were to be rewarded according to their grades.
+ Well now, I can understand the very young ones like me not being included, but why should they leave you out?
+ I felt really sorry for you when I heard that they'd left you out.
+ Aroma, of course, you'd expect to get more than anyone else.
+ I don't blame her at all.
+ In fact, I think it's owing to her.
+ Let's be honest: none of us can compare with Aroma.
+ I mean, even if she didn't always take so much trouble over everything, no one would want to quarrel about her having a bigger share.
+ What makes me so angry is that people like Skybright and Mackerel should count as top grade when everyone knows they're only put there to curry favour with Bao-yu.
+ Doesn't it make you angry?'
+ 'I don't see much point in getting angry,' said Crimson.
+ 'You know what they said about the mile-wide marquee: "Even the longest party must have an end"?
+ Well, none of us is here for ever, you know.
+ Another four or five years from now when we've each gone our different ways it won't matter any longer what all the rest of us are doing.'
+ Little Melilot found this talk of parting and impermanence vaguely affecting and a slight moisture was to be observed about her eyes.
+ She thought shame to cry without good cause, however, and masked her emotion with a smile: 'That's perfectly true.
+ Only yesterday Bao-yu was going on about all the things he's going to do to his rooms and the clothes he's going to have made and everything, just as if he had a hundred or two years ahead of him with nothing to do but kill time in.'
+ Crimson laughed scornfully, though whether at Melilot's simplicity or at Bao-yu's improvidence is unclear, since just as she was about to comment, a little maid came running in, so young that her hair was still done up in two little girl's horns.
+ She was carrying some patterns and sheets of paper.
+ 'You're to copy out these two patterns.'
+ She threw them in Crimson's direction and straightway darted out again.
+ Crimson shouted after her: 'Who are they for, then?
+ You might at least finish your message before rushing off.
+ What are you in such a tearing hurry about?
+ Is someone steaming wheatcakes for you and you're afraid they'll get cold?'
+ 'They're for Mackerel.'
+ The little maid paused long enough to bawl an answer through the window, then picking up her heels, went pounding off, plim-plam, plim-plam, plim-plam, as fast as she had come.
+ Crimson threw the patterns crossly to one side and went to hunt in her drawer for a brush to trace them with.
+ After rummaging for several minutes she had only succeeded in finding a few worn-out ones, too moulted for use.
+ 'Funny!' she said.
+ 'I could have sworn I put a new one in there the other day ...'
+ She thought a bit, then laughed at herself as she remembered: 'Of course.
+ Oriole took it, the evening before last.'
+ She turned to Melilot.
+ 'Would you go and get it for me, then?'
+ 'I'm afraid I can't,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Aroma's waiting for me to fetch some boxes for her.
+ You'll have to get it yourself.'
+ 'If Aroma's waiting for you, why have you been sitting here gossiping all this time?' said Crimson.
+ 'If I hadn't asked you to go and get it, she wouldn't have been waiting, would she?
+ Lazy little beast!'
+ She left the room and walked out of the gate of Green Delights and in the direction of Bao-chai's courtyard.
+ She was just passing by Drenched Blossoms Pavilion when she caught sight of Bao-yu's old wet-nurse, Nannie Li, coming from the opposite direction and stood respectfully aside to wait for her.
+ 'Where have you been, Mrs Li?' she asked her.
+ 'I didn't expect to see you here.'
+ Nannie Li made a flapping gesture with her hand: 'What do you think, my dear: His Nibs has taken a fancy to the young fellow who does the tree-planting — "Yin" or "Yun" or whatever his name is — so Nannie has to go and ask him in.
+ Let's hope Their Ladyships don't find out about it.
+ There'll be trouble if they do.'
+ 'Are you really going to ask him in?'
+ 'Yes.
+ Why?'
+ Crimson laughed: 'If your Mr Yun knows what's good for him, he won't agree to come.'
+ 'He's no fool,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'Why shouldn't he?'
+ 'Any way, if he does come in,' said Crimson, ignoring her question, 'you can't just bring him in and then leave him, Mrs Li.
+ You'll have to take him back again yourself afterwards.
+ You don't want him wandering off on his own.
+ There's no knowing who he might bump into.'
+ (Crimson herself, was the secret hope.)
+ 'Gracious me!
+ I haven't got that much spare time,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'All I've done is just to tell him that he's got to come.
+ I'll send someone else to fetch him in when I get back presently - one of the girls, or one of the older women, maybe.'
+ She hobbled off on her stick, leaving Crimson standing there in a muse, her mission to fetch the tracing-brush momentarily forgotten.
+ She was still standing there a minute or two later when a little maid came along, who, seeing that it was Crimson, asked her what she was doing there.
+ Crimson looked up.
+ It was Trinket, another of the maids from Green Delights.
+ 'Where are you going?'
+ Crimson asked her.
+ 'I've been sent to fetch Mr Yun,' said Trinket.
+ 'I have to bring him inside to meet Master Bao.'
+ She ran off on her way.
+ At the gate to Wasp Waist Bridge Crimson ran into Trinket again, this time with Jia Yun in tow.
+ His eyes sought Crimson's; and hers, as she made pretence of conversing with Trinket, sought his.
+ Their two pairs of eyes met and briefly skirmished; then Crimson felt herself blushing, and turning away abruptly, she made off for Allspice Court.
+ Our narrative now follows Jia Yun and Trinket along the winding pathway to the House of Green Delights.
+ Soon they were at the courtyard gate and Jia Yun waited outside while she went in to announce his arrival.
+ She returned presently to lead him inside.
+ There were a few scattered rocks in the courtyard and some clumps of jade-green plantain.
+ Two storks stood in the shadow of a pine-tree, preening themselves with their long bills.
+ The gallery surrounding the courtyard was hung with cages of unusual design in which perched or fluttered a wide variety of birds, some of them gay-plumaged exotic ones.
+ Above the steps was a little five-frame penthouse building with a glimpse of delicately-carved partitions visible through the open doorway, above which a horizontal board hung, inscribed with the words CRIMSON JOYS AND GREEN DELIGHTS
+ 'So that's why it's called "The House of Green Delights"' Jia Yun told himself.
+ 'The name is taken from the inscription.'
+ A laughing voice addressed him from behind one of the silk gauze casements: 'Come on in!
+ It must be two or three months since I first forgot our appointment!'
+ Jia Yun recognized the voice as Bao-yu's and hurried up the steps inside.
+ He looked about him, dazzled by the brilliance of gold and semi-precious inlay-work and the richness of the ornaments and furnishings, but unable to see Bao-yu in the midst of it all.
+ To the left of him was a full-length mirror from behind which two girls now emerged, both about fifteen or sixteen years old and of much the same build and height.
+ They addressed him by name and asked him to come inside.
+ Slightly overawed, he muttered something in reply and hurried after them, not daring to take more than a furtive glance at them from the corner of his eye.
+ They ushered him into a tent-like summer 'cabinet' of green net, whose principal furniture was a tiny lacquered bed with crimson hangings heavily patterned in gold.
+ On this Bao-yu, wearing everyday clothes and a pair of bedroom slippers, was reclining, book in hand.
+ He threw the book down as Jia Yun entered and rose to his feet with a welcoming smile.
+ Jia Yun swiftly dropped knee and hand to floor in greeting.
+ Bidden to sit, he modestly placed himself on a bedside chair.
+ 'After I invited you round to my study that day,' said Bao-yu, 'a whole lot of things seemed to happen one after the other, and I'm afraid I quite forgot about your visit.'
+ Jia Yun returned his smile: 'Let's just say that it wasn't my luck to see you then.
+ But you have been ill since then, Uncle Bao.
+ Are you quite better now?'
+ 'Quite better, thank you.
+ I hear you've been very busy these last few days.'
+ 'That's as it should be,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But I'm glad you are better, Uncle.
+ That's a piece of good fortune for all of us.'
+ As they chatted, a maid came in with some tea.
+ Jia Yun was talking to Bao-yu as she approached, but his eyes were on her.
+ She was tall and rather thin with a long oval face, and she was wearing a rose-pink dress over a closely pleated white satin skirt and a black satin sleeveless jacket over the dress.
+ In the course of his brief sojourn among them in the early days of Bao-yu's illness, Jia Yun had got by heart the names of most of the principal females of Bao-yu's establishment.
+ He knew at a glance that the maid now serving him tea was Aroma.
+ He was also aware that she was in some way more important than the other maids and that to be waited on by her in the seated presence of her master was an honour.
+ Jumping hastily to his feet he addressed her with a modest smile: 'You shouldn't pour tea for me, Miss!
+ I'm not like a visitor here.
+ You should let me pour for myself!'
+ 'Oh do sit down!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'You don't have to be like that in front of the maids!'
+ 'I know,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But a body-servant!
+ I don't like to presume.'
+ He sat down, nevertheless, and sipped his tea while Bao-yu made conversation on a number of unimportant topics.
+ He told him which household kept the best troupe of players, which had the finest gardens, whose maids were the prettiest, who gave the best parties, and who had the best collection of curiosities or the strangest pets.
+ Jia Yun did his best to keep up with him.
+ After a while Bao-yu showed signs of flagging, and when Jia Yun, observing what appeared to be fatigue, rose to take his leave, he did not very strongly press him to stay.
+ 'You must come again when you can spare the time,' said Bao-yu, and ordered Trinket to see him out of the Garden.
+ Once outside the gateway of Green Delights, Jia Yun looked around him on all sides, and having ascertained that there was no one else about, slowed down to a more dawdling pace so that he could ask Trinket a few questions.
+ Indeed, the little maid was subjected to quite a catechism: How old was she?
+ What was her name?
+ What did her father and mother do?
+ How many years had she been working for his Uncle Bao?
+ How much pay did she get a month?
+ How many girls were there working for him altogether?
+ Trinket seemed to have no objection, however, and answered each question as it came.
+ 'That girl you were talking to on the way in,' he said, 'isn't her name "Crimson"?'
+ Trinket laughed: 'Yes.
+ Why do you ask?'
+ 'I heard her asking you about a handkerchief.
+ Only it just so happens that I picked one up.'
+ Trinket showed interest.
+ 'She's asked me about that handkerchief of hers a number of times.
+ I told her, I've got better things to do with my time than go looking for people's handkerchiefs.
+ But when she asked me about it again today, she said that if I could find it for her, she'd give me a reward.
+ Come to think of it, you were there when she said that, weren't you?
+ It was when we were outside the gate of Allspice Court.
+ So you can bear me out.
+ Oh Mr Jia, please let me have it if you've picked it up and I'll be able to see what she will give me for it!'
+ Jia Yun had picked up a silk handkerchief a month previously at the time when his tree-planting activities had just started.
+ He knew that it must have been dropped by one or another of the female inmates of the Garden, but not knowing which, had not so far ventured to do anything about his discovery.
+ When earlier on he had heard Crimson question Trinket about her loss, he had realized, with a thrill of pleasure, that the handkerchief he had picked up must have been hers.
+ Trinket's request now gave him just the opening he required.
+ He drew a handkerchief of his own from inside his sleeve and held it up in front of her with a smile: 'I'll give it to you on one condition.
+ If she lets you have this reward you were speaking of; you've got to let me know.
+ No cheating, mind!'
+ Trinket received the handkerchief with eager assurances that he would be informed of the outcome, and having seen him out of the Garden, went back again to look for Crimson.
+ Our narrative returns now to Bao-yu.
+ After disposing of Jia Yun, Bao-yu continued to feel extremely lethargic and lay back on the bed with every appearance of being about to doze off to sleep.
+ Aroma hurried over to him and, sitting on the edge of the bed, roused him with a shake: 'Come on!
+ Surely you are not going to sleep again?
+ You need some fresh air.
+ Why don't you go outside and walk around for a bit?'
+ Bao-yu took her by the hand and smiled at her.
+ 'I'd like to go,' he said, 'but I don't want to leave you.'
+ 'Silly!' said Aroma with a laugh.
+ 'Don't say what you don't mean!'
+ She hoicked him to his feet.
+ 'Well, where am I going to go then?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'I just feel so bored.'
+ 'Never mind where, just go out!' said Aroma.
+ 'If you stay moping indoors like this, you'll get even more bored.'
+ Bao-yu followed her advice, albeit half-heartedly, and went out into the courtyard.
+ After visiting the cages in the gallery and playing for a bit with the birds, he ambled out of the courtyard into the Garden and along the batik of Drenched Blossoms Stream, pausing for a while to look at the goldfish in the water.
+ As he did so, a pair of fawns came running like the wind from the hillside opposite.
+ Bao-yu was puzzled.
+ There seemed to be no reason for their mysterious terror.
+ But just then little Jia Lan came running down the same slope after them, a tiny bow clutched in his hand.
+ Seeing his uncle ahead of him, he stood politely to attention and greeted him cheerfully: 'Hello, Uncle.
+ I didn't know you were at home.
+ I thought you'd gone out.'
+ 'Mischievous little blighter, aren't you?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'What do you want to go shooting them for, poor little things?'
+ 'I've got no reading to do today,' said Jia Lan, 'and I don't like to hang about doing nothing, so I thought I'd practise my archery and equitation.'
+ 'Goodness!
+ You'd better not waste time jawing, then,' said Bao-yu, and left the young toxophilite to his pursuits.
+ Moving on, without much thinking where he was going, he came presently to the gate of a courtyard.
+ Denser than feathers on the phoenix' tail The stirred leaves murmured with a pent dragon's moan.
+ The multitudinous bamboos and the board above the gate confirmed that his feet had, without conscious direction, carried him to the Naiad's House.
+ Of their own accord they now carried him through the gateway and into the courtyard.
+ The House seemed silent and deserted, its bamboo door-blind hanging unrolled to the ground; but as he approached the window, he detected a faint sweetness in the air, traceable to a thin curl of incense smoke which drifted out through the green gauze of the casement.
+ He pressed his face to the gauze; but before his eyes could distinguish anything, his ear became aware of a long, languorous sigh and the sound of a voice speaking: 'Each day in a drowsy waking dream of love.'
+ Bao-yu felt a sudden yearning for the speaker.
+ He could see her now.
+ It was Dai-yu, of course, lying on her bed, stretching herself and yawning luxuriously.
+ He laughed: 'Why "each day in a drowsy waking dream of love"?' he asked through the window (the words were from his beloved Western Chamber); then going to the doorway he lifted up the door-blind and walked into the room.
+ Dai-yu realized that she had been caught off her guard.
+ She covered her burning face with her sleeve, and turning over towards the wall, pretended to be asleep.
+ Bao-yu went over intending to turn her back again, but just at that moment Dai-yu's old wet-nurse came hurrying in with two other old women at her heels: 'Miss Lin's asleep, sir.
+ Would you mind coming back again after she's woken up?'
+ Dai-yu at once turned over and sat up with a laugh: 'Who's asleep?'
+ The three old women laughed apologetically.
+ 'Sorry, miss.
+ We thought you were asleep.
+ Nightingale!
+ Come inside now!
+ Your mistress is awake.'
+ Having shouted for Nightingale, the three guardians of morality retired.
+ 'What do you mean by coming into people's rooms when they're asleep?' said Dai-yu, smiling up at Bao-yu as she sat on the bed's edge patting her hair into shape.
+ At the sight of those soft cheeks so adorably flushed and the starry eyes a little misted with sleep a wave of emotion passed over him.
+ He sank into a chair and smiled back at her: 'What was that you were saying just now before I came in?'
+ 'I didn't say anything,' said Dai-yu.
+ Bao-yu laughed and snapped his fingers at her: 'Put that on your tongue, girl!
+ I heard you say it.'
+ While they were talking to one another, Nightingale came in.
+ 'Nightingale,' said Bao-yu, 'what about a cup of that excellent tea of yours?'
+ 'Excellent tea?' said Nightingale.
+ 'There's nothing very special about the tea we drink here.
+ If nothing but the best will do, you'd better wait for Aroma to come.'
+ 'Never mind about him!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'First go and get me some water!'
+ 'He is our guest,' said Nightingale.
+ 'I can't fetch you any water until I've given him his tea.'
+ And she went to pour him a cup.
+ 'Good girl!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'If with your amorous mistress I should wed, 'Tis you, sweet maid, must make our bridal bed.'
+ The words, like Dai-yu's languorous line, were from Western Chamber, but in somewhat dubious taste.
+ Dai-yu was dreadfully offended by them.
+ In an instant the smile had vanished from her face.
+ 'What was that you said?'
+ He laughed: 'I didn't say anything.'
+ Dai-yu began to cry.
+ 'This is your latest amusement, I suppose.
+ Every time you hear some coarse expression outside or read some crude, disgusting book, you have to come back here and give me the benefit of it.
+ I am to become a source of entertainment for the menfolk now, it seems.'
+ She rose, weeping, from the bed and went outside.
+ Bao-yu followed her in alarm.
+ 'Dearest coz, it was very wrong of me to say that, but it just slipped out without thinking.
+ Please don't go and tell!
+ I promise never to say anything like that again.
+ May my mouth rot and my tongue decay if I do!'
+ Just at that moment Aroma came hurrying up: 'Quick!' she said.
+ 'You must come back and change.
+ The Master wants to see you.'
+ The descent of this thunderbolt drove all else from his mind and he rushed off in a panic.
+ As soon as he had changed, he hurried out of the Garden.
+ Tealeaf was waiting for him outside the inner gate.
+ 'I suppose you don't know what he wants to see me about?'
+ Bao-yu asked him.
+ 'I should hurry up, if I were you,' said Tealeaf.
+ 'All I know is that he wants to see you.
+ You'll find out why soon enough when you get there.'
+ He hustled him along as he spoke.
+ They had passed round the main hall, Bao-yu still in a state of fluttering apprehensiveness when there was a loud guffaw from a corner of the wall.
+ It was Xue Pan, clapping his hands and stamping his feet in mirth.
+ 'Ho! Ho! Ho! You'd never have come this quickly if you hadn't been told that Uncle wanted you!'
+ Tealeaf, also laughing, fell on his knees.
+ Bao-yu stood there looking puzzled.
+ It was some moments before it dawned on him that he had been hoaxed.
+ Xue Pan was by this time being apologetic — bowing repeatedly and pumping his hands to show how sorry he was: 'Don't blame the lad!' he said.
+ 'It wasn't his fault.
+ I talked him into it.'
+ Bao-yu saw that he could do nothing, and might as well accept with a good grace.
+ 'I don't mind being made a fool of,' he said, 'but I think it was going a bit far to bring my father into it.
+ I think perhaps I'd better tell Aunt Xue and see what she thinks about it all.'
+ 'Now look here, old chap,' said Xue Pan, getting agitated, 'it was only because I wanted to fetch you out a bit quicker.
+ I admit it was very wrong of me to make free with your Parent, but after all, you've only got to mention my father next time you want to fool me and we'll be quits!'
+ 'Aiyo!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Worse and worse!'
+ He turned to Tealeaf: 'Treacherous little beast!
+ What are you still kneeling for?'
+ Tealeaf kotowed and rose to his feet.
+ 'Look,' said Xue Pan.
+ 'I wouldn't have troubled you otherwise, only it's my birthday on the third of next month and old Hu and old Cheng and a couple of the others, I don't know where they got them from but they've given me: a piece of fresh lotus root, ever so crisp and crunchy, as thick as that, look, and as long as that; a huge great melon, look, as big as that; a freshly-caught sturgeon as big as that; and a cypress-smoked Siamese sucking-pig as big as that that came in the tribute from Siam.
+ Don't you think it was clever of them to get me those things?
+ Maybe not so much the sturgeon and the sucking-pig.
+ They're just expensive.
+ But where would you go to get a piece of lotus root or a melon like that?
+ However did they get them to grow so big?
+ I've given some of the stuff to Mother, and while I was about it I sent some round to your grandmother and Auntie Wang, but I've still got a lot left over.
+ I can't eat it all myself: it would be unlucky.
+ But apart from me, the only person I can think of who is worthy to eat a present like this is you.
+ That's why I came over specially to invite you.
+ And we're lucky, because we've got a little chap who sings coming round as well.
+ So you and I will be able to sit down and make a day of it, eh?
+ Really enjoy ourselves.'
+
+ 话说宝玉养过了三十三天之后，不但身体强壮，亦且连脸上疮痕平复，仍回大观园去。
+ 这也不在话下。
+ 且说近日宝玉病的时节，贾芸带着家下小厮坐更看守，昼夜在这里；那小红同众丫鬟也在这里守着宝玉。
+ 彼此相见日多，渐渐的混熟了。
+ 小红见贾芸手里拿着块绢子，倒像是自己从前掉的，待要问他，又不好问。
+ 不料那和尚道士来过，用不着一切男人，贾芸仍种树去了。
+ 这件事待放下又放不下，待要问去又怕人猜疑。
+ 正是犹豫不决、神魂不定之际，忽听窗外问道：“姐姐在屋里没有？”
+ 小红闻听，在窗眼内望外一看，原来是本院的个小丫头佳蕙，因答说：“在家里呢，你进来罢。”
+ 佳蕙听了跑进来，就坐在床上，笑道：“我好造化!
+ 才在院子里洗东西，宝玉叫往林姑娘那里送茶叶，花大姐姐交给我送去。
+ 可巧老太太给林姑娘送钱来，正分给他们的丫头们呢，见我去了，林姑娘就抓了两把给我。
+ 也不知是多少，你替我收着。”
+ 便把手绢子打开，把钱倒出来交给小红。
+ 小红就替他一五一十的数了收起。
+ 佳蕙道：“你这两日心里到底觉着怎么样?
+ 依我说，你竟家去住两日，请一个大夫来瞧瞧，吃两剂药，就好了。”
+ 小红道：“那里的话?
+ 好好儿的，家去做什么？”
+ 佳蕙道：“我想起来了。
+ 林姑娘生的弱，时常他吃药，你就和他要些来吃，也是一样。”
+ 小红道：“胡说！
+ 药也是混吃的？”
+ 佳蕙道：“你这也不是个长法儿，又懒吃懒喝的，终久怎么样？”
+ 小红道：“怕什么?
+ 还不如早些死了倒干净。”
+ 佳蕙道：“好好儿的，怎么说这些话？”
+ 小红道：“你那里知道我心里的事！”
+ 佳蕙点头，想了一会道：“可也怨不得你。
+ 这个地方，本也难站。
+ 就像昨儿老太太因宝玉病了这些日子，说伏侍的人都辛苦了，如今身上好了，各处还香了愿，叫把跟着的人都按着等儿赏他们。
+ 我们算年纪小，上不去，我也不抱怨；像你怎么也不算在里头?
+ 我心里就不服。
+ 袭人那怕他得十分儿，也不恼他，原该的。
+ 说句良心话，谁还能比他呢?
+ 别说他素日殷勤小心，就是不殷勤小心，也拼不得。
+ 只可气晴雯绮霞他们这几个都算在上等里去，伏着宝玉疼他们，众人就都捧着他们。
+ 你说可气不可气？”
+ 小红道：“也犯不着气他们。
+ 俗语说的：‘千里搭长棚——没有个不散的筵席。’
+ 谁守一辈子呢?
+ 不过三年五载，各人干各人的去了，那时谁还管谁呢？”
+ 这两句话不觉感动了佳蕙心肠，由不得眼圈儿红了，又不好意思无端的哭，只得勉强笑道：“你这话说的是。
+ 昨儿宝玉还说：明儿怎么收拾房子，怎么做衣裳。
+ 倒像有几百年熬煎似的。”
+ 小红听了，冷笑两声，方要说话，只见一个未留头的小丫头走进来，手里拿着些花样子并两张纸，说道：“这两个花样子叫你描出来呢。”
+ 说着，向小红撂下，回转身就跑了。
+ 小红向外问道：“到底是谁的?
+ 也等不的说完就跑。
+ ‘谁蒸下馒头等着你——怕冷了不成？’”
+ 那小丫头在窗外只说得一声：“是绮大姐姐的。”
+ 抬起脚来，咕咚咕咚又跑了。
+ 小红便赌气把那样子撂在一边，向抽屉内找笔。
+ 找了半天，都是秃的，因说道：“前儿一枝新笔放在那里了?
+ 怎么想不起来？”
+ 一面说，一面出神，想了一回，方笑道：“是了，前儿晚上莺儿拿了去了。”
+ 因向佳蕙道：“你替我取了来。”
+ 佳蕙道：“花大姐姐还等着我替他拿箱子，你自己取去罢。”
+ 小红道：“他等着你，你还坐着闲磕牙儿?
+ 我不叫你取去，他也不‘等’你了。
+ 坏透了的小蹄子！”
+ 说着自己便出房来。
+ 出了怡红院，一径往宝钗院内来。
+ 刚至沁芳亭畔，只见宝玉的奶娘李嬷嬷从那边来。
+ 小红立住，笑问道：“李奶奶，你老人家那里去了?
+ 怎么打这里来？”
+ 李嬷嬷站住，将手一拍，道：“你说，好好儿的，又看上了那个什么‘云哥儿’‘雨哥儿’的，这会子逼着我叫了他来。
+ 明儿叫上屋里听见，可又是不好。”
+ 小红笑道：“你老人家当真的就信着他去叫么？”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“可怎么样呢？”
+ 小红笑道：“那一个要是知好歹，就不进来才是。”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“他又不傻，为什么不进来？”
+ 小红道：“既是进来，你老人家该别和他一块儿来；回来叫他一个人混碰，看他怎么样！”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“我有那样大工夫和他走!
+ 不过告诉了他，回来打发个小丫头子，或是老婆子，带进他来就完了。”
+ 说着拄着拐一径去了。
+ 小红听说，便站着出神，且不去取笔。
+ 不多时，只见一个小丫头跑来，见小红站在那里，便问道：“红姐姐，你在这里作什么呢？”
+ 小红抬头见是小丫头子坠儿。
+ 小红道：“那里去？”
+ 坠儿道：“叫我带进芸二爷来。”
+ 说着，一径跑了。
+ 这里小红刚走至蜂腰桥门前，只见那边坠儿引着贾芸来了。
+ 那贾芸一面走，一面拿眼把小红一溜；那小红只装着和坠儿说话，也把眼去一溜贾芸：四目恰好相对。
+ 小红不觉把脸一红，一扭身往蘅芜院去了。
+ 不在话下。
+ 这里贾芸随着坠儿逶迤来至怡红院中，坠儿先进去回明了，然后方领贾芸进去。
+ 贾芸看时，只见院内略略有几点山石，种着芭蕉，那边有两只仙鹤，在松树下剔翎。
+ 一溜回廊上吊着各色笼子，笼着仙禽异鸟。
+ 上面小小五间抱厦，一色雕镂新鲜花样槅扇，上面悬着一个匾，四个大字，题道是：“怡红快绿。”
+ 贾芸想道：“怪道叫‘怡红院’，原来匾上是这四个字。”
+ 正想着，只听里面隔着纱窗子笑说道：“快进来罢！
+ 我怎么就忘了你两三个月！”
+ 贾芸听见是宝玉的声音，连忙进入房内，抬头一看，只见金碧辉煌，文章熌烁，却看不见宝玉在那里。
+ 一回头，只见左边立着一架大穿衣镜，从镜后转出两个一对儿十五六岁的丫头来，说：“请二爷里头屋里坐。”
+ 贾芸连正眼也不敢看，连忙答应了。
+ 又进一道碧纱厨，只见小小一张填漆床上，悬着大红销金撒花帐子。
+ 宝玉穿着家常衣服，靸着鞋，倚在床上，拿着本书；看见他进来，将书掷下，早带笑立起身来。
+ 贾芸忙上前请了安，宝玉让坐，便在下面一张椅子上坐了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“只从那个月见了你，我叫你往书房里来，谁知接接连连许多事情，就把你忘了。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“总是我没造化，偏又遇着叔叔欠安。
+ 叔叔如今可大安了？”
+ 宝玉道：“大好了。
+ 我倒听见说你辛苦了好几天。”
+ 贾芸道：“辛苦也是该当的。
+ 叔叔大安了，也是我们一家子的造化。”
+ 说着，只见有个丫鬟端了茶来与他。
+ 那贾芸嘴里和宝玉说话，眼睛却瞅那丫鬟：
+ 细挑身子，容长脸儿，穿着银红袄儿，青缎子坎肩，白绫细褶儿裙子。
+ 那贾芸自从宝玉病了，他在里头混了两天，都把有名人口记了一半；他看见这丫鬟，知道是袭人。
+ 他在宝玉房中比别人不同，如今端了茶来，宝玉又在旁边坐着，便忙站起来，笑道：“姐姐怎么给我倒起茶来?
+ 我来到叔叔这里，又不是客，等我自己倒罢了。”
+ 宝玉道：“你只管坐着罢。
+ 丫头们跟前也是这么着。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“虽那么说，叔叔屋里的姐姐们，我怎么敢放肆呢。”
+ 一面说，一面坐下吃茶。
+ 那宝玉便和他说些没要紧的散话：
+ 又说道谁家的戏子好，谁家的花园好，又告诉他谁家的丫头标致，谁家的酒席丰盛，又是谁家有奇货，又是谁家有异物。
+ 那贾芸口里只得顺着他说。
+ 说了一回，见宝玉有些懒懒的了，便起身告辞。
+ 宝玉也不甚留，只说：“你明儿闲了只管来。”
+ 仍命小丫头子坠儿送出去了。
+ 贾芸出了怡红院，见四顾无人，便慢慢的停着些走，口里一长一短和坠儿说话。
+ 先问他：“几岁了?
+ 名字叫什么?
+ 你父母在那行上?
+ 在宝叔屋里几年了?
+ 一个月多少钱?
+ 共总宝叔屋内有几个女孩子？”
+ 那坠儿见问，便一桩桩的都告诉他了。
+ 贾芸又道：“刚才那个和你说话的，他可是叫小红？”
+ 坠儿笑道：“他就叫小红。
+ 你问他作什么？”
+ 贾芸道：“方才他问你什么绢子，我倒拣了一块。”
+ 坠儿听了笑道：“他问了我好几遍：可有看见他的绢子的。
+ 我那里那么大工夫管这些事?
+ 今儿他又问我，他说我替他找着了他还谢我呢。
+ 才在蘅芜院门口儿说的，二爷也听见了，不是我撒谎。
+ 好二爷，你既拣了，给我罢，我看他拿什么谢我。”
+ 原来上月贾芸进来种树之时，便拣了一块罗帕，知是这园内的人失落的，但不知是那一个人的，故不敢造次。
+ 今听见小红问坠儿，知是他的，心内不胜喜幸。
+ 又见坠儿追索，心中早得了主意，便向袖内将自己的一块取出来，向坠儿笑道：“我给是给你，你要得了他的谢礼，可不许瞒着我。”
+ 坠儿满口里答应了，接了绢子，送出贾芸，回来找小红，不在话下。
+ 如今且说宝玉打发贾芸去后，意思懒懒的，歪在床上，似有朦胧之态。
+ 袭人便走上来，坐在床沿上推他，说道：“怎么又要睡觉?
+ 你闷的很，出去逛逛不好？”
+ 宝玉见说，携着他的手笑道：“我要去，只是舍不得你。”
+ 袭人笑道：“你没别的说了！”
+ 一面说，一面拉起他来。
+ 宝玉道：“可往那里去呢?
+ 怪腻腻烦烦的。”
+ 袭人道：“你出去了就好了。
+ 只管这么委琐，越发心里腻烦了。”
+ 宝玉无精打彩，只得依他。
+ 晃出了房门，在回廊上调弄了一回雀儿，出至院外，顺着沁芳溪，看了一回金鱼。
+ 只见那边山坡上两只小鹿儿箭也似的跑来。
+ 宝玉不解何意，正自纳闷，只见贾兰在后面，拿着一张小弓儿赶来。
+ 一见宝玉在前，便站住了，笑道：“二叔叔在家里呢，我只当出门去了呢。”
+ 宝玉道：“你又淘气了。
+ 好好儿的，射他做什么？”
+ 贾兰笑道：“这会子不念书，闲着做什么?
+ 所以演习演习骑射。”
+ 宝玉道：“磕了牙，那时候儿才不演呢。”
+ 说着，便顺脚一径来至一个院门前，看那凤尾森森，龙吟细细：正是潇湘馆。
+ 宝玉信步走入，只见湘帘垂地，悄无人声。
+ 走至窗前，觉得一缕幽香从碧纱窗中暗暗透出。
+ 宝玉便将脸贴在纱窗上看时，耳内忽听得细细的长叹了一声，道：“‘每日家，情思睡昏昏！’”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉心内痒将起来。
+ 再看时，只见黛玉在床上伸懒腰。
+ 宝玉在窗外笑道：“为什么‘每日家情思睡昏昏’的？”
+ 一面说，一面掀帘子进来了。
+ 黛玉自觉忘情，不觉红了脸，拿袖子遮了脸，翻身向里装睡着了。
+ 宝玉才走上来，要扳他的身子，只见黛玉的奶娘并两个婆子却跟进来了，说：“妹妹睡觉呢，等醒来再请罢。”
+ 刚说着，黛玉便翻身坐起来，笑道：“谁睡觉呢？”
+ 那两三个婆子见黛玉起来，便笑道：“我们只当姑娘睡着了。”
+ 说着，便叫紫鹃说：“姑娘醒了，进来伺候。”
+ 一面说，一面都去了。
+ 黛玉坐在床上，一面抬手整理鬓发，一面笑向宝玉道：“人家睡觉，你进来做什么？”
+ 宝玉见他星眼微饧，香腮带赤，不觉神魂早荡，一歪身坐在椅子上，笑道：“你才说什么？”
+ 黛玉道：“我没说什么。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“给你个榧子吃呢!
+ 我都听见了。”
+ 二人正说话，只见紫鹃进来，宝玉笑道：“紫鹃，把你们的好茶沏碗我喝。”
+ 紫鹃道：“我们那里有好的?
+ 要好的只好等袭人来。”
+ 黛玉道：“别理他。
+ 你先给我舀水去罢。”
+ 紫鹃道：“他是客，自然先沏了茶来再舀水去。”
+ 说着，倒茶去了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“好丫头!
+ ‘若共你多情小姐同鸳帐，怎舍得叫你叠被铺床？’”
+ 黛玉登时急了，撂下脸来说道：“你说什么？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我何尝说什么？”
+ 黛玉便哭道：“如今新兴的，外头听了村话来，也说给我听；看了混帐书，也拿我取笑儿。
+ 我成了替爷们解闷儿的了。”
+ 一面哭，一面下床来，往外就走。
+ 宝玉心下慌了，忙赶上来说：“好妹妹，我一时该死，你好歹别告诉去!
+ 我再敢说这些话，嘴上就长个疔，烂了舌头。”
+ 正说着，只见袭人走来，说道：“快回去穿衣裳去罢，老爷叫你呢。”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉打了个焦雷一般，也顾不得别的，疾忙回来穿衣服。
+ 出园来，只见焙茗在二门前等着。
+ 宝玉问道：“你可知道老爷叫我是为什么？”
+ 焙茗道：“爷快出来罢，横竖是见去的，到那里就知道了。”
+ 一面说，一面催着宝玉。
+ 转过大厅，宝玉心里还自狐疑，只听墙角边一阵呵呵大笑，回头见薛蟠拍着手跳出来，笑道：“要不说姨夫叫你，你那里肯出来的这么快！”
+ 焙茗也笑着跪下了。
+ 宝玉怔了半天，方想过来，是薛蟠哄出他来。
+ 薛蟠连忙打恭作揖赔不是，又求：“别难为了小子，都是我央及他去的。”
+ 宝玉也无法了，只好笑问道：“你哄我也罢了，怎么说是老爷呢?
+ 我告诉姨娘去，评评这个理，可使得么？”
+ 薛蟠忙道：“好兄弟，我原为求你快些出来，就忘了忌讳这句话，改日你要哄我，也说我父亲，就完了。”
+ 宝玉道：“嗳哟！
+ 越发的该死了。”
+ 又向焙茗道：“反叛杂种，还跪着做什么？”
+ 焙茗连忙叩头起来。
+ 薛蟠道：“要不是，我也不敢惊动：只因下月初三日，是我的生日，谁知老胡和老程他们，不知那里寻了来的：这么粗，这么长，粉脆的鲜藕；这么大的西瓜；这么长，这么大的暹罗国进贡的灵柏香熏的暹罗猪、鱼。
+ 你说这四样礼物，可难得不难得?
+ 那鱼、猪不过贵而难得，这藕和瓜亏他怎么种出来的!
+ 我先孝敬了母亲，赶着就给你们老太太、姨母送了些去。
+ 如今留了些，我要自己吃恐怕折福，左思右想除我之外惟你还配吃。
+ 所以特请你来。
+ 可巧唱曲儿的一个小子又来了，我和你乐一天何如？”
+
+ THE NINTH DAY of the eighth lunar month, 1939.
+ My father, a bandit's offspring who had passed his fifteenth birthday, was joining the forces of Commander Yu Zhan'ao, a man destined to become a legendary hero, to ambush a Japanese convoy on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Grandma, a padded jacket over her shoulders, saw them to the edge of the village.
+ 'Stop here,' Commander Yu ordered her.
+ She stopped.
+ 'Douguan, mind your foster-dad,' she told my father.
+ The sight of her large frame and the warm fragrance of her lined jacket chilled him.
+ He shivered.
+ His stomach growled.
+ Commander Yu patted him on the head and said, 'Let's go, foster-son.'
+ Heaven and earth were in turmoil, the view was blurred.
+ By then the soldiers' muffled footsteps had moved far down the road.
+ Father could still hear them, but a curtain of blue mist obscured the men themselves.
+ Gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat, he nearly flew down the path on churning legs.
+ Grandma receded like a distant shore as the approaching sea of mist grew more tempestuous; holding on to Commander Yu was like clinging to the railing of a boat.
+ That was how Father rushed towards the uncarved granite marker that would rise above his grave in the bright-red sorghum fields of his hometown.
+ A bare-assed little boy once led a white billy goat up to the weed-covered grave, and as it grazed in unhurried contentment, the boy pissed furiously on the grave and sang out: 'The sorghum is red – the Japanese are coming – compatriots, get ready – fire your rifles and cannons –'
+ Someone said that the little goatherd was me, but I don't know.
+ I had learned to love Northeast Gaomi Township with all my heart, and to hate it with unbridled fury.
+ I didn't realise until I'd grown up that Northeast Gaomi Township is easily the most beautiful and most repulsive, most unusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly, hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world.
+ The people of my father's generation who lived there ate sorghum out of preference, planting as much of it as they could.
+ In late autumn, during the eighth lunar month, vast stretches of red sorghum shimmered like a sea of blood.
+ Tall and dense, it reeked of glory; cold and graceful, it promised enchantment; passionate and loving, it was tumultuous.
+ The autumn winds are cold and bleak, the sun's rays intense.
+ White clouds, full and round, float in the tile-blue sky, casting full round purple shadows onto the sorghum fields below.
+ Over decades that seem but a moment in time, lines of scarlet figures shuttled among the sorghum stalks to weave a vast human tapestry.
+ They killed, they looted, and they defended their country in a valiant, stirring ballet that makes us unfilial descendants who now occupy the land pale by comparison.
+ Surrounded by progress, I feel a nagging sense of our species' regression.
+ After leaving the village, the troops marched down a narrow dirt path, the tramping of their feet merging with the rustling of weeds.
+ The heavy mist was strangely animated, kaleidoscopic.
+ Tiny droplets of water pooled into large drops on Father's face, clumps of hair stuck to his forehead.
+ He was used to the delicate peppermint aroma and the slightly sweet yet pungent odour of ripe sorghum wafting over from the sides of the path – nothing new there.
+ But as they marched through the heavy mist, his nose detected a new, sickly-sweet odour, neither yellow nor red, blending with the smells of peppermint and sorghum to call up memories hidden deep in his soul.
+ Six days later, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
+ A bright round moon climbed slowly in the sky above the solemn, silent sorghum fields, bathing the tassels in its light until they shimmered like mercury.
+ Among the chiselled flecks of moonlight Father caught a whiff of the same sickly odour, far stronger than anything you might smell today.
+ Commander Yu was leading him by the hand through the sorghum, where three hundred fellow villagers, heads pillowed on their arms, were strewn across the ground, their fresh blood turning the black earth into a sticky muck that made walking slow and difficult.
+ The smell took their breath away.
+ A pack of corpse-eating dogs sat in the field staring at Father and Commander Yu with glinting eyes.
+ Commander Yu drew his pistol and fired – a pair of eyes was extinguished.
+ Another shot, another pair of eyes gone.
+ The howling dogs scattered, then sat on their haunches once they were out of range, setting up a deafening chorus of angry barks as they gazed greedily, longingly at the corpses.
+ The odour grew stronger.
+ 'Jap dogs!'
+ Commander Yu screamed.
+ 'Jap sons of bitches!'
+ He emptied his pistol, scattering the dogs without a trace.
+ 'Let's go, son,' he said.
+ The two of them, one old and one young, threaded their way through the sorghum field, guided by the moon's rays.
+ The odour saturating the field drenched Father's soul and would be his constant companion during the cruel months and years ahead.
+ Sorghum stems and leaves sizzled fiercely in the mist.
+ The Black Water River, which flowed slowly through the swampy lowland, sang in the spreading mist, now loud, now soft, now far, now near.
+ As they caught up with the troops, Father heard the tramping of feet and some coarse breathing fore and aft.
+ The butt of a rifle noisily bumped someone else's.
+ A foot crushed what sounded like a human bone.
+ The man in front of Father coughed loudly.
+ It was a familiar cough, calling to mind large ears that turned red with excitement.
+ Large transparent ears covered with tiny blood vessels were the trademark of Wang Wenyi, a small man whose enlarged head was tucked down between his shoulders.
+ Father strained and squinted until his gaze bored through the mist: there was Wang Wenyi's head, jerking with each cough.
+ Father thought back to when Wang was whipped on the parade ground, and how pitiful he had looked.
+ He had just joined up with Commander Yu.
+ Adjutant Ren ordered the recruits: Right face!
+ Wang Wenyi stomped down joyfully, but where he intended to 'face' was anyone's guess.
+ Adjutant Ren smacked him across the backside with his whip, forcing a yelp from between his parted lips.
+ Ouch, mother of my children!
+ The expression on his face could have been a cry, or could have been a laugh.
+ Some kids sprawled atop the wall hooted gleefully.
+ Now Commander Yu kicked Wang Wenyi in the backside.
+ 'Who said you could cough?'
+ 'Commander Yu . . .'
+ Wang Wenyi stifled a cough.
+ 'My throat itches. . . .'
+ 'So what?
+ If you give away our position, it's your head!'
+ 'Yes, sir,' Wang replied, as another coughing spell erupted.
+ Father sensed Commander Yu lurching forward to grab Wang Wenyi around the neck with both hands.
+ Wang wheezed and gasped, but the coughing stopped.
+ Father also sensed Commander Yu's hands release Wang's neck; he even sensed the purple welts, like ripe grapes, left behind.
+ Aggrieved gratitude filled Wang's deep-blue, frightened eyes.
+ The troops turned quickly into the sorghum, and Father knew instinctively that they were heading southeast.
+ The dirt path was the only direct link between the Black Water River and the village.
+ During the day it had a pale cast; the original black earth, the colour of ebony, had been covered by the passage of countless animals: cloven hoofprints of oxen and goats, semicircular hoofprints of mules, horses, and donkeys; dried road apples left by horses, mules, and donkeys; wormy cow chips; and scattered goat pellets like little black beans.
+ Father had taken this path so often that later on, as he suffered in the Japanese cinder pit, its image often flashed before his eyes.
+ He never knew how many sexual comedies my grandma had performed on this dirt path, but I knew.
+ And he never knew that her naked body, pure as glossy white jade, had lain on the black soil beneath the shadows of sorghum stalks, but I knew.
+ The surrounding mist grew more sluggish once they were in the sorghum field.
+ The stalks screeched in secret resentment when the men and equipment bumped against them, sending large, mournful beads of water splashing to the ground.
+ The water was ice-cold, clear and sparkling, and deliciously refreshing.
+ Father looked up, and a large drop fell into his mouth.
+ As the heavy curtain of mist parted gently, he watched the heads of sorghum stalks bend slowly down.
+ The tough, pliable leaves, weighted down by the dew, sawed at his clothes and face.
+ A breeze set the stalks above him rustling briefly; the gurgling of the Black Water River grew louder.
+ Father had gone swimming so often in the Black Water River that he seemed born to it.
+ Grandma said that the sight of the river excited him more than the sight of his own mother.
+ At the age of five, he could dive like a duckling, his little pink asshole bobbing above the surface, his feet sticking straight up.
+ He knew that the muddy riverbed was black and shiny, and as spongy as soft tallow, and that the banks were covered with pale-green reeds and plantain the colour of goose-down; coiling vines and stiff bone grass hugged the muddy ground, which was crisscrossed with the tracks of skittering crabs.
+ Autumn winds brought cool air, and wild geese flew through the sky heading south, their formation changing from a straight line one minute to a V the next.
+ When the sorghum turned red, hordes of crabs the size of horse hooves scrambled onto the bank at night to search for food – fresh cow dung and the rotting carcasses of dead animals – among the clumps of river grass.
+ The sound of the river reminded Father of an autumn night during his childhood, when the foreman of our family business, Arhat Liu, named after Buddhist saints, took him crabbing on the riverbank.
+ On that grey-purple night a golden breeze followed the course of the river.
+ The sapphire-blue sky was deep and boundless, green-tinted stars shone brightly in the sky: the ladle of Ursa Major (signifying death), the basket of Sagittarius (representing life); Octans, the glass well, missing one of its tiles; the anxious Herd Boy (Altair), about to hang himself; the mournful Weaving Girl (Vega), about to drown herself in the river. . . .
+ Uncle Arhat had been overseeing the work of the family distillery for decades, and Father scrambled to keep up with him as he would his own grandfather.
+ The weak light of the kerosene lamp bored a five-yard hole in the darkness.
+ When water flowed into the halo of light, it was the cordial yellow of an overripe apricot.
+ But cordial for only a fleeting moment, before it flowed on.
+ In the surrounding darkness the water reflected a starry sky.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat, rain capes over their shoulders, sat around the shaded lamp listening to the low gurgling of the river.
+ Every so often they heard the excited screech of a fox calling to its mate in the sorghum fields beside the river.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat sat quietly, listening with rapt respect to the whispered secrets of the land, as the smell of stinking river mud drifted over on the wind.
+ Hordes of crabs attracted by the light skittered towards the lamp, where they formed a shifting, restless cloister.
+ Father was so eager he nearly sprang to his feet, but Uncle Arhat held him by the shoulders.
+ 'Take it easy!
+ Greedy eaters never get the hot gruel.'
+ Holding his excitement in check, Father sat still.
+ The crabs stopped as soon as they entered the ring of lamplight, and lined up head to tail, blotting out the ground.
+ A greenish glint issued from their shells, as countless pairs of button eyes popped from deep sockets on little stems.
+ Mouths hidden beneath sloping faces released frothy strings of brazenly colourful bubbles.
+ The long fibres on Father's straw rain cape stood up.
+ 'Now!'
+ Uncle Arhat shouted.
+ Father sprang into action before the shout died out, snatching two corners of the tightly woven net they'd spread on the ground beforehand; they raised it in the air, scooping up a layer of crabs and revealing a clear spot of riverbank beneath them.
+ Quickly tying the ends together and tossing the net to one side, they rushed back and lifted up another piece of netting with the same speed and skill.
+ The heavy bundles seemed to hold hundreds, even thousands of crabs.
+ As Father followed the troops into the sorghum field, he moved sideways, crablike, overshooting the spaces between the stalks and bumping them hard, which caused them to sway and bend violently.
+ Still gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat-tail, he was pulled along, his feet barely touching the ground.
+ But he was getting sleepy.
+ His neck felt stiff, his eyes were growing dull and listless, and his only thought was that as long as he could tag along behind Uncle Arhat to the Black Water River he'd never come back empty-handed.
+ Father ate crab until he was sick of it, and so did Grandma.
+ But even though they lost their appetite for it, they couldn't bear to throw the uneaten ones away.
+ So Uncle Arhat minced the leftovers and ground them under the bean-curd millstone, then salted the crab paste, which they ate daily, until it finally went bad and became mulch for the poppies.
+ Apparently Grandma was an opium smoker, but wasn't addicted, which was why she had the complexion of a peach, a sunny disposition, and a clear mind.
+ The crab-nourished poppies grew huge and fleshy, a mixture of pinks, reds, and whites that assailed your nostrils with their fragrance.
+ The black soil of my hometown, always fertile, was especially productive, and the people who tilled it were especially decent, strong-willed, and ambitious.
+ The white eels of the Black Water River, like plump sausages with tapered ends, foolishly swallowed every hook in sight.
+ Uncle Arhat had died the year before on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ His corpse, after being hacked to pieces, had been scattered around the area.
+ As the skin was being stripped from his body, his flesh jumped and quivered, as if he were a huge skinned frog.
+ Images of that corpse sent shivers up Father's spine.
+ Then he thought back to a night some seven or eight years earlier, when Grandma, drunk at the time, had stood in the distillery yard beside a pile of sorghum leaves, her arms around Uncle Arhat's shoulders.
+ 'Uncle . . . don't leave,' she pleaded.
+ 'If not for the sake of the monk, stay for the Buddha.
+ If not for the sake of the fish, stay for the water.
+ If not for my sake, stay for little Douguan.
+ You can have me, if you want. . . .
+ You're like my own father. . . .'
+ Father watched him push her away and swagger into the shed to mix fodder for the two large black mules who, when we opened our distillery, made us the richest family in the village.
+ Uncle Arhat didn't leave after all.
+ Instead he became our foreman, right up to the day the Japanese confiscated our mules to work on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Now Father and the others could hear long-drawn-out brays from the mules they had left behind in the village.
+ Wide-eyed with excitement, he could see nothing but the congealed yet nearly transparent mist that surrounded him.
+ Erect stalks of sorghum formed dense barriers behind a wall of vapour.
+ Each barrier led to another, seemingly endless.
+ He had no idea how long they'd been in the field, for his mind was focused on the fertile river roaring in the distance, and on his memories.
+ He wondered why they were in such a hurry to squeeze through this packed, dreamy ocean of sorghum.
+ Suddenly he lost his bearings.
+ He listened carefully for a sign from the river, and quickly determined that they were heading east-southeast, towards the river.
+ Once he had a fix on their direction, he understood that they would be setting an ambush for the Japanese, that they would be killing people, just as they had killed the dogs.
+ By heading east-southeast, they would soon reach the Jiao-Ping highway, which cut through the swampy lowland from north to south and linked the two counties of Jiao and Pingdu.
+ Japanese and their running dogs, Chinese collaborators, had built the highway with the forced labour of local conscripts.
+ The sorghum was set in motion by the exhausted troops, whose heads and necks were soaked by the settling dew.
+ Wang Wenyi was still coughing, even though he'd been the target of Commander Yu's continuing angry outbursts.
+ Father sensed that the highway was just up ahead, its pale-yellow outline swaying in front of him.
+ Imperceptibly tiny openings began to appear in the thick curtain of mist, and one dew-soaked ear of sorghum after another stared sadly at Father, who returned their devout gaze.
+ It dawned on him that they were living spirits: their roots buried in the dark earth, they soaked up the energy of the sun and the essence of the moon; moistened by the rain and dew, they understood the ways of the heavens and the logic of the earth.
+ The colour of the sorghum suggested that the sun had already turned the obscured horizon a pathetic red.
+ Then something unexpected occurred.
+ Father heard a shrill whistle, followed by a loud burst from up ahead.
+ 'Who fired his weapon?'
+ Commander Yu bellowed.
+ 'Who's the prick who did it?'
+ Father heard the bullet pierce the thick mist and pass through sorghum leaves and stalks, lopping off one of the heads.
+ Everyone held his breath as the bullet screamed through the air and thudded to the ground.
+ The sweet smell of gunpowder dissipated in the mist.
+ Wang Wenyi screamed pitifully, 'Commander – my head's gone – Commander – my head's gone –'
+ Commander Yu froze momentarily, then kicked Wang Wenyi.
+ 'You dumb fuck!' he growled.
+ 'How could you talk without a head?'
+ Commander Yu left my father standing there and went up to the head of the column.
+ Wang Wenyi was still howling.
+ Father pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the strange look on Wang's face.
+ A dark-blue substance was flowing on his cheek.
+ Father reached out to touch it; hot and sticky, it smelled a lot like the mud of the Black Water River, but fresher.
+ It overwhelmed the smell of peppermint and the pungent sweetness of sorghum and awakened in Father's mind a memory that drew ever nearer: like beads, it strung together the mud of the Black Water River, the black earth beneath the sorghum, the eternally living past, and the unstoppable present.
+ There are times when everything on earth spits out the stench of human blood.
+ 'Uncle,' Father said, 'you're wounded.'
+ 'Douguan, is that you?
+ Tell your old uncle if his head's still on his neck.'
+ 'It's there, Uncle, right where it's supposed to be.
+ Except your ear's bleeding.'
+ Wang Wenyi reached up to touch his ear and pulled back a bloody hand, yelping in alarm.
+ Then he froze as if paralysed.
+ 'Commander, I'm wounded!
+ I'm wounded!'
+ Commander Yu came back to Wang, knelt down, and put his hands around Wang's neck.
+ 'Stop screaming or I'll throttle you!'
+ Wang Wenyi didn't dare make a sound.
+ 'Where were you hit?'
+ Commander Yu asked him.
+ 'My ear . . .'
+ Wang was weeping.
+ Commander Yu took a piece of white cloth from his waistband and tore it in two, then handed it to him.
+ 'Hold this over it, and no more noise.
+ Stay in rank.
+ You can bandage it when we reach the highway.'
+ Commander Yu turned to Father.
+ 'Douguan,' he barked.
+ Father answered, and Commander Yu walked off holding him by the hand, followed by the whimpering Wang Wenyi.
+ The offending discharge had been the result of carelessness by the big fellow they called Mute, who was up front carrying a rake on his shoulder.
+ The rifle slung over his back had gone off when he stumbled.
+ Mute was one of Commander Yu's old bandit friends, a greenwood hero who had eaten fistcakes in the sorghum fields.
+ One of his legs was shorter than the other – a prenatal injury – and he limped when he walked, but that didn't slow him down.
+ Father was a little afraid of him.
+ At about dawn, the massive curtain of mist finally lifted, just as Commander Yu and his troops emerged onto the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ In my hometown, August is the misty season, possibly because there's so much swampy lowland.
+ Once he stepped onto the highway, Father felt suddenly light and nimble; with extra spring in his step, he let go of Commander Yu's coat.
+ Wang Wenyi, on the other hand, wore a crestfallen look as he held the cloth to his injured ear.
+ Commander Yu crudely wrapped it for him, covering up half his head.
+ Wang gnashed his teeth in pain.
+ 'The heavens have smiled on you,' Commander Yu said.
+ 'My blood's all gone,' Wang whimpered, 'I can't go on!'
+ 'Bullshit!'
+ Commander Yu exclaimed.
+ 'It's no worse than a mosquito bite.
+ You haven't forgotten your three sons, have you?'
+ Wang hung his head and mumbled, 'No, I haven't forgotten.'
+ The butt of the long-barrelled fowling piece over his shoulder was the colour of blood.
+ A flat metal gunpowder pouch rested against his hip.
+ Remnants of the dissipating mist were scattered throughout the sorghum field.
+ There were neither animal nor human footprints in the gravel, and the dense walls of sorghum on the deserted highway made the men feel that something ominous was in the air.
+ Father knew all along that Commander Yu's troops numbered no more than forty – deaf, mute, and crippled included.
+ But when they were quartered in the village, they had stirred things up so much, with chickens squawking and dogs yelping, that you'd have thought it was a garrison command.
+ Out on the highway, the soldiers huddled so closely together they looked like an inert snake.
+ Their motley assortment of weapons included shotguns, fowling pieces, ageing Hanyang rifles, plus a cannon that fired scale weights and was carried by two brothers, Fang Six and Fang Seven.
+ Mute was toting a rake with twenty-six metal tines, as were three other soldiers.
+ Father still didn't know what an ambush was, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known why anyone would take four rakes to the event.
+
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九，我父亲这个土匪种十四岁多一点。
+ 他跟着后来名满天下的传奇英雄余占鳌司令的队伍去胶平公路伏击敌人的汽车队。
+ 奶奶披着夹袄，送他们到村头。
+ 余司令说：“立住吧。”
+ 奶奶就立住了。
+ 奶奶对我父亲说：“豆官，听你干爹的话。”
+ 父亲没吱声，他看着奶奶高大的身躯，嗅着从奶奶的夹袄里散出的热烘烘的香味，突然感到凉气逼人。
+ 他打了一个战，肚子咕噜噜响一阵。
+ 余司令拍了一下父亲的头，说：“走，干儿。”
+ 天地混沌，景物影影绰绰，队伍的杂沓脚步声已响出很远。
+ 父亲眼前挂着蓝白色的雾幔，挡住了他的视线，只闻队伍脚步声，不见队伍形和影。
+ 父亲紧紧扯住余司令的衣角，双腿快速挪动。
+ 奶奶像岸愈离愈远，雾像海水愈近愈汹涌，父亲抓住余司令，就像抓住一条船舷。
+ 父亲就这样奔向了耸立在故乡通红的高粱地里属于他的那块无字的青石墓碑。
+ 他的坟头上已经枯草瑟瑟，曾经有一个光屁股的男孩牵着一只雪白的山羊来到这里，山羊不紧不慢地啃着坟头上的草，男孩站在墓碑上，怒气冲冲地撒上一泡尿，然后放声高唱：高粱红了——日本来了——同胞们准备好——开枪开炮——
+ 有人说这个放羊的男孩就是我，我不知道是不是我。
+ 我曾对高密东北乡极端热爱，曾经对高密东北乡极端仇恨，长大后努力学习马克思主义，我终于悟到：高密东北乡无疑是地球上最美丽最丑陋、最超脱最世俗、最圣洁最龌龊、最英雄好汉最王八蛋、最能喝酒最能爱的地方。
+ 生存在这块土地上的我的父老乡亲们，喜食高粱，每年都大量种植。
+ 八月深秋，无边无际的高粱红成洸洋的血海，高粱高密辉煌，高粱凄婉可人，高粱爱情激荡。
+ 秋风苍凉，阳光很旺，瓦蓝的天上游荡着一朵朵丰满的白云，高粱上滑动着一朵朵丰满白云的紫红色影子。
+ 一队队暗红色的人在高粱棵子里穿梭拉网，几十年如一日。
+ 他们杀人越货，精忠报国，他们演出过一幕幕英勇悲壮的舞剧，使我们这些活着的不肖子孙相形见绌，在进步的同时，我真切地感到种的退化。
+ 出村之后，队伍在一条狭窄的土路上行进，人的脚步声中夹着路边碎草的窸窣声响。
+ 雾奇浓，活泼多变。
+ 我父亲的脸上，无数密集的小水点凝成大颗粒的水珠，他的一撮头发，粘在头皮上。
+ 从路两边高粱地里飘来的幽淡的薄荷气息和成熟高粱苦涩微甘的气味，我父亲早已闻惯，不新不奇。
+ 在这次雾中行军里，我父亲闻到了那种新奇的、黄红相间的腥甜气息。
+ 那味道从薄荷和高粱的味道中隐隐约约地透过来，唤起父亲心灵深处一种非常遥远的记忆。
+ 七天之后，八月十五日，中秋节。
+ 一轮明月冉冉升起，遍地高粱肃然默立，高粱穗子浸在月光里，像蘸过水银，汩汩生辉，我父亲在剪破的月影下闻到了比现在强烈无数倍的腥甜气息。
+ 那时候，余司令牵着他的手在高粱地里行走，三百多个乡亲叠股枕臂，陈尸狼藉，流出的鲜血灌溉了一大片高粱，把高粱下的黑土地浸泡成稀泥，使他们拔脚迟缓。
+ 腥甜的气味令人窒息，一群前来吃人肉的狗，坐在高粱地里，目光炯炯地盯着父亲和余司令。
+ 余司令掏出自来得手枪，甩手一响，两只狗眼灭了；又一甩手，灭了两只狗眼。
+ 群狗一哄而散，坐得远远的，呜呜地咆哮着，贪婪地望着死尸。
+ 腥甜味愈加强烈，余司令大喊一声：“日本狗！
+ 狗娘养的日本！”
+ 他对着那群狗打完了所有的子弹，狗跑得无影无踪。
+ 余司令对我父亲说：“走吧，儿子！”
+ 一老一小，便迎着月光，向高粱深处走去。
+ 那股弥漫着田野的腥甜味浸透了我父亲的灵魂，在以后更加激烈更加残忍的岁月里，这股腥甜昧一直伴随着他。
+ 高粱的茎叶在雾中滋滋乱叫，雾中缓慢地流淌着在这块低洼平原上穿行的墨河水明亮的喧哗，一阵强一阵弱，一阵远一阵近。
+ 赶上队伍了，父亲的身前身后响着踢踢踏踏的脚步声和粗重的呼吸。
+ 不知谁的枪托撞到另一个谁的枪托上了。
+ 不知谁的脚踩破了一个死人的骷髅什么的。
+ 父亲前边那个人吭吭地咳嗽起来，这个人的咳嗽声非常熟悉。
+ 父亲听到他咳嗽就想起他那两扇一激动就充血的大耳朵。
+ 透明单薄布满血管的大耳朵是王文义头上引人注目的器官。
+ 他个子很小，一颗大头缩在耸起的双肩中。
+ 父亲努力看去，目光刺破浓雾，看到了王文义那颗一边咳一边颠动的大头。
+ 父亲想起王文义在演练场上挨打时，那颗大头颠成那般可怜模样。
+ 那时他刚参加余司令的队伍，任副官在演练场上对他也对其他队员喊：向右转——，王文义欢欢喜喜地跺着脚，不知转到哪里去了。
+ 任副官在他腚上打了一鞭子，他嘴咧开叫一声：孩子他娘！
+ 脸上表情不知是哭还是笑。
+ 围在短墙外看光景的孩子们都哈哈大笑。
+ 余司令飞起一脚，踢到王文义的屁股上。
+ “咳什么？”
+ “司令……”
+ 王文义忍着咳嗽说，“嗓子眼儿发痒……”
+ “痒也别咳！
+ 暴露了目标我要你的脑袋！”
+ “是，司令。”
+ 王文义答应着，又有一阵咳嗽冲口而出。
+ 父亲觉出余司令前跨了一大步，只手捺住了王文义的后颈皮。
+ 王文义口里咝咝地响着，随即不咳了。
+ 父亲觉出余司令的手从王文义的后颈皮上松开了，父亲还觉得王文义的脖子上留下两个熟葡萄一样的紫手印，王文义幽蓝色的惊惧不安的眼睛里，飞迸出几点感激与委屈。
+ 很快，队伍钻进了高粱地。
+ 我父亲本能地感觉到队伍是向着东南方向开进的。
+ 适才走过的这段土路是由村庄直接通向墨水河边的唯一的道路。
+ 这条狭窄的土路在白天颜色青白。
+ 路原是由乌油油的黑土筑成，但久经践踏，黑色都沉淀到底层，路上叠印过多少牛羊的花瓣蹄印和骡马毛驴的半圆蹄印，马骡驴粪像干萎的苹果，牛粪像虫蛀过的薄饼，羊粪稀拉拉像震落的黑豆。
+ 父亲常走这条路，后来他在日本炭窑中苦熬岁月时，眼前常常闪过这条路。
+ 父亲不知道我的奶奶在这条土路上主演过多少风流悲喜剧，我知道。
+ 父亲也不知道在高粱阴影遮掩着的黑土上，曾经躺过奶奶洁白如玉的光滑肉体，我也知道。
+ 拐进高粱地后，雾更显凝滞，质量更大，流动感少，在人的身体与人负载的物体碰撞高粱秸秆后，随着高粱嚓嚓啦啦的幽怨鸣声，一大滴一大滴的沉重水珠扑簌簌落下。
+ 水珠冰凉清爽，味道鲜美，我父亲仰脸时，一滴大水珠准确地打进他的嘴里。
+ 父亲看到舒缓的雾团里，晃动着高粱沉甸甸的头颅。
+ 高粱沾满了露水的柔韧叶片，锯着父亲的衣衫和面颊。
+ 高粱晃动激起的小风在父亲头顶上短促出击，墨水河的流水声愈来愈响。
+ 父亲在墨水河里玩过水，他的水性好像是天生的，奶奶说他见了水比见了亲娘还急。
+ 父亲五岁时，就像小鸭子一样潜水，粉红的屁股眼儿朝着天，双脚高举。
+ 父亲知道，墨水河底的淤泥乌黑发亮，柔软得像油脂一样。
+ 河边潮湿的滩涂上，丛生着灰绿色的芦苇和鹅绿色车前草，还有贴地生的野葛蔓，支支直立的接骨草。
+ 滩涂的淤泥上，印满螃蟹纤细的爪迹。
+ 秋风起，天气凉，一群群大雁往南飞，一会儿排成个“一”字，一会儿排成个“人”字，等等。
+ 高粱红了，西风响，蟹脚痒，成群结队的、马蹄大小的螃蟹都在夜间爬上河滩，到草丛中觅食。
+ 螃蟹喜食新鲜牛屎和腐烂的动物的尸体。
+ 父亲听着河声，想着从前的秋天夜晚，跟着我家的老伙计刘罗汉大爷去河边捉螃蟹的情景。
+ 夜色灰葡萄，金风串河道，宝蓝色的天空深邃无边，绿色的星辰格外明亮。
+ 北斗勺子星——北斗主死，南斗簸箕星——南斗司生、八角玻璃井——缺了一块砖，焦灼的牛郎要上吊，忧愁的织女要跳河……
+ 都在头上悬着。
+ 刘罗汉大爷在我家工作了几十年，负责我家烧酒作坊的全面工作，父亲跟着罗汉大爷脚前脚后地跑，就像跟着自己的爷爷一样。
+ 父亲被迷雾扰乱的心头亮起了一盏四块玻璃插成的罩子灯，洋油烟子从罩子灯上盖的铁皮、钻眼的铁皮上钻出来。
+ 灯光微弱，只能照亮五六米方圆的黑暗。
+ 河里的水流到灯影里，黄得像熟透的杏子一样可爱，但可爱一霎霎，就流过去了，黑暗中的河水倒映着一天星斗。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷披着蓑衣，坐在罩子灯旁，听着河水的低沉呜咽——非常低沉的呜咽。
+ 河道两边无穷的高粱地不时响起寻偶狐狸的兴奋鸣叫。
+ 螃蟹趋光，正向灯影聚拢。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷静坐着，恭听着天下的窃窃秘语，河底下淤泥的腥味，一股股泛上来。
+ 成群结队的螃蟹团团围上来，形成一个躁动不安的圆圈。
+ 父亲心里惶惶，跃跃欲起，被罗汉大爷按住了肩头。
+ “别急！”
+ 大爷说，“心急喝不得热粘粥。”
+ 父亲强压住激动，不动。
+ 螃蟹爬到灯光里就停下来，首尾相衔，把地皮都盖住了。
+ 一片青色的蟹壳闪亮，一对对圆杆状的眼睛从凹陷的眼窝里打出来。
+ 隐在倾斜的脸面下的嘴里，吐出一串一串的五彩泡沫。
+ 螃蟹吐着彩沫向人挑战，父亲身上披着大蓑衣长毛奓起。
+ 罗汉大爷说：“抓！”
+ 父亲应声弹起，与罗汉大爷抢过去，每人抓住一面早就铺在地上的密眼罗网的两角，把一堆螃蟹抬起来，露出了螃蟹下的河滩地。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷把两角系起扔在一边，又用同样的迅速和熟练抬起网片。
+ 每一网都是那么沉重，不知网住了几百几千只螃蟹。
+ 父亲跟着队伍进了高粱地后，由于心随螃蟹横行斜走，脚与腿不择空隙，撞得高粱棵子东倒西歪。
+ 他的手始终紧扯着余司令的衣角，一半是自己行走，一半是余司令牵着前进，他竟觉得有些瞌睡上来，脖子僵硬，眼珠子生涩呆板。
+ 父亲想，只要跟着罗汉大爷去墨水河，就没有空手回来的道理。
+ 父亲吃螃蟹吃腻了，奶奶也吃腻了。
+ 食之无味，弃之可惜，罗汉大爷就用快刀把螃蟹斩成碎块，放到豆腐磨里研碎，加盐，装缸，制成蟹酱，成年累月地吃，吃不完就臭，臭了就喂罂粟。
+ 我听说奶奶会吸大烟但不上瘾，所以始终面如桃花，神清气爽，用螃蟹喂过的罂粟花朵肥硕壮大，粉、红、白三色交杂，香气扑鼻。
+ 故乡的黑土本来就是出奇的肥沃，所以物产丰饶，人种优良。
+ 民心高拔健迈，本是我故乡心态。
+ 墨水河盛产的白鳝鱼肥得像肉棍一样，从头至尾一根刺。
+ 它们呆头呆脑，见钩就吞。
+ 父亲想着的罗汉大爷去年就死了，死在胶平公路上。
+ 他的尸体被割得零零碎碎，扔得东一块西一块。
+ 躯干上的皮被剥了，肉跳，肉蹦，像只褪皮后的大青蛙。
+ 父亲一想起罗汉大爷的尸体，脊梁沟就发凉。
+ 父亲又想起大约七八年前的一个晚上，我奶奶喝醉了酒，在我家烧酒作坊的院子里，有一个高粱叶子垛，奶奶倚在草垛上，搂住罗汉大爷的肩，呢呢喃喃地说：“大叔…… 你别走。
+ 不看僧面看佛面，不看鱼面看水面，不看我的面子也要看豆官的面子上，留下吧，你要我…… 我也给你…… 你就像我的爹一样……”
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷把奶奶推到一边，晃晃荡荡走进骡棚，给骡子拌料去了。
+ 我家养着两头大黑骡子，开着烧高粱酒的作坊，是村子里的首富。
+ 罗汉大爷没走，一直在我家担任业务领导，直到我家那两头大黑骡子被日本人拉到胶平公路修筑工地上去使役为止。
+ 这时，从被父亲他们甩在身后的村子里，传来悠长的毛驴叫声。
+ 父亲精神一振，眼睛睁开，然而看到的，依然是半凝固半透明的雾气。
+ 高粱挺拔的秆子，排成密集的栅栏，模模糊糊地隐藏在气体的背后，穿过一排又一排，排排无尽头。
+ 走进高粱地多久了，父亲已经忘记，他的神思长久地滞留在远处那条喧响着的丰饶河流里，长久地滞留在往事的回忆里，竟不知这样匆匆忙忙拥拥挤挤地在如梦如海的高粱地里躜进是为了什么。
+ 父亲迷失了方位。
+ 他在前年有一次迷途高粱地的经验，但最后还是走出来了，是河声给他指引了方向。
+ 现在，父亲又谛听着河的启示，很快明白，队伍是向正东偏南开进，对着河的方向开进。
+ 方向辨清，父亲也就明白，这是去打伏击，打日本人，要杀人，像杀狗一样。
+ 他知道队伍一直往东南走，很快就要走到那条南北贯通，把偌大个低洼平原分成两半，把胶县平度县两座县城连在一起的胶平公路。
+ 这条公路，是日本人和他们的走狗用皮鞭和刺刀催逼着老百姓修成的。
+ 高粱的骚动因为人们的疲惫困乏而频繁激烈起来，积露连续落下，淋湿了每个人的头皮和脖颈。
+ 王文义咳嗽不断，虽连遭余司令辱骂也不改正。
+ 父亲感到公路就要到了，他的眼前昏昏黄黄地晃动着路的影子。
+ 不知不觉，连成一体的雾海中竟有些空洞出现，一穗一穗被露水打得精湿的高粱在雾洞里忧悒地注视着我父亲，父亲也虔诚地望着它们。
+ 父亲恍然大悟，明白了它们都是活生生的灵物。
+ 它们扎根黑土，受日精月华，得雨露滋润，上知天文下知地理。
+ 父亲从高粱的颜色上，猜到了太阳已经被高粱遮挡着的地平线烧成一片可怜的艳红。
+ 忽然发生变故，父亲先是听到耳边一声尖利呼啸，接着听到前边发出什么东西被迸裂的声响。
+ 余司令大声吼叫：“谁开枪？
+ 小舅子，谁开的枪？”
+ 父亲听到子弹钻破浓雾，穿过高粱叶子高粱秆，一颗高粱头颅落地。
+ 一时间众人都屏气息声。
+ 那粒子弹一路尖叫着，不知落到哪里去了。
+ 芳香的硝烟迷散进雾。
+ 王文义惨叫一声：“司令——我没有头啦——司令——我没有头啦——”
+ 余司令一愣神，踢了王文义一脚，说：“你娘个蛋！
+ 没有头还会说话！”
+ 余司令撇下我父亲，到队伍前头去了。
+ 王文义还在哀嚎。
+ 父亲凑上前去，看清了王文义奇形怪状的脸。
+ 他的腮上，有一股深蓝色的东西在流动。
+ 父亲伸手摸去，触了一手粘腻发烫的液体。
+ 父亲闻到了跟墨水河淤泥差不多、但比墨水河淤泥要新鲜得多的腥气。
+ 它压倒了薄荷的幽香，压倒了高粱的甘苦，它唤醒了父亲那越来越迫近的记忆，一线穿珠般地把墨水河淤泥、把高粱下黑土、把永远死不了的过去和永远留不住的现在联系在一起，有时候，万物都会吐出人血的味道。
+ “大叔，”父亲说，“大叔，你挂彩了。”
+ “豆官，你是豆官吧，你看看大叔的头还在脖子上长着吗？”
+ “在，大叔，长得好好的，就是耳朵流血啦。”
+ 王文义伸手摸耳朵，摸到一手血，一阵尖叫后，他就瘫了：“司令，我挂彩啦！
+ 我挂彩啦，我挂彩啦。”
+ 余司令从前边回来，蹲下，捏着王文义的脖子，压低嗓门说：“别叫，再叫我就毙了你！”
+ 王文义不敢叫了。
+ “伤着哪儿啦？”
+ 余司令问。
+ “耳朵……”
+ 王文义哭着说。
+ 余司令从腰里抽出一块包袱皮样的白布，嚓一声撕成两半，递给王文义，说：“先捂着，别出声，跟着走，到了路上再包扎。”
+ 余司令又叫：“豆官。”
+ 父亲应了，余司令就牵着他的手走。
+ 王文义哼哼唧唧地跟在后边。
+ 适才那一枪，是扛着一盘耙在头前开路的大个子哑巴不慎摔倒，背上的长枪走了火。
+ 哑巴是余司令的老朋友，一同在高粱地里吃过“拤饼”的草莽英雄，他的一只脚因在母腹中受过伤，走起来一颠一颠，但非常快，父亲有些怕他。
+ 黎明前后这场大雾，终于在余司令的队伍跨上胶平公路时漶散下去。
+ 故乡八月，是多雾的季节，也许是地势低洼土壤潮湿所致吧。
+ 走上公路后，父亲顿时感到身体灵巧轻便，脚步利索有劲，他松开了抓住余司令衣角的手。
+ 王文义用白布捂着血耳朵，满脸哭相。
+ 余司令给他粗手粗脚包扎耳朵，连半个头也包住了。
+ 王文义痛得龇牙咧嘴。
+ 余司令说：“你好大的命！”
+ 王文义说：“我的血流光了，我不能去啦！”
+ 余司令说：“屁，蚊子咬了一口也不过这样，忘了你那三个儿子啦吧！”
+ 王文义垂下头，嘟嘟哝哝说：“没忘，没忘。”
+ 他背着一支长筒子鸟枪，枪托儿血红色。
+ 装火药的扁铁盒斜吊在他的屁股上。
+ 那些残存的雾都退到高粱地里去了。
+ 大路上铺着一层粗沙，没有牛马脚踪，更无人的脚印。
+ 相对着路两侧茂密的高粱，公路荒凉，荒唐，令人感到不祥。
+ 父亲早就知道余司令的队伍连聋带哑连瘸带拐不过四十人，但这些人住在村里时，搅得鸡飞狗跳，仿佛满村是兵。
+ 队伍摆在大路上，三十多人缩成一团，像一条冻僵了的蛇。
+ 枪支七长八短，土炮、鸟枪、老汉阳，方六方七兄弟俩抬着一门能把小秤砣打出去的大抬杆子。
+ 哑巴扛着一盘长方形的平整土地用的、周遭二十六根铁尖齿的耙，另有三个队员各扛着一盘。
+ 父亲当时还不知道打伏击是怎么一回事，更不知道打伏击为什么还要扛上四盘铁齿耙。
+
+ FATHER FINISHED HIS fistcake as he stood on the withered grass, turned blood-red by the setting sun.
+ Then he walked gingerly up to the edge of the water.
+ There on the stone bridge across the Black Water River the lead truck, its tyres flattened by the barrier of linked rakes, crouched in front of the other three.
+ Its railings and fenders were stained by splotches of gore.
+ The upper half of a Japanese soldier was draped over one of the railings, his steel helmet hanging upturned by a strap from his neck.
+ Dark blood dripped into it from the tip of his nose.
+ The water sobbed as it flowed down the riverbed.
+ The heavy, dull rays of sunlight were pulverised by tiny ripples on its surface.
+ Autumn insects hidden in the damp mud beneath the water plants set up a mournful chirping.
+ Sorghum in the fields sizzled as it matured.
+ The fires were nearly out in the third and fourth trucks; their blackened hulks crackled and split, adding to the discordant symphony.
+ Father's attention was riveted by the sight and sound of blood dripping from the Japanese soldier's nose into the steel helmet, each drop splashing crisply and sending out rings of concentric circles in the deepening pool.
+ Father had barely passed his fifteenth birthday.
+ The sun had nearly set on this ninth day of the eighth lunar month of the year 1939, and the dying embers of its rays cast a red pall over the world below.
+ Father's face, turned unusually gaunt by the fierce daylong battle, was covered by a layer of purplish mud.
+ He squatted down upriver from the corpse of Wang Wenyi's wife and scooped up some water in his hands; the sticky water oozed through the cracks between his fingers and dropped noiselessly to the ground.
+ Sharp pains racked his cracked, swollen lips, and the brackish taste of blood seeped between his teeth and slid down his throat, moistening the parched membranes.
+ He experienced a satisfying pain, and even though the taste of blood made his stomach churn, he scooped up handful after handful of water, drinking it down until it soaked up the dry, cracked fistcake in his stomach.
+ He stood up straight and took a deep breath of relief.
+ Night was definitely about to fall; the ridge of the sky's dome was tinged with the final sliver of red.
+ The scorched smell from the burned-out hulks of the trucks had faded.
+ A loud bang made Father jump.
+ He looked up, just in time to see exploded bits of truck tyres settling slowly into the river like black butterflies, and countless kernels of Japanese rice – some black, some white – soaring upward, then raining down on the still surface of the river.
+ As he spun around, his eyes settled on the tiny figure of Wang Wenyi's wife lying at the edge of the river, the blood from her wounds staining the water around her.
+ He scrambled to the top of the dike and yelled: 'Dad!'
+ Granddad was standing on the dike, the flesh on his face wasted away by the day's battle, the bones jutting out beneath his dark, weathered skin.
+ In the dying sunlight Father noticed that Granddad's short-cropped hair was turning white.
+ With fear in his aching heart, Father nudged him timidly.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'Dad!
+ What's wrong with you?'
+ Tears were running down Granddad's face.
+ He was sobbing.
+ The Japanese machine gun that Detachment Leader Leng had so magnanimously left behind sat at his feet like a crouching wolf, its muzzle gaping.
+ 'Say something, Dad.
+ Eat that fistcake, then drink some water.
+ You'll die if you don't eat or drink.'
+ Granddad's head drooped until it rested on his chest.
+ He seemed to lack the strength to support its weight.
+ He knelt at the top of the dike, holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
+ After a moment, or two, he looked up and cried out: 'Douguan, my son!
+ Is it all over for us?'
+ Father stared wide-eyed and fearfully at Granddad.
+ The glare in his diamondlike pupils embodied the heroic, unrestrained spirit of Grandma, a flicker of hope that shone and lit up Granddad's heart.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'don't give up.
+ I'll work hard on my shooting, like when you shot fish at the inlet to perfect your seven-plum-blossom skill.
+ Then we'll go settle accounts with that rotten son of a bitch Pocky Leng!'
+ Granddad sprang to his feet and bellowed three times – half wail, half crazed laughter.
+ A line of dark-purple blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
+ 'That's it, son, that's the way to talk!'
+ He picked up one of Grandma's fistcakes from the dark earth, bit off a chunk, and swallowed it.
+ Cake crumbs and flecks of bubbly blood stuck to his stained teeth.
+ Father heard Granddad's painful cries as the dry cake stuck in his throat and saw the rough edges make their way down his neck.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'go drink some water to soak up the cake in your belly.'
+ Granddad stumbled along the dike to the river's edge, where he knelt among the water plants and lapped up the water like a draught animal.
+ When he'd had his fill, he drew his hands back and buried his head in the river, holding it under the water for about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful of tobacco.
+ Father started getting nervous as he gazed at his dad, frozen like a bronze frog at the river's edge.
+ Finally, Granddad jerked his dripping head out of the water and gasped for breath.
+ Then he walked back up the dike to stand in front of Father, whose eyes were glued to the cascading drops of water.
+ Granddad shook his head, sending forty-nine drops, large and small, flying like so many pearls.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'come with Dad.
+ Let's go see the men.'
+ Granddad staggered down the road, weaving in and out of the sorghum field on the western edge, Father right on his heels.
+ They stepped on broken, twisted stalks of sorghum and spent cartridges that gave off a faint yellow glint.
+ Frequently they bent down to look at the bodies of their fallen comrades, who lay amid the sorghum, deathly grimaces frozen on their faces.
+ Granddad and Father shook them in hope of finding one who was alive; but they were dead, all of them.
+ Father's and Granddad's hands were covered with sticky blood.
+ Father looked down at two soldiers on the westernmost edge of the field: one lay with the muzzle of his shotgun in his mouth, the back of his neck a gory mess, like a rotten wasps' nest; the other lay across a bayonet buried in his chest.
+ When Granddad turned them over, Father saw that their legs had been broken and their bellies slit open.
+ Granddad sighed as he withdrew the shotgun from the one soldier's mouth and pulled the bayonet from the other's chest.
+ Father followed Granddad across the road, into the sorghum field to the east, which had also been swept by machine-gun fire.
+ They turned over the bodies of more soldiers lying strewn across the ground.
+ Bugler Liu was on his knees, bugle in hand, as though he were blowing it.
+ 'Bugler Liu!'
+ Granddad called out excitedly.
+ No response.
+ Father ran up and nudged him.
+ 'Uncle Liu!' he shouted, as the bugle dropped to the ground.
+ When Father looked more closely, he discovered that the bugler's face was already as hard as a rock.
+ In the lightly scarred section of field some few dozen paces from the dike, Granddad and Father came upon Fang Seven, whose guts had spilled out of his belly, and another soldier, named Consumptive Four, who, after taking a bullet in the leg, had fainted from blood loss.
+ Holding his bloodstained hand above the man's mouth, Granddad detected a faint sign of dry, hot breath from his nostrils.
+ Fang Seven had stuffed his own intestines back into his abdomen and covered the gaping wound with sorghum leaves.
+ He was still conscious.
+ When he spotted Granddad and Father, his lips twitched and he said haltingly, 'Commander . . . done for . . .
+ When you see my old lady . . . give some money. . . .
+ Don't let her remarry. . . .
+ My brother . . . no sons . . .
+ If she leaves . . .
+ Fang family line ended. . . .'
+ Father knew that Fang Seven had a year-old son, and that there was so much milk in his mother's gourdlike breasts that he was growing up fair and plump.
+ 'I'll carry you back, little brother,' Granddad said.
+ He bent over and pulled Fang Seven onto his back.
+ As Fang screeched in pain, Father saw the leaves fall away and his white, speckled intestines slither out of his belly, releasing a breath of foul hot air.
+ Granddad laid him back down on the ground.
+ 'Elder brother,' Fang pleaded, 'put me out of my misery. . . .
+ Don't torture me. . . .
+ Shoot me, please. . . .'
+ Granddad squatted down and held Fang Seven's hand.
+ 'Little brother, I can carry you over to see Zhang Xinyi, Dr Zhang.
+ He'll patch you up.'
+ 'Elder brother . . . do it now. . . .
+ Don't make me suffer. . . .
+ Past saving . . .'
+ Granddad squinted into the murky, late-afternoon August sky, in which a dozen or so stars shone brightly, and let out a long howl before turning to Father.
+ 'Are there bullets in your gun, Douguan?'
+ 'Yes.'
+ Father handed his pistol to Granddad, who released the safety catch, took another look into the darkening sky, and spun the cylinder.
+ 'Rest easy, brother.
+ As long as Yu Zhan'ao has food to eat, your wife and child will never go hungry.'
+ Fang Seven nodded and closed his eyes.
+ Granddad raised the revolver as though he were lifting a huge boulder.
+ The pressure of the moment made him quake.
+ Fang Seven's eyes snapped open.
+ 'Elder brother . . .'
+ Granddad spun his face away, and a burst of flame leaped out of the muzzle, lighting up Fang Seven's greenish scalp.
+ The kneeling man shot forward and fell on top of his own exposed guts.
+ Father found it hard to believe that a man's belly could hold such a pile of intestines.
+ 'Consumptive Four, you'd better be on your way, too.
+ Then you can get an early start on your next life and come back to seek revenge on those Jap bastards!'
+ He pumped the last cartridge into the heart of the dying Consumptive Four.
+ Though killing had become a way of life for Granddad, he dropped his arm to his side and let it hang there like a dead snake; the pistol fell to the ground.
+ Father bent over and picked it up, stuck it into his belt, and tugged on Granddad, who stood as though drunk or paralysed.
+ 'Let's go home, Dad, let's go home. . . .'
+ 'Home?
+ Go home?
+ Yes, go home!
+ Go home . . .'
+ Father pulled him up onto the dike and began walking awkwardly towards the west.
+ The cold rays of the half-moon on that August 9 evening filled the sky, falling lightly on the backs of Granddad and Father and illuminating the heavy Black Water River, which was like the great but clumsy Chinese race.
+ White eels, thrown into a frenzy by the bloody water, writhed and sparkled on the surface.
+ The blue chill of the water merged with the red warmth of the sorghum bordering the dikes to form an airy, transparent mist that reminded Father of the heavy, spongy fog that had accompanied them as they set out for battle that morning.
+ Only one day, but it seemed like ten years.
+ Yet it also seemed like the blink of an eye.
+ Father thought back to how his mother had walked him to the edge of the fog-enshrouded village.
+ The scene seemed so far away, though it was right there in front of his eyes.
+ He recalled how difficult the march through the sorghum field had been, how Wang Wenyi had been wounded in the ear by a stray bullet, how the fifty or so soldiers had approached the bridge looking like the droppings of a goat.
+ Then there was Mute's razor-sharp sabre knife, the sinister eyes, the Jap head sailing through the air, the shrivelled ass of the old Jap officer . . .
+ Mother soaring to the top of the dike as though on the wings of a phoenix . . . the fistcakes . . . fistcakes rolling on the ground . . . stalks of sorghum falling all around . . . red sorghum crumpling like fallen heroes. . . .
+ Granddad hoisted Father, who was asleep on his feet, onto his back and wrapped his arms – one healthy, the other injured – around Father's legs.
+ The pistol in Father's belt banged against Granddad's back, sending sharp pains straight to his heart.
+ It had belonged to the dark, skinny, handsome, and well-educated Adjutant Ren.
+ Granddad was thinking about how this pistol had ended the lives of Adjutant Ren, Fang Seven, and Consumptive Four.
+ He wanted nothing more than to heave the execrable thing into the Black Water River.
+ But it was only a thought.
+ Bending over, he shifted his sleeping son higher up on his back, partly to relieve the excruciating pain in his heart.
+ All that kept Granddad moving was a powerful drive to push on and continue the bitter struggle against wave after murky wave of obdurate air.
+ In his dazed state he heard a loud clamour rushing towards him like a tidal wave.
+ When he raised his head he spotted a long fiery dragon wriggling its way along the top of the dike.
+ His eyes froze, as the image slipped in and out of focus.
+ When it was blurred he could see the dragon's fangs and claws as it rode the clouds and sailed through the mist, the vigorous motions making its golden scales jangle; wind howled, clouds hissed, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, the sounds merging to form a masculine wind that swept across a huddled feminine world.
+ When it was clear he could see it was ninety-nine torches hoisted above the heads of hundreds of people hastening towards him.
+ The dancing flames lit up the sorghum on both banks of the river.
+ Granddad lifted Father down off his back and shook him hard.
+ 'Douguan,' he shouted in his ear, 'Douguan!
+ Wake up!
+ Wake up!
+ The villagers are coming for us, they're coming. . . .'
+ Father heard the hoarseness in Granddad's voice and saw two remarkable tears leap out of his eyes.
+ GRANDDAD WAS ONLY twenty-four when he murdered Shan Tingxiu and his son.
+ Even though by then he and Grandma had already done the phoenix dance in the sorghum field, and even though, in the solemn course of suffering and joy, she had conceived my father, whose life was a mixture of achievements and sin (in the final analysis, he gained distinction among his generation of citizens of Northeast Gaomi Township), she had nonetheless been legally married into the Shan family.
+ So she and Granddad were adulterers, their relationship marked by measures of spontaneity, chance, and uncertainty.
+ And since Father wasn't born while they were together, accuracy demands that I refer to Granddad as Yu Zhan'ao in writing about this period.
+ When, in agony and desperation, Grandma told Yu Zhan'ao that her legal husband, Shan Bianlang, was a leper, he decapitated two sorghum plants with his short sword.
+ Urging her not to worry, he told her to return three days hence.
+ She was too overwhelmed by the tide of passionate love to concern herself with the implications of his comment.
+ But murderous thoughts had already entered his mind.
+ He watched her thread her way out of the sorghum field and, through the spaces between stalks, saw her summon her shrewd little donkey and nudge Great-Granddad with her foot, waking the mud-caked heap from his drunken stupor.
+ He heard Great-Granddad, whose tongue had grown thick in his mouth, say: 'Daughter . . . you . . . what took you so long to take a piss? . . .
+ Your father-in-law . . . going to give me a big black mule . . .
+ Ignoring his mumbling, she swung her leg over the donkey's back and turned her face, brushed by the winds of spring, towards the sorghum field south of the road.
+ She knew that the young sedan bearer was watching her.
+ Struggling to wrench free of this unknown passion, she had a dim vision of a new and unfamiliar broad road stretching out ahead of her, covered with sorghum seeds as red as rubies, the ditches on either side filled with crystal-clear sorghum wine.
+ As she moved down the road, her imagination coloured the genuine article until she could not distinguish between reality and illusion.
+ Yu Zhan'ao followed her with his eyes until she rounded a bend.
+ Feeling suddenly weary, he pushed his way through the sorghum and returned to the sacred altar, where he collapsed like a toppled wall and fell into a sound sleep.
+ Later, as the red sun was disappearing in the west, his eyes snapped open, and the first things he saw were sorghum leaves, stems, and ears of grain that formed a thick blanket of purplish red above him.
+ He draped his rain cape over his shoulders and walked out of the field as a rapid breeze on the road caused the sorghum to rustle noisily.
+ He wrapped the cape tightly around him to ward off the chill, and as his hand brushed against his belly he realised how hungry he was.
+ He dimly recalled the three shacks at the head of the village where he had carried the woman in the sedan chair three days ago, and the tattered tavern flag snapping and fluttering in the raging winds of the rainstorm.
+ So hungry he could neither sit still nor stand straight, he strode towards the tavern.
+ Since he had been hiring out for the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company for less than two years, the people around here wouldn't recognise him.
+ He'd get something to eat and drink, find a way to do what he'd come to do, then slip into the sorghum fields, like a fish in the ocean, and swim far away.
+ At this point in his ruminations, he headed west, where bilious red clouds turned the setting sun into a blooming peony with a luminous, fearfully bright golden border.
+ After walking west for a while, he turned north, heading straight for the village where Grandma's nominal husband lived.
+ The fields were still and deserted.
+ During those years, any farmer who had food at home left his field before nightfall, turning the sorghum fields into a haven for bandits.
+ Village chimneys were smoking by the time he arrived, and a handsome young man was walking down the street with two crocks of fresh well water over his shoulder, the shifting water splashing over the sides.
+ Yu Zhan'ao darted into the doorway beneath the tattered tavern flag.
+ No inner walls separated the shacks, and a bar made of adobe bricks divided the room in two, the inner half of which was furnished with a brick kang, a stove, and a large vat.
+ Two rickety tables with scarred tops and a few scattered narrow benches constituted the furnishings in the outer half of the room.
+ A glazed wine crock rested on the bar, its ladle hanging from the rim.
+ A fat old man was sprawled on the kang.
+ Yu Zhan'ao recognised him as the Korean dog butcher they called Gook.
+ He had seen Gook once at the market in Ma Hamlet.
+ The man could slaughter a dog in less than a minute, and the hundreds of dogs that lived in Ma Hamlet growled viciously when they saw him, their fur standing straight up, though they kept their distance.
+
+ 我父亲吃完了一根拤饼，脚踏着被夕阳照得血淋淋的衰草，走下河堤，又踩着生满茵茵水草的松软的河滩，小心翼翼地走到河水边站定。
+ 墨水河大石桥上那四辆汽车，头辆被连环耙扎破了轮胎，呆呆地伏在那儿，车栏杆上、挡板上，涂着一摊摊蓝汪汪的血和嫩绿的脑浆。
+ 一个日本兵的上半身趴在车栏杆上，头上的钢盔脱落，挂在脖子上。
+ 从他的鼻尖上流下的黑血滴滴答答地落在钢盔里。
+ 河水在呜呜咽咽地悲泣。
+ 高粱在滋滋咝咝地成熟。
+ 沉重凝滞的阳光被河流上的细小波涌颠扑破碎。
+ 秋虫在水草根下的潮湿泥土中哀鸣。
+ 第三第四辆汽车燃烧将尽的乌黑框架在焦焦地嘶叫皱裂。
+ 父亲在这些杂乱的音响和纷繁的色彩中谛视着，看到了也听到了日本兵鼻尖上的血滴在钢盔里激起的层层涟漪和清脆如敲石磬的响声。
+ 父亲十四岁多一点了。
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九的太阳消耗殆尽，死灰余烬染红天下万物，父亲经过一天激战更显干瘦的小脸上凝着一层紫红的泥土。
+ 父亲在王文义妻子的尸体上游蹲下，双手掬起水来喝，粘稠的水滴从他的指缝里摇曳下落，落水无声。
+ 父亲焦裂的嘴唇接触到水时，泡酥了的嘴唇一阵刺痛，一股血腥味顺着牙缝直扑进喉咙，在一瞬间他的喉管痉得笔直坚硬，连连嗝呃几声后，喉管才缓解成正常状态。
+ 温暖的墨水河河水进入父亲的喉管，滋润着干燥，使父亲产生了一种痛苦的快感，尽管血腥味使他肠胃翻腾，但他还是连连掬水进喉，一直喝到河水泡透了腹中那张干渣裂纹的拤饼时，他才直起腰来舒了一口气。
+ 天确凿地要黑了，红日只剩下一刃嫣红在超旷的穹隆下缘画着，大石桥上，第三辆和第四辆车上发散的焦糊味儿也有些淡薄。
+ 咕咚一声巨响，使父亲大吃一惊，抬头看，见爆炸后破碎的汽车轮胎像黑蝴蝶一样在河道上飘飘下落，被震扬起的黑黑白白的东洋大米也唰唰啦啦地洒在板块般的河面上。
+ 父亲转身时看到了趴在河水边，用鲜血流红了一片河的王文义的小个女人。
+ 爬上河堤，父亲大声喊： “爹！”
+ 爷爷直立在河堤上，他脸上的肉在一天内消耗得干干净净，骨骼的轮廓从焦黑的皮肤下棱岸地凸现出来。
+ 父亲看到在苍翠的暮色中，爷爷半寸长的卓然上指的头发在一点点地清晰地变白，父亲心中惊惧痛苦，怯生生地靠了前，轻轻地推推爷爷，说：“爹！
+ 爹！
+ 你怎么啦？”
+ 两行泪水在爷爷脸上流，一串喀噜喀噜地响声在爷爷喉咙里滚。
+ 冷支队长开恩扔下的那挺日本机枪像一匹老狼，踞伏在爷爷脚前，喇叭状的枪口，像放大了的狗眼。
+ “爹，你说话呀，爹，你吃饼呀，吃了饼你去喝点水，你不吃不喝会渴死饿死的。”
+ 爷爷的脖子往前一折，脑袋耷拉到胸前。
+ 他的身体仿佛承受不住脑袋的重压，慢慢地、慢慢地矮。
+ 爷爷蹲在河堤上，双手抱头，唏嘘片刻，忽而扬头大叫：“豆官！
+ 我的儿，咱爷们，就这样完了吗？”
+ 父亲怔怔地看着爷爷。
+ 父亲的双眼大睁，从那两粒钻石一样的瞳孔里，散射出本来属于我奶奶的那种英勇无畏、狂放不羁的响马精神，那种黑暗王国里的希望之光，照亮了我爷爷的心头。
+ “爹，”父亲说，“你别愁，我好好练枪，像你当年绕着水湾子打鱼那样练，练出七点梅花枪，就去找冷麻子这个狗娘养的王八蛋算帐！”
+ 爷爷腾地跳起，咆哮三声，半像恸哭半像狂笑。
+ 从他的嘴唇正中，流出一线乌紫的血。
+ “说得是！
+ 儿子，说得好！”
+ 爷爷从黑土大地上捡起我奶奶亲手制造的拤饼，大口吞吃，焦黄的牙齿上，沾着饼屑和一个个血泡沫。
+ 父亲听到爷爷被饼噎得哦哦地叫，看到那些棱角分明的饼块从爷爷的喉咙里缓慢地往下蠕动。
+ 父亲说： “爹，你下河喝点水把肚子里的饼泡泡吧。”
+ 爷爷趔趔趄趄走下河堤，双膝跪在水草上，伸出长长的颈，像骡马一样饮着水。
+ 喝完水，父亲见爷爷双手撑开，把整个头颅和半截脖子扎进河水里，河水碰到障碍，激起一簇簇鲜艳的浪花。
+ 爷爷把头放在水里泡了足有半袋烟的工夫——
+ 父亲在堤上看着像一个铜铸蛤蟆一样的他的爹，心里一阵阵发紧——
+ 爷爷呼拉拉扬起了浸透了的头，呼哧呼哧地喘着粗气，站起来，上了河堤，站在父亲面前。
+ 父亲看到爷爷的头上往下滚动着水珠。
+ 爷爷甩甩头，把四十九颗大小不一的水珠甩出去，如扬撒了一片珍珠。
+ “豆官，”爷爷说，“跟爹一起，去看看弟兄们吧！”
+ 爷爷踉踉跄跄地在路西边的高粱地里穿行着，父亲紧跟着爷爷走。
+ 他们脚踩着残断曲折的高粱和发出微弱黄光的铜弹壳，不时弯腰俯头，看着那些横卧竖躺、龇牙咧嘴的队员们。
+ 他们都死了，爷爷和父亲扳动着他们，希望能碰上个活的，但他们都死了。
+ 父亲和爷爷手上，沾满了粘乎乎的血。
+ 父亲看到最西边两个队员，一个含着土枪口，后颈窝那儿，烂乎乎一大片，像一个捅烂的蜂窝；另一个则俯在地上，胸口上扎进了一把尖刀。
+ 爷爷翻看着他们，父亲看到他们被打断了的腿和打破了的小腹。
+ 爷爷叹了一口气，把土枪从那个队员口里拔出来，把尖刀从那个队员胸口里撕出来。
+ 父亲跟着爷爷走过因天空的灰暗而变得明亮起来的公路，在路东边那片同样被扫射得七零八落的高粱地里，翻看着那些东一个西一个的弟兄们。
+ 刘大号还跪在那里，双手端着大喇叭，保持着吹奏的姿式。
+ 爷爷兴奋地大叫：“刘大号！”
+ 大号一声不吭。
+ 父亲上去推了他一把，喊一声：“大叔！”
+ 那根大喇叭掉在地上，低头看时，吹号人的脸已经像石头般僵硬了。
+ 在离开河堤几十步远，伤损不太严重的高粱地里，爷爷和父亲找到了被打出了肠子的方七和另一个叫“痨痨四”的队员（他排行四，小时得过肺痨病），痨痨四大腿上中了一枪，因流血过多，已昏迷过去。
+ 爷爷把沾满人血的手放在他的唇边。
+ 还能感到从他的鼻孔里，喷出焦灼干燥的气息。
+ 方七的肠子已经塞进肚子，伤口处堵着一把高粱叶子。
+ 他还省人事，见到爷爷和父亲，抽搐着嘴唇说：“司令…… 我完了……
+ 你见了俺老婆…… 给她点钱……
+ 别让她改嫁……
+ 俺哥没有后……
+ 她要走了……
+ 方家就断了香火啦……”
+ 父亲知道方七有个一岁多的儿子，方七的老婆有一对葫芦那么大的奶子，奶汁旺盛，灌得个孩子又鲜又嫩。
+ 爷爷说：“兄弟，我背你回去。”
+ 爷爷蹲下，拉着方七的胳膊往背上一拖，方七惨叫一声，父亲看到那团堵住方七伤口的高粱叶子掉了，一嘟噜白花花的肠子，夹带着热乎乎的腥臭气，从伤口里蹿出来。
+ 爷爷把方七放下，方七连声哀鸣着：“大哥…… 行行好……
+ 别折腾我啦……
+ 补我一枪吧……”
+ 爷爷蹲下去，握着方七的手，说：“兄弟，我背你去找张辛一，张先生，他能治红伤。”
+ “大哥…… 快点吧……
+ 别让我受啦……
+ 我不中用啦……”
+ 爷爷眯着眼，仰望着缀着十几颗璀璨星辰的混沌渺茫的八月的黄昏的天空，长啸一声，对我父亲说：“豆官，你那枪里，还有火吗？”
+ 父亲说：“还有。”
+ 爷爷接过父亲递给他的左轮手枪，扳开机关，对着焦黄的天光，看了一眼，把枪轮子一转。
+ 爷爷说：“七弟，你放心走吧，有我余占鳌吃的，就饿不着弟媳和大侄子。”
+ 方七点点头，闭上眼睛。
+ 爷爷举着左轮手枪，像举着一块千斤巨石，整个儿人，都在重压下颤栗。
+ 方七睁开眼，说：“大哥……”
+ 爷爷猛一别脸，枪口迸出一团火光，照明了方七青溜溜的头皮。
+ 半跪着的方七迅速前栽，上身伏在自己流出来的肠子上。
+ 父亲无法相信，一个人的肚子里竟然能盛得下那么多肠子。
+ “‘痨痨四’，你也一路去了吧，早死早投生，回来再跟这帮东洋杂种们干！”
+ 爷爷把左轮手枪里仅存的一颗子弹，打进了命悬一线的“痨痨四”的心窝。
+ 杀人如麻的爷爷，打死“痨痨四”之后，左轮手枪掉在地上，他的胳膊像死蛇一样垂着，再也无力抬起来了。
+ 父亲从地上捡起手枪，插进腰里，扯扯如醉如痴的爷爷，说：“爹，回家去吧。
+ 爹，回家去吧……”
+ “回家，回家？
+ 回家！
+ 回家……” 爷爷说。
+ 父亲拉着爷爷，爬上河堤，笨拙地往西走去。
+ 八月初九的大半个新月亮已经挂上了天，冰凉的月光照着爷爷和父亲的背，照着沉重如伟大笨拙的汉文化的墨水河。
+ 被血水撩拨得精神亢奋的白鳝鱼在河里飞腾打旋，一道道银色的弧光在河面上跃来跃去。
+ 河里泛上来的蓝蓝的凉气和高粱地里弥散开来的红红的暖气在河堤上交锋汇合，化合成轻清透明的薄雾。
+ 父亲想起凌晨出征时那场像胶皮一样富有弹性的大雾，这一天过得像十年那么长，又像一眨么眼皮那么短。
+ 父亲想起在弥漫的大雾中他的娘站在村头上为他送行，那情景远在天边，近在眼前。
+ 他想起行军高粱地中的艰难，想起王文义被流弹击中耳朵，想起五十几个队员在公路上像羊拉屎一样往大桥开进，还有哑巴那锋利的腰刀，阴鸷的眼睛，在空中飞行的鬼子头颅，老鬼子干瘪的屁股……
+ 像凤凰展翅一样扑倒在河堤上的娘…… 拤饼…… 遍地打滚的拤饼…… 纷纷落地的红高粱…… 像英雄一样纷纷倒下的红高粱……
+ 爷爷把睡着走的我父亲背起来，用一只受伤的胳膊，一只没受伤的胳膊，揽住我父亲的两条腿弯子。
+ 父亲腰里的左轮手枪硌着爷爷的背，爷爷心里一阵巨痛。
+ 这是又黑又瘦又英俊又有大学问的任副官的左轮手枪。
+ 爷爷想到这支枪打死了任副官，又打死了方七、“痨痨四”，爷爷恨不得把它扔到黑水河里，这个不祥的家伙。
+ 他只是想着扔，身体却弓一弓，把睡在背上的儿子往上颠颠，也是为了减缓那种锥心的痛疼。
+ 爷爷走着，他已经感觉不到自己的腿在何处，只是凭着一种走的强烈意念，在僵硬的空气的浊浪中，困难地挣扎。
+ 爷爷在昏昏沉沉中，听到从前方传来了浪潮一样的喧嚷。
+ 抬头看时，见远处的河堤上，蜿蜒着一条火的长龙。
+ 爷爷凝眸片刻，眼前一阵迷蒙一阵清晰，迷蒙时见那长龙张牙舞爪，腾云驾雾，抖搂的满身金鳞索落落地响，并且风吼云嘶，电闪雷鸣，万声集合，似雄风横扫着雌伏的世界；
+ 清晰时则辨出那是九十九支火把，由数百的人簇拥着跑过来。
+ 火光起伏跳荡，照亮了河南河北的高粱。
+ 前边的火把照着后边的人，后边的火把照着前边的人。
+ 爷爷把父亲从背上放下，用力摇晃着，喊叫着： “豆官！ 豆官！
+ 醒醒！
+ 醒醒！
+ 乡亲们接应我们来了，乡亲们来了……”
+ 父亲听到爷爷嗓音沙哑；父亲看到两颗相当出色的眼泪，蹦出了爷爷的眼睛。
+ 爷爷刺杀单廷秀父子时，年方二十四岁。
+ 虽然我奶奶与他已经在高粱地里凤凰和谐，在那个半是痛苦半是幸福的庄严过程中，我奶奶虽然也怀上了我的功罪参半但毕竟是高密东北乡一代风流的父亲，但那时奶奶是单家的明媒正娶的媳妇，爷爷与她总归是桑间濮上之合，带着相当程度的随意性偶然性不稳定性，况且我父亲也没落土，所以，写到那时候的事，我还是称呼他余占鳌更为准确。
+ 当时，我奶奶痛苦欲绝对余占鳌说，她的法定的丈夫单扁郎是个麻风病人，余占鳌用那柄锋利的小剑斩断了两棵高粱，要我奶奶三天后只管放心回去，他的言外之意我奶奶不及细想，奶奶被爱的浪潮给灌迷糊了。
+ 他那时就起了杀人之心。
+ 他目送着我奶奶钻出高粱地，从高粱缝隙里看到我奶奶唤来聪明伶俐的小毛驴，踢醒了醉成一摊泥巴的曾外祖父。
+ 他听到我曾外祖父舌头僵硬地说：“闺女…… 你…… 一泡尿尿了这半天……
+ 你公公…… 要送咱家一头大黑骡子……”
+ 奶奶不管她的胡言乱语的爹，骗腿上了驴，把一张春风漫卷过的粉脸对着道路南侧的高粱地。
+ 她知道那年轻轿夫正在注视着自己。
+ 奶奶从撕肝裂胆的兴奋中挣扎出来，模模糊糊地看到了自己的眼前出现了一条崭新的、同时是陌生的、铺满了红高粱钻石般籽粒的宽广大道，道路两侧的沟渠里，蓄留着澄澈如气的高粱酒浆。
+ 路两边依旧是坦坦荡荡、大智若愚的红高粱集体，现实中的红高粱与奶奶幻觉中的红高粱融成一体，难辨真假。
+ 奶奶满载着空灵踏实、清晰模糊的感觉，一程程走远了。
+ 余占鳌手扶着高粱，目送我奶奶拐过弯去。
+ 一阵倦意上来，他推推搡搡地回到方才的圣坛，像一堵墙壁样囫囵个儿倒下，呼呼噜噜地睡过去。
+ 直睡到红日西沉，睁眼先见到高粱叶茎上、高粱穗子上，都涂了一层厚厚的紫红。
+ 他披上蓑衣，走出高粱地，路上小风疾驰，高粱嚓嚓作声。
+ 他感到有些凉意上来，用力把衰衣裹紧。
+ 手不慎碰到肚皮，又觉腹中饥饿难忍。
+ 他恍惚记起，三天前抬着那女子进村时，见村头三间草屋檐下，有一面破烂酒旗儿在狂风暴雨中招飐，腹中的饥饿使他坐不住，站不稳，一壮胆，出了高粱地，大踏步向那酒店走去。
+ 他想，自己来到东北乡“婚丧嫁娶服务公司”当雇工不到两年，附近的人不会认识。
+ 去那村头酒店吃饱喝足，瞅个机会，干完了那事，撒腿就走，进了高粱地，就如鱼儿入了海，逍遥游。
+ 想到此，迎着那阳光，徜徉西行，见落日上方彤云膨胀，如牡丹芍药开放，云团上俱镶着灼目金边，鲜明得可怕。
+ 西走一阵，又往北走，直奔我奶奶的名义丈夫单扁郎的村庄。
+ 田野里早已清静无人，在那个年头里，凡能吃上口饭的庄稼人都是早早地回家，不敢恋晚，一到夜间，高粱地就成了绿林响马的世界。
+ 余占鳌那些天运气还不错，没碰上草莽英雄找他的麻烦。
+ 村子里已经炊烟升腾，街上有一个轻俏的汉子挑着两瓦罐清水从井台上走来，水罐淅淅沥沥地滴着水。
+ 余占鳌闪进那挂着破酒旗的草屋，屋子里一贯通，没有隔墙，一道泥坯垒成的柜台把房子分成两半，里边一铺大炕，一个锅灶，一口大缸。
+ 外边有两张腿歪面裂的八仙桌子，桌旁胡乱搡着几条狭窄的木凳。
+ 泥巴柜台上放着一只青釉酒坛，酒提儿挂在坛沿上。
+ 大炕上半仰着一个胖大的老头。
+ 余占鳌看他一眼，立即认出，老头人称“高丽棒子”，以杀狗为业。
+ 余占鳌记得有一次在马店集上见他只用半分钟就要了一条狗命，马店集上成百条狗见了他都戗毛直立，咆哮不止，但绝对不敢近前。
+
+ WHEN THE JAPANESE troops withdrew, the full moon, thin as a paper cutout, rose in the sky above the tips of the sorghum stalks, which had undergone such suffering.
+ Grain fell sporadically like glistening tears.
+ A sweet odour grew heavy in the air; the dark soil of the southern edge of our village had been thoroughly soaked by human blood.
+ Lights from fires in the village curled like foxtails, as occasional pops, like the crackling of dry wood, momentarily filled the air with a charred odour that merged with the stifling stench of blood.
+ The wound on Granddad's arm had turned worse, the scabs cracking and releasing a rotting, oozing mixture of dark blood and white pus.
+ He told Father to squeeze the area around the wound.
+ Fearfully, Father placed his icy fingers on the discoloured skin around the suppurating wound and squeezed, forcing out a string of air bubbles that released the putrid smell of pickled vegetables.
+ Granddad picked up a piece of yellow spirit currency that had been weighted down by a clod of earth at the head of a nearby gravesite and told Father to smear some of the salty white powder from the sorghum stalks on it.
+ Then he removed the head of a cartridge with his teeth and poured the greenish gunpowder onto the paper, mixed it with the white sorghum powder, and took a pinch with his fingers to daub on the open wound.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'shall I mix some soil into it?'
+ Granddad thought for a moment.
+ 'Sure, why not?'
+ Father bent down and picked up a clod of dark earth near the roots of a sorghum stalk, crumbled it in his fingers, and spread it on the paper.
+ After Granddad mixed the three substances together and covered the wound with them, paper and all, Father wrapped a filthy strip of bandage cloth around it and tied it tight.
+ 'Does that make it feel better, Dad?'
+ Granddad moved his arm back and forth.
+ 'Much better, Douguan.
+ An elixir like this will work on any wound, no matter how serious.'
+ 'Dad, if we'd had something like that for Mother, she wouldn't have died, would she?'
+ 'No, she wouldn't have. . . .'
+ Granddad's face clouded.
+ 'Dad, wouldn't it've been great if you'd told me about this before?
+ Mother was bleeding so much I kept packing earth on the wounds, but that only stopped it for a while.
+ If I'd known to add some white sorghum powder and gunpowder, everything would have been fine. . . .'
+ All the while Father was rambling, Granddad was loading his pistol.
+ Japanese mortar fire raised puffs of hot yellow smoke all up and down the village wall.
+ Since Father's Browning pistol lay under the belly of the fallen horse, during the final battle of the afternoon he used a Japanese rifle nearly as tall as he was; Granddad used his German automatic, firing it so rapidly it spent its youth and was ready for the trash heap.
+ Although battle fires still lit up the sky above the village, an aura of peace and quiet had settled over the sorghum fields.
+ Father followed Granddad, dragging his rifle behind him as they circled the site of the massacre.
+ The blood-soaked earth had the consistency of liquid clay under the weight of their footsteps; bodies of the dead merged with the wreckage of sorghum stalks.
+ Moonlight danced on pools of blood, and hideous scenes of dismemberment swept away the final moments of Father's youth.
+ Tortured moans emerged from the field of sorghum, and here and there among the bodies some movement appeared.
+ Father was burning to ask Granddad to save those fellow villagers who were still alive, but when he saw the pale, expressionless look on his father's bronze face, the words stuck in his throat.
+ During the most critical moments, Father was always slightly more alert than Granddad, perhaps because he concentrated on surface phenomena; superficial thought seems ideally suited to guerrilla fighting.
+ At that moment, Granddad looked benumbed; his thoughts were riveted on a single point, which might have been a twisted face, or a shattered rifle, or a single spent bullet.
+ He was blind to all other sights, deaf to all other sounds.
+ This problem – or characteristic – of his would grow more pronounced over the coming decade.
+ He returned to China from the mountains of Hokkaido with an unfathomable depth in his eyes, gazing at things as though he could will them to combust spontaneously.
+ Father never achieved this degree of philosophical depth.
+ In 1957, after untold hardships, when he finally emerged from the burrow Mother had dug for him, his eyes had the same look as in his youth: lively, perplexed, capricious.
+ He never did figure out the relationship between men and politics or society or war, even though he had been spun so violently on the wheel of battle.
+ He was forever trying to squeeze the light of his nature through the chinks in his body armour.
+ Granddad and Father circled the site of the massacre a dozen times, until Father said tearfully, 'Dad . . . I can't walk any more. . . .'
+ Granddad's robot movements stopped; taking Father's hand, he backed up ten paces and sat down on a patch of solid, dry earth.
+ The cheerless and lonely sorghum field was highlighted by the crackle of fires in the village.
+ Weak golden flames danced fitfully beneath the silvery moonlight.
+ After sitting there for a moment, Granddad fell backward like a capsized wall, and Father laid his head on Granddad's belly, where he fell into a hazy sleep.
+ He could feel Granddad's feverish hand stroking his head, which sent his thoughts back nearly a dozen years, to when he was suckling at Grandma's breast.
+ He was four at the time, and growing tired of the yellowed nipple that was always thrust into his mouth.
+ Having begun to hate its sour hardness, he gazed up into the look of rapture in Grandma's face with a murderous glint in his eyes and bit down as hard as he could.
+ He felt the contraction in Grandma's breast as her body jerked backward.
+ Trickles of a sweet liquid warmed the corners of his mouth, until Grandma gave him a swat on the bottom and pushed him away.
+ He fell to the ground, his eyes on the drops of fresh red blood dripping from the tip of Grandma's pendulous breast.
+ He whimpered, but his eyes were dry.
+ Grandma, on the other hand, was crying bitterly, her shoulders heaving, her face bathed in tears.
+ She lashed out at him, calling him a wolf cub, as mean as his wolf of a father.
+ Later on he learned that that was the year Granddad, who loved Grandma dearly, had fallen in love with the hired girl, Passion, who had grown into a bright-eyed young woman.
+ At the moment when Father bit Grandma, Granddad, who had grown tired of her jealousy, was living with Passion in a house he'd bought in a neighbouring village.
+ Everyone said that this second grandma of mine was no economy lantern, and that Grandma was afraid of her, but this is something I'll clear up later.
+ Second Grandma eventually had a girl by Granddad.
+ In 1938, Japanese soldiers murdered this young aunt of mine with a bayonet, then gang-raped Second Grandma – this, too, I'll clear up later.
+ Granddad and Father were exhausted.
+ The wound throbbed in Granddad's arm, which seemed to be on fire.
+ Father's feet had swollen until his cloth shoes nearly split their seams, and he fantasised about the exquisite pleasure of airing the rotting skin of his feet in the moonlight.
+ But he didn't have the strength to sit up and take off his shoes.
+ Instead, he rolled over and rested his head on Granddad's hard stomach so he could look up into the starry night and let the moon's rays light up his face.
+ He could hear the murmuring flow of the Black Water River and see black clouds gather in the sky above him.
+ He remembered Uncle Arhat's saying once that, when the Milky Way lay horizontally across the sky, autumn rains would fall.
+ He had only really seen autumn water once in his life.
+ The sorghum was ready for harvest when the Black Water River rose and burst its banks, flooding both the fields and the village.
+ The stalks strained to keep their heads above water; rats and snakes scurried and slithered up them to escape drowning.
+ Father had gone with Uncle Arhat to the wall, which the villagers were reinforcing, and gazed uneasily at the yellow water rushing towards him.
+ The villagers made rafts from kindling and paddled out to the fields to hack off the ears of grain, which were already sprouting new green buds.
+ Bundles of soaked deep-red and emerald-green ears of sorghum weighted down the rafts so much it's a wonder they didn't sink.
+ The dark, gaunt men, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing conical straw hats, stood with their legs akimbo on the rafts, poling with all their strength as they rocked from side to side.
+ The water in the village was knee-high, covering the legs of livestock, whose waste floated on the surface.
+ In the dying rays of the autumn sun, the water shone like liquefied metal; tips of sorghum stalks too far away to be harvested formed a canopy of golden red just above the rippling surface, over which flocks of wild geese flew.
+ Father could see a bright, broad body of water flowing slowly through the densest patch of red sorghum, in sharp contrast to the muddy, stagnant water around him; it was, he knew, the Black Water River.
+ On one of the rafts lay a silver-bellied, green-backed grass carp, a long, thin sorghum stalk stuck through its gills.
+ The farmer proudly held it up to show the people on the wall; it was nearly half as tall as he was.
+ Blood oozed from its gills, and its mouth was open as it looked at my father with dull, sorrowful eyes.
+ Father was thinking about how Uncle Arhat had bought a fish from a farmer once, and how Grandma had scraped the scales from its belly, then made soup out of it; just thinking about that delicious soup gave him an appetite.
+ He sat up.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'aren't you hungry?
+ I am.
+ Can you find me something to eat?
+ I'm starving. . . .'
+ Granddad sat up and fished around in his belt until he found a bullet, which he inserted into the cylinder; then he snapped it shut, sending the bullet into the chamber.
+ He pulled the trigger, and there was a loud crack.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'let's go find your mother. . . .'
+ 'No, Dad,' Father replied in a high-pitched, frightened voice, 'Mother's dead.
+ But we're still alive, and I'm hungry.
+ Let's get something to eat.'
+ Father pulled Granddad to his feet.
+ 'Where?'
+ Granddad mumbled.
+ 'Where can we go?'
+ So Father led him by the hand into the sorghum field, where they walked in a crooked line, as though their objective was the moon, hanging high and icy in the sky.
+ A growl emerged from the field of corpses.
+ Granddad and Father stopped in their tracks and turned to see a dozen pairs of green eyes, like will-o'-the-wisps, and several indigo shadows tumbling on the ground.
+ Granddad took out his pistol and fired at two of the green eyes; the howl of a dying dog accompanied the extinguishing of those eyes.
+ Granddad fired seven shots in all, and several wounded dogs writhed in agony among the corpses.
+ While he was emptying his pistol into the pack, the uninjured dogs fled into the sorghum field, out of range, where they howled furiously at the two humans.
+ The last couple of bullets from Granddad's pistol had travelled only thirty paces or so before thudding to the ground.
+ Father watched them tumble in the moonlight, so slowly he could have reached out and caught them.
+ And the once crisp crack of the pistol sounded more like the phlegmatic cough of a doddering old man.
+ A tortured, sympathetic expression spread across Granddad's face as he looked down at the weapon in his hand.
+ 'Out of bullets, Dad?'
+ The five hundred bullets they'd brought back from town in the goat's belly had been used up in a matter of hours.
+ The pistol had aged overnight, and Granddad came to the painful realisation that it was no longer capable of carrying out his wishes; time for them to part ways.
+ Holding the gun out in front of him, he carefully studied the muted reflection of the moonlight on the barrel, then loosened his grip and let the gun fall heavily to the ground.
+ The green-eyed dogs returned to the corpses, timidly at first.
+ But their eyes quickly disappeared, and the moonlight was reflected off rolling waves of bluish fur; Granddad and Father could hear the sounds of dogs tearing human bodies with their fangs.
+ 'Let's go into the village, Dad,' Father said.
+ Granddad wavered for a moment, so Father tugged on him, and they fell into step.
+ By then most of the fires in the village had gone out, leaving red-hot cinders that gave off an acrid heat amid the crumbling walls and shattered buildings.
+ Hot winds whirled above the village roads.
+ The murky air was stifling.
+ Roofs of houses, their supports burned out beneath them, had collapsed in mountains of smoke, dust, and cinders.
+ Bodies were strewn atop the village wall and on the roads.
+ A page in the history of our village had been turned.
+ At one time the site had been a wasteland covered with brambles, underbrush, and reeds, a paradise for foxes and wild rabbits.
+ Then a few huts appeared, and it became a haven for escaped murderers, drunks, gamblers, who built homes, cultivated the land, and turned it into a paradise for humans, forcing out the foxes and wild rabbits, who set up howls of protest on the eve of their departure.
+ Now the village lay in ruins; man had created it, and man had destroyed it.
+ It was now a sorrowful paradise, a monument to both grief and joy, built upon ruins.
+ In 1960, when the dark cloud of famine settled over the Shandong Peninsula, even though I was only four years old I could dimly sense that Northeast Gaomi Township had never been anything but a pile of ruins, and that its people had never been able to rid their hearts of the shattered buildings, nor would they ever be able to.
+ That night, after the smoke and sparks from the other houses had died out, our buildings were still burning, sending skyward green-tinged tongues of flame and the intoxicating aroma of strong wine, released in an instant after all those years.
+ Blue roof tiles, deformed by the intense heat, turned scarlet, then leaped into the air through a wall of flames that illuminated Granddad's hair, which had turned three-quarters grey in the space of a week.
+ A roof came crashing down, momentarily blotting out the flames, which then roared out of the rubble, stronger than ever.
+ The loud crash nearly crushed the breath out of Father and Granddad.
+ Our house, which had sheltered the father and son of the Shan family as they grew rich, then had sheltered Granddad after his murderous deed, then had sheltered Grandma, Granddad, Father, Uncle Arhat, and all the men who worked for them, a sanctuary for their kindnesses and their grievances, had now completed its historical mission.
+ I hated that sanctuary: though it had sheltered decent emotions, it had also sheltered heinous crimes.
+ Father, when you were hiding in the burrow we dug for you in the floor of my home back in 1957, you recalled those days of your past in the unrelenting darkness.
+ On no fewer than 365 occasions, in your mind you saw the roof of your house crash down amid the flames, and wondered what was going through the mind of your father, my granddad.
+ So my fantasies were chasing yours while yours were chasing Granddad's.
+ As he watched the roof collapse, Granddad became as angry as he'd been the day he abandoned Grandma and moved to another village to be with his new love, Passion.
+ He had learned then that Grandma had shamelessly taken up with Black Eye, the leader of an organisation called the Iron Society, and at the time he wasn't sure what filled his heart – loathing or love, pain or anger.
+ When he later returned to Grandma's arms, his feelings for her were so confused he couldn't sort them out.
+ In the beginning, his emotional warfare scarred only his own heart, and Grandma's scarred only her own.
+ Finally, they hurt each other.
+ Only when Grandma smiled up at him as she lay dead in the sorghum field did he realise the grievous punishment life had meted out to him.
+ He loved my father as a magpie loves the last remaining egg in its nest.
+ But by then it was too late, for fate, cold and calculating, had sentenced him to a cruel end that was waiting for him down the road.
+ 'Dad, our house is gone. . . .'
+ Father said.
+ Granddad rubbed Father's head as he stared at the ruins of his home, then took Father's hand and began stumbling aimlessly down the road under the waning light of the flames and the waxing light of the moon.
+ At the head of the village they heard an old man's voice: 'Is that you, Number Three?
+ Why didn't you bring the oxcart?'
+ The sound of that voice gave Granddad and Father such a warm feeling they forgot how tired they were and rushed over to see who it was.
+ A hunched-over elderly man rose to greet them, carefully sizing up Granddad with his ancient eyes, nearly touching his face.
+ Granddad didn't like his watchful look and was repulsed by the greedy stench that came from his mouth.
+ 'You're not my Number Three,' the old man said unhappily, his head wobbling as he sat down on a pile of loot.
+ There were trunks, cupboards, dining tables, farm tools, harnesses, ripped comforters, cooking pots, earthenware bowls.
+ He was sitting on a small mountain of stuff and guarding it as a wolf guards its kill.
+ Behind him, two calves, three goats, and a mule were tied to a willow tree.
+ 'You old dog!'
+ Granddad growled through clenched teeth.
+ 'Get the hell out of here!'
+ The old man rose up on his haunches and said amiably, 'Ah, my brother, let's not be envious.
+ I risked my life to drag this stuff out of the flames!'
+ 'I'll fuck your living mother!
+ Climb down from there!'
+ Granddad lashed out angrily.
+ 'You have no right to talk to me like that.
+ I didn't do anything to you.
+ You're the one who's asking for trouble.
+ What gives you the right to curse me like that?' he complained.
+ 'Curse you?
+ I'll goddamn kill you!
+ We're not in a desperate struggle with Japan just so you can go on a looting binge!
+ You bastard, you old bastard!
+ Douguan, where's your gun?'
+ 'It's under the horse's belly,' Father said.
+ Granddad jumped up onto the mountain of stuff and, with a single kick, sent the old man sprawling onto the ground.
+ He rose to his knees and begged, 'Spare me, Eighth Route Master, spare me!'
+ 'I'm not with the Eighth Route Army,' Granddad said, 'or the Ninth Route.
+ I'm Yu Zhan'ao the bandit!'
+ 'Spare me, Commander Yu, spare me!
+ What good would it do to let all this stuff burn?
+ I'm not the only "potato picker" from the village.
+ Those thieves got all the good stuff.
+ I'm too old and too slow, and all I could find was this junk.'
+ Granddad picked up a wooden table and threw it at the old man's bald head.
+ He screamed and held his bleeding scalp as he rolled in the dirt.
+ Granddad reached down and picked him up by his collar.
+ Looking straight into those tortured eyes, he said, 'Our hero, the "potato picker", then raised his fist and drove it with a loud crack into the old man's face, sending him crumpling to the ground, face up.
+ Granddad walked up and kicked him in the face, hard.
+
+ 日本人撤走了。
+ 硕大的、单薄的像一片剪纸一样的圆月，在升上高粱梢头的过程中，面积凝缩变小，并渐渐放射出光辉。
+ 多灾多难的高粱们在月光中肃立不语，间或有一些高粱米坠落在黑土上，好像高粱们晶莹的泪珠。
+ 空气中腥甜的气息浓烈稠密，人血把我们村南这一片黑土地都给泡透了。
+ 村子里的火光像狐狸尾巴一样耸动着，时不时响起木头烧焦的爆裂声，焦糊味道从村子里弥散出来，与高粱地里的血腥味掺合一起，形成一种令人窒息的怪味。
+ 爷爷胳膊上的老伤口累发了，疮面迸裂，流了那么多乌黑的花白的腥臭脓血。
+ 爷爷要父亲帮助他挤压伤口。
+ 父亲用冰凉的小手指，胆颤心惊地挤压着爷爷胳膊上的伤口附近青紫色的皮肤，挤一下，噗噗冒出一串虹膜般的气泡，伤口里有一股酱菜般的腐败气息。
+ 爷爷从远处的一丘坟墓上，揭来一张用土坷垃压在坟尖上的黄表纸，他要父亲从高粱秸上刮下一些碱卤般的白色粉末放在纸上。
+ 父亲用双手托着放了一小堆高粱粉的黄表纸，献到爷爷面前。
+ 爷爷用牙齿拧开一颗手枪子弹，倒出一些灰绿色的火药，与白色的高粱粉末掺合在一起，捏起一撮，要往伤口上撒，父亲小声问： “爹，不掺点黑土？”
+ 爷爷想了一会，说：“掺吧。”
+ 父亲从高粱根下挖起一块黑土，用手搓得精细，撒在黄表纸上。
+ 爷爷把三种物质拌匀，连同那张黄表纸，拍在伤口上，父亲帮着爷爷把那根肮脏不堪的绷带扎好。
+ 父亲问：“爹，疼得轻点了吗？”
+ 爷爷活动了几下胳膊，说：“好多了，豆官，这样的灵丹妙药，什么样的重伤也能治好。”
+ “爹，俺娘那会儿要是也敷上这种药就不会死了吧？” 父亲问。
+ “是，是不会死……”
+ 爷爷面色阴沉地说。
+ “爹，你早把这个药方告诉我就好啦，俺娘伤口里的血咕嘟咕嘟往外冒，我就用黑土堵啊堵啊，堵住一会儿，血又冲出来。
+ 要是那会儿加上高粱白粉和枪子药就好啦……”
+ 爷爷在父亲的细声碎语中，用那只伤手往手枪里压子弹；日本人的迫击炮弹，在村子的围子上炸起了一团团焦黄的烟雾。
+ 父亲的勃朗宁手枪压在日本洋马肚子下边了。
+ 在下午最后的搏斗中，父亲拖着一杆比他矮不了多少的日本马枪，爷爷还用着那支德国造“自来得”手枪。
+ 连续不断地射击，使本来就过了青春年华的这支“自来得”迅速奔向废铁堆。
+ 父亲觉得爷爷的手枪筒子都弯弯曲曲的抻长了一节。
+ 尽管村子里火光冲天，但高粱地里，还是呈现出一派安恬的宁静夜色。
+ 更加凄清的皎皎月光洒在魅力渐渐衰退的高粱萎缩的头颅上。
+ 父亲拖着枪，跟着爷爷，绕着屠杀场走着，滋足了血的黑土像胶泥一样，陷没了他们的脚面。
+ 人的尸体与高粱的残躯混杂在一起。
+ 一汪汪的血在月下闪烁着。
+ 模糊的狰狞嘴脸纵横捭阖，扫荡着父亲最后的少年岁月。
+ 高粱棵子里似乎有痛苦的呻吟声，尸体堆中好像有活物的蠕动，父亲想唤住爷爷，去看看这些尚未死利索的乡亲。
+ 他仰起脸来，看到爷爷那副绿锈斑斑、丧失了人的表情的青铜面孔，把话儿压进了喉咙。
+ 在特别关键的时刻，父亲总是比爷爷要清醒一些，他的思想可能总是浮在现象的表面，深入不够，所以便于游击吧！
+ 爷爷的思想当时麻木地凝滞在一个点上，这一点或许是一张扭歪的脸，或许是一管断裂的枪、一颗飞躜着的尖头子弹。
+ 其他的景物他视而不见，其他的声音他听而不闻。
+ 爷爷这种毛病或特点，在十几年后，发展得更加严重。
+ 他从日本北海道的荒山僻岭中归国之后，双目深不可测，盯住什么就像要把什么烧焦似的。
+ 父亲却永远没达到这种哲学的思维深度。
+ 一九五七年，他历尽千难万苦，从母亲挖的地洞里跑出来时，双眼还像他少年时期一样，活泼、迷惘、瞬息万变。
+ 他一辈子都没弄清人与政治、人与社会、人与战争的关系，虽然他在战争的巨轮上飞速旋转着，虽然他的人性的光芒总是力图冲破冰冷的铁甲放射出来。
+ 但事实上，他的人性即使能在某一瞬间放射出璀璨的光芒，这光芒也是寒冷的、弯曲的，掺杂着某种深刻的兽性因素。
+ 后来，爷爷和父亲绕着屠杀场转了十几个圈子的时候，父亲悲泣着说：“爹…… 我走不动啦……”
+ 爷爷从机械运动中醒过来，他牵着父亲后退几十步，坐在没浸过人血的比较坚硬干燥的黑土上。
+ 村子里的火声加剧了高粱地里的寂寞清冷；金黄色的微弱火光在银白色的月光中颤抖。
+ 爷爷坐了片刻，像半堵墙样往后倒去。
+ 父亲把头伏在爷爷的肚子上，朦胧入睡。
+ 他感觉到爷爷那只滚烫的大手轻轻抚摸着自己的头，父亲想起十几年前在奶奶怀里吃奶的情景。
+ 那时候他四岁，对奶奶硬塞到他嘴里的淡黄色乳房产生了反感。
+ 他含着酸溜溜硬梆梆的乳头，心里涌起一股仇恨。
+ 他用小兽一样凶狠的眼睛上望着奶奶迷幻的脸，狠狠地咬了一口。
+ 他感到奶奶的乳房猛一收缩，奶奶的身体往上一耸。
+ 一丝甜味的液体温暖着他的口腔。
+ 奶奶在他屁股上用力打了一巴掌，然后把他推出去。
+ 他跌倒了，坐起来，看着奶奶那个像香瓜一样垂着的乳房上一滴滴下落的艳红的血珍珠，眼中无泪，干嚎了几声。
+ 奶奶痛苦地抽搐着，眼泪乱纷纷溢出。
+ 他听到奶奶骂他是个恶狼崽子，跟那个恶狼爹是一样的畜牲。
+ 父亲后来才知道，就是他四岁那一年，爷爷在爱着奶奶的同时，又爱上了奶奶雇来的小姑娘——已经长成了漆黑发亮的大姑娘恋儿。
+ 父亲咬伤奶奶时，爷爷因厌烦奶奶的醋劲，在邻村买了一排房屋，把恋儿接去住了。
+ 据说我这个二奶奶也不是盏省油的灯，奶奶惧她五分——这都是以后一定要完全彻底说清楚的事情——二奶奶为我生过一个小姑姑。
+ 一九三八年，日本兵用刺刀把我小姑姑挑了，一群日本兵把二奶奶给轮奸了——这也是以后要完全彻底说清楚的事情。
+ 爷爷和父亲都困乏极了，爷爷感到他臂上的枪伤在蹦蹦跳跳，整条胳膊火烫。
+ 爷爷和父亲都感到他们的脚胀满了布鞋，他们想象着让溃烂的脚晾在月光下的幸福，但都没有力气起身把鞋扒掉了。
+ 他们躺着，昏昏沉沉似睡非睡。
+ 父亲翻了一个身，后脑勺子搁在爷爷坚硬的肚子上，面对星空，一缕月色照着他的眼。
+ 墨水河的喑哑低语一波波传来，天河中出现了一道道蛇状黑云，仿佛在蜿蜒游动，又仿佛僵化不动。
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷说过，天河横缠，秋雨绵绵。
+ 父亲只见过一次真正的秋水，那时候高粱即将收割，墨水河水暴涨，堤坝决裂，洪水灌进了田地和村庄。
+ 在滉滉大水中，高粱努力抻着头，耗子和蛇在高粱穗子上缠绕盘踞着。
+ 父亲跟着罗汉大爷走在临时加高的土围子上，看着仿佛从天外涌来的黄色大水，心里惴惴不安。
+ 秋水经久不退，村里百姓捆扎起木筏子，划到高粱地里去，用镰刀割下生满绿色芽苗的高粱穗子。
+ 一捆捆湿漉漉的、暗红的、翠绿的高粱穗子，把木筏子压得随时都要沉底的样子。
+ 又黑又瘦赤脚光背戴着破烂斗笠的男人，十字劈叉站在筏子上，用长长的木杆子，一左一右地用力撑着，筏子缓慢地向土围子靠拢。
+ 村里街道上也水深及膝，骡马牛羊都泡在水里，水上漂着牲畜们稀薄的排泄物。
+ 如果秋阳夕照，水面上烁金熔铁，远处尚未割掉头颅的高粱们，凸出水面一层金红。
+ 大群的野鸭飞翔在高粱头上，众多的翅膀扇起阴凉的风，把高粱间的水面吹出一片细小的皱纹。
+ 父亲看到高粱板块之间，有一道明亮宽阔的大水在缓缓流动，与四周漶漫的黄水形成鲜明的界限，父亲知道那是墨水河。
+ 撑筏子的男人们大口喘着气，互相问讯着，慢慢地向土围子靠拢，慢慢地向爷爷靠拢。
+ 一个青年农夫的筏子上，躺着一条银腹青脊的大草鱼，一根柔韧的细高粱秸子穿住草鱼的腮。
+ 青年农夫把草鱼提起来向围子上的人炫耀。
+ 草鱼有半截人高，腮上流着血，圆张着嘴，用呆滞的眼睛悲哀地看着我父亲……
+ 父亲想到，那条大鱼怎样被罗汉大爷买回，奶奶怎样亲手把鱼剖肚刮鳞，烧成一大锅鱼汤，鱼汤的鲜美回忆勾起父亲的食欲。
+ 父亲坐起来，说：“爹，你不饿吗？
+ 爹，我饿了，你弄点东西给我吃吧，我要饿死啦……”
+ 爷爷坐起，在腰里摸索着，摸出三夹零六颗子弹。
+ 爷爷从身边找到那支手枪，拉开枪栓，压进一条子弹，一松栓子弹上膛，勾一下机，啪啦一声响，一粒子弹飞出膛。
+ 爷爷说：“豆官，咱们…… 找你娘去吧……”
+ 父亲一惊，尖利地说：“不，爹，俺娘死啦，咱还活着，我肚子饿，你带我去找点东西吃。”
+ 父亲把爷爷拖起来。
+ 爷爷自言自语地说着：“到哪里去？
+ 到哪里去？”
+ 父亲牵着爷爷的手，在高粱棵子里，一脚高一脚低，歪歪斜斜，仿佛是奔着挂得更高、更加寒如冰霜的月亮走。
+ 尸体堆里，响起一阵猛兽的咆哮。
+ 爷爷和父亲立即转身回头，看到十几对鬼火一样闪烁的绿眼睛和一团团遍地翻滚的钢蓝色的影子。
+ 爷爷掏出枪，对着两只绿眼一甩，一道火光飞去，那两只绿眼灭了，高粱棵子里传来垂死挣扎的狗叫。
+ 爷爷连射七枪，一群受伤的狗在高粱丛中、尸体堆里滚来滚去。
+ 爷爷对着狗群打完了所有的子弹，没受伤的狗逃窜出几箭远，对着爷爷和父亲发出愤怒的咆哮。
+ 爷爷的自来得手枪射出的最后几粒子弹飞行了三十几步远就掉在了地上。
+ 父亲看到弹头在月光中翻着筋斗飞行，缓慢得伸手就可抓住。
+ 枪声也失去了焦脆的青春喉咙，颇似一个耄耋之年的老头子在咳嗽吐痰。
+ 爷爷举起枪来看了一下子，脸上露出悲痛惋惜的表情。
+ “爹，没子弹啦？” 父亲问。
+ 爷爷和父亲从县城里用小山羊肚腹运载回来的五百发子弹，在十几个小时里已经发射完毕。
+ 好像人是在一天中突然衰老一样，枪也是在一天中突然衰老。
+ 爷爷痛感到这支枪越来越违背自己的意志，跟它告别的时候到了。
+ 爷爷把胳膊平伸出去，仔细地看着月光照在枪面上反射出的黯淡的光彩，然后一松手，匣子枪沉重落地。
+ 那些绿眼睛的狗又向尸体聚拢过来，起初还畏畏惧惧，绿眼睛里跳着惊惧的火花。
+ 很快，绿眼睛消失，月光照着一道道波浪般翻滚的蓝色狗毛，爷爷和父亲都听到了狗嘴的吧咂声和尸体的撕裂声。
+ “爹，咱到村里去吧。”父亲说。
+ 爷爷有点犹豫，父亲拉他一把，他就跟着父亲走了。
+ 村里的火堆多半熄灭，断壁残垣中，暗红的余烬发散着酷热，街上热风盘旋，浊气逼人，白烟和黑烟交织成团，在烧焦的、烘萎了的树梢间翻腾。
+ 木料在炭化过程中爆豆般响着，失去支撑的房屋顶盖塌下，砸起冲天的尘烟和灰烬。
+ 土围子上、街道上、尸体狼藉。
+ 我们村子的历史又翻开了新的一页。
+ 它原先是一片蛮荒地，荆榛苇茅丛生，狐狸野兔的乐园，后来有了几架牧人的草棚，后来逃来了杀人命犯、落魄酒徒、亡命赌棍……
+ 他们建造房屋，开垦荒地，拓扑出人的乐园，狐狸野兔迁徙他乡，临别时齐声发出控诉人类的鸣叫。
+ 现在它是一片废墟了，人创造的，又被人摧毁。
+ 真正的现在的它是在废墟上建立起来的悲喜参半的忧乐园。
+ 当一九六○年黑暗的饥馑笼罩山东大地时，我虽然年仅四岁，也隐隐约约地感觉到，高密东北乡从来就没有不是废墟过，高密东北乡人心灵里堆积着的断砖碎瓦从来就没有清理干净过，也不可能清理干净。
+ 那天晚上，所有的房屋都烟飞火灭之后，我家那几十间房屋还在燃烧。
+ 我家的房子燃烧时放出一些翠绿的火苗和一股醉人的酒味，潴留多年的酒气，都在火中升腾起来。
+ 蓝色的房瓦在大火中弯曲变形，呈现暗红色，疾速地、像弹片一样从火中飞出来。
+ 火光照着爷爷花白的头发，爷爷的满头黑发，在短短的七天里，白了四分之三。
+ 我家的房盖轰隆隆塌陷下去，火焰萎缩片刻，又疯蹿得更高。
+ 父亲和爷爷都被这一声巨响震荡得胸闷气噎。
+ 这几十间先庇护了单家父子发财致富后庇护了爷爷放火杀人又庇护着奶奶爷爷父亲罗汉大爷与众伙计们多少恩恩怨怨的房屋完成了它的所谓的“历史的使命”。
+ 我恨透了这个庇护所，因为它在庇护着善良、麻醉着真挚的情感的同时，也庇护着丑陋和罪恶。
+ 父亲，一九五七年，你躲在我家里间屋里那个地洞里时，你每日每夜，在永恒的黑暗中，追忆流水年月，你至少三百六十次想到了我们家那几十间房屋的屋盖在大火中塌落的情景。
+ 你想到你的父亲我的爷爷在那时刻想到了什么，我的幻想紧追着你的幻想，你的幻想紧追着爷爷的思维。
+ 爷爷看到这房屋的塌陷的感觉，就像当初爱上恋儿姑娘后，愤然抛弃我奶奶另村去住，但后来又听说奶奶在家放浪形骸与“铁板会”头子“黑眼”姘上一样，说不清是恨还是爱，说不清是痛苦还是愤怒。
+ 爷爷后来重返奶奶的怀抱，对奶奶的感情已经混浊得难辨颜色和味道。
+ 我们感情上的游击战首先把自己的心脏打得千疮百孔最后又把对方打得千疮百孔。
+ 只有当奶奶在高粱地里用死亡的面容对着爷爷微笑时，他才领会到生活对自己的惩罚是多么严酷。
+ 他像喜鹊珍爱覆巢中最后一个卵一样珍爱着我父亲，但是，已经晚一点了，命运为他安排的更残酷的结局，已在前面路口上，胸有成竹地对他冷笑着。
+ “爹，咱的家没了……” 父亲说。
+ 爷爷摸着父亲的头，看着残破的家园，牵着父亲的手，在火光渐弱月光渐强的街道上无目标地蹒跚着。
+ 村头上，一个苍老淳朴的声音问：“是小三吗？
+ 怎么没把牛车赶来？”
+ 爷爷和父亲听到人声，倍觉亲切，忘了疲乏，急匆匆赶过去。
+ 一个弓着腰的老头，迎着他们上来，把眼睛几乎贴到爷爷脸上打量着。
+ 爷爷对老头那两只警觉的眼睛不满意，老头嘴里喷出的铜臭气使爷爷反感。
+ “不是我家小三子。”
+ 老头子遗憾地晃晃脑袋，坐回去。
+ 他的屁股下边堆了一大堆杂物，有箱、柜、饭桌、农具、牲口套具、破棉絮、铁锅、瓦盆……
+ 老头坐在小山一样的货物上，像一只狼守护着自己的猎物。
+ 老头身后的柳树上，拴着两头牛犊子、三只山羊，一头小毛驴。
+ 爷爷咬牙切齿地骂道：“老狗！
+ 你给我滚下来！”
+ 老头子从货堆上蹲起，友善地说：“哎，兄弟，别眼红吆，俺这是不惧生死从火堆里抢出来的！”
+ “你给我下来，我操死你活妈！”
+ 爷爷怒骂。
+ “你这人好没道理，我一没招你，二没惹你，你凭什么骂人？”
+ 老头宽容地谴责着我爷爷。
+ “骂你？
+ 老子要宰了你！
+ 老子们抗日救国，与日本人拼死拼活，你们竟然趁火打劫！
+ 畜牲，老畜牲！
+ 豆官，你的枪呢？”
+ “扔到洋马肚子底下啦！”父亲说。
+ 爷爷纵身跳上货堆，飞起一脚，把那老头踢到货堆下。
+ 老头子跪在地上，哀求道：“八路老爷饶命，八路老爷饶命……”
+ 爷爷说：“老子不是八路，也不是九路。
+ 老子是土匪余占鳌！”
+ “余司令饶命，余司令，这些东西，放到火里也白白烧毁了……
+ 俺村来‘倒地瓜’的不光我一个，值钱的东西都被那些贼给抢光啦，俺老汉腿脚慢，拾掇了一点破烂……”
+ 爷爷搬起一张木桌子，对准老头那秃脑门砸下去。
+ 老头惨叫一声，抱住流血的头，在地上转着圈乱钻。
+ 爷爷抓着他的衣领，把他提起来，对着那张痛苦的老脸，说：“‘倒地瓜’的好汉子！”
+ 然后猛力捣了一拳，老头脸上腻腻地响了一声，仰面朝天摔在地上，爷爷又走上前去，对着老头的脸，狠命踹了一脚。
+
+ FULL PURPLE LIPS, like ripe grapes, gave Second Grandma – Passion – her extraordinary appeal.
+ The sands of time had long since interred her origins and background.
+ Her rich, youthful, resilient flesh, her plump bean-pod face, and her deep-blue, seemingly deathless eyes were buried in the wet yellow earth, extinguishing for all time her angry, defiant gaze, which challenged the world of filth, adored the world of beauty, and brimmed over with an intense consciousness.
+ Second Grandma had been buried in the black earth of her hometown.
+ Her body was enclosed in a coffin of thin willow covered with an uneven coat of reddish-brown varnish that failed to camouflage its wormy, beetle-holed surface.
+ The sight of her blackened, blood-shiny corpse being swallowed up by golden earth is etched forever on the screen of my mind.
+ In the warm red rays of the sun, I saw a mound in the shape of a human figure rising atop the heavy, deeply remorseful sandbar.
+ Second Grandma's shapely figure; Second Grandma's high-arching breasts; tiny grains of shifting sand on Second Grandma's furrowed brow; Second Grandma's sensual lips protruding through the golden-yellow sand . . .
+ I knew it was an illusion, that Second Grandma was buried beneath the black earth of her hometown, and that only red sorghum grew around her gravesite.
+ Standing at the head of her grave – as long as it isn't during the winter, when the plants are dead and frozen, or on a spring day, when cool southerly breezes blow – you can't even see the horizon for the nightmarishly dense screen of Northeast Gaomi sorghum.
+ Then you raise your gaunt face, like a sunflower, and through the gaps in the sorghum you can see the stunning brilliance of the sun hanging in the kingdom of heaven.
+ Amid the perennially mournful sobs of the Black Water River you listen for a lost soul drifting down from that kingdom.
+ THE SKY WAS a beautiful clear blue.
+ The sun hadn't yet made an appearance, but the chaotic horizon on that early-winter morning was infused with a blinding red light when Old Geng shot at a red fox with a fiery torch of a tail.
+ Old Geng had no peers among hunters in Saltwater Gap, where he bagged wild geese, hares, wild ducks, weasels, foxes, and, when there was nothing else around, sparrows.
+ In the late autumn and early winter, enormous flocks of sparrows flew over Northeast Gaomi Township, a shifting brown cloud that rolled and tumbled above the boundless land.
+ At dusk they returned to the village, where they settled on willows whose naked, yellowing limbs drooped earthward or arched skyward.
+ As the dying red rays of the evening sun burned through the clouds, the branches lit up with sparrows' black eyes shining like thousands of golden sparks.
+ Old Geng picked up his shotgun, squinted, and pulled the trigger.
+ Two sparrows crashed to the ground like hailstones as shotgun pellets tore noisily through the branches.
+ Uninjured sparrows saw their comrades hit the ground and flapped their wings, rising into the air like shrapnel sent flying high into a lethargic sky.
+ Father had eaten some of Old Geng's sparrows when he was young.
+ They were delicious.
+ Three decades later, my older brother and I went into the sorghum field and engaged some crafty sparrows in a heated battle.
+ Old Geng, who was already over seventy by then and lived alone as a pensioner, was one of our most revered villagers.
+ Asked to speak at meetings to air grievances against the old order, he invariably stripped to the waist onstage to show his scars.
+ 'The Japs bayoneted me eighteen times,' he'd say, 'until you couldn't see my skin for all the blood.
+ But I didn't die, and you know why?
+ Because I was protected by a fox fairy.
+ I don't know how long I lay there, but when I opened my eyes all I could see was a bright-red light.
+ The fox fairy was licking my wounds.'
+ In his home, Old Geng – Eighteen Stabs Geng – kept a fox-fairy memorial tablet, which some Red Guards decided to smash during the Cultural Revolution.
+ They changed their minds and got out of there fast when they saw him kneel in front of the tablet wielding a cleaver.
+ Old Geng drew a bead on the red fox, knowing exactly which way it would run; but he was reluctant to shoot.
+ He knew he could sell the beautiful, bushy pelt for a good price.
+ If he was going to shoot, it had to be now.
+ The fox had already enjoyed a full life, sneaking over nightly to steal a chicken.
+ No matter how strong the villagers made their chicken coops, the fox always found a way inside and no matter how many traps they set, it always got away.
+ That year the villagers' chicken coops seemed built solely to store its food.
+ Old Geng had walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time and gone straight to a low embankment alongside the swamp in front of the village, where he waited for the chicken thief to show up.
+ Dried-up marsh weeds stood waist-high in the swamp, where a thin sheet of nearly transparent ice, possibly thick enough to bear a man's weight, covered the stagnant water that had accumulated during the autumn rains.
+ Yellow tassels atop imprisoned reeds shivered in the freezing morning air, as powerful rays of light from far off in the eastern sky gradually illuminated the icy surface, which gave off a moist radiance, like the scales of a carp.
+ Then the eastern sky turned bright, staining the ice and reeds the colour of mottled blood.
+ Old Geng picked up the odour and saw a tight cluster of reeds part slowly like an undulating wave, then close up quickly.
+ He stuck his nearly frozen index finger into his mouth and breathed on it, then wrapped it around the frost-covered trigger.
+ The fox bounded out of the clump of reeds and stood on the ice, turning it a bright red, as though it had gone up in flames.
+ Congealed blood covered its pointy little snout; a chicken feather the colour of hemp was stuck in its whiskers.
+ It walked with stately grace across the ice.
+ Old Geng cried out, and it froze on the spot, squinting to get a good look at the embankment.
+ Old Geng shivered, closed his eyes, and fired.
+ Like a little fireball, the fox rolled into the reeds.
+ Old Geng, his shoulder numb from the recoil, stood up under a silvery sky, looking bigger and taller than usual.
+ He knew the fox was hiding amid the reeds and staring at him with loathing.
+ Something suspiciously like a guilty conscience began to stir in Old Geng.
+ He thought back over the past year and the trust the fox had shown in him: it always knew he was hiding behind the embankment, yet it sauntered across the ice as though putting his conscience to the test.
+ And Old Geng had always passed the test.
+ But now he had betrayed this friendship, and he hung his head, gazing into the clump of reeds that had swallowed the fox, not even turning back to look when he heard the clatter of footsteps behind him.
+ Suddenly he felt a stabbing pain, and stumbled forward, twisting his body, dropping his shotgun to the ice.
+ Something hot squirmed under his pants at the belt line.
+ Running towards him were a dozen uniformed figures armed with rifles and glinting bayonets.
+ Instinctively he yelled in fear, 'Japan!'
+ The Japanese soldiers pounced on him and bayoneted him in the chest and abdomen.
+ He screamed pitifully, like a fox howling for its mate.
+ The blood from his wounds pitted the ice beneath him with its heat.
+ He ripped off his tattered shirt with both hands.
+ In his semiconscious state he saw the furry red fox emerge from the clump of reeds and circle round him once, then crouch down and gaze sympathetically.
+ Its fur glowed brilliantly and its slightly slanted eyes shone like emeralds.
+ After a while, Old Geng felt warm fur rubbing against his body, and he lay there waiting for the razor-sharp teeth to begin ripping him apart.
+ If he were torn to shreds, he'd die with no complaints, for he knew that a man who betrays a trust is lower than an animal.
+ The fox began licking his wounds with its cold tongue.
+ Old Geng was adamant that the fox had repaid his betrayal by saving his life.
+ Where else could you find another man who had sustained eighteen bayonet wounds yet lived to tell the tale?
+ The fox's tongue must have been coated with a miraculous substance since Old Geng's wounds were instantly soothed, as though treated with peppermint oil – or so he said.
+ VILLAGERS WHO HAD gone to town to sell straw sandals announced upon their return: 'Gaomi has been occupied by the Japanese.
+ There's a Rising Sun at the entrance!'
+ The panic-stricken villagers could only wait for the calamity they knew was coming.
+ But not all of them suffered from racing hearts and crawling flesh: two among them went about their business totally unconcerned, never varying their routine.
+ Who were they?
+ One was Old Geng, the other a onetime musician who loved to sing Peking opera – Pocky Cheng.
+ 'What are you afraid of?'
+ Pocky Cheng asked everyone he met.
+ 'We're still common folk, no matter who's in charge.
+ We don't refuse to give the government its grain, and we always pay our taxes.
+ We lie down when we're told, and we kneel when they order us.
+ So who'd dare punish us?
+ Who, I ask you?'
+ His advice calmed many of the people, who began sleeping, eating, and working again.
+ But it didn't take long for the evil wind of Japanese savagery to blow their way: they fed human hearts to police dogs; they raped sixty-year-old women; they hung rows of human heads from electric poles in town.
+ Even with the unflappable examples of Pocky Cheng and Old Geng, rumours of brutality were hard for the people to put aside, especially in their dreams.
+ Pocky Cheng walked around happy all the time.
+ News that the Japanese were on their way to sack the village created a glut in dogshit in and around the village.
+ Apparently the farmers who normally fought over it had grown lazy, for now it lay there waiting for him to come and claim it.
+ He, too, walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time, running into Old Geng with his shotgun slung over his back.
+ They greeted each other and parted ways.
+ By the time the eastern sky had turned red, the pile of dogshit in Pocky Cheng's basket was like a little mountain peak.
+ He laid it down, stood on the southern edge of the village wall, and breathed in the cool, sweet morning air, until his throat itched.
+ He cleared it loudly, then raised his voice to the rosy morning clouds and began to sing: 'I am a thirsty grainstalk drinking up the morning dew –'
+ A shot rang out.
+ His battered, wingless felt hat sailed into the air.
+ Tucking in his neck, he jumped into the ditch beneath the wall like a shot, bumping his head with a resounding thud against the frozen ground.
+ Not sure if he was dead or alive, he tried moving his arms and legs.
+ They were working, but barely.
+ His crotch was all sticky.
+ Fear raced through his heart.
+ I've been hit, he thought.
+ He sat up and stuck his hand down his pants.
+ With his heart in his mouth, he pulled out his hand, expecting it to be all red.
+ But it was covered with something yellow, and his nostrils twitched from the odour of rotten seedlings.
+ He tried to rub the stuff off on the side of the ditch, but it stuck to his skin.
+ He heard a shout from beyond the ditch: 'Stand up!'
+ He looked up to see a man in his thirties with a flat, chiselled face, yellow skin, and a long, jutting chin.
+ He was wearing a chestnut-coloured wool cap and brandishing a black pistol!
+ A forest of yellow-clad legs was aligned behind him, the calves wrapped in wide, crisscrossed cloth leggings.
+ His eyes travelled slowly upward past protruding hips, stopping at dozens of alien faces, all adorned with the smug smile of a man taking a comfortable shit.
+ A Rising Sun flag drooped under the bright-red sunrise; onion-green rays glinted off a line of bayonets.
+ Pocky Cheng's stomach lurched, and his nervous guts relinquished their contents.
+ 'Get up here!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap barked out angrily.
+ Pocky Cheng climbed out of the ditch.
+ Not knowing what to say, he just bowed repeatedly.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap was twitching right under his nose.
+ 'Are there Nationalist troops in the village?' he asked.
+ Pocky Cheng looked at him blankly.
+ A Japanese soldier waved a bloodstained bayonet in front of Pocky Cheng's chest and face.
+ He heard his stomach growl and felt his intestines writhe and twist slowly; at any other moment, he would have welcomed the intensely pleasant sensation of a bowel movement.
+ The Japanese soldier shouted something and swung the bayonet, slicing Pocky Cheng's padded jacket down the middle and freeing the cotton wadding inside.
+ The sharp pain of parted skin and sliced muscles leaped from his rib cage.
+ He doubled over, all the foul liquids in his body seeming to pour out at once.
+ He looked imploringly into the enraged Japanese face and began to wail.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap drove the barrel of his pistol into his forehead.
+ 'Stop blubbering!
+ The commander asked you a question!
+ What village is this?
+ Is it Saltwater Gap?'
+ He nodded, trying hard to control his sobs.
+ 'Is there a man in the village who makes straw sandals?'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap softened his tone a little.
+ Ignoring his pain, he eagerly and ingratiatingly replied, 'Yes yes yes.'
+ 'Did he take his straw sandals to market day in Gaomi yesterday?'
+ 'Yes yes yes,' he jabbered.
+ Warm blood had slithered down from his chest to his belly.
+ 'How about pickles?'
+ 'I don't know . . . don't think so. . . .'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the mouth and shouted: 'Tell me!
+ I want to know about pickles!'
+ 'Yes yes yes, your honour,' he muttered obsequiously.
+ 'Commander, every family has pickles, you can find them in every pickle vat in the village.'
+ 'Stop acting like a fucking idiot.
+ I want to know if there's somebody called Pickles!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the face, over and over.
+ 'Yes . . . no . . . yes . . . no . . .
+ Your honour . . . don't hit me . . .
+ Please don't hit me . . . your honour . . .' he mumbled, reeling from the slaps.
+ The Japanese said something.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap swept the hat off his head and bowed, then turned back, the smile on his face gone in an instant.
+ He shoved Pocky Cheng and said with a scowl, 'We want to see all the sandal makers in the village.
+ You lead the way.'
+ Concerned about the dung basket he'd left on the wall, Pocky Cheng instinctively cocked his head in that direction.
+ A bayonet that shone like snow flashed past his cheek.
+ Quickly concluding that his life was worth more than a dung basket and spade, he turned his head back and set out for the village on his bandy legs.
+ Dozens of Japs fell in behind him, their leather boots crunching across the frost-covered grass.
+ A few grey dogs barked tentatively.
+ I'm really in a fix this time, Pocky Cheng was thinking.
+ No one else went out to collect dogshit, no one but me, and I ran into some real dogshit luck.
+ The fact that the Japanese didn't appreciate his good-citizen attitude frustrated him.
+ He led them quickly to each of the sandal makers' cellars.
+ Whoever Pickle was, he was sure in one now.
+ Pocky Cheng looked off into the distance towards his house, where green smoke curled into the sky from the solitary kitchen chimney.
+ It was the most intense longing for home he'd ever known.
+ As soon as he was finished he'd go there, change into clean pants, and have his wife rub some lime into the bayonet wound on his chest.
+ The great woodwind player of Northeast Gaomi Township had never been in such a mess.
+ Oh, how he longed for his lovely wife, who had grumbled about his pocked face at first, but, resigned at last, had decided that if you marry a chicken you share the coop; marry a dog and you share the kennel.
+ EARLY-MORNING GUNFIRE beyond the village startled Second Grandma out of a dream in which she was fighting Grandma tooth and nail.
+ She sat up, her heart thumping wildly, and, try as she might, she couldn't decide if the noise had just been part of the dream.
+ The window was coated with pale morning sunlight; a grotesque pattern of frost had formed on the pane.
+ Shuddering from the cold, she tilted her head so she could see her daughter, my aunt, who was lying beside her, snoring peacefully.
+ The sweet, even breathing of the five-year-old girl soothed Second Grandma's fears.
+ Maybe it was only Old Geng shooting at wild game, a mountain lion or something, she consoled herself.
+ She had no way of knowing how accurate her prediction was, nor could she have known that while she was sliding back under the covers the tips of Japanese bayonets were jabbing Old Geng's ribs.
+ Little Auntie rolled over and nestled up against Second Grandma, who wrapped her arms around her until she could feel the little girl's warm breath against her chest.
+ Eight years had passed since Grandma had kicked her out of the house.
+ During that time, Granddad had been tricked into going to the Jinan police station, where he nearly lost his life.
+ But he managed to escape and make his way home, where Grandma had taken Father to live with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society.
+ When Granddad fought Black Eye to a standstill at the Salty Water River, he touched Grandma so deeply she followed him home, where they ran the distillery with renewed vitality.
+ Granddad put his rifle away, bringing his bandit days to an end, and began life as a wealthy peasant, at least for the next few years.
+ They were troubling years, thanks to the rivalry between Grandma and Second Grandma.
+ In the end, they reached a 'tripartite agreement' in which Granddad would spend ten days with Grandma, then ten days with Second Grandma – ten days was the absolute limit.
+ He stuck to his bargain, since neither woman was an economy lantern, someone to be taken lightly.
+ Second Grandma was enjoying the sweetness of her sorrows as she hugged Little Auntie.
+ She was three months pregnant.
+ A period of increased tenderness, pregnancy is a time of weakness during which women need attention and protection, and Second Grandma was no exception.
+ Counting the days on her fingers, she longed for Granddad.
+ He would be there tomorrow.
+ Another crisp gunshot sounded outside the village,
+
+ 黑皮肤女人特有的像紫红色葡萄一样的丰满嘴唇使二奶奶恋儿魅力无穷。
+ 她的出身、来历已被岁月的沙尘深深掩埋。
+ 黄色的潮湿沙土埋住了她的弹性丰富的年轻肉体，埋住了她的豆荚一样饱满的脸庞和死不瞑目的瓦蓝色的眼睛，遮断了她愤怒的、癫狂的、无法无天的、向肮脏的世界挑战的、也眷恋美好世界的、洋溢着强烈性意识的目光。
+ 二奶奶其实是被埋葬在故乡的黑土地里的。
+ 盛殓她的散发着血腥味尸体的是一具浅薄的柳木板棺材，棺材上涂着深一片浅一片的酱红颜色，颜色也遮没不了天牛幼虫在柳木板上钻出的洞眼。
+ 但二奶奶乌黑发亮的肉体被金黄色沙土掩没住的景象，却牢牢地刻印在我的大脑的屏幕上，永远也不漶散地成象在我的意识的眼里。
+ 我看到好象在温暖的红色阳光照耀着的厚重而沉痛的沙滩上，隆起了一道人形的丘陵。
+ 二奶奶的曲线流畅；二奶奶的双乳高耸；二奶奶的崎岖不平的额头上流动着细小的沙流；二奶奶性感的双唇从金沙中凸出来，好象在召唤着一种被华丽的衣裳遮住了的奔放的实事求是精神……
+ 我知道这一切都是幻象，我知道二奶奶是被故乡的黑土掩埋的。
+ 在她的坟墓周围只有壁立的红色高粱，站在她的坟墓前——如果不是万木肃杀的冬天或熏风解愠的阳春——你连地平线也看不到，高密东北乡梦魇般的高粱遮挡着你，使你鼠目寸光。
+ 那么，你仰起你的葵花般的青黄脸盘，从高粱的缝隙里，去窥视蓝得令人心惊的天国光辉吧！
+ 你在墨水河永不欢乐的呜咽声中，去聆听天国传来的警悟执迷灵魂的音乐吧！
+ 那天早晨，天空是澄彻美丽的蔚蓝色，太阳尚未出头，初冬的混沌地平线被一线耀眼的深红镶着边。
+ 老耿向一匹尾巴像火炬般的红毛狐狸开了一土枪。
+ 老耿是咸水口子村独一无二的玩枪的人，他打雁、打野兔、打野鸭子、打黄鼠狼、打狐狸，万般无奈也打麻雀。
+ 初冬深秋，高密东北乡的麻雀都结成庞大的密集团体，成千只麻雀汇集成一团褐色的破云，贴着苍莽的大地疾速地翻滚。
+ 傍晚，它们飞回村，落在挂着孤单枯叶的柳树上，柳条青黄、赤裸裸下垂或上指，枝条上结满麻雀。
+ 一抹夕阳烧红了天边云霞，树上涂满亮色，麻雀漆黑的眼睛像金色的火星一样满树闪烁。
+ 它们不停地跳动着，树冠上翅羽翻卷。
+ 老耿端起枪，眯缝起一只三角眼，一搂扳机响了枪，冰雹般的金麻雀劈哩啪啦往下落，铁砂子在柳枝间飞迸着，嚓嚓有声。
+ 没受伤的麻雀思索片刻，看着自己的同伴们垂直落地后，才振翅逃窜——像弹片一样，射到暮气深沈的高天里去。
+ 父亲幼年时吃过老耿的麻雀。
+ 麻雀肉味鲜美，营养丰富。
+ 三十多年后，我跟着哥哥在杂种高粱试验田里，与狡猾的麻雀展开过激烈坚韧的斗争。
+ 老耿那时已七十多岁，孤身一人，享受“五保”待遇，是村里德高望重的人物，每逢诉苦大会，都要他上台诉苦。
+ 每次诉苦，他都要剥掉上衣，露出一片疤痕。
+ 他总是说：“日本鬼子捅了我十八刀、我全身泡在血里，没有死，为什么没有死呢？
+ 全仗着狐仙搭救。
+ 我躺了不知道多久，一睁眼，满眼红光，那个大恩大德的狐仙，正伸着舌头，呱唧呱唧地舔着我的刀伤……”
+ 老耿头——耿十八刀家里供着一个狐仙牌位，“文化大革命”初起，红卫兵去他家砸牌位，他握着一把切菜刀蹲在牌位前，红卫兵灰溜溜地退了。
+ 老耿早就侦察好了那条红毛老狐的行动路线，但一直没舍得打它。
+ 他看着它长起了一身好皮毛，又厚又绒，非常漂亮，肯定能卖好价钱。
+ 他知道打它的时候倒了，它在生的世界上已经享受够了。
+ 它每天夜里都要偷一只鸡吃。
+ 村里人无论把鸡窝插得多牢，它都能捣古开；无论设置多少陷阱圈套，它都能避开。
+ 村里人的鸡窝在那一年里，仿佛成了这只狐狸的食品储藏库。
+ 老耿在鸡叫三遍时出了村，埋伏在村前洼地边沿一道低矮的土堰后，等待着它偷鸡归来。
+ 洼地里丛生着半人高的枯瘦芦苇，秋天潴留的死水结成一层勉可行人的白色薄冰，黄褐色的小芦苇缨子在凌晨时分寒冽的空气中颤栗着，遥远的东方天际上渐渐强烈的光明投在冰上，泛起鲤鱼鳞片般的润泽光彩。
+ 后来东天边辉煌起来，冰上、芦苇上都染上了寒冷的死血光辉。
+ 老耿闻到了它的气味，看到密集的芦苇棵子像舒缓的波浪一样慢慢漾动着，很快又合拢。
+ 他把冻僵了的右手食指放到嘴边哈哈，按到沾满白色霜花的扳机上。
+ 它从芦苇丛中跳出来，站在白色的冰上。
+ 冰上通红一片，像着了火一样。
+ 它的瘦削的嘴巴上冻结着深红的鸡血，一片麻色的鸡羽沾在它嘴边的胡须上。
+ 它雍容大度地在冰上走。
+ 老耿喝了一声，它立正站住，眯着眼睛看着土壤。
+ 老耿浑身打起颤来，狐狸眼里那种隐隐约约的愤怒神情使他心里发虚。
+ 它大摇大摆地往冰那边的芦苇丛中走，它的巢穴就在那片芦苇里。
+ 老耿闭着眼开了枪。
+ 枪托子猛力后座，震得他半个肩膀麻酥酥的。
+ 狐狸像一团火，滚进了芦苇丛。
+ 他站起来，提着枪，看着深绿的硝烟在清清的空气中扩散着。
+ 他知道它正在芦苇丛里仇恨地盯着自己。
+ 他的身体立在银子般的天光下，显得又长又大。
+ 一种类似愧疚的心情在他心里漾起，他后悔了。
+ 他想到一年来狐狸对他表示的信任，狐狸明知道他就伏在土堰后，却依旧缓慢地在冰上走，就好象对他的良心进行考验一样。
+ 他开了枪，无疑是对这异类朋友的背叛。
+ 他对着狐狸消遁的芦苇丛垂下了头，连身后响起杂沓的脚步声，他都没有回头。
+ 后来，有一线扎人的寒冷从他的腰带上方刺进来，他身体往前一蹿，回转了身，土枪掉在冰上。
+ 一股热流在棉裤腰间蠕动着。
+ 迎着他的面，逼过来十几个身穿土黄色服装的人。
+ 他们手里托着大枪，枪刺明亮。
+ 他不由自主地惊叫一声：“日本！”
+ 十几个日本士兵走上前去，在他的胸膛上、肚腹上，每人刺了一刀。
+ 他发出一声狐狸求偶般的凄惨叫声，一头栽倒在冰上。
+ 额头撞得白冰开裂。
+ 他身上流出的血把身下的冰烫得坑坑洼洼。
+ 在昏迷中，他感到上半身像被火苗子燎烤着一样灼热，双手用力撕扯着破烂的棉衣。
+ 他在恍惚中，看到那只红毛狐狸从芦苇里走出来，围着他的身体转了一圈，然后蹲在他的身前，同情地看着他。
+ 狐狸的皮毛灿烂极了，狐狸的略微有点斜视的眼睛像两颗绿色的宝石。
+ 后来他感到了狐狸的温暖的皮毛凑近了自己的身体，他等待着它的尖利牙齿的撕咬。
+ 他知道人一旦背叛信义连畜牲也不如，即使被它咬死他也死而无怨。
+ 狐狸伸出凉森森的舌头舔着他的伤口。
+ 老耿坚定地认为，是这条以德报怨的狐狸救了他的命，世界上恐怕难以找出第二个挨了十八刺刀还能活下来的人了。
+ 狐狸的舌头上一定有灵丹妙药，凡是它舔到的地方，立即像涂了薄荷油一样舒服，老耿说。
+ 村里有人进县城卖草鞋，回来说：日本人占了高密城，城头上插着太阳旗。
+ 听到这消息，全村人几乎都坐卧不宁，等待着大祸降临。
+ 在众人惴惴不安、心惊肉跳的时候，却有两个人无忧无虑， 照旧干自己的营生。
+ 这两个人，一个是前面提到的自由猎手老耿；另一个是当过吹鼓手、喜欢唱京戏的成麻子。
+ 成麻子逢人便说：“你们怕什么？
+ 愁什么？
+ 谁当官咱也是为民。
+ 咱一不抗皇粮，二不抗国税，让躺着就躺着，让跪着就跪着，谁好意思治咱的罪？
+ 你说，谁好意思治咱的罪？”
+ 成麻子的劝导使不少人镇静下来，大家又开始睡觉、吃饭、干活。
+ 不久，日本人的暴行阴风般传来：杀人修炮楼，扒人心喂狼狗，奸淫六十岁的老太太，县城里的电线杆上挂着成串的人头。
+ 虽有成麻子和老耿做着无忧无虑的表率、人们也想仿效他们，但教的曲儿唱不得，人们即使在睡梦中，也难以忘掉流言中描绘出的残酷画面。
+ 成麻子一直很高兴，日本人即将前来洗劫的消息使村里村外的狗屎大增，往常早起抢捡狗屎的庄稼汉仿佛都懒惰了，遍地的狗屎没人捡，好象单为成麻子准备的。
+ 他也是鸡叫三遍时出的村，在村前碰到了背着土枪的老耿，打了个招呼，就各走各的道。
+ 东边一抹红时，成麻子的狗屎筐子起了尖。
+ 他把粪筐放下，提着铁铲，站在村南土围子上，呼吸着又甜又凉的空气，嗓子眼里痒痒的。
+ 他清清嗓子，顿喉高唱，对着天边的红霞：“我好比久旱的禾苗逢了哪甘霖——”
+ 一声枪响。
+ 成麻子头上的破毡帽不翼而飞，他脖子一缩，子弹般迅速地扎到围子沟里。
+ 脑袋撞得坚硬的冻土砰砰响他不痛也不痒。
+ 后来，他看到自己的嘴边是一堆煤灰渣子，一条磨秃了的苕帚疙瘩旁边躺着一只浑身煤灰的死耗子。
+ 他不知自己是死是活，活动了一下胳膊腿，能动弹，但似乎都不灵便。
+ 裤裆里粘糊糊的。
+ 一阵恐怖涌上心头，毁了，挂彩了，他想。
+ 他试探着坐起来，把手伸进裤裆间一摸。
+ 他心惊胆战地等待着摸出一手红来，举到眼前一看，却是满手焦黄。
+ 他的鼻子里充满了揉烂禾苗的味道。
+ 他把手掌放到沟底上蹭着，蹭不掉，又拿起那个破苕帚疙瘩来擦，正擦得起劲，就听到沟外一声吼：“站起来！”
+ 他抬头看到，吼叫的人三十岁出头，面孔像刀削的一样，皮肤焦黄，下巴漫长，头戴一顶香色呢礼帽，手里持着一只乌黑的短枪。
+ 在他的身后，是几十条劈开站着的土黄色的腿，腿肚子上绑扎着十字盘花的宽布条子，沿着腿往上看，是奓出来的腰胯和几十张异国情调的脸，那些脸上都带着蹲坑大便般的幸福表情。
+ 一面方方正正的太阳旗在通红的朝霞下耷拉着，一柄柄刺刀上汪着葱绿色的光彩。
+ 成麻子肚腹里一阵骚动，战战兢兢的排泄愉悦在他的腔肠里呼噜噜滚动。
+ “上来！”
+ 香色礼帽怒气冲冲地喊。
+ 成麻子扎好布腰带，哈着腰爬上沟堐，四肢拘谨得没处安放，大眼珠子灰白，不知说什么好，就直着劲点头哈腰。
+ 香色呢礼帽搐动着鼻子问：“村子里有国民党的队伍吗？”
+ 成麻子愣愣怔怔地望着他。
+ 一个日本兵端着滴血的刺刀，对着他的胸膛和他的脸晃动，刀尖上的寒气刺激着他的眼睛和肚腹，他听到自己的肚子里呼噜噜响着，肠子频频抽动，更加强烈的排泄快感使他手舞足蹈起来。
+ 日本兵叫了一声，把刺刀往下一摆，他的棉衣哗然一声裂开，破烂棉絮绽出，沿着棉衣的破缝，他的胸肋间爆发了一阵肌肉破裂的痛苦。
+ 他把身体紧缩成一团，眼泪、鼻涕、大便、小便几乎是一齐冒出来。
+ 日本兵又呜噜了一句话，很长，吐噜吐噜的，像葡萄一样。
+ 他痛苦地祈望着日本人怒冲冲的脸，大声哭起来。
+ 香色呢礼帽用手枪筒子戳了一下他的额头，说：“别哭！
+ 太君问你话呢！
+ 这是什么村？
+ 是咸水口子吗？”
+ 他强忍住抽泣，点了点头。
+ “这村里有编草鞋的吗？”
+ 香色呢礼帽用稍微和善一点的口气问。
+ 他顾不上伤痛，急忙地、讨好似的回答：“有，有，有。”
+ “昨天高密大集，有去赶集卖草鞋的没有？”香色呢礼帽又问。
+ “有有有”。他说。
+ 胸脯上流出的血已经热乎乎地淌到肚子上。
+ “有个叫咸菜疙瘩的吗？”
+ “不知道…… 没有……”
+ 香色呢礼帽熟练地搧了他一个耳光，叫道：“说！
+ 有没有咸菜疙瘩！”
+ “有有有，长官。”
+ 他又委屈地呜咽起来，“长官，家家都有咸菜疙瘩，家家户户的咸菜瓮里都有咸菜疙瘩。”
+ “他娘的，你装什么憨，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人！”
+ 呢礼帽劈劈啪啪地抽打着他的脸，骂着，“刁民，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人。”
+ “有…… 没有…… 有…… 没有……
+ 长官…… 别打我……
+ 别打我，长官……”
+ 他被大耳刮子搧昏了，颠三倒四地说。
+ 日本人说了一句什么，呢礼帽摘下礼帽，对鬼子鞠了一躬，转过身，他脸上的笑容急邃消失，搡了成麻子一把，横眉立目地说：“带路，进村，把编草鞋的都给我找出来。”
+ 他记挂着扔在围子上的粪筐和粪铲，不由自主地往后歪头，一柄雪亮的刺刀从他的腮帮子旁边欻啦顺过来。
+ 他想明白了，命比粪筐和粪铲值钱多了，便再也不回头，罗圈着腿往村里走。
+ 几十个鬼子在他身后走着，大皮靴踩得沾霜枯草咯崩咯崩响。
+ 几只灰溜溜的狗躺在墙犄角里小心翼翼地叫着。
+ 天空愈加晴朗，大半个太阳压着灰褐色的土地。
+ 村里的婴孩哭声衬出一个潜藏着巨大恐怖的宁静村庄。
+ 日本士兵整齐的踏步声像节奏分明的鼓声，震荡着他的耳膜，撞击着他的胸膛。
+ 他感到胸膛上的伤口像着火一样烫，裤子里的粪便又粘又冷。
+ 他想到自己倒霉透了，别人都不拣狗屎了，他偏要拣狗屎，于是撞上了狗屎运气。
+ 他为日本人不理解他的顺民态度感到委屈。
+ 赶快把他们带到那几个草鞋窨子里去，谁是咸菜疙瘩谁倒霉。
+ 远远地望见家门口了，被夏季的暴雨抽打得坑坑洼洼的房顶上生着几蓬白色的草，孤零零的烟筒里冒着青蓝色的炊烟，他从来没有感到对家有如此强烈的眷恋，他想完了事快回家，换条干净裤子，让老婆往胸膛的刀口上洒点石灰，血大概快流光了，眼前迸发着一簇簇的绿星星，双腿已经发软，一阵阵的恶心从肚里往喉咙里爬。
+ 他从来没这样狼狈过，高密东北乡吹唢吶的好手从来没这样狼狈过。
+ 他脚踩浮云，两汪冰冷的泪水盈满了眼泡。
+ 他思念着漂亮的、因为自己满脸麻子而抱屈、但也只好嫁鸡随鸡嫁狗随狗的妻子。
+ 凌晨时村外一声枪响，把正在梦中与我奶奶厮打的二奶奶惊醒了。
+ 她坐起来，心窝里噗噗通通乱跳一阵，想了好久，也没弄清楚是村外发生了什么事情了呢，还是梦中的幻觉。
+ 窗户上已布满淡薄的晨曦，那块巴掌大的窗玻璃上结着奇形怪状的霜花。
+ 二奶奶感到双肩冰凉，她斜了一下脸，看到躺在身侧的她的女儿、我的小姑姑正在鼾睡。
+ 五岁女孩甜蜜均匀的呼吸声把二奶奶心中的恐惧平息了。
+ 二奶奶想，也许是老耿又在打什么山猫野兽吧，她不知道这个推测十分正确，更不知道当她又痴坐片刻，拉开被子重新钻进被窝时，日本人锋利的刺刀正在穿插着老耿坚韧的肉体。
+ 小姑姑一翻身，滚进了二奶奶的怀里，二奶奶抱着她，感觉到女孩温暖的呼吸一缕缕地吹到自己的胸膛上。
+ 二奶奶被奶奶赶出家门已有八年，这期间爷爷曾被骗到济南府，险些送了性命。
+ 后来爷爷死里逃生，跑回家乡，奶奶那时带着父亲与铁板会头子黑眼住在一处。
+ 爷爷与黑眼在盐水河边决斗，虽然被打翻在地，但却唤起了奶奶心中难以泯灭的深情。
+ 奶奶追上爷爷，重返家乡，振兴烧酒买卖。
+ 爷爷洗手插枪，不干土匪生涯，当了几年富贵农民。
+ 在这几年里，使爷爷长久烦恼的，是奶奶与二奶奶的争风吃醋。
+ 争风吃醋的结果，是订了“三家条约”：爷爷在奶奶家住十天，就转移到二奶奶家住十天，不得逾约。
+ 爷爷向来是严守法则，因为这两个女人，哪个也不是省油的灯。
+ 二奶奶搂抱着小姑姑，心里泛滥着甜蜜忧愁。
+ 她又有了三个月的身孕。
+ 怀孕后的女人一般都变得善良温和，但也软弱，需要照顾和保护。
+ 二奶奶也不例外，她掐着指头数算日子，她盼望着爷爷，爷爷明天到来……
+ 村外又是一声尖锐的枪响。
+
+ Longtang
+ LOOKED DOWN UPON from the highest point in the city, Shanghai's longtang—her vast neighborhoods inside enclosed alleys—are a magnificent sight.
+ The longtang are the backdrop of this city.
+ Streets and buildings emerge around them in a series of dots and lines, like the subtle brushstrokes that bring life to the empty expanses of white paper in a traditional Chinese landscape painting.
+ As day turns into night and the city lights up, these dots and lines begin to glimmer.
+ However, underneath the glitter lies an immense blanket of darkness—these are the longtang of Shanghai.
+ The darkness looks almost to be a series of furious waves that threaten to wash away the glowing dots and lines.
+ It has volume, whereas all those lines and dots float on the surface—they are there only to differentiate the areas of this dark mass, like punctuation marks whose job it is to break up an essay into sentences and paragraphs.
+ The darkness is like an abyss—even a mountain falling in would be swallowed whole and sink silently to the bottom.
+ Countless reefs lurk beneath this swelling ocean of darkness, where one false move could capsize a ship.
+ The darkness buoys up Shanghai's handful of illuminated lines and dots, supporting them decade after decade.
+ Against this decades-old backdrop of darkness, the Paris of the Orient unfolds her splendor.
+ Today, everything looks worn out, exposing bit by bit what lies underneath.
+ One strand at a time, the first rays of the morning sun shine through just as, one by one, the city lights go out.
+ Everything begins from a cover of light fog, through which a horizontal ray of light crafts an outline as if drawing it out with a fine brush.
+ First to appear are the dormer windows protruding from the rooftop tingzijian of those traditional longtang buildings, showing themselves off with a certain self-conscious delicacy; the wooden shutters are carefully delineated, the handmade rooftop tiles are arranged with precision, even the potted roses on the windowsills have been cared for painstakingly.
+ Next to emerge are the balconies; here articles of clothing hung out to dry the night before cling motionless like a scene out of a painting.
+ The cement on the balustrade peels away to reveal the rusty red bricks beneath—this too looks as if painted in a picture, each brushstroke appearing clear and distinct.
+ After that come the cracked gable walls, lined with traces of green moss that look cold and clammy to the touch.
+ The first rays of light shining on the gable walls create a stunning picture, a gorgeous portrait, bearing just a hint of desolation, fresh and new yet not without a past.
+ At this moment the cement pavement of the longtang is still enveloped in fog, which lingers thick in the back alleys.
+ But on the iron-railed balconies of the newer longtang apartments the sunlight is already striking the glass panes on the French doors, which refract the light.
+ This stroke is a relatively sharp one, and seems to pull back the curtain that separates day from night.
+ The sunlight finally drives away the fog, washing everything in its path with a palette of strong color.
+ The moss turns out to be not green but a dark raven hue, the wooden window frames start to blacken, and the iron railing on the balcony becomes a rusted yellow.
+ One can see blades of green grass growing from between the cracks in the gables, and the white pigeons turn gray as they soar up into the sky.
+ Shanghai's longtang come in many different forms, each with colors and sounds of its own.
+ Unable to decide on any one appearance, they remain fickle, sometimes looking like this, sometimes looking like that.
+ Actually, despite their constant fluctuations, they always remain the same—the shape may shift but the spirit is unchanged.
+ Back and forth they go, but in the end it's the same old story, like an army of a thousand united by a single goal.
+ Those longtang that have entryways with stone gates emanate an aura of power.
+ They have inherited the style of Shanghai's glorious old mansions.
+ Sporting the facade of an official residence, they make it a point to have a grandiose entrance and high surrounding walls.
+ But, upon entering, one discovers that the courtyard is modest and the reception area narrow—two or three steps and you are already at the wooden staircase across the room.
+ The staircase is not curved, but leads straight up into the bedroom, where a window overlooking the street hints at romantic ardor.
+ The trendy longtang neighborhoods in the eastern district of Shanghai have done away with such haughty airs.
+ They greet you with low wrought-iron gates of floral design.
+ For them a small window overlooking a side street is not enough; they all have to have walk-out balconies, the better to enjoy the street scenery.
+ Fragrant oleanders reach out over the courtyard walls, as if no longer able to contain their springtime passion.
+ Deep down, however, those inside still have their guard up: the back doors are bolted shut with spring locks of German manufacture, the windows on the ground floor all have steel bars, the low front gates of wrought iron are crowned with ornamented spikes, and walls protect the courtyard on all sides.
+ One may enter at will, but escape seems virtually impossible.
+ On the western side of the city, the apartment-style longtang take an even stricter approach to security.
+ These structures are built in clusters, with doors that look as if not even an army of ten thousand could force their way inside.
+ The walls are soundproof so that people living even in close quarters cannot hear one another, and the buildings are widely spaced so that neighbors can avoid one another.
+ This is security of a democratic sort—trans-Atlantic style—to ensure and protect individual freedom.
+ Here people can do whatever their hearts desire, and there is no one to stop them.
+ The longtang in the slums are open-air.
+ The makeshift roofs leak in the rain, the thin plywood walls fail to keep out the wind, and the doors and windows never seem to close properly.
+ Apartment structures are built virtually on top of one another, cheek by jowl, breathing down upon each other's necks.
+ Their lights are like tiny glowing peas, not very bright, but dense as a pot of pea porridge.
+ Like a great river, these longtang have innumerable tributaries, and their countless branches resemble those of a tall tree.
+ Crisscrossing, they form a giant web.
+ On the surface they appear entirely exposed, but in reality they conceal a complex inner soul that remains mysterious, unfathomable.
+ As dusk approaches, flocks of pigeons hover about the Shanghai skyline in search of their nests.
+ The rooftop ridges rise and fall, extending into the distance; viewed from the side, they form an endless mountain range, and from the front, a series of vertical summits.
+ Viewed from the highest peak, they merge into one boundless vista that looks the same from all directions.
+ Like water flowing aimlessly, they seem to creep into every crevice and crack, but upon closer inspection they fall into an orderly pattern.
+ At once dense and wide-ranging, they resemble rye fields where the farmers, having scattered their seeds, are now harvesting a rich crop.
+ Then again, they are a little like a pristine forest, living and dying according to its own cycle.
+ Altogether they make for a scene of the utmost beauty and splendor.
+ The longtang of Shanghai exude a sensuality like the intimacy of flesh on flesh—cool and warm, tangible and knowable, a little self-centered.
+ The grease-stained rear kitchen window is where the amah gossips.
+ Beside the window is the back door; from this the eldest daughter goes out to school and holds her secret rendezvous with her boyfriend.
+ The front door, reserved for distinguished guests, opens only on important occasions.
+ On each side of the door hang couplets announcing marriages, funerals, and other family events.
+ The door seems always to be in a state of uncontrollable, even garrulous, excitement.
+ Echoes of secret whispers linger around the flat roof, the balcony, and the windows.
+ At night, the sounds of rapping on the doors rise and fall in the darkness.
+ To return to the highest point in the city and look down on it from another angle: clothes hanging out to dry on the cluttered bamboo poles hint at the private lives and loves that lie hidden beneath.
+ In the garden, potted balsams, ghost flowers, scallions, and garlic also breathe the faint air of a secret affair.
+ The empty pigeon cage up on the roof is an empty heart.
+ Broken roof tiles lying in disarray are symbols of the body and soul.
+ Some of the gullylike alleys are lined with cement, others with cobblestone.
+ The cement alleys make you feel cut off, while the cobblestone alleys give the sensation of a fleshy hand.
+ Footsteps sound different in these two types of longtang.
+ In the former the sound is crisp and bright, but in the latter it is something that you absorb and keep inside.
+ The former is a collection of polite pleasantries, the latter of words spoken from the bottom of one's heart.
+ Neither is like an official document; both belong to the necessary language of the everyday.
+ The back alleys of Shanghai try even harder to work their way into people's hearts.
+ The pavement is covered with a layer of cracks.
+ Gutters overflow; floating in the discolored water are fish scales and rotten vegetable leaves, as well as the greasy lampblack from the stovetop.
+ It is dirty and grimy, impure, here.
+ Here the most private secrets are exposed, and not always in the most conventional fashion.
+ Because of this a pall hangs over these back alleys.
+ The sunlight does not shine through until three o'clock in the afternoon and before long the sun begins to set in the west.
+ But this little bit of sunlight envelops the back alleys in a blanket of warm color.
+ The walls turn a brilliant yellow, highlighting the unevenness of the rough whetstone and giving it the texture of coarse sand.
+ The windows also turn a golden yellow, but they are scratched and stained.
+ By now the sun has been shining down for a long time and is beginning to show signs of fatigue.
+ Summoning up the last vestiges of radiance from the depths, the lingering rays of sunlight flicker with a sticky thickness of built-up residue, rather dirty.
+ As twilight encroaches, flocks of pigeons soar overhead, dust motes drift, and stray cats wander in and out of sight.
+ This is a feeling that, having penetrated the flesh, goes beyond closeness.
+ One begins to weary of it.
+ It breeds a secret fear, but hidden within that fear is an excitement that gnaws down to the bone.
+ What moves you about the longtang of Shanghai stems from the most mundane scenes: not the surging rush of clouds and rain, but something steadily accumulated over time.
+ It is the excitement of cooking smoke and human vitality.
+ Something is flowing through the longtang that is unpredictable yet entirely rational, small, not large, and trivial—but then even a castle can be made out of sand.
+ It has nothing to do with things like "history," not even "unofficial history": we can only call it gossip.
+ Gossip is yet another landscape in the Shanghai longtang—you can almost see it as it sneaks out through the rear windows and the back doors.
+ What emerges from the front doors and balconies is a bit more proper—but it is still gossip.
+ These rumors may not necessarily qualify as history, but they carry with them the shadows of time.
+ There is order in their progression, which follows the law of preordained consequences.
+ These rumors cling to the skin and stick to the flesh; they are not cold or stiff, like a pile of musty old books.
+ Though marred by untruths, these are falsehoods that have feeling.
+ When the city's streetlights are ablaze, its longtang remain in darkness, save the lonely street lamps hanging on the alley corners.
+ The lamps, enclosed in crude frames of rusty iron covered with dust, emit a murky yellow glow.
+ On the ground, a shroud of thick mist forms and begins to spread out—this is the time when rumors and gossip start to brew.
+ It is a gloomy hour, when nothing is clear, yet it is enough to break the heart.
+ Pigeons coo in their cages, talking their language of secret whispers.
+ The streetlights shine with a prim and proper light, but as soon as that light streams into the longtang alleys, it is overwhelmed by darkness.
+ The kind of gossip exchanged in the front rooms and adjoining wings belongs to the old school and smacks faintly of potpourri.
+ The gossip in the rooftop tingzijian and staircases is new school and smells of mothballs.
+ But, old school or new, gossip is always told in earnest—you could even say it is told in the spirit of truth.
+ This is like scooping water with one's hands: even though you might lose half the water along the way, with enough persistence you can still fill up a pond.
+ Or like the swallow that, though she may drop half the earth and twigs she is carrying in her beak, can still build a nest—there is no need for laziness or trickery.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are an unbearable sight.
+ The patches of green moss growing in the shade are, in truth, like scars growing over a wound; it takes time for the wound to heal.
+ It is because the moss lacks a proper place that it grows in the shade and shadows—years go by and it never sees the sun.
+ Now ivy grows out in the open, but it serves as Time's curtain and always has something to hide.
+ The pigeons gaze down at the outstretching billows of roof tiles as they take to the air, and their hearts are stabbed with pain.
+ Coming up over the longtang rooftops, the sun shoots out its belabored rays—a majestic sight pieced together from countless minute fragments, an immense power born of immeasurable patience.
+ Gossip
+ Gossip always carries with it an exhalation of gloom.
+ This murky air sometimes smells like lavender in a bedroom, sometimes like mothballs, and at other times like a kitchen chopping block.
+ It does not remind you of the smell of tobacco plugs or cigars, nor is it even faintly reminiscent of the smell of insecticides like Lindane or Dichlorvos.
+ It is not a strong masculine scent, but a soft feminine one—the scent of a woman.
+ It combines the smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, the smell of cosmetics and cooking oil, mixed in with a bit of sweat.
+ Gossip is always trailed by clouds and a screen of mist.
+ Shadowy and indistinct, it is a fogged-up window—a windowpane covered with a layer of dust.
+ Shanghai has as many rumors as longtang: too many to be counted, too many to be told.
+ There is something infectious about gossip; it can transform an official biography into a collection of dubious tales, so that truth becomes indistinguishable from gossip.
+ In the world of rumor, fact cannot be separated from fiction; there is truth within lies, and lies within the truth.
+ That gossip should put on an absurd face is unavoidable; this absurdity is the incredulity born of girlish inexperience, and is at least in part an illusion.
+ In places like the longtang, it travels from back door to back door, and in the blink of an eye the whole world knows all.
+ Gossip is like the silent electrical waves crisscrossing in the air above the city, like formless clouds that enshroud the whole city, slowly brewing into a shower, intermixing right and wrong.
+ The rain comes down not in a torrent but as a hazy springtime drizzle.
+ Although not violent, it drenches the air with an inescapable humidity.
+ Never underestimate these rumors: soft and fine as these raindrops may be, you will never struggle free of them.
+ Every longtang in Shanghai is steeped in an atmosphere of gossip, where right and wrong get twisted and confused.
+ In the elegant apartment-style longtang on the west side of town, this atmosphere is free of clouds, refreshing and transparent as a bright autumn day.
+ Moving down among the modern-style longtang neighborhoods, the atmosphere becomes a bit more turgid and turbulent, blowing to and fro like the wind.
+ Lower down still is the fractious atmosphere of the old-style longtang neighborhoods with the stone gates.
+ Here the wind has died, replaced by the vapor of a humid day.
+ By the time one gets to where the slum-dwellers live, all is enveloped in mist—not the roseate mists of dawn, but the thick fog that comes before a torrential downpour, when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
+ But regardless of the type of longtang, this atmosphere penetrates everywhere.
+ You could say that it is the genius loci of Shanghai's alleys.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could speak, they would undoubtedly speak in rumors.
+ They are the thoughts of Shanghai's longtang, disseminating themselves through day and night.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could dream, that dream would be gossip.
+ Gossip is base.
+ With this vulgar heart, it cannot help wallowing in self-degradation.
+ It is like sewer water, used, contaminated.
+ There is nothing aboveboard about it, nothing straight and narrow; it can only whisper secrets behind people's backs.
+ It feels no sense of responsibility, never takes the blame for the outcome—whatever that outcome may be.
+ Because of this, gossip has learned to do as it pleases, running wild like a flood out of control.
+ It never bothers to think things over—and no one ever bothers to think it over.
+ It is a bit like verbal garbage, but then again one can occasionally find small treasures in the garbage.
+ Gossip is made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice.
+ These bits and pieces have faces that are not quite decent; always up to something, they are spoiled merchandise.
+ They are actually made from the crudest materials.
+ However, even the girls in Shanghai's west-end apartments feel compelled to stockpile some of this lowly stuff, because buried deep inside this shamefully base material is where one can find a few genuine articles.
+ These articles lie outside the parameters of what is dignified; their nature is such that no one dares speak of them aloud—and so they are taken and molded into gossip.
+ If gossip has a positive side, it is the part of it that is genuine.
+ The genuine, however, has a false appearance; this is what is known as "making truth out of falsehood, fact from fiction"—it is always dishing itself up in a new form, making a feint to the east while attacking from the west.
+ This truth is what gives you the courage to go out into the world and not fear losing face, or the courage to become a ghost—to go against prevailing opinions.
+ But there is a kind of sorrow that comes with this courage—the sorrow that comes from being thwarted, from being kept from doing what one wishes.
+ However, there is a certain vital energy in this sorrow, because even in the midst of it one's heart surges with high-flying ambition; in fact, it is because of these surging ambitions that one feels such bafflement and loss.
+ This sorrow is not refined like Tang dynasty poetry and Song dynasty lyrics, but belongs to the world of vulgar grievances aired out in the streets.
+ One can feel the weight of this sorrow as it sinks to the bottom.
+ It has nothing of the airy-fairy—the wind, flowers, snow, and the moon dancing on the water—it is the sediment that accumulates at the bottom.
+ Gossip always sinks to the lowest place.
+ There is no need to go looking for it, it is already there—and it will always be there.
+ It cannot be purified by fire or washed clean with water.
+ It has the tenacity for holding onto life that keeps the muscles intact when the bones are shattered, that enables one to swallow the teeth broken in one's mouth—a brazen-faced tenacity.
+ Gossip cannot help but be swashbuckling and sensational.
+ It travels in the company of monsters and goblins; rising with the wind, its elusive tail can never be caught.
+ Only in gossip can the true heart of this city be found.
+ No matter how gorgeous and splendid the city may look on the outside, its heart is vulgar.
+ That heart is born of gossip, and gossip is born of the Shanghai longtang.
+ Magnificent tales of the Far East can be heard all over this Paris of the Orient; but peel away the outer shell and you will discover that gossip lies at its core.
+ Like the center of a pearl—which is actually a rough grain of sand—coarse sand is the material of which gossip is made.
+ Gossip always muddles the senses.
+ Starting with inconsequential things, it winds up trying to rewrite history.
+ Like woodworm, it slowly chews up the books and records, eating away magnificent buildings like an army of termites.
+ Its methods are chaotic, without rhyme, reason, or logic.
+ It goes wherever it wants, swaggering like a hooligan, and wastes no time on long-winded theories, nor does it go into too much detail.
+ It simply spreads across the city, launching surprise attacks; by the time you turn around to see what sneaked up on you from behind, it has already gone without a trace.
+ It leaves in its wake a chain of injustices with no one to take the blame and a string of scores with no one to settle with.
+ It makes no big, sudden movements but quietly works away without stopping.
+ In the end, "many a little makes a lot," and trickling water flows into a great river.
+ This is what is meant by the saying, "Rumors rise in swarms"; they indeed drone and buzz like a nest of hornets.
+ A bit contemptible, maybe, but they are also conscientious.
+ They pick up discarded matchsticks to make a fire.
+ If they see a lone piece of thread on the floor, they will take it up and begin to sew.
+ Though always making trouble, they are nevertheless earnest and sincere.
+ Gossip is never cynical; even if the thing in question is nothing but empty rumors, the utmost care is still put into their creation.
+ Baseless and unreliable as these rumors may be, they are not without a certain warmth of feeling.
+ They mind their own business: whatever others may say, they will stick to their version—to them even settled opinions are taken under advisement.
+ It is not that gossip takes a different political view, but that it does not take any political view; in fact, it lacks the most basic knowledge about politics.
+ Always going by back roads and entering through side doors, it does not stand in opposition to society—it forms its own society.
+ As far as society is concerned, these are small and inconsequential things, like twigs and knots on a tree.
+ And precisely because society never takes these things seriously, they are able to maneuver unseen through the darkness and have their way.
+ Combined together, they constitute a power that should not be underestimated, in the way that a butterfly beating its wings here can cause a hurricane in a faraway place.
+ Rumors deviate from traditional moral codes but never claim to be antifeudal.
+ Like a true bum, they chip away at the foundations of public decency.
+ They wouldn't hesitate to pull the emperor down off his horse—not in order to install a new republic, but merely as an act of defiance.
+ Despising revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, they themselves are consistently slighted and deserted by both sides.
+ Indeed, there is not a presentable one in the whole lot—if there were, they could be promoted to the level of "public opinion," where they could advance into the open.
+ Instead, they have to be content with making secret maneuvers under the cover of darkness.
+ They care not that they are mere whispers in people's ears; they'll make their home wherever their wanderings take them, having no conception of what it means to build an enterprise.
+ These are creatures without ambition, holding out no hopes; in fact, they do not even have the ability to think.
+ All they have is the natural capacity to cause trouble and make mischief; they grow and reproduce in complete ignorance.
+ They reproduce at quite startling rates, hatching all at once like spawn.
+ Their methods of reproduction are also varied; sometimes linear, like a chain of interlocking rings, at other times concentric, like a suite of riddles.
+ They spread through the city air like a pack of down-at-the-heel vagrants.
+ But the truth is, gossip is one of the things that make this city so romantic.
+ What makes gossip romantic is its unbridled imagination.
+ With the imagination completely free from all fetters, gossip can leap through the dragon's gate and squeeze through the dog's den.
+ No one is better at making up stories, telling lies, and wagging its tongue than gossip.
+ It also has boundless energy—nothing can kill it dead.
+ Wildfires burn but, come spring, the grass will grow again.
+ Like the lowliest of seeds, gossip is carried by the wind to sprout and bloom in between rocks.
+ It works its way into every crack, even getting behind the heavy curtains of ladies' boudoirs, where it floats amid the embroidery needles in the young mistress's pincushions; and lingers among the tear-stained pages of those heartwrenching novels the schoolgirl reads in her spare time.
+ As the clock on the table ticks, gossip stretches itself out, even filling the basin where milady washes her rouge away.
+ It thrives in the most secret of places: a clandestine atmosphere is particularly beneficial to its development.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are very good at protecting their privacy, allowing gossip to prosper and proliferate.
+ Deep in the night, after everyone has turned out their lights, there is a narrow patch of light peeking out through the crack under someone's door—that is gossip.
+ The pair of embroidered shoes in the moonlight beside the bed—that too is gossip.
+ When the old amah, carrying her box of toiletries, says she is going out to comb her hair, she is actually off to spread gossip.
+ The clatter of young wives shuffling mahjong tiles—that is the sound of gossip.
+ Sparrows hopping around deserted courtyards on winter afternoons chirp about gossip.
+ The word "self" is embedded into gossip; and within this word "self" there is an unmentionable pain.
+ This bottled-up pain is different from what the Tang emperor felt at the death of Yang Guifei or the King of Chu for his beloved concubine.
+ It is not the kind of grand and heroic suffering that moves heaven and earth, but base and lowly, like pebbles and dirt, or the tentacles of ivy creeping stealthily out of bounds.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are incapable of harboring the kind of suffering that inspires legends.
+ The pain is broken up and evenly allocated throughout the city, so that each person ends up with a small share.
+ Even when they suffer deep sorrow, its inhabitants keep it down inside their bellies; they do not put it on stage for people to admire, nor do they make it into lyrics to be sung by others.
+ Only they themselves know where it comes from and whither it goes.
+ They alone carry its burden.
+ This is also where the word "self" comes into play, and herein, incidentally, lies the true meaning of sorrow.
+ Therefore we can say that gossip is painful; even if the pain does not arise from proper causes, it is still excruciating.
+ The pain is suffered individually, eliciting no sympathy—a lonely pain.
+ This is also what is moving about gossip.
+ The moment that gossip is born is actually the moment that people are trying their hardest to conduct themselves properly.
+ The people in Shanghai's longtang neighborhoods conduct themselves with the utmost attention and care; all their energy is directed to the way they carry themselves.
+ Their eyes are focused exclusively on themselves, and they are never distracted by their surroundings.
+ They don't want to create a place for themselves in history: they want to create themselves.
+ Without being ambitious, they expend every ounce of what strength they have.
+ This strength, too, is evenly allocated.
+ Everyone has his fair share.
+
+ 1．弄堂
+ 站一个至高点看上海，上海的弄堂是壮观的景象。
+ 它是这城市背景一样的东西。
+ 街道和楼房凸现在它之上，是一些点和线，而它则是中国画中称为皴法的那类笔触，是将空白填满的。
+ 当天黑下来，灯亮起来的时分，这些点和线都是有光的，在那光后面，大片大片的暗，便是上海的弄堂了。
+ 那暗看上去几乎是波涛汹涌，几乎要将那几点几线的光推着走似的。
+ 它是有体积的，而点和线却是浮在面上的，是为划分这个体积而存在的，是文章里标点一类的东西，断行断句的。
+ 那暗是像深渊一样，扔一座山下去，也悄无声息地沉了底。
+ 那暗里还像是藏着许多礁石，一不小心就会翻了船的。
+ 上海的几点几线的光，全是叫那暗托住的，一托便是几十年。
+ 这东方巴黎的璀璨，是以那暗作底铺陈开，一铺便是几十年。
+ 如今，什么都好像旧了似的，一点一点露出了真迹。
+ 晨曦一点一点亮起，灯光一点一点熄灭。
+ 先是有薄薄的雾，光是平直的光，勾出轮廓，细工笔似的。
+ 最先跳出来的是老式弄堂房顶的老虎天窗，它们在晨雾里有一种精致乖巧的模样，那木框窗扇是细雕细作的；那屋披上的瓦是细工细排的；窗台上花盆里的月季花也是细心细养的。
+ 然后晒台也出来了，有隔夜的衣衫，滞着不动的，像画上的衣衫；晒台矮墙上的水泥脱落了，露出锈红色的砖，也像是画上的，一笔一划都清晰的。
+ 再接着，山墙上的裂纹也现出了，还有点点绿苔，有触手的凉意似的。
+ 第一缕阳光是在山墙上的，这是很美的图画，几乎是绚烂的，又有些荒凉；是新鲜的，又是有年头的。
+ 这时候，弄底的水泥地还在晨雾里头，后弄要比前弄的雾更重一些。
+ 新式里弄的铁栏杆的阳台上也有了阳光，在落地的长窗上折出了反光。
+ 这是比较锐利的一笔，带有揭开帷幕，划开夜与昼的意思。
+ 雾终被阳光驱散了，什么都加重了颜色，绿苔原来是黑的，窗框的木头也是发黑的，阳台的黑铁栏杆却是生了黄锈，山墙的裂缝里倒长出绿色的草，飞在天空里的白鸽成片灰鸽。
+ 上海的弄堂是形形种种，声色各异的。
+ 它们有时候是那样，有时候是这样，莫衷一是的模样。
+ 其实它们是万变不离其宗，形变神不变的，它们是倒过来倒过去最终说的还是那一桩事，千人手面，又万众一心的。
+ 那种石窟门弄堂是上海弄堂里最有权势之气的一种，它们带有一些深宅大院的遗传，有一副官邸的脸面．它们将森严壁垒全做在一扇门和一堵墙上。
+ 一已开进门去，院子是浅的，客堂也是浅的，三步两步便走穿过去，一道木楼梯挡在了头顶。
+ 木楼梯是不打弯的，直抵楼上的闺阁，那二楼的临了街的窗户便流露出了风情。
+ 上海东区的新式里弄是放下架子的，门是楼空雕花的矮铁门，楼上有探身的窗还不够，还要做出站脚的阳台，为的是好看街市的风景。
+ 院里的夹竹桃伸出墙外来，锁不住的春色的样子。
+ 但骨子里头却还是防范的，后门的锁是德国造的弹簧锁，底楼的窗是有铁栅栏的，矮铁门上有着尖锐的角，天井是围在房中央，一副进得来出不去的样子。
+ 西区的公寓弄堂是严加防范的，房间都是成套，一扇门关死，一夫当关万夫莫开的架势，墙是隔音的墙，鸡犬声不相闻的。
+ 房子和房子是隔着宽阔地，老死不相见的。
+ 但这防范也是民主的防范，欧美风的，保护的是做人的自由，其实是想做什么就做什么，谁也拦不住的。
+ 那种棚户的杂弄倒是全面敞开的样子，油毛毡的屋顶是漏雨的，板壁墙是不遮风的，门窗是关不严的。
+ 这种弄堂的房屋看上去是鳞次栉比，挤挤挨挨，灯光是如豆的一点一点，虽然微弱，却是稠密，一锅粥似的。
+ 它们还像是大河一般有着无数的支流，又像是大树一样，枝枝杈杈数也数不清。
+ 它们阡陌纵横，是一张大网。
+ 它们表面上是袒露的，实际上却神秘莫测，有着曲折的内心。
+ 黄昏时分，鸽群盘桓在上海的空中，寻找着各自的巢。
+ 屋脊连绵起伏，横看成岭竖成峰的样子。
+ 站在至高点上，它们全都连成一片，无边无际的，东南西北有些分不清。
+ 它们还是如水漫流，见缝就钻，看上去有些乱，实际上却是错落有致的。
+ 它们又辽阔又密实．有些像农人撒播然后丰收的麦田，还有些像原始森林，自生自灭的。
+ 它们实在是极其美丽的景象。
+ 上海的弄堂是性感的，有一股肌肤之亲似的。
+ 它有着触手的凉和暖，是可感可知，有一些私心的。
+ 积着油垢的厨房后窗．是专供老妈子一里一外扯闲篇的；窗边的后门，是供大小姐提著书包上学堂读书，和男先生幽会的；前边大门虽是不常开，开了就是有大事情，是专为贵客走动，贴了婚丧嫁娶的告示的。
+ 它总是有一点按捺不住的兴奋，跃跃然的，有点絮叨的。
+ 晒台和阳台，还有窗畔，都留着些窃窃私语，夜间的敲门声也是此起彼落。
+ 还是要站一个至高点，再找一个好角度：弄堂里横七竖八晾衣竹竿上的衣物，带有点私情的味道；花盆里栽的凤仙花、宝石花和青葱青蒜，也是私情的性质；屋顶上空着的鸽笼，是一颗空着的心；碎了和乱了的瓦片，也是心和身子的象征。
+ 那沟壑般的弄底，有的是水泥铺的，有的是石卵拼的。
+ 水泥铺的到底有些隔心隔肺，石卵路则手心手背都是肉的感觉。
+ 两种弄底的脚步声也是两种，前种是清脆响亮的，后种却是吃进去，闷在肚里的；前种说的是客套，后种是肺腑之言，两种都不是官面文章，都是每日里免不了要说的家常话。
+ 上海的后弄更是要钻进人心里去的样子，那里的路面是饰着裂纹的，阴沟是溢水的，水上浮着鱼鳞片和老菜叶的，还有灶间的油烟气的。
+ 这里是有些脏兮兮，不整洁的，最深最深的那种隐私也裸露出来的，有点不那么规矩的。
+ 因此，它便显得有些阴沉。
+ 太阳是在午后三点的时候才照进来，不一会儿就夕阳西下了。
+ 这一点阳光反给它罩上一层暧昧的色彩，墙是黄黄的，面上的粗砺都凸现起来，沙沙的一层。
+ 窗玻璃也是黄的，有着污迹，看上去有一些花的。
+ 这时候的阳光是照久了，有些压不住的疲累的，将最后一些沉底的光都迸出来照耀，那光里便有了许多沉积物似的，是粘稠滞重，也是有些不干净的。
+ 鸽群是在前边飞的，后弄里飞着的是夕照里的一些尘埃，野猫也是在这里出没的。
+ 这是深入肌肤，已经谈不上是亲是近，反有些起腻，暗底里生畏的，却是有一股噬骨的感动。
+ 上海弄堂的感动来自于最为日常的情景，这感动不是云水激荡的，而是一点一点累积起来。
+ 这是有烟火人气的感动。
+ 那一条条一排排的里巷，流动着一些意料之外又清理之中的东西，东西不是什么大东西，但琐琐细细，聚沙也能成塔的。
+ 那是和历史这类概念无关，连野史都难称上，只能叫做流言的那种。
+ 流言是上海弄堂的又一景观，它几乎是可视可见的，也是从后窗和后门里流露出来。
+ 前门和前阳台所流露的则要稍微严正一些，但也是流言。
+ 这些流言虽然算不上是历史，却也有着时间的形态，是循序渐进有因有果的。
+ 这些流言是贴肤贴肉的，不是故纸堆那样冷淡刻板的，虽然谬误百出，但谬误也是可感可知的谬误。
+ 在这城市的街道灯光辉煌的时候，弄堂里通常只在拐角上有一盏灯，带着最寻常的铁罩，罩上生着锈，蒙着灰尘，灯光是昏昏黄黄，下面有一些烟雾般的东西滋生和蔓延，这就是酝酿流言的时候。
+ 这是一个晦涩的时刻，有些不清不白的，却是伤人肺腑。
+ 鸽群在笼中叽叽哝哝的，好像也在说着私语。
+ 街上的光是名正言顺的，可惜刚要流进弄口，便被那暗吃掉了。
+ 那种有前客堂和左右厢房里的流言是要老派一些的，带薰衣草的气味的；而带亭子间和拐角楼梯的弄堂房子的流言则是新派的，气味是樟脑丸的气味。
+ 无论老派和新派，却都是有一颗诚心的，也称得上是真情的。
+ 那全都是用手掬水，掬一捧漏一半地掬满一池，燕子衔泥衔一口掉半口地筑起一巢的，没有半点偷懒和取巧。
+ 上海的弄堂真是见不得的情景，它那背阴处的绿苔，其实全是伤口上结的疤一类的，是靠时间抚平的痛处。
+ 因它不是名正言顺，便都长在了阴处，长年见不到阳光。
+ 爬墙虎倒是正面的，却是时间的帷幕，遮着盖着什么。
+ 鸽群飞翔时，望着波涛连天的弄堂的屋瓦，心是一刺刺的疼痛。
+ 太阳是从屋顶上喷薄而出，坎坎坷坷的，光是打折的光，这是由无数细碎集合而成的壮观，是由无数耐心集合而成的巨大的力。
+ 2．流言
+ 流言总是带着阴沉之气。
+ 这阴沉气有时是东西厢房的薰衣草气味，有时是樟脑丸气味，还有时是肉砧板上的气味。
+ 它不是那种板烟和雪茄的气味，也不是六六粉和敌敌畏的气味。
+ 它不是那种阳刚凛冽的气味，而是带有些阴柔委婉的，是女人家的气味。
+ 是闺阁和厨房的混淆的气味，有点脂粉香，有点油烟味，还有点汗气的。
+ 流言还都有些云遮雾罩，影影绰绰，是哈了气的窗玻璃，也是蒙了灰尘的窗玻璃。
+ 这城市的弄堂有多少，流言就有多少，是数也数不清，说也说不完的。
+ 这些流言有一种蔓延的洇染的作用，它们会把一些正传也变成流言一般暧昧的东西，于是，什么是正传，什么是流言，便有些分不清。
+ 流言是真假难辨的，它们假中有真，真中有假，也是一个分不清。
+ 它们难免有着荒诞不经的面目，这荒诞也是女人家短见识的荒诞，带着些少见多怪，还有些幻觉的。
+ 它们在弄堂这种地方，从一扇后门传进另一扇后门，转眼间便全世界皆知了。
+ 它们就好像一种无声的电波，在城市的上空交叉穿行；它们还好像是无形的浮云，笼罩着城市，渐渐酿成一场是非的雨。
+ 这雨也不是什么倾盆的雨，而是那黄梅天里的雨，虽然不暴烈，却是连空气都湿透的。
+ 因此，这流言是不能小视的，它有着细密绵软的形态，很是纠缠的。
+ 上海每一条弄堂里，都有着这样是非的空气。
+ 西区高尚的公寓弄堂里，这空气也是高朗的，比较爽身，比较明澈，就像秋日的天，天高云淡的；再下来些的新式弄堂里，这空气便要混浊一些，也要波动一些，就像风一样，吹来吹去；更低一筹的石窟门老式弄堂里的是非空气，就又不是风了，而是回潮天里的水汽，四处可见污迹的；到了棚户的老弄，就是大雾天里的雾，不是雾开日出的雾，而浓雾作雨的雾，弥弥漫漫，五步开外就不见人的。
+ 但无论哪一种弄堂，这空气都是渗透的，无处不在。
+ 它们可说是上海弄堂的精神性质的东西。
+ 上海的弄堂如果能够说话，说出来的就一定是流言。
+ 它们是上海弄堂的思想，昼里夜里都在传播。
+ 上海弄堂如果有梦的话，那梦，也就是流言。
+ 流言总是鄙陋的。
+ 它有着粗俗的内心，它难免是自甘下贱的。
+ 它是阴沟里的水，被人使用过，污染过的。
+ 它是理不直气不壮，只能背地里窃窃喳喳的那种。
+ 它是没有责任感，不承担后果的，所以它便有些随心所欲，如水漫流。
+ 它均是经不起推敲，也没人有心去推敲的。
+ 它有些像言语的垃圾，不过，垃圾里有时也可淘出真货色的。
+ 它们是那些正经话的作了废的边角料，老黄叶片，米里边的稗子。
+ 它们往往有着不怎么正经的面目，坏事多，好事少，不干净，是个腌臜货。
+ 它们其实是用最下等的材料制造出来的，这种下等材料，连上海西区公寓里的小姐都免不了堆积了一些的。
+ 但也唯独这些下等的见不得人的材料里，会有一些真东西。
+ 这些真东西是体面后头的东西，它们是说给自己也不敢听的，于是就拿来，制作流言了。
+ 要说流言的好，便也就在这真里面了。
+ 这真却有着假的面目，是在假里做真的，虚里做实，总有些改头换面，声东击西似的。
+ 这真里是有点做人的胆子的，是不怕丢脸的胆子，放着人不做却去做鬼的胆子，唱反调的胆子。
+ 这胆子里头则有着一些哀意了。
+ 这哀意是不遂心不称愿的哀，有些气在里面的，哀是哀，心却是好高骛远的，唯因这好高骛远，才带来了失落的哀意。
+ 因此，这哀意也是粗鄙的哀意，不是唐诗宋词式的，而是街头切口的一种。
+ 这哀意便可见出了重量，它是沉痛的，是哀意的积淀物，不是水面上的风花雪月。
+ 流言其实都是沉底的东西，不是手淘万洗，百炼千锤的，而是本来就有，后来也有，洗不净，炼不精的，是做人的一点韧，打断骨头连着筋，打碎牙齿咽下肚，死皮赖脸的那点韧。
+ 流言难免是虚张声势，危言耸听，魑魅魍魉一起来，它们闻风而动，随风而去，摸不到头，抓不到尾。
+ 然而，这城市里的真心，却唯有到流言里去找的。
+ 无论这城市的外表有多华美，心却是一颗粗鄙的心，那心是寄在流言里的，流言是寄在上海的弄堂里的。
+ 这东方巴黎遍布远东的神奇传说，剥开壳看，其实就是流言的芯子。
+ 就好像珍珠的芯子，其实是粗糙的沙粒，流言就是这颗沙粒一样的东西。
+ 流言是混淆视听的，它好像要改写历史似的，并且是从小处着手。
+ 它蚕食般地一点一点咬噬着书本上的记载，还像白蚁侵蚀华厦大屋。
+ 它是没有章法，乱了套的，也不按规矩来，到哪算哪的，有点流氓地痞气的。
+ 它不讲什么长篇大论，也不讲什么小道细节，它只是横看来。
+ 它是那种偷袭的方法，从背后擦上一把，转过身却没了影，结果是冤无头，债无主。
+ 它也没有大的动作，小动作却是细细碎碎的没个停，然后敛少成多，细流汇大江。
+ 所谓“谣言蜂起”，指的就是这个，确是如蜂般嗡嗡营营的。
+ 它是有些卑鄙的，却也是勤恳的。
+ 它是连根火柴梗都要抬起来作引火柴的，见根线也拾起来穿针用的。
+ 它虽是捣乱也是认真恳切，而不是玩世不恭，就算是谣言也是悉心编造。
+ 虽是无根无凭，却是有情有意。
+ 它们是自行其事，你说你的，它说它的，什么样的有公论的事情，在它都是另一番是非。
+ 它且又不是持不同政见，它是一无政见，对政治一窍不通，它走的是旁门别道，同社会不是对立也不是同意，而是自行一个社会。
+ 它是这社会的旁枝错节般的东西，它引不起社会的警惕心，因此，它的暗中作祟往往能够得逞。
+ 它们其实是一股不可小视的力量，有点“大风始于青萍之末”的意味。
+ 它们是背离传统道德的，却不以反封建的面目，而是一味的伤风败俗，是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们又敢把皇帝拉下马，也不以共和民主的面目，而是痞子的作为，也是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们是革命和反革命都不齿的，它们被两边的力量都抛弃和忽略。
+ 它们实在是没个正经样，否则便可上升到公众舆论这一档里去明修栈道，如今却只能暗渡陈仓，走的是风过耳。
+ 风过耳就风过耳，它也不在乎，它本是四海为家的，没有创业的观念。
+ 它最是没有野心，没有抱负，连头脑也没有的。
+ 它只有着作乱生事的本能，很茫然地生长和繁殖。
+ 它繁殖的速度也是惊人的，鱼撒籽似的。
+ 繁殖的方式也很多样，有时环扣环，有时套连套，有时谜中谜，有时案中案。
+ 它们弥漫在城市的空中，像一群没有家的不拘形骸的浪人，其实，流言正是这城市的浪漫之一。
+ 流言的浪漫在于它无拘无束能上能下的想象力。
+ 这想象力是龙门能跳狗洞能钻的，一无清规戒律。
+ 没有比流言更能胡编乱造，信口雌黄的了。
+ 它还有无穷的活力，怎么也扼它不死，是野火烧不尽，春风吹又生的。
+ 它是那种最卑贱的草籽，风吹到石头缝里也照样生根开花。
+ 它又是见缝就钻，连闺房那样帷幕森严的地方都能出入的。
+ 它在大小姐花绷上的绣花外流连，还在女学生的课余读物，那些哀情小说的书页流连，书页上总是有些泪痕的。
+ 台钟滴滴答答走时声中，流言一点一点在滋生；洗胭脂的水盆里，流言一点一点在滋生。
+ 隐秘的地方往往是流言丛生的地方，隐私的空气特别利于流言的生长。
+ 上海的弄堂是很藏得住隐私的，于是流言便漫生漫长。
+ 夜里边，万家万户灭了灯，有一扇门缝里露出的一线光，那就是流言；床前月亮地里的一双绣花拖鞋，也是流言；老妈子托着梳头匣子，说是梳头去，其实是传播流言去；少奶奶们洗牌的哗哗声，是流言在作响；连冬天没有人的午后，天井里一跳一跳的麻雀，都在说着鸟语的流言。
+ 这流言里有一个“私”字，这“私”字里头是有一点难言的苦衷。
+ 这苦衷不是唐明皇对杨贵妃的那种，也不是楚霸王对虞姬的那种，它不是那种大起大落、可歌可泣、悲天恸地的苦衷，而是狗皮倒灶，牵丝攀藤，粒粒屑屑的。
+ 上海的弄堂是藏不住大苦衷的。
+ 它的苦衷都是割碎了平均分配的，分到各人名下也就没有多少的。
+ 它即便是悲，即便是恸，也是悲在肚子里，恸在肚子里，说不上戏台子去供人观赏，也编不成词曲供人唱的，那是怎么来怎么去都只有自己知道，苦来苦去只苦自己，这也就是那个“私”字的意思，其实也是真正的苦衷的意思。
+ 因此，这流言说到底是有一些痛的，尽管痛的不是地方，倒也是钻心钻肺的。
+ 这痛都是各人痛各人，没有什么共鸣，也引不起同情，是很孤单的痛。
+ 这也是流言的感动之处。
+ 流言产生的时刻，其实都是悉心做人的时刻。
+ 上海弄堂里的做人，是悉心悉意，全神贯注的做人，眼睛只盯着自己，没有旁骛的。
+ 不想创造历史，只想创造自己的，没有大志气，却用尽了实力的那种。
+ 这实力也是平均分配的实力，各人名下都有一份。
+
+ Peace Lane
+ SHANGHAI MUST HAVE at least a hundred Peace Lanes, some occupying a large area connecting two major streets, others connected to other longtang, forming a vast network of twisted, dirty lanes where one can easily get lost.
+ As confusing as they may be to outsiders, each has developed a distinct identity simply through having survived for so many years.
+ Under moonlight, these blocks of crumbling wood and brick look positively serene, like something out of a painting executed with minute brushstrokes; they too hold memories and aspirations.
+ The ringing bells make their evening rounds, reminding residents to watch their cooking fires, evincing a trace of warmth and goodwill from those who live there.
+ Mornings, however, begin with night-soil carts, clattering in to collect waste for fertilizer, and the raspy noises of brushes scrubbing out commodes.
+ Amid the smoke of coal burners, laundry soaked overnight is taken out to be hung, banner-like, on bamboo poles.
+ Every action, every gesture comes across to the onlooker as a boastful swagger or perhaps an exaggerated fit of pique; why, the collective provocation would be enough to darken the rising sun.
+ Each Peace Lane has a few residents who are as old as the neighborhood.
+ Being history's witnesses, they observe newcomers with knowing eyes.
+ Some are not averse to mingling with newcomers, and this creates an impression of continuity.
+ But on the whole they like to keep to themselves, adding an air of mystery to the neighborhood.
+ Wang Qiyao moved into the third floor of 39 Peace Lane.
+ Different batches of tenants had left their plants on the balcony.
+ Most had withered, but a few nameless ones had sprouted new leaves.
+ Insects swam in the stagnant liquid of moldy jars in the kitchen, yet among them was a bottle of perfectly good peanut oil.
+ On the wall behind the door somebody had written, "Buy birthday present on January 10," and a child had scrawled "Wang Gensheng eats shit."
+ One could only speculate about the birthday celebrant and the object of the child's resentment.
+ Rubbish lay, piled up at haphazard—one could make nothing coherent out of all this.
+ Having put her things down among other people's debris, Wang Qiyao decided to make the place her own by hanging up her curtains.
+ The room did seem different with the curtains.
+ However, with no shade over the light bulb, the objects in the room simply looked naked rather than illuminated.
+ Outside it was a typical evening in May.
+ The warm breeze carried with it whiffs of grease and swill, which was the basic odor of Shanghai, although the typical Shanghainese was so steeped in it he scarcely noticed.
+ Later in the night would come the scent of rice gruel flavored with osmanthus blossoms.
+ The smells were familiar, the curtains were familiar, and the evening outside was familiar, but Wang Qiyao felt strange.
+ She needed to reattach herself to life here; fortunately for her, the lines where attachments could be made were clearly marked on the fabric.
+ Wang Qiyao was grateful to the large flowers on the curtains, which, no matter where they were placed, remained in full bloom, faithfully retaining the glory of bygone days.
+ The floor and the window frames emitted the odiferous warmth of decaying wood.
+ Scurrying mice conveyed their greetings.
+ Soon, bells reminding people to watch their cooking fires began ringing.
+ Wang Qiyao underwent three months of training as a nurse in order to be certified to give injections.
+ She hung out a sign advertising injections outside the entrance to her apartment on Peace Lane.
+ Similar signs could be seen along the entrances of other longtang—following those signs inside, one could find Wang Qiyaos of all different shapes and sizes eking out a living.
+ They all woke up early, put on clean clothes, and straightened up their rooms.
+ Then they ignited the alcohol burner to disinfect a box of needles.
+ The sun, reflected from the rooftops across the alley, left rectangles of light on the wooden floor.
+ After switching off the burner, they reached for a book to read while they waited for patients.
+ The patients tended to come in batches, morning and afternoon, but there might be one or two in the evening.
+ Once in a while, when someone requested a house call, they hurried off in white cap and surgical mask.
+ Lugging a straw bag containing the needles and medicinal cotton, they looked very much like professional nurses as they scurried down the street.
+ Wang Qiyao always wore a simple cheongsam.
+ In the 1950s these were becoming rare on the streets of Shanghai, a symbol of nostalgia as well as style, at once old-fashioned and modern.
+ When she crossed the streets on house calls, she was often struck by a sense of déjà vu—the places were familiar, only the roles were changed.
+ One day she called on a patient in a dark apartment where the waxed floor reflected her shoes and stockings, and was led into the bedroom.
+ There, under a green silk blanket, a young woman lay.
+ Wang Qiyao had the curious sensation that the woman was herself.
+ Having administered the shot, she put her things away and left, but her heart seemed to tarry in that apartment.
+ She could almost hear the woman complaining to the maid that the shrimps from the market were too small and not fresh enough—didn't she know the master would be home for dinner that night?
+ At times she stared into the blue flames of the alcohol burner and saw a resplendent world in which people sang and danced for all eternity.
+ Once in a while she caught a late movie, one of the ones that started at eight, when street lamps were reflected on the face of the silent streets.
+ Only the theater lobby would be bustling, as though time had stood still.
+ She only went to old movies: Zhou Xuan in Street Angel, Bai Yang in Crossroads, and others.
+ Although they had no connection to her present situation, they were familiar and they spoke to her.
+ She subscribed to an evening newspaper to fill the hours of dusk.
+ She read every word in the newspaper, making sense perhaps of half the reports.
+ By the time she finished it, the water would be boiling and it would be dinner time.
+ There was an exciting element of unpredictability to her work.
+ Hearing footsteps on the staircase at night, she would speculate, Who could it be?
+ She was unusually vivacious on these occasions and often talked a bit too much, asking this or that as she reignited the alcohol burner to sterilize the needle.
+ If the patient was a child, she would put out all her charm.
+ She would feel sad after the patient left.
+ Pondering over the recent commotion, she would forget to put things away, and then discover that the pot had boiled dry.
+ Such interruptions in her tranquil routine gave rise to a vague feeling of anticipation.
+ Something was fomenting, she felt, from which something might just develop.
+ Once, awakened in the middle of the night by urgent and frightened calls for help at the door, she threw a jacket over her nightgown and rushed downstairs, her heart pounding, to find two men from the provinces carrying someone on a stretcher.
+ The person was critically ill.
+ They had mistaken her for a doctor.
+ After giving them directions to the nearest hospital, she went back upstairs but could not sleep a wink.
+ All kinds of odd things happened in the night in this city.
+ Under the lamp at the entrance to the longtang, the shingle advertising "Injection Nurse Wang Qiyao" looked as if it was waiting patiently to be noticed.
+ The passing cars and the windswept fallen leaves hinted at concealed activities in the dark night.
+ People came to Wang Qiyao in an unending parade.
+ Those who stopped coming were quickly replaced by others.
+ She would speculate about her patients' professions and backgrounds and was pleased to find most of her guesses correct as, with a few casual remarks, she pried the facts out of them.
+ Her best sources were nannies accompanying little charges—these eagerly volunteered all kinds of unflattering information about their employers.
+ A number of patients had nothing wrong with them, but came for routine health-enhancing shots, such as placenta fluid.
+ They became so comfortable with her that they would drop by to gossip.
+ Thus, without going out of her house, Wang Qiyao learned a great deal about the neighborhood.
+ This hodgepodge of activity was enough to fill up half her day.
+ Sometimes she was so busy she could hardly keep up with all the goings-on.
+ The hustle-bustle on Peace Lane was both invasive and highly contagious.
+ Wang Qiyao's tranquility gradually gave way to frequent footfalls on the stairs, doors opening and shutting; her name was regularly hollered by people on the ground with upturned heads, their fervent voices carrying far and wide on quiet afternoons.
+ Before long, the oleanders, planted haphazardly in makeshift planters formed from broken bricks on balconies, put forth their dazzling flowers.
+ Nothing marvelous had happened to Wang Qiyao, but through careful cultivation her life had also sprouted countless little sprigs that held the promise of developing into something.
+ People at Peace Lane knew Wang Qiyao as a young widow.
+ Several attempts were made to match her up with men, including a teacher who, though only thirty, was already bald.
+ Arrangements were made for them to meet at a theater to watch a movie about victorious peasants—the kind of thing she detested—but she forced herself to sit through it.
+ Whenever there was a lull in the show, she heard a faint whistling sound coming from the man as he breathed.
+ Seeing this was the best she could do, she declined all further matchmaking efforts on her behalf.
+ As she watched the smoky sky above Peace Lane, she often wondered if anything exciting would ever happen to her again.
+ To charges of arrogance as well as to praise for being loyal to her late husband, she turned a deaf ear.
+ She ignored all gossip and advice, remaining at once genial and distant.
+ This was normal on Peace Lane, where friendships were circumscribed, there being untold numbers of large fish swimming around in the murky waters.
+ Underneath all that conviviality, people were lonely, though often they did not know it themselves, merely muddling through from one day to the next.
+ Wang Qiyao was rather muddleheaded about some things, while she couldn't have been more clear-sighted about others; the former concerned issues of daily living, while the latter were reserved for her private thoughts.
+ She was occupied with people and things during the day.
+ At night, after she turned off the lights and the moonlight lit up the big flowers on the curtains, she could not help but slip into deep thought.
+ There was a great deal of thinking going on around Peace Lane, but much of it, like sediment, had sunk to the bottom of people's hearts, all the juice squeezed out of them, so that they had solidified and could no longer be stirred up.
+ Wang Qiyao had not reached this stage.
+ Her thoughts still had stems, leaves, and flowers, which glimmered in the dark night of Peace Lane.
+ A Frequent Guest
+ Among Wang Qiyao's frequent visitors was one Madame Yan, who came quite regularly.
+ She lived in a townhouse with a private entrance at the end of Peace Lane.
+ She must have been thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, as her eldest son, an architecture student at Tongji University, was already nineteen.
+ Her husband had owned a light bulb factory that, since 1949, was jointly operated with the state.
+ He was now the deputy manager—a mere figurehead, according to Madame Yan.
+ Madame Yan painted her eyebrows and wore lipstick even on days when she didn't leave the house.
+ She favored a short green Chinese jacket over a pair of Western-style pants made of cheviot wool.
+ When they saw her coming, people stopped talking and turned to stare, but she acted as if they did not exist.
+ Her children did not play with the other kids, and, since her husband was driven everywhere by a chauffeur, few people really knew what he looked like.
+ There was a high turnover among their servants; in any case, they were not permitted to loiter when they went out for errands, so they, too, appeared aloof.
+ Every Monday and Thursday Madame Yan would come for a shot of imported vitamins to help her ward off colds.
+ The first time she saw Wang Qiyao, she was taken aback.
+ Her clothes, the way she ate, her every move and gesture, hinted of a splendid past.
+ Madame Yan decided they could be friends.
+ She had always felt Peace Lane was beneath her.
+ Her husband, a frugal person, had bought the property at a good price.
+ In response to her complaints, he had, in bed, promised many times to move them to a house with a garden.
+ Now that their assets were controlled by the government, they felt lucky simply to be allowed to keep their house.
+ Still, as long as she lived in Peace Lane, Madame Yan felt like a crane among chickens.
+ No one there was her equal and, in her eyes, even the neighbors were no better than her servants.
+ She was therefore delighted to see another woman similarly out of place moving into no. 39.
+ Without seeking Wang Qiyao's permission, she made herself a regular visitor.
+ Madame Yan usually showed up in the afternoon sometime after two o'clock, heralded by the fragrance of scented powder and her sandalwood fan.
+ Most of Wang Qiyao's patients came between three and four o'clock, so they had an hour to kill.
+ Sitting across from each other in the lazy summer afternoon, they would stifle their yawns and chatter on without fully realizing what they were talking about, as cicadas droned in the parasol tree at the entrance to the longtang.
+ Wang Qiyao would ladle out some of her chilled plum soup, which they sipped absentmindedly while exchanging gossip.
+ Then, having thrown off their afternoon sluggishness and cooled off, they would perk up.
+ Madame Yan did most of the talking while Wang Qiyao listened, but both were equally absorbed in the conversation.
+ Madame Yan would go on and on, passing from stories about her parents to gossip about her in-laws; actually, all she wanted was to hear herself talk.
+ As for Wang Qiyao, she listened with her heart and eventually made all business concerning the Yan family her own.
+ When, once in a while, Madame Yan inquired about Wang Qiyao's family, she always answered in the vaguest terms.
+ She suspected Madame Yan didn't believe most of what she said, but that was fine—she was free to speculate.
+ Wang Qiyao would much rather that Madame Yan guessed the truth but left things discreetly unsaid; but Madame Yan, who had to some extent figured out the situation, insisted on asking questions pointblank.
+ It was her way of testing Wang Qiyao's sincerity.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, wanted to be sincere, but there were some things that simply could not be spoken aloud.
+ So they went around in circles, one chasing and the other evading, and before they knew it, a grudge had grown up between them.
+ Fortunately, grudges are no impediment to friendships between women.
+ The friendships of women are made of grudges: the deeper the grudge, the deeper the friendship.
+ Sometimes they parted acrimoniously, but would resume their friendship the very next day with a deeper understanding of each other.
+ One day Madame Yan announced that she wanted to set Wang Qiyao up with someone, but Wang Qiyao declined with a good-humored laugh.
+ When Madame Yan inquired into the reason, Wang Qiyao simply recounted the scene at the movie theater with the schoolteacher.
+ Madame Yan laughed out loud but then continued with a straight face, "I'll promise you three things about the guy I want to introduce you to.
+ One, I'll make sure he's not a teacher; two, that he's still got a head of hair; and three, that he doesn't have asthma."
+ They both collapsed in laughter, but that was the last time Madame Yan brought up the topic of matchmaking.
+ They came to a tacit understanding that the subject would not be broached and they would simply let nature take its course.
+ Both being still young and bright, their sensitivity had not yet been ground down by time, and they quickly understood how each other felt.
+ Although there was a ten-year difference between them, Madame Yan acted a bit young for her age and Wang Qiyao was more mature, so they were well-suited.
+ People like them, who become friends at mid-life, tend to keep part of themselves hidden away.
+ Even Madame Yan, who usually wore her heart on her sleeve, retained certain secrets that she herself might not have understood.
+ It was not necessary for them to know everything there was to know about each other—a little sympathy went a long way.
+ And even though Madame Yan was not satisfied, she could bear it and still treat Wang Qiyao as a true friend.
+ What Madame Yan had was time on her hands.
+ Her husband left early every morning and did not get home until late at night.
+ Two of her children were grown, while the third was cared for by a nanny.
+ She socialized with the wives of other industrialists and businessmen, but this hardly took up all her time.
+ Dropping by to see Wang Qiyao became part of her daily routine; she sometimes even stayed for dinner, insisting that they simply eat what was already on hand rather than doing anything fancy.
+ Consequently, they often had leftover rice, heated up again with just a dish of mud snails to go with it.
+ Wang Qiyao's near-ascetic lifestyle reminded Madame Yan of her own simple, quiet life before marriage, which seemed so long ago.
+ If a patient came while they were talking, Madame Yan would help by bringing over a chair, getting the medicine out, and collecting the money.
+ More than once the patient thought the well-dressed woman was Wang Qiyao's younger sister, which caused her to blush with pleasure, as if she were a child being patted on the head by an adult.
+ Afterward she would in a self-deprecating tone urge Wang Qiyao to get some new clothes and have her hair permed.
+ She spoke eloquently about how a woman must treasure her youth and beauty, which would disappear before she knew it.
+ This never failed to touch Wang Qiyao, who, at twenty-five, was indeed watching her youth slip by.
+ Madame Yan's outfits were always new and fashionable, but that was all she could do to hold on to the tail end of her youth.
+ At times her appearance startled and touched Wang Qiyao.
+ There was an innocence about her heavy makeup and also a certain world-weariness, blended together to create a desolate kind of beauty.
+ Eventually, unable to withstand Madame Yan's blandishments, Wang Qiyao went out and got herself a perm.
+ The smell of shampoo, lotion, and burning hair was intimately familiar to Wang Qiyao, as was the image of a woman sitting under the hair dryer, one hand holding a magazine, the other extended to be pampered by a manicurist.
+ The routines of washing, cutting, rolling, perming, drying, and setting had long been imprinted on her mind.
+ She felt like she had been there just the day before, surrounded by faces she knew.
+ When the process was completed, the old Wang Qiyao emerged in the mirror—the intervening three years seemed to have been snipped off along with her split ends.
+ Looking into the mirror, she noted Madame Yan's face, on which was a mixture of astonishment and envy.
+ As the stylist gave her hair a last-minute adjustment with a hand blower, the expression on Wang Qiyao's face, turning slightly to avoid the hot air with just a soupçon of the spoiled child, belonged to yesteryear.
+
+ 6．平安里
+ 上海这城市最少也有一百条平安里。
+ 一说起平安里，眼前就会出现那种曲折深长、藏污纳垢的弄堂。
+ 它们有时是可走穿，来到另一条马路上；还有时它们会和邻弄相通，连成一片。
+ 真是有些像网的，外地人一旦走进这种弄堂，必定迷失方向，不知会把你带到哪里。
+ 这样的平安里，别人看，是一片迷乱，而它们自己却是清醒的，各自守着各自的心，过着有些挣扎的日月。
+ 当夜幕降临，有时连月亮也升起的时候，平安里呈现出清洁宁静的面目，是工笔画一类的，将那粗疏的生计描画得细腻了。
+ 那平安里其实是有点内秀的，只是看不出来。
+ 在那开始朽烂的砖木格子里，也会盛着一些谈不上如锦如绣，却还是月影花影的回忆和向往。
+ “小心火烛”的摇铃声声，是平安里的一点小心呵护，有些温爱的。
+ 平安里的一日生计，是在喧嚣之中拉开帷幕；粪车的轱辘声，涮马桶声，几十个煤球炉子在弄堂里升烟，隔夜洗的衣衫也晾出来了，竹竿交错，好像在烟幕中升旗。
+ 这些声色难免有些夸张，带着点负气和炫耀，气势很大的，将东升的日头都遮暗了。
+ 这里有一些老住户，与平安里同龄，他们是平安里的见证人一样，用富于历史感的眼睛，审视着那些后来的住户。
+ 其中有一部分是你来我往，呈现出川流不息的景象。
+ 他们的行迹藏头露尾，有些神秘，在平安里的上空散布着疑云。
+ 王琦瑶住进平安里三十九号三楼。
+ 前边几任房客都在晒台上留下各种花草，大多枯败，也有一两盆无名的，却还长出了新叶。
+ 前几任的房客还在灶间里留下各自的瓶瓶罐罐，里面生了霉，积水里游着小虫，却又有半瓶新鲜的花生油。
+ 房门后的墙上留着一些手迹，有大人的，记着事：正月初十备寿礼。
+ 也不知是谁的寿礼。
+ 也有小孩的，是发泄私愤，写着“王根生吃屎”。
+ 都是些零星的岁月，不成篇章，却这里那里的，俯拾皆是。
+ 还是一层摞一层，糊鞋靠一样，扎扎实实，针锥都吃不进去。
+ 王琦瑶安置下自己的几件东西，别的都乱摊着，先把几幅窗帘装上，拉起，开亮了电灯。
+ 那房间就变了面目，虽是接在人家的茬上，到底也是换新的。
+ 那电灯没有章子，光便满房间的，不是明亮，而是样样东西都扒了皮，裸着了。
+ 窗外是五月的天，风是和暖的，夹了油烟和泔水的气味，这其实才是上海芯子里的气味，嗅久了便浑然不觉，身心都浸透了。
+ 再晚些，桂花糖粥的香味也飘上来了，都是旧相识。
+ 窗帘也是旧窗帘，遮着熟知的夜晚。
+ 这熟知里却是有点隔，要悉心去连上，续上，有些拼接的痕迹。
+ 王琦瑶很感激窗帘上的大花朵，易时易地都是盛开，忠心陪伴的样子。
+ 它还有留影留照的意思，是好时光的遗痕，再是流逝，依然绚烂。
+ 地板和木窗框散发出木头的霉烂的暖意，有老鼠小心翼翼的脚步，从心上踩过似的，也是关照。
+ 然后，“小心火烛”的铃声便响起了。
+ 王琦瑶到护士教习所学了三个月，得了一张注射执照，便在平安里弄口挂了牌子。
+ 这种牌子，几乎每三个弄口就有一块，是形形色色的王琦瑶的营生。
+ 她们早晨起来收拾干净房间，穿一身干净衣服，然后便点起酒精灯，煮一盒注射针头。
+ 阳光从前边人家的屋顶上照进窗口，在地板上划下一方一方的。
+ 她们熄了酒精灯，打开一本闲书，等着有人上门来打针。
+ 来人一般是上午一拨，下午一拨，也有晚上的一个两个。
+ 还有来请上门去打针的，那样的话，她们便提一个草包，装着针盒、药棉，白布帽和口罩，俨然一个护士的样子，去了。
+ 王琦瑶总是穿一件素色的旗袍，在五十年代的上海街头，这样的旗袍正日渐少去，所剩无多的几件，难免带有缅怀的表情，是上个时代的遗迹，陈旧和摩登集一身的。
+ 王琦瑶穿着旗袍，走过一两条马路，去给病家打针。
+ 她会有旧境重现的心情，不过人都是换了角色的。
+ 有一日，她去集雅公寓，走进暗沉沉的客厅，打蜡地板映着她的鞋袜。
+ 她被这家的佣人引进卧房，床上一个年轻女人，盖一条绿绸薄被，她觉得这女人就是自己的化身。
+ 打完针，装好东西，走出那公寓，心却好像留在了那里。
+ 她几乎能听见那女人对佣人发嗔的声音，是怪她买来的虾又小又不新鲜，明知道先生要来家吃晚饭的。
+ 她有时望着酒精灯蓝色的火苗，会望见斑斓的景象，里面有一个小世界，小世界里的歌舞永恒不止，是天上的歌舞。
+ 她偶尔去看一场电影，晚上八点的那一场。
+ 马路上静静的，路面有灯的反光，电影院前厅那静里的沸腾，有着时光倒流的意思。
+ 她看的多是老电影，周璇的《马路天使》，白杨的《十字街头》，这也是旧相识，最不相关的故事也是肺腑之言。
+ 她订了一份晚报，黄昏时间是看报度过的，报上的每一个字她都读到，懂一半，不懂一半，半懂不懂之间，晚饭的时间便到了，炉子上的水也开了。
+ 晚上来打针的，总有点不速之客的味道，听见楼梯响，她便猜：是谁来了。
+ 她有些活跃，话也多几句。
+ 倘若打针的是孩子，她便格外地要哄他高兴。
+ 她重新点上酒精灯消毒针头，问东问西，打完针，病家要走时，她就有些不舍。
+ 那一阵骚动与声响还会留下余音，她忘了收拾，锅里的水干了底才醒来。
+ 这种夜晚，打破了千篇一律的生活，虽然是个没结果，可毕竟制造了一点起伏不定，使人生出期待。
+ 那期待是茫茫然的，方向都不明，有什么未知在酝酿和发展，终于会有果实似的。
+ 她有一次夜半被叫醒。
+ 人们早已入睡，那叫声便显得格外惊动，带着些危急和恐怖。
+ 王琦瑶的心擂鼓似的怦怦响着，她睡衣外面披上件夹袄便下楼去开门，见是两个乡下人，抬了一个担架，躺着垂危的病人，说是请王医师救命。
+ 王琦瑶知道他们弄错了，将护士当作医师了。
+ 她指点他们去最近处的医院，再回楼上，却怎么也睡不着了。
+ 这城市的夜晚总有着出其不意，每一点动静都不寻常。
+ 弄口路灯下，写着注射护士王琦瑶的牌子，带着点翘首以待。
+ 静夜里有汽车驶过，风扫落叶的声音，夜晚便流动起来，有了一股暗中的活跃。
+ 上门打针的人川流不息，今天去了明天来，常有新人出现。
+ 这时，王琦瑶便暗自打量，猜那人的家庭和职业，再用些闲话去套，套出的几句实情，竟也能八九不离十。
+ 要逢到那些做奶妈的带孩子来，不问也要告诉你东家的底细。
+ 哪个奶妈不是碎嘴？
+ 又不是对东家有仇有恨，要把一肚子苦水倒给你的样子？
+ 还有一些是固定出现的病人，这些其实都算不上病人，打的是胎盘液之类的营养针，一周一次或一周两次。
+ 日子长了，有几个不打针时也来，坐坐，说说闲话，张家长李家短。
+ 这样，王琦瑶虽然不出门，也知天下事了。
+ 这些杂碎虽说是人家的，可也把王琦瑶的日子填个半满。
+ 一早一晚，有时甚至会是忙碌的，眼和耳都有些不够用。
+ 平安里的闹，是会传染的，而且无缝不钻，渐渐地，就有些将王琦瑶的清静给打破了。
+ 楼梯上的脚步纷沓起来，门开门关频繁起来，时常有人在后弄仰头叫王琦瑶的名字，一声声的。
+ 尤其是在那种悠闲的下午，这叫声便传远，有一股殷切的味道。
+ 夹竹桃也开了。
+ 平安里也是有几棵夹竹桃的，栽在晒台上碎砖围起来的一掬泥土中，开出绚烂的花朵。
+ 白昼里虽不会有奇遇，可却是悉心积累起许多细枝末节，最后也要酿成个什么。
+ 王琦瑶和人相熟起来。
+ 人们知道她是个年轻的寡妇，自然就有热心说媒的人上门。
+ 王琦瑶见过其中的一个，是个做教师的，说是三十岁，却已谢顶。
+ 两人在电影院里见面，看一场农民翻身的电影，是王琦瑶最不要看的那种，硬撑到底的。
+ 其中有静默的间隙，便听见那教书的局促的呼吸声，带了一股胸腔里的啸音，是哮喘的症状。
+ 王琦瑶从此便对说媒的人婉言谢绝，她知道再介绍谁也跳不出教书先生这个窠臼。
+ 她不怪别人，只怪自己命运不济。
+ 她望着平安里油烟弥漫的上空，心里想，还会有什么好事情来临呢？
+ 人们有说她骄傲，也有说她守节，什么闲话她都作耳边风，什么开导的话她也作耳边风。
+ 虽是相熟，却还是隔的，这也是正常。
+ 平安里的相熟中不知有多少隔，浑水里不知有多少大鱼。
+ 平安里的相熟都是不求甚解，浮皮潦草，表面上闹，底下还是寂寞，这寂寞是人不知，己也不知。
+ 日子就糊里糊涂地过下去。
+ 王琦瑶是糊涂一半，清楚一半，糊涂的那半供过，清楚的一半是供想。
+ 白天忙着应付各样的人和事，到了夜晚，关了灯，月光一下子跳到窗帘上，把那大朵大朵的花推近眼前，不想也要想。
+ 平安里的夜晚其实也是有许多想头的，只不过没有王琦瑶窗帘上的大花朵，映显不出来罢了。
+ 许多想头都是沉在心底，沉渣一般。
+ 全是叫生计熬炼的，挤干汁，沥干水，凝结成块，怎么样的激荡也泛不起来。
+ 王琦瑶还没到这一步，她的想头还有些枝叶花朵，在平安里黯淡的夜里，闪出些光亮来。
+ 7．熟客
+ 常来的人中间，有一个人称严家师母的，更是常来一些。
+ 她也是住平安里，弄底的，独门独户的一幢。
+ 她三十六七岁的年纪，最大的儿子倒有十九岁了，在同济读建筑。
+ 她家先生一九四九年前是一爿灯泡厂的厂主，公私合营后做了副厂长，照严家师母的话， 就是摆摆样子的。
+ 严家师母在平常的日子，也描眉毛，抹口红，穿翠绿色的短夹袄，下面是舍味呢的西装裤。
+ 她在弄堂里走过，人们便都停了说话，将目光转向她。
+ 她则昂然不理会，进出如入无人之境。
+ 她家的儿女也不与邻人家的孩子嬉戏玩耍，严先生更是汽车进，汽车出，多年来，连他的面目都没看真切过。
+ 严家的娘姨是不让随便出来的，又换得勤，所以就连她家娘姨，也像是骄傲的，与人们并不相识。
+ 严家师母每逢星期一和四，到王琦瑶这里打一种进口的防止感冒的营养针。
+ 她第一眼见王琦瑶，心中便暗暗惊讶，她想，这女人定是有些来历。
+ 王琦瑶一举一动，一衣一食，都在告诉她隐情，这隐情是繁华场上的。
+ 她只这一眼就把王琦瑶视作了可亲可近。
+ 严家师母在平安里始终感到委屈，住在这里全为了房价便宜，因严先生是克勤克俭的人。
+ 为此她没少发牢骚，严先生枕头上也立下千般愿，万般誓，不料公私合营，产业都归了国家，能保住一处私房就是天恩地恩，花园洋房终成泡影。
+ 严家师母在平安里总是鹤立鸡群，看别人都是下人一般，没一个可与她平起平坐。
+ 现在，三十九号住进一个王琦瑶，不由她又惊又喜，还使她有同病相怜之感。
+ 也不管王琦瑶同意不同意，便做起她的座上客。
+ 严家师母总是在下午两点钟以后来王琦瑶处，手里拿一把檀香扇，再加身上的脂粉，人未见香先到。
+ 下午来打针多是在三四点钟，这一小时总空着，只她们俩，面对面地坐。
+ 夏天午间的困盹还没完全过去，禁不住哈欠连哈欠的。
+ 她们强打精神，自己都不知说的什么。
+ 弄口梧桐树上的蝉一迭声叫，传进来是嗡嗡的，也是不清楚。
+ 王琦瑶舀来自己做的乌梅汤给客人喝，一杯喝下去也不知喝的什么。
+ 等那哈欠过去，人渐渐醒了，胸中那股潮热劲平息下去，便有了些好的心情。
+ 一般总是严家师母说，王琦瑶听，说的和听的都入神。
+ 严家师母对了王琦瑶像有几百年的心里话，竹筒倒豆子似的，从娘家说到婆家，其实都是说给自己听的。
+ 王琦瑶呢？
+ 耳朵里听进的严家的事，落到心里便成了自己的事，是听自己的心声。
+ 也有时候，严家师母要问起王琦瑶的事，王琦瑶只照一般回答的话说，明知道她未必信，也只能叫她自己去猜，猜对了也别出口。
+ 严家师母虽是能猜出几分，却偏要开口问，像是检验王琦瑶的诚心似的。
+ 王琦瑶不是不诚心，只是不能说。
+ 两人有些兜圈子，你追我躲，心里就种下了芥蒂。
+ 好在女人和女人是不怕种下芥蒂的，女人间的友谊其实是用芥蒂结成的，越是有芥蒂，友情越是深。
+ 她们两人有时是不欢而散，可下一日又聚在了一处，比上一日更知心。
+ 这一日，严家师母要与王琦瑶做媒，王琦瑶笑着说不要。
+ 严家师母问这又是为什么。
+ 王琦瑶并不说理由，只把那一日同教书先生看电影的情景描绘给她。
+ 她听了便是笑，笑过后则正色道：我要介绍给你的，一不教书，二不败顶，三不哮喘，说到此处，两人就又忍不住地笑，笑断肠子了。
+ 笑完后，严家师母就不提做媒的事，王琦瑶自然更不提，是心照不宣，也是顺水推舟。
+ 两人都是聪敏人，又还年轻，没叫时间磨钝了心，一点就通的。
+ 虽然相差有近十岁的年纪，可一个浅了几岁，另一个深了几岁，正好走在了一起。
+ 像她们这样半路上的朋友，各有各的隐衷，别看严家师母竹筒倒豆子，内中也有自己未必知道的保留，彼此并不知根知底，能有一些同情便可以了。
+ 所以尽管严家师母有些不满足的地方，可也担待下来，做了真心相待的朋友。
+ 严家师母就是时间多，虽有严先生，却是早出晚归；有三个孩子，大的大了，小的丢给奶妈；再有些工商界的太太们的交际，毕竟不能天天去。
+ 于是，王琦瑶家便成了好去处，天天都要点个卯的，有时竟连饭也在这里陪王琦瑶吃。
+ 王琦瑶要去炒两个菜，她则死命拦着不放，说是有啥吃啥。
+ 她们常常是吃泡饭，黄泥螺下饭。
+ 王琦瑶这种简单的近于苦行的日子，有着淡泊和安宁，使人想起闺阁的生活，那已是多么遥远的了。
+ 当她们正说着闲话，会有来打针的人，严家师母就帮着端椅子，收钱接药，递这递那。
+ 来人竟把装扮艳丽的她看成是王琦瑶的妹妹，严家师母便兴奋得红了脸，好像孩子得到了大人的夸奖。
+ 事后，她必得鼓动王琦瑶烫头发做衣服，怀着点自我牺牲的精神。
+ 她说着做女人的道理，有关青春的短暂和美丽。
+ 想到青春，王琦瑶不由哀从中来。
+ 她看见她二十五岁的年纪在苍白的晨曦和昏黄的暮色里流淌，她是挽也挽不住，抽刀断水水更流的。
+ 严家师母的装束是常换常新，紧跟时尚，也只能拉住青春的尾巴。
+ 她的有些装束使王琦瑶触目惊心，却有点感动。
+ 她的光艳照人里有一些天真，也有一些沧桑，杂糅在一起，是哀绝的美。
+ 经不住严家师母言行并教的策动，王琦瑶真就去烫了头发。
+ 走进理发店，那洗发水和头油的气味，夹着头发的焦糊味，扑鼻而来，真是熟得不能再熟。
+ 一个女人正烘着头发，一手拿本连环画看，另一手伸给理发师修剪的样子，也是熟进心里去的。
+ 洗头，修剪，卷发，电烫，烘干，定型，一系列的程序是不思量，自难忘。
+ 王琦瑶觉得昨天还刚来过的，周围都是熟面孔。
+ 最后，一切就绪，镜子里的王琦瑶也是昨天的，中间那三年的岁月是一剪子剪下，不知弃往何处。
+ 她在镜子里看见站在身后的严家师母瞠目结舌的表情，几乎是后悔怂恿她来烫发的。
+ 理发师正整理她的鬓发，手指触在脸颊，是最悉心的呵护。
+ 她微微侧过脸，躲着吹风机的热风，这略带娇憨的姿态也是昨天的。
+
+ Childbirth
+ ONE DAY MR. CHENG went to Wang Qiyao's after work to find her pale and flustered, lying down every so often and then getting up to pace around.
+ She even knocked over a glass, which shattered on the floor, but didn't bother to pick up the pieces.
+ Mr. Cheng hurried out to call a pedicab, came back in to help her downstairs, and then rushed them off to the hospital.
+ Having arrived at the hospital, she seemed to improve, and Mr. Cheng went out to get something for their dinner.
+ By the time he got back, Wang Qiyao had already been taken into the delivery room.
+ It was a baby girl.
+ She was born at eight o'clock.
+ They told Mr. Cheng that she had long arms and legs and a full head of black hair.
+ This set him wondering, Just who does she look like?
+ When, three days later, he brought mother and daughter home from the hospital, the threesome attracted quite a few curious stares down the longtang.
+ Mr. Cheng had fetched Wang Qiyao's mother the day before, setting up a place for her on the sofa, and even going to the trouble of preparing a set of toiletries.
+ Mrs. Wang was silent the whole time, but, as Mr. Cheng busied himself with the household chores, she blurted out, "If only you had been the child's father . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng trembled and almost lost hold of the things in his hands.
+ He wanted to say something but his throat had closed up.
+ By the time he was able to speak, he had forgotten what to say.
+ So he simply pretended that he had not heard.
+ When Wang Qiyao came home the next day, her mother had already prepared a pot of chicken broth and the customary bowl of soup with red jujube and longan, which was supposed to be so nourishing for new mothers.
+ She handed the bowl to her daughter in silence.
+ She did not bother to even look at her granddaughter; it was as if the child did not exist.
+ Neighbors began to call on them, but they were only the most casual of acquaintances—the only contact they normally had with Wang Qiyao was waving hello as she went in and out of the longtang; now they came out of curiosity.
+ Each one went on about how much the baby looked like Wang Qiyao, all the while wondering who the father was.
+ Going into the kitchen to fetch the hot water Thermos, Mr. Cheng found Mrs. Wang standing in front of the window, looking out at the overcast sky and quietly wiping away the tears.
+ Mr. Cheng had always thought her a calculating woman.
+ Back when he used to call on Wang Qiyao, she would never even bother to greet him but always sent the maid down to talk to him at the door instead.
+ Now, he sensed, she was much closer to him, perhaps more understanding and sympathetic even than her daughter.
+ He stood behind her for a moment before offering a timid attempt at consolation.
+ "Don't worry, Auntie.
+ I'll take care of her."
+ With those words he could feel the tears welling up and hastened back into the room with the hot water thermos.
+ The next day Madame Yan, who had not visited for ages, came to see Wang Qiyao.
+ She had long heard of the pregnancy from her servant Mama Zhang, who had seen Wang Qiyao coming and going with that protruding belly of hers; Wang Qiyao obviously wasn't worried about the rumors her pregnancy might stir up.
+ Kang Mingxun and Sasha had by this time long vanished from the scene, one hiding out at home while the other fled far away.
+ Then, out of nowhere, appeared this Mr. Cheng, who suddenly started coming by at least three times a day.
+ Although Madame Yan wasn't exactly sure what had transpired, she wasn't in the least bit taken off guard; in fact, she fancied herself one imbued with keen insights into the situation of women like Wang Qiyao.
+ Still, she was intrigued by Mr. Cheng.
+ She could tell from the fine quality of the old suit he wore that this Mr. Cheng had been a stylish man back in the old days.
+ She took him to be some kind of playboy whom Wang Qiyao must have known back in her dance hall days.
+ Madame Yan imagined all kinds of things about Mr. Cheng.
+ She had run into him a few times in the alley: he was always on his way to Wang Qiyao's with snacks like "stinky tofu," and would always rush briskly past lest the food get cold.
+ The grease from the tofu had already soaked the bottom of the bag and was about to drip through.
+ Madame Yan was touched, even somewhat jealous of Wang Qiyao for having such a devoted friend.
+ Hearing that Wang Qiyao had given birth, she was moved to sympathy; being a woman, she could relate to how difficult things must have been for Wang Qiyao, and decided to go over to see how she was.
+ Mrs. Wang, sensing that Madame Yan was a cut above the others, felt favored by the visit and tried to make herself pleasant.
+ She even brewed some tea and sat down with Madame Yan.
+ With Mr. Cheng away at work, these three women of different generations compared notes about the hardships of childbirth.
+ Wang Qiyao mostly just sat and listened, as if the shady circumstances surrounding the father of her child prevented her from claiming her share of the glory.
+ Her mother and Madame Yan, on the other hand, vividly recalled every detail from earlier decades.
+ When Mrs. Wang started to speak about how hard it was giving birth to Wang Qiyao, the irony of the present situation was not lost on her and her eyes reddened.
+ She quickly found an excuse to scurry off into the kitchen, leaving the other two in an awkward silence.
+ The baby had just been fed and was deep in sleep, her outline barely visible in the candle light.
+ Wang Qiyao had been looking down as she picked her fingernails, but she abruptly raised her head and laughed.
+ It was a tragic laugh that affected even Madame Yan.
+ "Madame Yan, I really appreciate you coming to see me . . . especially after all that's happened.
+ I was worried you would look down on me," Wang Qiyao said.
+ "Oh, cut it out, Wang Qiyao!" replied Madame Yan.
+ "Nobody is looking down on you!
+ I'm calling on Kang Mingxun in a few days and I'm going to see to it that he comes to see you."
+ At the mention of his name, Wang Qiyao turned away.
+ It was only after a long silence that she replied, "That's right, it's been ages since I've seen him."
+ Madame Yan grew suspicious, but was forced to keep her thoughts to herself; instead she casually suggested that they all get together again.
+ "It's a pity that Sasha's no longer around.
+ He must be off in Siberia eating his Russian bread!
+ But that's okay, you can bring along that new friend of yours and we'll have a foursome for our mahjong games."
+ She took the opportunity to ask Wang Qiyao the gentleman's name, his age, where he was from, and where he worked, all of which Wang Qiyao responded to matter-of-factly.
+ At that point Madame Yan asked bluntly, "He is so loyal to you, and neither of you is getting any younger....
+ Why don't you just get married?"
+ Wang Qiyao responded with another laugh.
+ Raising her head, she looked Madame Yan straight in the eye.
+ "A woman like me. . . .
+ How could I talk of marriage?"
+ The next day, Kang Mingxun indeed came by to call on Wang Qiyao.
+ Although she had expected him to show up after Madame Yan's visit, she was still caught by surprise.
+ Standing there face to face, neither knew what to say.
+ Mrs. Wang sized up the situation and decided it was best to give them some privacy, but slammed the door shut on her way out to register her disapproval.
+ But Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun didn't even notice.
+ This was the first time they had been together since their parting.
+ It felt like thousands of years since they had last seen each other.
+ They had appeared in each other's dreams, but the images in their dreams were so far from the real person that they would have been better off not even dreaming.
+ They had, in truth, resolved not to think of each other—and succeeded.
+ But, face to face once again, they discovered that letting go was not as easy as they had thought.
+ They stood there for a moment before Kang Mingxun walked around to the other side of the bed to take a look at the baby.
+ Wang Qiyao stopped him.
+ When he asked why he shouldn't see the baby, she said, "Because I said so. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun pressed for an explanation.
+ Wang Qiyao said that it wasn't his baby.
+ They fell silent for a while before he said, "Well, whose is it then, if it isn't mine?"
+ "Sasha's."
+ At that, the two of them broke down in tears.
+ All the sorrow they had suppressed back when they had to make that difficult decision suddenly came rushing back; they wondered how they had ever got through everything that had brought them to this point.
+ "I'm so sorry . . . I'm so sorry. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun kept apologizing, knowing it would do no good even if he said it a thousand times over.
+ Wang Qiyao kept shaking her head, aware that if she did not accept the apology, she would have nothing at all.
+ They were both in tears, but it was Wang Qiyao who stopped crying first.
+ Wiping away her tears, she insisted, "She really is Sasha's child."
+ Hearing her say this, Kang Mingxun also pulled back his tears and sat himself down.
+ There was no more mention of the baby; it was as if she had ceased to exist.
+ Wang Qiyao had Kang Mingxun make himself some tea and, as he busied himself, she asked him what he had been doing of late—did he still play bridge?
+ Was there any news on the job front?
+ "For the past few months, it feels like I have been doing only one thing—waiting in line.
+ I get in line at nine thirty every morning to get into the Chinese restaurant.
+ Then I line up again around four at a Western restaurant.
+ Sometimes I have to line up just to get a cup of coffee or a quick bite, like a bowl of rice with salted pork."
+ He explained that he was the one who usually got stuck holding a place in line for the rest of the family; once it got to close to his turn, everyone else would show up.
+ "Everyone talks about there not being enough to eat, but I feel like all I do all day long is eat!"
+ Wang Qiyao took a closer look at him and jokingly observed, "You've been eating so much that you're starting to grow gray."
+ "I don't think that's from eating too much—it's from missing someone too much...."
+ Wang Qiyao rolled her eyes.
+ "Oh no, I'm not singing Rendezvous at the Pavilion with you again!"
+ They seemed to have slipped back into their old ways—except that there was this new addition asleep on the bed.
+ Sparrows were pecking at crumbs on the windowsill and they could hear someone forcefully shaking out a comforter on a nearby balcony.
+ Kang Mingxun was just on his way out as Mr. Cheng came back from work.
+ Passing on the stairs, they exchanged a quick glance but neither left much of an impression on the other.
+ It wasn't until he got inside that Wang Qiyao explained that the man was her neighbor Madame Yan's cousin, the one she used to spend time with.
+ "It's almost dinner time.
+ How come you didn't ask him to stay for dinner?"
+ Mr. Cheng asked.
+ "We really don't have anything special to entertain a guest... so I thought it would be rude to invite him," she explained.
+ Mrs. Wang kept quiet but had a disgusted look on her face.
+ She went out of her way to be nice to Mr. Cheng, who wondered who had crossed her—he knew it wasn't him.
+ As usual, he spent some time playing with the baby after dinner.
+ Seeing the baby fed and contentedly asleep with her tiny fist in her mouth, he took his leave.
+ It was around eight o'clock.
+ People and cars passed back and forth under the bright city lights.
+ Instead of taking the trolley, Mr. Cheng draped his fall coat over his arm and walked home.
+ He took in the familiar scents of the city and soaked up the evening scene.
+ Now that the burden weighing on him for so long had been finally lifted, he felt relaxed: mother and child were safe and sound and the baby didn't bother him as he had originally feared.
+ In fact, Mr. Cheng was struck with a peculiar happiness; it was as if he, and not the child, had been given a new lease on life.
+ The late show was about to begin at the cinemas, which added a feeling of excitement to the night air.
+ The city still had the spirit of a night owl, and the same energy of years ago was still there.
+ The tricolor revolving pole outside the barbershop was the emblem of this unsleeping city.
+ The strong aroma of Brazilian coffee wafting out of Old Chang's gives the impression that time is flowing backward.
+ How exciting the night is!
+ Desire and contentment abound and, despite the compromises that have to be made, everyone gives their all, living life to the fullest.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes grew moist and a strange excitement welled up in his heart, the like of which he had not experienced in a long time.
+ The next time Kang Mingxun showed up, Mrs. Wang did not go into the kitchen to avoid him.
+ She sat on the sofa reading a cartoon version of the Dream of the Red Chamber.
+ Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun couldn't help but feel awkward and fell back on making small talk about the weather.
+ When the baby woke up crying, Wang Qiyao asked Kang Mingxun to hand her a clean diaper.
+ To her dismay, her mother got up and, taking the diaper out of Kang Mingxun's hand, scolded her.
+ "How could you have the gentleman do this kind of thing?"
+ "I don't mind," explained Kang Mingxun.
+ "It's not like I'm busy with anything else. . . ."
+ "Right, let him help out," Wang Qiyao added.
+ Mrs. Wang drew a long face.
+ "Don't you have any manners?
+ How could you ask a gentleman like him to lay his hands on these filthy articles?
+ He is decent enough to treat you with respect and come to visit; but don't take it as a sign that you can walk all over him.
+ Show some tact!"
+ Stunned by the innuendo in her mother's sudden attack, Wang Qiyao burst into tears.
+ Mrs. Wang became even more incensed.
+ She flung the diaper in her daughter's face, screaming, "I try to help you save face, but you just don't seem to care!
+ You demean yourself, and it's all your own doing!
+ If you want to lead a life of shame, go ahead!
+ Nobody's going to be able to help you if you don't help yourself!"
+ With that, Mrs. Wang also burst out crying.
+ Kang Mingxun was thoroughly bemused; he had no idea what had brought this on.
+ Not knowing what else to do, he set about trying to mollify Mrs. Wang, "Please don't be upset, Auntie.
+ You know that Wang Qiyao has a good heart. . . ."
+ His words made Mrs. Wang laugh.
+ She turned to him, "Mister, you are very perceptive.
+ Wang Qiyao does indeed have a good heart.
+ She has no choice.
+ Where would she be if she didn't have a good heart?"
+ Suddenly Kang Mingxun realized that he was the object of her wrath.
+ He stepped back and stammered something inaudible.
+ At this point, the baby, whom no one had been tending to, began to howl.
+ Of the four people in the room, three were now in tears.
+ Aghast at the chaos, Kang Mingxun felt impelled to say, "It is less than a month since Wang Qiyao gave birth.
+ She should still be resting and we should try not to make her upset."
+ Mrs. Wang laughed coldly.
+ "Oh, so Wang Qiyao should be resting this month, should she?
+ That's funny, I didn't know.
+ With no man around to rely on, how is she supposed to be able to rest?
+ Will you explain that to me?"
+ Those words brought an abrupt end to Wang Qiyao's tears.
+ When she had finished changing and feeding the baby, she said, "Mom, you said I lack tact; but what about you?
+ How do you think it looks when you say such things in front of our guest?
+ After all, it's not as if he has anything to do with our family.
+ You're the one who is demeaning me—and yourself!
+ At any rate, I'll always be your daughter!"
+ Mrs. Wang was dumbstruck.
+ By the time she was ready to respond, Wang Qiyao cut her off.
+ "This gentleman has the decency to come by and pay his respects.
+ I would never dream of making any unseemly demands on him—and neither should you!
+ All my life I've had no one to rely on but myself; I make no other claims besides that.
+ I'm sorry to have troubled you to help out during this difficult time, but I promise you that I will repay you for your trouble."
+ Her remarks were directed at her mother, but they were also meant for Kang Mingxun.
+ Mother and daughter both fell silent for a time, until Ms. Wang wiped away her tears and murmured bleakly, "I see I've been worrying too much.
+ Well, you are almost through your first month, and it looks like I'm no longer needed here."
+ Even as she spoke, she began to gather up her personal effects.
+ Neither Wang Qiyao nor Kang Mingxun dared say a word to persuade her to stay.
+ They watched in shock as she packed her things and placed a red envelope on the baby's chest.
+ She went out the door and down the stairs; then they heard the sound of the downstairs door closing, and she was gone.
+ Inside the red envelope were 200 yuan and a gold pendant.
+ When Mr. Cheng arrived, he found Wang Qiyao out of bed cooking dinner in the kitchen.
+ He asked where Mrs. Wang had gone.
+ Wang Qiyao told him that her father was not feeling well and, since it was already almost a month since the birth, she had persuaded her mother to go home to look after him.
+ Mr. Cheng noticed her swollen eyes and guessed that she had been crying, but he decided not to press her and simply let things go at that.
+ With Mrs. Wang gone, the mood that evening was a bit dull.
+ Wang Qiyao was not very talkative and answered Mr. Cheng's questions absentmindedly, leaving her guest rather down.
+ Mr. Cheng sat off to one side and read the newspaper.
+ He read on for quite some time and the apartment grew quiet.
+ He thought that Wang Qiyao must be asleep, but when he looked over he saw that she had propped her head against the pillow and was staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought.
+ He quietly approached to ask what she was thinking.
+ The last thing he expected was for her to jerk back and ask him what he wanted.
+ There was alarm in her eyes and a distant look that made Mr. Cheng feel like a stranger.
+ He retreated to the sofa and went on with reading his newspaper.
+ All of a sudden, rowdy noises broke out from the longtang outside.
+ Opening the window to look out, Mr. Cheng saw that a crowd had gathered around a man holding up a weasel he had caught in his chicken coop.
+ After recounting the beast's crimes, the man carried it toward the entrance to the longtang with the crowd following close behind.
+ Mr. Cheng was about to close the window when he caught the scent of osmanthus blossoms in the air; it wasn't terribly strong, but the fragrance went straight to his heart.
+ He also noticed the narrow span of sky above Peace Lane—a deep, deep blue.
+ He felt exhilarated.
+ Turning to Wang Qiyao, he said, "Let's have a banquet to celebrate the child's one-month birthday."
+ Wang Qiyao did not say anything at first.
+ Then, breaking into a smile: "Is that cause for celebration?"
+ "Yes," Mr. Cheng said more earnestly.
+ "A first-month birthday is always a happy and auspicious occasion!"
+ "What's so happy and auspicious about it?"
+ Mr. Cheng did not know how to answer.
+ Although she had been the one to crush his excitement, he pitied her.
+ Wang Qiyao rolled over away from him.
+ After a pause, she continued, "Let's not fuss over this one-month celebration.
+ Let's simply make a few dishes, buy a bottle of wine, and invite Madame Yan and her cousin over.
+ They have been good to me, coming to see me and all."
+ That was enough to put Mr. Cheng back in high spirits.
+ He pondered what kind of soup and dishes they should serve.
+ Wang Qiyao objected to virtually every one of his suggestions, and he had to start from scratch.
+ They became more animated as they argued back and forth about the menu and gradually things went back to normal.
+ On the afternoon of the dinner Mr. Cheng left work early to pick up the food for that evening.
+ They put the baby to bed early and chatted as they cooked.
+ Mr. Cheng saw that Wang Qiyao was in a good mood, which also put him in a good mood.
+ They arranged the cold dishes in a delightful pattern, garnishing the plate with purple radishes.
+ Wang Qiyao declared, "Mr. Cheng, you're not only a great photographer, but you can cook too!"
+ "And you didn't even mention what I'm best at . . ."
+ "What's that?"
+ "Railroad engineering."
+ "I practically forgot your true calling.
+ You see, all along you have been entertaining us with your hobbies, and hiding your real talent!"
+ "It's not that I was trying to hide it....
+ I just never get the chance to show it off!"
+ Their jovial banter was interrupted by the guests, who had come bearing gifts.
+ Madame Yan brought a pound of cashmere yarn, and Kang Mingxun a pair of gold ingots.
+ Wang Qiyao wanted to tell him that he shouldn't have given such an expensive gift, but was worried that Madame Yan would take that as a sign that her gift wasn't lavish enough, so she decided to accept them both and save her misgivings for another day.
+ Everyone went inside to see the baby before dinner and they all commented on how precious she looked.
+ Since there were four of them, it worked out perfectly when they sat down at the table, one person on each side.
+ This was the first time that Mr. Cheng had met the evening's guests.
+ Madame Yan had taken note of him, but he had never noticed her, and he had only passed Kang Mingxun on the staircase, when neither could get a good look at the other.
+ Wang Qiyao made the introductions and they proceeded with dinner as if they were all acquainted.
+ Madame Yan already had a good impression of Mr. Cheng and was especially friendly toward him; it wasn't long before she felt like they were old friends.
+ Although Mr. Cheng was a bit overwhelmed by her warmth, he realized she had nothing but the best intentions.
+ Kang Mingxun, on the other hand, was stiff and subdued.
+ He said little, focusing on the warm rice wine.
+ They finished off the first bottle rather quickly and started on a second.
+ Mr. Cheng excused himself so he could go to the kitchen to prepare another dish, but seeing he was a bit tipsy, Wang Qiyao put her hand on his shoulder, motioning him to sit back down, and insisted that she take care of it.
+ He gently caressed the hand on his shoulder, but she instinctively pulled it away.
+ Kang Mingxun, in spite of himself, flashed Mr. Cheng a rather sharp glance.
+ The effect on Mr. Cheng was instantaneously sobering.
+ Wang Qiyao returned to the table with the new dish she had just whipped up.
+ By then even Madame Yan, whose cheeks were red, was getting a bit tipsy.
+ She proposed a toast to Mr. Cheng, declaring him a rare gentleman and even quoting the old adage, "It's easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend who can really understand you."
+ Her words were inappropriate to the occasion; obviously, alcohol was bringing out some hidden truths.
+ Not content to propose a toast on her own, she insisted that Kang Mingxun also drink to Mr. Cheng.
+ Kang Mingxun raised his cup but didn't know quite what to say.
+ As the rest of the party waited anxiously, he finally came out with something that sounded even more inappropriate.
+ "Here's to Mr. Cheng soon finding matrimonial bliss!"
+ Mr. Cheng accepted their toast with equanimity and a "thank you."
+ Then, turning to Wang Qiyao, he asked if she had anything to say.
+ Wang Qiyao was a bit disconcerted by the unfamiliar glint in his eyes—she wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or something else—so she put on a placating smile.
+ "Naturally, I should have been the first one to toast Mr. Cheng.
+ Just as Madame Yan said, it is easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend.
+ No one else here understands me the way Mr. Cheng does.
+ He has always been there for me during my most difficult times.
+ And for all the mistakes I have made, he has always forgiven me.
+ I owe him a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to repay."
+ Conscious that it was the alcohol that had emboldened her to open up, Mr. Cheng couldn't help being at once deeply disappointed and hurt by her words; all she spoke of was gratitude, with not a word about love.
+ On the brink of tears, he lowered his head.
+ Only after a long pause did he manage to force a smile and say,
+ "Hey, we're not here to celebrate my one-month birthday!
+ Why is everyone toasting me?
+ Drinking to Wang Qiyao would be more like it!"
+ And so, with Madame Yan leading the way, they all toasted Wang Qiyao.
+ But, perhaps because they had all talked too much already, no one had much left to say.
+ So they just drank, one cup after another.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes met Kang Mingxun's once again.
+ They stared mutely at each other, neither fully understanding the circumstances.
+ But the seeds of suspicion had been planted.
+ Everyone drank more than they should have that evening.
+ Mr. Cheng couldn't remember how he had seen the guests out or whether he had washed the dishes after they left.
+ He woke up to discover himself on Wang Qiyao's sofa, a thin blanket draped over him.
+ Leftover food was still on the table, and the room was filled with the sweet and sour fragrance of rice wine.
+ The moon shining through the curtains on his face was cool as water.
+ He felt utterly at peace as he watched the moonlight dancing on the curtain; he decided to let his mind go blank and not worry about anything that had happened that night.
+ Suddenly he heard a gentle voice ask, "Would you care for some tea?"
+ He followed the voice and saw Wang Qiyao lying in bed across the room.
+ She had also woken up, but her face was obscured by the shadows and Mr. Cheng could only make out her silhouette.
+ Mr. Cheng did not feel awkward; on the contrary, he was filled with a sense of serenity.
+ "I'm so embarrassed!" he said.
+ Wang Qiyao responded with a silent laugh.
+ "You fell asleep with your head on the table.
+ It took the three of us to get you onto the sofa."
+ "I drank too much," he said.
+ "But that was only because I was happy."
+ After a silence, Wang Qiyao responded, "Actually . . . you drank so much because you were upset. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed.
+ "What's there for me to be upset about?
+ I was really happy."
+ Neither of them spoke and gradually the moonlight shifted a bit closer.
+ Bathed in the moonlight, Mr. Cheng had the sensation that he was lying in water.
+ Quite some time passed, and he was certain that Wang Qiyao must have long fallen asleep, when she suddenly called out his name.
+ He was surprised to hear her call him.
+ "What is it?"
+ Wang Qiyao hesitated before asking, "Can't you get to sleep?"
+ "I think I got all the sleep I needed when I passed out earlier!"
+ "That's not what I meant. . . ."
+ "I think I know quite well what you meant," insisted Mr. Cheng.
+ "I don't think so. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed, "Of course I do."
+ "If you understand what I meant, then why don't you tell me...?"
+ "If that's what you want, I will then," replied Mr. Cheng.
+ "You meant that all this time we have been but just one step away from taking our relationship somewhere else.
+ And if I were to take that step, you would not refuse me."
+ Wang Qiyao marveled at Mr. Cheng's perceptiveness, especially since he usually came off so stiff and bookish.
+ Embarrassed, she tried to find an excuse to explain things away.
+ "I know I don't deserve you . . . and that's why I wanted to wait for you to make the first move."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed again.
+ He felt extremely relaxed, as if floating on air.
+ When he spoke, it felt almost as if someone else was doing the talking, but the words that came out were indeed his deepest and most honest inner thoughts.
+ "We talked about taking that one last step. . . .
+ Well, I have been waiting practically half my life to take that step.
+ But it's not as easy as it sounds.
+ Have you ever heard the saying, 'People can be a short distance away, yet poles apart'?
+ There are a lot of things in life that simply can't be forced."
+ Wang Qiyao remained silent and Mr. Cheng, unconcerned as to whether she was really listening, continued to pour out the feelings he had accumulated inside himself all those years.
+ He explained how he had long ago come to understand this principle.
+ So long as they could be close friends, confidants, he thought, his life would not have been in vain.
+ But once people are together, it is as the saying goes: "A boat sailing against the current must forge ahead or else be driven back."
+ "I would be lying if I said that I didn't have the desire to forge ahead . . . but when the boat won't go forward anymore . . . all I can do is turn back."
+ After a long silence, he suddenly asked, "Kang Mingxun is the father, isn't he?"
+ Wang Qiyao laughed, "What does it matter whether he is or not?"
+ Mr. Cheng grew a bit self-conscious.
+ "I was only asking."
+ The two of them turned over, away from each other, and before long they were both fast asleep, snoring lightly.
+ The following day Mr. Cheng did not show up at Wang Qiyao's after work—he went to see Jiang Lili instead.
+ He had called her at her office, and they agreed to meet on Tilan Bridge.
+ By the time Mr. Cheng arrived, Jiang Lili was already standing there waiting, constantly looking at her watch.
+ She had clearly arrived too early but insisted on blaming Mr. Cheng for being late.
+ Mr. Cheng refused to argue with her.
+ They found a small restaurant nearby, went in, and ordered a few dishes.
+ As soon as the waiter turned away, Mr. Cheng bent over the table and started to cry, a stream of tears falling steadily on the bleached table cloth.
+ Jiang Lili could pretty much figure out what had happened, but made no effort to comfort him.
+ All she offered was silence as she silently fixed her gaze on the ashen wall, which had recently been stained a pale white.
+ At that moment, all Mr. Cheng was focused on was his own pain, and he made no effort to understand what Jiang Lili might be feeling.
+ Even people as good-natured and generous as Mr. Cheng can become extremely selfish and unfair in love.
+ They tiptoe around their loved ones, fearful of giving offense; but with the people who love them they are thoroughly inconsiderate and arrogant, behaving like spoiled brats.
+ This was what had motivated him to seek out Jiang Lili.
+ Jiang Lili did not speak for a long time.
+ Then, seeing that he was still crying, she sneered, "What's wrong?
+ Went out and got your heart broken, did you?"
+ Mr. Cheng gradually stopped crying and sat in silence.
+ Jiang Lili had the urge to taunt him further, but, taking pity on him, softened up.
+ "You know, it seems like the harder we try to get something, the more elusive it becomes.
+ But when we don't want something, it ends up falling into our lap."
+ Mr. Cheng asked softly, "And what if one gives up on something but it still remains elusive?"
+ Jiang Lili was livid.
+ She raised her voice, "What, are all the women in the world dead?
+ Don't tell me that I'm the only one left?
+ Sent here to listen to you ramble on about your grievances over her?"
+ Mr. Cheng lowered his head contritely and was silent.
+ Jiang Lili also gave up speaking to him, and the two of them sat for some time in an awkward silence.
+ In the end, it was Mr. Cheng who continued.
+ "Actually, I came here to ask a favor of you. . . .
+ I'm not sure what made me break down like that.
+ I'm so sorry."
+ Somewhat mollified, Jiang Lili told him to go ahead and say what he had to say.
+ "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and you are the only one I can go to for help.
+ I know it's not right, but there is no one else I can turn to."
+ "Whatever it is, let's hear it!"
+ Mr. Cheng explained that he would never again visit Wang Qiyao.
+ He wanted to ask Jiang Lili to look out for her.
+ Jiang Lili did not know whether to be angry or bitter.
+ It took a long time before she managed to say, "Well I guess all the women in the world are dead . . . even me."
+ Mr. Cheng took her ridicule in stride and Jiang Lili stopped herself from saying more.
+ Wang Qiyao waited for Mr. Cheng's return.
+ She waited several days, but in the end it was Jiang Lili who came to visit.
+ She had come straight from work in Yangshupu and had had to transfer several times on the bus.
+ By the time she got there, her hair was disheveled, her shoes were covered with dust, and she was quite hoarse.
+ She carried a netted bag stuffed with fruits, crackers, milk powder, and a barely used bed sheet.
+ She emptied everything out onto the table before Wang Qiyao could stop her, and with several forceful motions, ripped the bed sheet into several small pieces to be used as diapers.
+
+ 14.分娩
+ 这天，程先生下班后到王琦瑶处，见她脸色苍白，坐立不安，一会儿躺倒，一会儿站起，一个玻璃杯碰在地上，摔得粉碎，也顾不上去收拾。
+ 程先生赶紧去叫来一辆三轮车，扶她下楼，去了医院。
+ 到医院倒痛得好些了，程先生就出来买些吃的做晚饭。
+ 再回到医院，人已经进了产房，晚上八点便生下了，是个女孩，说是一出娘胎就满头黑发，手脚很长。
+ 程先生难免要想：她究竟像谁呢？
+ 三天之后，程先生接了王琦瑶母女出院，进弄堂时，自然招来许多眼光。
+ 程先生早一天就把王琦瑶的母亲接来，在沙发上安了一张铺，还很细心地准备了洗漱用具。
+ 王琦瑶母亲一路无言，看程先生忙着，忽然间说了一句：程先生要是孩子的爸爸就好了。
+ 程先生拿东西的手不禁抖了一下，他想说什么，喉头却哽着，待咽下了，又不知该说什么了，只得装没听见。
+ 王琦瑶到家后，她母亲已炖了鸡汤和红枣桂圆汤，什么话也没有地端给她喝，也不看那孩子一眼，就当没这个人似的。
+ 过一会儿，就有人上门探望，都是弄堂里的，平时仅是点头之交，并不往来，其时都是因好奇而来。
+ 看了婴儿，口口声声直说像王琦瑶，心里都在猜那另一半像谁。
+ 程先生到灶间拿热水瓶给客人添水，却见王琦瑶母亲一个人站在灰蒙蒙的窗前，静静地抹着眼泪。
+ 程先生向来觉得她母亲势利，过去并不把他放在眼里，他在楼下叫王琦瑶，她连门都不肯开，只让老妈子伸出头来回话。
+ 这时，他觉着她的心与他靠近了些，甚至是比王琦瑶更有了解和同情的。
+ 他站在她的身后，嗫嚅了一会儿，说道：伯母，请你放心，我会对她照顾的。
+ 说完这话，他觉着自己也要流泪，赶紧拎起热水瓶回房间去了。
+ 过了一天，严师母来看王琦瑶了。
+ 她已经很久没有上门，早听娘姨张妈说，王琦瑶有喜了，挺着肚子在弄堂里进出，也不怕人笑话。
+ 其时，康明逊和萨沙都销声匿迹了似的，一个闭门不出，一个远走高飞，倒是半路里杀出个程先生，一日三回地来。
+ 严师母虽然不清楚究竟发生了怎样的事，但自视对王琦瑶一路的女人很了解，并不大惊小怪，倒是那个程先生给了她奇异的印象。
+ 她看出他的旧西装是好料子的，他的做派是旧时代的摩登。
+ 她猜想他是一个小开，舞场上的旧知那类人物，就从他身上派生出许多想象。
+ 她曾有几回在弄口看见他，手里捧着油炸臭豆腐什么的，急匆匆地走着，怕手里的东西凉了，那油浸透了纸袋，几乎要滴下来的样子。
+ 严师母不由受了感动，觉出些江湖不忘的味道，暗里甚至还对王琦瑶生出羡嫉。
+ 这时听说王琦瑶生了，也动了恻隐之心，感触到几分女人共同的苦衷，便决定上门看望。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲看出严师母身份不同，有一些安慰似的，脸色和悦了一些，泡来茶，一同坐下聊天。
+ 程先生上班去了，就只这老少三个女人，互诉着生产的苦情。
+ 比起来，王琦瑶多是听，少是说，因不是来路明正的生产，不敢居功似的。
+ 严师母和她母亲却是越说越热乎，虽然是多年前的事情，一点一滴都不忘怀的。
+ 她母亲说到生王琦瑶的艰辛，不觉触动心事，又红了眼圈，赶紧推说有事，避到灶间去了。
+ 留下这两人，竟一时无语。
+ 婴儿吃足了奶已睡着，蜷在蜡烛光里，也看不见个人形。
+ 王琦瑶低头剔着手指甲，忽然抬头一笑。
+ 这一笑是有些惨然的，严师母都不觉有一阵酸楚。
+ 王琦瑶说：严师母，谢谢你不嫌弃我，还来看我。
+ 严师母说：王琦瑶，你快不要说这样的话了，谁嫌弃你了？
+ 过几天我去叫康明逊也来看你。
+ 听到这个名字，王琦瑶把脸转到一边，背着严师母，停了一会儿才说：是呀，我也有好久没看见他了。
+ 严师母心里狐疑，嘴上却不好说，只闲扯着要重新聚一聚，可惜萨沙不在了，去西伯利亚吃苏联面包了，不过，补上那位新来的先生，也够一桌麻将了。
+ 说到这里，便问王琦瑶那位先生姓什么，贵庚多少，籍贯何处，在哪里高就。
+ 王琦瑶一一告诉她后，她便直截了当问道：看他对你这样忠心，两人又都不算年轻，为什么不结婚算了呢？
+ 王琦瑶听了这话又是一笑，仰起脸看了严师母说道：我这样的人，还谈什么结婚不结婚的话呢？
+ 又过了一天，康明逊果然来了。
+ 王琦瑶虽是有准备，也是意外。
+ 两人一见面，都是怔怔的，说不出话来。
+ 她母亲是个明眼人，见这情形便走开去，关门时却重重地一摔，不甘心似的。
+ 这两人则是什么也听不见了。
+ 自从分手后，这是第一次见，中间相隔有十万八千年似的。
+ 彼此的梦里都做过无数回，那梦里的人都不大像了，还不如不梦见。
+ 其实都已经决定不去想了，也真不再想了，可人一到了面前，却发觉从没放下过的。
+ 两人怔了一时，康明逊就绕到床边要看孩子。
+ 王琦瑶不让看，康明逊问为什么，王琦瑶说，不让看就是不让看。
+ 康明逊还问为什么，王琦瑶就说因为不是他的孩子。
+ 两人又沉默了一会儿，康明逊问：不是我的是谁的？
+ 王琦瑶说：是萨沙的。
+ 说罢，两人都哭了。
+ 许多辛酸当时并不觉得，这时都涌上心头，心想，他们是怎样才熬过来的呀！
+ 康明逊连连说道：对不起，对不起。
+ 自己知道说上一万遍也是无从补过，可不说对不起又说什么呢？
+ 王琦瑶只是摇头，心里也知道不要这个对不起，就什么也没了。
+ 哭了一会儿，王琦瑶先止住了，擦干眼泪说道：确是萨沙的孩子。
+ 听她这一说，康明逊的眼泪也干了，在椅子上坐下，两人就此不再提孩子的话，也像没这个人似的。
+ 王琦瑶让他自己泡茶，问他这些日子做什么，打不打桥牌，有没有分配工作的消息。
+ 他说这几个月来好像只在做一件事，就是排队。
+ 上午九点半到中餐馆排队等吃饭，下午四点钟再到西餐社排队等吃饭，有时是排队喝咖啡，有时是排队吃咸肉菜饭。
+ 总是他一个人排着，然后家里老老少少的来到。
+ 说是闹饥荒，却好像从早到晚都在吃。
+ 王琦瑶看着他说：头上都吃出白头发来了。
+ 他就说：这怎么是吃出来的呢？
+ 分明是想一个人想出来的。
+ 王琦瑶白他一眼，说：谁同你唱“楼台会”！
+ 过去的时光似乎又回来了，只是多了床上那个小人。
+ 麻雀在窗台上啄着什么碎屑，有人拍打晒透的被子，啪啪地响。
+ 程先生回来时，正好康明逊走，两人在楼梯上擦肩而过，互相看了一眼，也没留下什么印象。
+ 进房间才听王琦瑶说是弄堂底严师母的表弟，过去常在一起玩的。
+ 就说怎么临吃晚饭了还让人走。
+ 王琦瑶说没什么菜好留客的。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲并不说什么，脸色很不好看，但对程先生倒比往日更殷勤。
+ 程先生知道这不高兴不是对自己，却不知是对谁。
+ 吃过饭后，照例逗那婴儿玩一会儿，看王琦瑶给她喂了奶，她将小拳头塞进嘴巴，很满足地睡熟，便告辞出来。
+ 其时是八点钟左右，马路上人来车往，华灯照耀，有些流光溢彩。
+ 程先生也不去搭电车，臂上搭着秋大衣，信步走着。
+ 他在这夜晚里嗅到了他所熟悉的气息。
+ 灯光令他亲切，是驻进他身心里的那种。
+ 程先生现在的心情是闲适的，多日来的重负终于卸下，王琦瑶母女平安，他又不像担心的那样，对那婴儿生厌。
+ 程先生甚至有一种奇怪的兴奋心情，好像新生的不是那婴儿，而是他自己。
+ 电影院正将开映第四场电影，这给夜晚带来了活跃的空气。
+ 这城市还是睡得晚，精力不减当年。
+ 理发店门前的三色灯柱旋转着，也是夜景不熄的内心。
+ 老大昌的门里传出浓郁的巴西咖啡的香气，更是时光倒转。
+ 多么热闹的夜晚啊！
+ 四处是活跳跳的欲望和满足，虽说有些得过且过，却也是认真努力，不虚此生。
+ 程先生的眼睛几乎湿润了，心里有一种美妙的悸动，是他长久没体验过的。
+ 康明逊再一次来的时候，王琦瑶的母亲没有避进厨房，她坐在沙发上看一本连环画的《红楼梦》。
+ 这两个人难免尴尬，说着些天气什么的闲话。
+ 孩子睡醒哭了，王琦瑶让康明逊将干净尿布递一块给她，不料她母亲站了起来，拿过康明逊手中的尿布，说：怎么好叫先生你做这样的事情呢。
+ 康明逊说不要紧，反正他也没事，王琦瑶也说让他拿好了。
+ 她母亲便将脸一沉，说：你懂不懂规矩，他是一位先生，怎么能碰这些屎尿的东西，人家是对你客气，把你当个人来看望你，你就以为是福气，要爬上脸去，这才是不识相呢！
+ 王琦瑶被她母亲劈头盖脸一顿说，话里且句句有所指，心里委屈，脸上又挂不住，就哭了起来。
+ 她这一哭，她母亲更火了，将手里的尿布往她脸上摔去，接着骂道：给你脸你不要脸，所以才说自作自践，这“践”都是自己“作”出来的。
+ 自己要往低处走，别人就怎么扶也扶不起了！
+ 说着，自己也流泪了。
+ 康明逊蒙了，不知是怎么会引起来这一个局面，又不好不说话，只得劝解道：伯母不要生气，王琦瑶是个老实人……
+ 她母亲一听这话倒笑了，转过脸对了他道：先生你算是明白人，知道王琦瑶老实，她确实是老实，她也只好老实，她倘若要不老实呢？
+ 又怎么样？
+ 康明逊这才听出这一句句原来都是冲着他来的，不由后退了几步，嘴里嗫嚅着。
+ 这时，孩子见久久没人管她，便大哭起来。
+ 房间里四个人有三个人在哭，真是乱得可以。
+ 康明逊忍不住说：王琦瑶还在月子里，不能伤心的。
+ 她母亲便连连冷笑道：王琦瑶原来是在坐月子，我倒不知道，她男人都没有，怎么就坐月子，你倒给我说说这个道理！
+ 话说到这样，王琦瑶的眼泪倒干了，她给孩子换好尿布，又喂给她奶吃，然后说：妈，你说我不懂规矩，可你自己不也是不懂规矩？
+ 你当了客人的面，说这些揭底的话，就好像与人家有什么干系似的，你这才是作践我呢！
+ 也是作践你自己，好歹我总是你的女儿。
+ 她这一席话把她母亲说怔了，待要开口，王琦瑶又说道：人家先生确是看得起我才来看我，我不会有非分之想，你也不要有非分之想，我这一辈子别的不敢说，但总是靠自己，这一次累你老人家侍候我坐月子，我会知恩图报的。
+ 她这话，既是说给母亲听，也是说给康明逊听，两人一时都沉默着。
+ 她母亲擦干眼泪，怆然一笑，说：看来我是多操了心，反正你也快出月子了，我在这里倒是多余了。
+ 说罢就去收拾东西要走，这两人都不敢劝她，怔怔地看她收拾好东西，再将一个红纸包放在婴儿胸前，出了门去，然后下楼，便听后门一声响，走了。
+ 再看那红纸包里，是装了二百块钱，还有一个金锁片。
+ 程先生到来时，见王琦瑶已经起床，在厨房里烧晚饭。
+ 问她母亲上哪里去了，王琦瑶说是爹爹有些不舒服，她这里差几天就满月，劝母亲回去了。
+ 程先生又见她眼睛肿着，好像哭过的样子，无端的却不好问，只得作罢。
+ 这天晚上，兴许少了一个人的缘故，显出了沉闷。
+ 王琦瑶不太说话，问她什么也有些答非所问，程先生不免扫兴，一个人坐在一边看报纸。
+ 看了一会儿，听房间里没动静，以为王琦瑶睡着了，回过头去，却见她靠在枕上，两眼睁着，望了天花板，不知在想什么。
+ 他轻轻走过去，想问她什么，不料她却惊了一跳，回头反问程先生要什么。
+ 她的眼睛是漠然警觉的表情，使程先生觉着自己是个陌生人，就退回到沙发上，重新看报纸。
+ 忽听窗下弄堂里嘈杂声起，便推窗望去，原来是谁家在鸡窝里抓住一只黄鼠狼。
+ 那人倒提着黄鼠狼控诉它的罪孽，围了许多人看，然后，人们簇拥着他向弄口走去。
+ 程先生正要关窗，却在空气里嗅到一股桂花香，虽不浓烈，却沁人肺腑。
+ 他还注意到平安里上方的狭窄的天空，是十分彻底的深蓝。
+ 他心里有些跃然，回过头对王琦瑶说：等孩子满月，办一次满月酒吧！
+ 王琦瑶先不回答，然后笑了笑说：办什么满月酒！
+ 程先生更加积极地说：满月总是高兴吉利的事。
+ 王琦瑶反问：有什么高兴吉利？
+ 程先生被她问住了，虽然被泼了冷水，心里却只有对她的可怜。
+ 王琦瑶翻了个身，面向壁地躺着，停了一会儿，又说：也别提什么满不满月了，就烧几个菜，买一瓶酒，请严师母和她表弟吃顿便饭，他们都待我不错的，还来看我。
+ 程先生就又高兴起来，盘算着炒几个菜，烧什么汤，王琦瑶总是与他唱反调，把他的计划推翻再重来。
+ 两人你一句我一句地争执着，才有些热闹起来。
+ 这天下午，程先生提前下班，买了菜到王琦瑶处，两人将孩子哄睡了，便一起忙了起来，一边忙一边说话。
+ 程先生见王琦瑶情绪好，自己的情绪也就好，将冷盆摆出各色花样，紫萝卜镶边的。
+ 王琦瑶说程先生不仅会照相，还会烹饪啊！
+ 程先生说：我最会的一样你却没有说。
+ 王琦瑶问：最会的是哪一样？
+ 程先生说：铁路工程。
+ 王琦瑶说：我倒忘了程先生的老本行了，弄了半天，原来都是在拿副业敷衍我们，真本事却藏着。
+ 程先生就笑，说不是藏着，而是没地方拿出来。
+ 两人正打趣，客人来了，严师母表姐弟俩一同进了门，都带着礼物。
+ 严师母是一磅开司米绒线，康明逊则是一对金元宝。
+ 王琦瑶想说金元宝的礼过重了，又恐严师母误以为嫌她的礼轻，便一并收下，日后再说。
+ 大家再看一遍孩子，称赞她大有人样，然后就围桌坐下，正好一人一面。
+ 程先生同这两位全是初次见面。
+ 严师母见过他，他却没见过严师母，和康明逊则是楼梯上交臂而过，谁也没看清谁。
+ 这时候，便由王琦瑶做了介绍，算是认识了。
+ 严师母在此之前就对程先生有好印象，便分外热情，见面就熟。
+ 程先生虽是有些招架不住，可也心领她的好意，并不见怪。
+ 相比之下，康明逊倒显得拘谨和沉默，也不大吃菜，只是喝温热的黄酒，一瓶黄酒很快喝完了，又开了一瓶。
+ 程先生说要去炒菜，站起来却有些摇晃，王琦瑶就说她去炒，按他坐下。
+ 他抬起手，在王琦瑶按他的肩的手背上抚摸了一下，王琦瑶本能地一抽手。
+ 对面的康明逊不禁看他一眼，是锐利的目光。
+ 程先生心里一动，清醒了一半。
+ 王琦瑶炒了热菜上来，重又入座。
+ 严师母也脸热心跳地有了几分醉意。
+ 她向程先生敬一杯酒，称他是世上少有的仁义之士，又说是黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求。
+ 话都说得有些不搭调，可也是借酒吐真言，放了平时则是难出口的。
+ 严师母自己敬了酒不算，又怂恿康明逊也向程先生敬酒。
+ 康明逊只得也举酒杯，却不晓得该说什么，看大家都等着，心里着急，说出的话更不搭调，说的是：祝程先生早结良缘。
+ 程先生照单全收，都是一个“谢”字，然后问王琦瑶有什么话说。
+ 王琦瑶看程先生的眼睛很不像过去，有些无赖似的，不知是喝了酒还是有别的原因，心里不安着，脸上便带了安抚的笑容，说：
+ 我当然是第一个要敬程先生酒的，就像方才严师母说的，“黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求”，要说知心，这里人没一个比得上程先生对我的，程先生是我王琦瑶最难堪时的至交，王琦瑶就算是有一万个错处，程先生也是一个原谅，这恩和义是刻骨铭心，永世难报。
+ 程先生听她只说恩义，却不提一个“情”字，也知她是借了酒向他交心的意思，胸中有无穷的感慨，还是伤感，眼泪几乎都到了下眼睑，只是低头，停了一会儿，才勉强笑道：今天又不是我满月，怎么老向我敬酒，应当敬王琦瑶才对呢！
+ 于是又由严师母带头，向王琦瑶敬酒。
+ 可大约是方才的话都说多了，这时倒都不说话，只喝酒。
+ 喝着喝着，程先生与康明逊的目光又碰在一起，相互看了一眼，虽没看明白什么的，可心里却都种下了疑窦。
+ 这天的酒都喝过量了，程先生不记得是怎么送走的客人，也不记得洗没洗碗盏了，他一觉醒来，发现竟是睡在王琦瑶的沙发上，身上盖一床薄被，桌上还摆着碗碟剩菜，满屋都是黄酒酸甜的香。
+ 月光透过窗帘，正照在他的脸上，真是清凉如水。
+ 他心里很安宁，看着窗帘上的光影，什么都不去想的。
+ 忽听有声音轻轻问道：要不要喝茶？
+ 他循声音望去，见是王琦瑶躺在房间那头的床上，也醒了。
+ 脸在阴影里，看不清楚，只见一个隐约的轮廓。
+ 程先生并不觉局促，反是一片静谧，他说：真是现世啊！
+ 王琦瑶不出声地笑了：趴在桌上就睡着了，三个人一起把你抬到了沙发。
+ 他说：喝过头了，也是高兴的缘故。
+ 静了一下，王琦瑶说：其实你是不高兴。
+ 程先生笑了一声：我怎么会不高兴？
+ 真的是高兴。
+ 两人都不说话，月光又移近了一些。
+ 程先生觉着自己像躺在水里似的。
+ 过了很久，程先生以为王琦瑶睡着了，不料却听她叫了声程先生。
+ 他问：什么事啊？
+ 王琦瑶停了一下，说：程先生睡不着吗？
+ 程先生说：方才那一大觉是睡足了。
+ 王琦瑶说，你没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生说：我很明白。
+ 王琦瑶就说：你还是没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生笑了：我当然明白的。
+ 王琦瑶就说：倘若明白，你说给我听听。
+ 程先生道：要我说我就说，你的意思是，如今你我只这一步之遥，只要我程先生跨过这一步，你王琦瑶是不会说一个“不”的。
+ 王琦瑶心里诧异这个呆木头似的程先生其实解人至深，面上却有些尴尬，解嘲说：我自知是不配，所以只能等程先生提出。
+ 程先生又笑了，这时他感到身心都十分轻松，几乎要飘起来似的，他听着自己的声音就好像听着别人在说话，说的都是体己的话。
+ 他说：要说这一步，我程先生几乎等了有半辈子了，可这不是说跨过就跨过的，不是还有咫尺天涯的说法吗？
+ 许多事情都是强求不得的。
+ 王琦瑶那边悄然无声，程先生不管她是否醒着，只顾自己滔滔不绝地说，像是把积攒了十余年的话全一股脑儿地倒出来。
+ 他说他其实早就明白这个道理，并且想好就做个知己知彼的朋友，也不枉为一世人生；可这人和人在一起，就有些像古话说的“逆水行舟，不进则退”的道理，要说没有进一步的愿望是不真实的，要进又进不了的时候，看来就只得退了。
+ 停了一会儿，他突然问道：康明逊是孩子的父亲吧？
+ 王琦瑶出声地笑了，说：是又如何？
+ 不是又如何？
+ 程先生倒反有些窘，说：随便问问的。
+ 两人各自翻了个身，不一会儿都睡熟了，发出了轻微的鼾声。
+ 第二天，程先生下了班后，没有到王琦瑶处，他去找蒋丽莉了。
+ 事先他给她往班上打了电话，约好在提篮桥见面。
+ 程先生到时，蒋丽莉已在那里站着了，不停地看表。
+ 分明是她到早了，却怨程先生晚了。
+ 程先生也不与她争辩，两人在附近找了个小饭馆，坐进去，点好菜。
+ 那堂倌一转身，程先生便伏在桌上哭了，眼泪成串地落在碱水刷白的白木桌面上。
+ 蒋丽莉心里明白了大半，并不劝解，只沉默着，眼睛看着对面的墙壁，墙壁是刷了石灰水的，惨白的颜色。
+ 这时的程先生只顾着发泄自己的难过，全然不顾别人是什么心情，即便是如程先生这样的忠厚人，爱起来也极端自私的，也极其地不公平。
+ 在他所爱的人面前，兢兢业业，小心翼翼，而到了爱他的人面前，却无所顾忌，目中无人，有些像耍赖的小孩。
+ 也正是这个，促使程先生来找蒋丽莉了。
+ 蒋丽莉沉默了一会儿，回头看他还在流泪，嘲笑道：怎么，失恋了？
+ 程先生的泪渐渐止了，坐在那里不作声。
+ 蒋丽莉还想刺他，又看他可怜，就换了口气道：世上东西，大多是越想越不得，不想倒得了。
+ 程先生轻声说：要不想也不得怎么办呢？
+ 蒋丽莉一听这话就火了，大了声说：天下女人都死光了吗？
+ 可不还有个蒋丽莉活着吗？
+ 这蒋丽莉是专供听你哭她活着的吗？
+ 程先生自知有错，低头不语，蒋丽莉也不说了。
+ 两人僵持了一会儿，程先生说：我本是有事托你，可不知道怎么就哭了起来，真是不好意思。
+ 听他这话，蒋丽莉也平和下来，说有什么事尽管说好了。
+ 程先生说：这件事我想来想去只能托你，其实也许是最不妥的，可却再无他人了。
+ 蒋丽莉说：有什么妥不妥的，有话快说。
+ 程先生就说托她今后多多照顾王琦瑶，她那地方，他从此是不会再去了。
+ 蒋丽莉听他说出的这件事情，心里不知是气还是怨，憋了半天才说出一句：天下女人原来真就死光了，连我一同都死光的。
+ 程先生忍着她奚落，可蒋丽莉就此打住，并没再往下说什么。
+ 王琦瑶等程先生来，等了几日，却等来蒋丽莉。
+ 她是下班后从杨树浦过来，调了几部车，头发蓬乱着，鞋面上全是灰，声音嘶哑。
+ 手里提了一个网兜，装了水果、饼干、奶粉，还有一条半新的床单。
+ 进门就抖出来，王琦瑶来不及去阻止，就唰唰几下子，撕成一堆尿布。
+
+ Old Colour
+ "LAO KE-LA" REFERS to a specific breed of debonair figures active during the fifties and sixties.
+ These were the keepers of old-style Shanghai fashion in the new society, at a time when holding on to the past was considered radical.
+ The term probably originated with the English word "old colour," or perhaps "old classic," a remnant of the colonial culture of Shanghai in the day of the treaty ports.
+ As the lingo of the city incorporated bits and pieces of foreign languages, words became dismembered and, with the passage of time, grew increasingly distant from their original meanings.
+ By the eighties, people who fell into the category of "Old Colour" were virtually extinct.
+ The surviving handful were all fairly advanced in age, their erstwhile shape completely transformed; eventually even the term itself was forgotten.
+ But then something odd happened.
+ In the mid eighties, a new generation of Old Colours emerged quietly upon the scene.
+ Lacking their predecessors' craving for notoriety, they were not compelled to behave ostentatiously and appeared more easygoing.
+ It was not even easy to spot them in the crowd.
+ Where might one go to find such a specimen?
+ These Old Colours—when everyone was out buying a stereo, they were listening to old phonographs.
+ When Nikon and Minolta cameras equipped with auto-focus features were all the rage, they were busy fiddling with their vintage Rolleiflex 120s.
+ They sported wind-up watches, drank coffee brewed in small pots, shaved with old-fashioned razor blades and shaving cream, took great delight in antique slide projectors, and wore large leather shoes shaped like boats.
+ When you saw these markings, you could be certain that you had found one.
+ Then, having found one, you couldn't help but notice just how crude and boorish the so-called fashionable were in comparison.
+ The rush to be trendy left no time for elegance or refinement.
+ One was driven about by a succession of waves.
+ Speed and quantity were all that mattered, and the result was that corners were cut and things got done in a slipshod manner and had eventually to be discarded.
+ You could tell this by looking at the clothing shops where advertisements for markdowns were posted all over the walls, shelves, and counters—even the stalls outside.
+ Before the last season's clothes had sold out, they were two steps behind the latest fashion, which had already arrived.
+ What choice was there but to run constant sales and markdowns?
+ In this crude and uncultured fashion world, the "Old Colours" were the stewards in charge of safekeeping refinement.
+ They were the only ones paying attention to the things that mattered; though they never advertised themselves or talked about what they were doing, they had their feet firmly planted on the ground.
+ They took things one step at a time; men of action, they let others do the talking.
+ They didn't even have a name.
+ The term "Old Colour" was given to them by the few who remembered the old days, but it never gained wide circulation.
+ A small minority called them Western-style "Yuppies," but that never caught on either.
+ And so they remained nameless, silently tilling their little plot of land.
+ We could, if we chose, refer to them as nostalgic "lovers of the past," although they were all young and didn't have a past to love per se.
+ But they had all been to the Bund and seen, riding on the ferry, what it looked like from out on the water: there they saw the ramparts formed by the Georgian buildings, the Gothic bell tower with its pointed steeple, and the dark forbidding windows staring back at them—all of which sent them down the tunnel of time.
+ They had also climbed up to the rooftops to release pigeons and fly kites, and there, looking out over the sea of rooftops, a few of which jutted out like sails, felt as if they were navigating against the currents of time.
+ Besides these, the ivy crawling up the sides of the walls and the sounds of someone playing the piano in the Western-style house next door also came to feed their nostalgia.
+ Wang Qiyao knew one of these "Old Colours."
+ He was twenty-six years old, so calling him an "Old Colour" was a bit ironic, a way of emphasizing his youth.
+ A gym teacher at a local middle school, he normally dressed in sweatpants, and his hair looked like the bristle end of a scrub brush.
+ He had a dark complexion from years of working outdoors.
+ At school he kept to himself and never fraternized with his colleagues.
+ Who would have guessed that he was an accomplished flamenco guitar player with a collection of more than a hundred jazz records?
+ This "Old Colour" lived in a traditional longtang in Hongkou, with parents who were honest, hardworking government employees and watched what they spent; his sister had left home to get married.
+ He himself occupied the third-floor tingzijian: his palmwood cot lay on the floor along with his record player.
+ As soon as he entered his room, he would take off his shoes and, sitting on the bare floor, enter into his own little universe.
+ Outside his dormer window was a slanted portion of the roof.
+ Occasionally, during the summer, he would climb out the window with a backpack, spread a mat out over the roof tiles, and, tying himself to the windowsill with a rope around his waist, spend the evening lying outside.
+ Looking up, he would see a sprinkling of stars suspended in the deep blue sky above.
+ He could faintly make out the rumbling sounds of the machinery from a factory in the distance, and the smoke from the factory's smokestack billowed white against the sky.
+ The scattered sounds of the night seemed to have sunk down to earth, while he himself had dissolved into the air, empty of thoughts and desires.
+ Old Colour was still without a girlfriend.
+ Although he got on quite well with some of the girls in his regular circle of friends, things had never developed past the point of ordinary friendship.
+ As there was nothing further he needed, he had no particular aspirations and was content just to have a job.
+ However, he recognized that he had only himself to rely on, and this made him approach things with a positive attitude.
+ And, though he lacked long-term goals, he did have some short-term plans.
+ This meant that, while never vexed by major problems, he was struck by the occasional fit of inexplicable depression.
+ For these depressions he found an antidote in his collection of old jazz records from the twenties.
+ The sound of the saxophone, mixed with the hissing sound of the needle against the vinyl, gave him a feeling of an almost palpable intimacy.
+ Old Colour was a bit old-fashioned: nothing new suited his taste, because to him it lacked substance and smacked of the nouveau riche; but then neither was he a fan of things that were too old, which would have felt antiquated and dismal.
+ A hundred years was just about enough.
+ He longed for a time back when, like the sprinkling of stars in the night sky, only the elite prospered—for a European-style house on a smooth cobblestone road, and the spiraling sounds of the phonograph twisting their way up through an otherwise perfect silence.
+ This was, when all was said and done, what all those old jazz records stood for.
+ His young friends were all modern individuals at the cutting edge of fashion, quite the opposite of Old Colour.
+ When Shanghai inaugurated its first tennis court, his friends were the first customers standing in line; when a certain luxury hotel opened up a bowling alley, they were the first to try it out.
+ All of them were college classmates of Old Colour from the phys-ed department; they prided themselves on their athletic spirit and prowess, which happened to be right in tune with worldwide fashion.
+ Just look at the most popular brand names of the day—Nike and Puma—you could see that they were all athletic apparel, whereas brands like Pierre Cardin had long been on the way down.
+ This cohort would appear on the streets on motorcycles, a girl seated at the back with her hair streaming down from her helmet, and you could feel the rush of wind as they flew past.
+ They were the wildest ones on the dance floor at the discos.
+ They always managed to get hold of a foreigner or two to give their gatherings an international flavor—which, incidentally, gained them entry into all kinds of exclusive places where only international guests were welcome.
+ Among them, Old Colour was always the quiet one: he never really contributed to the group.
+ When everyone else was having a great time, he would be off standing in one corner as if he did not count.
+ He seemed a bit lonely, but it was precisely such loneliness that provided this fashionable, happy-go-lucky crowd with a certain substance.
+ So it actually wouldn't have been the same if he hadn't been there.
+ As for himself, he needed a modern backdrop to set himself off from everyone else; had he been thrown into the sea of people unattached, his old-fashioned style would have been completely drowned out.
+ Because his style appeared outdated on the surface, people had a hard time identifying it for what it was; but it really stood out against a super-modern background, like an antique placed on a velvet mat.
+ Without the mat, someone would probably have thrown the piece away, thinking it was junk.
+ Therefore Old Colour had to run with that crowd, lonely as he may have been.
+ If he had left, he would have lost even the distinction of being lonely—he would have simply disappeared among the teeming masses.
+ Old Colour's parents always thought of him as a responsible son; he didn't drink or smoke, had a steady job and a healthy hobby, and never got mixed up with the wrong sort of girl.
+ They themselves had been fairly conservative in their youth; going to the movies once a week was their sole entertainment.
+ There was a period when his mother became obsessed with collecting movie pamphlets, but during the Cultural Revolution she took it upon herself to burn her entire collection; later the movie theaters stopped putting them out.
+ Once his parents bought a television set, they stopped going to the movies altogether.
+ Every night they would turn on the television after dinner and watch until eleven o'clock.
+ With this television set, their golden years seemed perfect.
+ The music their son played up in the tingzijian had a familiar sound, which tended to confirm their opinions that he was steady.
+ The fact that he was taciturn also put them at ease.
+ Even when they had dinner together at the same table, the entire meal would pass with barely a few words.
+ When it came down to it, they were all strangers to each other, but seeing each other, day in, day out, they didn't think much about their state, as if this was how it was supposed to be.
+ But they were, in truth, decent people; their thoughts and actions were always in line and, whether it be spiritual or material, just a little bit of space was enough for them.
+ Crammed in under the rooftops of the Shanghai longtang were countless people living out their frugal lives just like that.
+ On occasion you might feel that it is rather noisy—as soon as the windows were opened, your ears would be assaulted by all kinds of sounds.
+ But don't be offended: what you hear are the accumulated sounds of the activities of prudent people over their lifetime; at least the noise shows that they are lively.
+ And Old Colour certainly wasn't the only one stargazing from the rooftop on those summer nights; the hearts of all these people are restless and unsure of where to go—and so up they go to the rooftops.
+ There everything is wide open; even the knowing pigeons are bedded down for the evening, leaving the sky empty of their flight.
+ All the noise and clatter remain below, but they have floated to the top and it feels good to drift for a while.
+ In these longtang with the dormer windows, the songs of the heart have quite a distinctive sound, and the dormer windows are the throats through which the songs are forced out.
+ Old Colour finds true understanding in the neighborhoods on the west side of Shanghai, and he likes to wander there along the tree-lined streets.
+ Even the canopies of the trees there have a history, having filtered out the sunlight for a century.
+ Maoming Road passes from a roaring hubbub on one end to quietude on the other, both of which have the vintage of years.
+ Old Colour loved traversing this area, where he had the feeling that time had been turned back.
+ Examining the trolley tracks on the street, he tried to imagine what it was like when the cars were still running; he could picture two rows of wooden benches facing each other inside the trolley, just like the ones he had seen in old silent films.
+ There seemed to be writing on the brick and stonework of the old hotels; as he patiently read them, the words recounted trials and tribulations from the past.
+ The areas on the east side of the city also understood Old Colour.
+ Every major street there leads to the river.
+ Though the scene is less refined, it has a sharpness about it.
+ The silent film being played here is more like a sweeping epic, the action coming on like a hurricane.
+ Time has stopped for the seagulls soaring across the sky, as it has for the pigeons.
+ That's what he, too, wanted—for time to stop.
+ That's not too much to ask, is it?
+ He didn't ask for an eternity, only the last fifty years.
+ His request was restrained, like the sunrise in the city, which does not come up over the sea or the horizon, but from the rooftops—its beginning and the end curtailed.
+ In fact, the city is still a child and doesn't have many days to look back upon.
+ But a child like Old Colour was already an old man, who, bypassing experience, went straight to reminiscence.
+ All of his deepest thoughts were dialogues with the past.
+ At least the clock in the Customs House was still ringing, in a world where everything else seemed to have vanished like clouds and mist, and the sound he heard was the very sound heard decades ago.
+ As Old Colour walked down the street, the wind blowing against his face was a draft squeezed through the space between two buildings.
+ He may have looked calm on the surface, but his heart was vibrant, almost dancing with joy.
+ He loved the sunset over Shanghai; the streets at dusk were like a faded oil painting, a perfect match for the mood of the city.
+ One day a friend of his told Old Colour about a party someone was having.
+ All kinds of people were supposed to be coming, including a former Miss Shanghai from the old days.
+ He hopped onto the back of his friend's motorcycle, and they headed west to the new residential area near the airport.
+ The man lived on the thirteenth floor of a building that he was managing for the owner, a relative of his who was living overseas.
+ He didn't normally live there, but every few days he would invite friends over for a fun-filled afternoon or evening.
+ Gradually, his parties started to gain some notoriety: word traveled fast, as one guest brought ten friends and each of them brought along others—but he didn't mind, everyone was welcome.
+ As the numbers started to build up, it was inevitable that some questionable individuals would weasel their way in, and sometimes unpleasant things, such as thefts, would happen.
+ But with so many people, the probability of someone extraordinary showing up was also quite high.
+ Occasionally, real celebrities would appear, such as movie stars, the first violin from a famous orchestra, and reporters, as well as the children and grandchildren of powerful Communist and Nationalist leaders.
+ This friend's parties were like small political meetings, where old stories and the latest gossip were passed around the living room, the whole place abuzz with excitement.
+ In this new district, all you saw when you opened the windows was a forest of buildings.
+ Some of the windows were lit up while others remained dark; the sky was unobstructed, but this made the stars seem more distant.
+ Below, the cars speeding down the straight broad roads looked like a chain of pearls.
+ Not far off there would always be a construction site, where the lights blazed through the night and the noise of pile-drivers, hammering away in rhythm, filled the entire space below the heavens.
+ The air is choked with particles of chalky cement and the wind is especially strong as it whips between the buildings.
+ The lights over in the hotel district look a little lonely due to the heights of the buildings around it, but theirs is a resplendent loneliness that pierces the heart with rapture.
+ This was indeed a brand-new district that greeted everything with an open heart, quite unlike the downtown area, whose convoluted feelings are more difficult to grasp.
+ Arriving in the new district, one has the feeling that one has left the city behind.
+ The style of the streets and buildings—built at right angles in a logical manner—is so unlike downtown, which seems to have been laid out by squeezing the emotions out from the heart.
+ Under the sky of the new district, the joyful laughter coming from the thirteenth floor of this joint-venture construction suddenly dissipates and the music fades away.
+ But how much does that bit of happiness really matter in this new district?
+ Playing out behind the honeycomb-like windows of those tall buildings is a fresh new form of happiness.
+ In hotels so new that they have yet to acquire their four or five stars, there are buffets, dances, and receptions every night, as well as brazen games of passion that offered no excuses as they announced themselves to the world with "do not disturb" signs.
+ With people of all races and colors taking part, it feels like a party of universal jubilation.
+ This is especially so around Christmas time: as soon as the Christmas carols break out, you are hard pressed to discern whether you are in China or abroad.
+ When you first arrive here, the place seems to lack a heart because it is so carefree—but that is because it hasn't yet had time to build up a reservoir of recollections; its mind is blank and has not begun to feel the need to call on its memory.
+ Such is the spiritual state of the entire district.
+ The laughter and gaiety coming from the thirteenth floor form but a drop in the ocean.
+ The only one who seems a bit annoyed is the elevator attendant, as people come rushing in and out of the elevator, in couples or crowds, holding wine and flowers—mostly strangers, in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
+ More than a dozen groups of guests had already arrived by the time Old Colour got to the party.
+ The door had been left half-open and the room was filled with people moving about.
+ No one paid the newcomers much attention as they came in; the stereo was blaring loud music.
+ A few people sat around watching a television miniseries in the first room, which led out to the balcony.
+ The door to the balcony was ajar and the wind was agitating the curtains.
+ In a corner of this room sat a woman with fair skin, wearing light makeup, in a pinkish-purple suit made of raw silk.
+ She was leaning forward slightly toward the television screen with her arms crossed.
+ The curtain brushed against her skirt from time to time, but this didn't seem to distract her.
+ Only when the screen suddenly lit up did her drooping eyelids show, giving away her age.
+ But the stamp of age passes in a flickering instant: she carefully wrapped hers up and tucked it away inside her bones.
+ The years had tiptoed around her, careful not to leave too many traces, but in the end they couldn't help leaving a few.
+ This was Wang Qiyao in 1985.
+ Around this time the opulence of 1946 was revived in a few essays reminiscing about old Shanghai, and the name Wang Qiyao suddenly came into the spotlight again.
+ One or two nosy reporters even went so far as to investigate what had happened to Wang Qiyao in the years following the pageant; several articles were published in the back pages of the newspapers but failed to generate much interest, and the whole thing eventually died down.
+ A lot of time had indeed gone by.
+ No matter how glamorous a woman has been, once she has entered the black hole of time, she is lucky to generate even a few flickers of light.
+ The aura surrounding the beauty pageant, no less than Wang Qiyao herself, had also faded after forty years, and it only served to date her by revealing her age.
+ It was like the old clothes at the bottom of her chest: though many were still in good shape, wearing them only made her look older, because they were from the wrong era.
+ The only one who seemed to be moved by any of this history was Zhang Yonghong.
+ She didn't believe the story initially, but once she had accepted it she had an endless array of questions for Wang Qiyao.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, resisted answering them at first, but once she began to open up, she had an endless series of revelations for Zhang Yonghong to uncover.
+ There were many things that Wang Qiyao thought she had completely forgotten, but as soon as she got started, all of those tiny bits and fragments of detail came together to make a flowing river of memories.
+ The stories she told were those of a woman who had stood in the limelight; but wasn't that the goal of all those girls on Huaihai Road trying to outdress one another?
+ Wave after wave of fashion that came and went—weren't they all vying for their moment in the spotlight?
+ Zhang Yonghong, who understood the magnitude of the splendor Wang Qiyao was describing, exclaimed, "I'm so envious!"
+ Zhang Yonghong introduced Wang Qiyao to all of her boyfriends and invited her to all kinds of parties.
+ These were mostly parties for young people, and, knowing her own place, Wang Qiyao would usually sit off to one side.
+ Nevertheless, her elegance would still add a touch of distinction to the party.
+ Barring the occasional glance, people didn't pay her any attention, but everyone was aware that there was a "Miss Shanghai" in their presence.
+ On occasion there might even be a few people eagerly awaiting her arrival, not realizing that she had been sitting in the corner all along—she sat there alone until the music stopped and the show was over.
+ Wang Qiyao was always well dressed and elegant; she was never awkward and never got in the way.
+ She was an ornament, a painting on the wall to adorn the living room.
+ The painting was done in somber hues, with a dark yellow base; it had true distinction, and even though the colors were faded, its value had appreciated.
+ Everything else was simply transient flashes of light and shadow.
+ It was under these circumstances that Old Colour first met Wang Qiyao.
+ Could that be the "Miss Shanghai" everyone was talking about? he wondered.
+ Just as he was about to walk away, he saw Wang Qiyao look up and scan the room before lowering her head again.
+ The look in her eyes had a hint of panic, but she was not at all looking for sympathy or forgiveness.
+ It was then that Old Colour realized how callous he had been.
+ He thought, The Miss Shanghai pageant was nearly forty years ago.
+ His vision grew blurry as he stared at Wang Qiyao, as if his eyes couldn't focus properly, and through that hazy vision he saw an image of her from more than three decades ago.
+ Gradually the image became clearer, taking on depth and new details.
+ But none of those details looked real; they floated on the surface, piercing Old Colour's heart.
+ He came face to face with a cruel reality—the corrosive power of time.
+ At twenty-six years of age, Old Colour should have been too young to care about the passing of time; time had yet to teach him such truths, but that is precisely why he longed for the past—that is the only reason he dared to extol the fruits of time!
+ The passage of time associated with those old jazz records was indeed a good thing; it had smoothed things out until they were strong and fine, rubbing off the superficial layers to reveal the inner grain, like gold emerging when the fire has burned away the dross.
+ But what he saw that day was not an object, like an old jazz record, but a person.
+ He was at a complete loss as to what to say, because the situation had an element of the tragic.
+ He had finally touched the heart of that bygone era, whereas before he had only paced back and forth on its surface.
+ Something halted his steps and Old Colour couldn't bring himself to walk away.
+ He picked up a glass of wine and leaned up against the door, fixing his gaze on the television.
+ Eventually Wang Qiyao got up from the corner to go to the restroom.
+ As she walked past him, he flashed her a smile.
+ She immediately accepted his smile, responding with a look of gratitude before smiling back at him.
+ When she came back, he asked her if he could get her a drink.
+ She pointed to the corner and said that she already had a cup of tea, so there was no need.
+ He asked her to dance.
+ She hesitated for a moment . . . and accepted.
+ Disco music was blaring in the living room, but they danced the four-step at half speed.
+ With all manner of wild movements swirling around them, only they were stationary, like a lone island in a rushing torrent.
+ She apologized, suggesting that he go back to disco dancing rather than waste his time with her.
+ But he insisted that he was having a good time.
+ He put his hand on her waist and could feel the slight pulsations of her body.
+ It was a strategy of nonmovement in response to the myriad changes taking place around her, of finding her own rhythm, no matter what the tempo of her surroundings might be, a rhythm that could carry her through time.
+ Moved by this, he remained lost in silence until she suddenly complimented his dance skills; they were now doing a traditional Latin number.
+ When the tune changed, someone else invited Wang Qiyao to dance.
+ During the next number, they each danced with their respective partners but their eyes occasionally met, whereupon they exchanged a knowing smile, lit up with the joy of this chance meeting.
+ The party took place on the evening of National Day and fireworks were being set off from one of the balconies.
+ A single rocket shot up into the darkness and slowly unfurled its fiery petals in the night sky before breaking up into a stream of falling stars, which vanished slowly, leaving a faint white shadow in the sky.
+ It was some time before the last of the light was absorbed into the blackness.
+
+ 10．老克腊
+ 所谓“老克腊”指的是某一类风流人物，尤以五十和六十年代盛行。
+ 在那全新的社会风貌中，他们保持着上海的旧时尚，以固守为激进。
+ “克腊”这词其实来自英语“colour”，表示着那个殖民地文化的时代特征。
+ 英语这种外来语后来打散在这城市的民间口语中，内中的含义也是打散了重来，随着时间的演进，意思也越来越远。
+ 像“老克腊”这种人，到八十年代，几乎绝迹，有那么三个五个的，也都上了年纪，面目有些蜕变，人们也渐渐把这个名字给忘了似的。
+ 但很奇怪的，到了八十年代中叶，于无声处地，又悄悄地生长起一代年轻的老克腊，他们要比旧时代的老克腊更甘于寂寞，面目上也比较随和，不作哗众取宠之势。
+ 在熙来攘往的人群中，人们甚至难以辨别他们的身影，到哪里才能找到他们呢？
+ 人们都在忙着置办音响的时候，那个在听老唱片的；人们时兴“尼康”“美能达”电脑调焦照相机的时候，那个在摆弄“罗莱克斯”一二零的；手上戴机械表，喝小壶煮咖啡，用剃须膏刮脸，玩老式幻灯机，穿船形牛皮鞋的，千真万确，就是他。
+ 找到他，再将眼光从他身上移开，去看目下的时尚，不由看出这时尚的粗陋鄙俗。
+ 一窝蜂上的，都来不及精雕细刻。
+ 又像有人在背后追赶，一浪一浪接替不暇。
+ 一个多和一个快，于是不得不偷工减料，粗制滥造，然后破罐破摔。
+ 只要看那服装店就知道了，墙上，货架上，柜台里，还有门口摊子上挂着大甩卖牌子的，一代流行来不及卖完，后一代后两代已经来了，不甩卖又怎么办？
+ “老克腊”是这粗糙时尚中的一点精细所在。
+ 他们是真讲究，虽不作什么宣言，也不论什么理，却是脚踏实地，一步一个脚印，自己做，让别人说。
+ 他们甚至也没有名字，叫他们“老克腊”只是一两个过来人的发明，也流传不开。
+ 另有少数人，将他们归到西方的“雅皮士”里， 也是难以传播。
+ 因此，他们无名无姓的，默默耕耘着自己的一方田地。
+ 其实，我们是可以把他们叫做“怀旧”这两个字的，虽然他们都是新人，无旧可念，可他们去过外滩呀，摆渡到江心再蓦然回首，便看见那屏障般的乔治式建筑，还有歌特式的尖顶钟塔，窗洞里全是森严的注视，全是穿越时间隧道的。
+ 他们还爬上过楼顶平台，在那里放鸽子或者放风筝，展目便是屋顶的海洋，有几幢耸起的，是像帆一样，也是越过时间的激流。
+ 再有那山墙上的爬墙虎，隔壁洋房里的钢琴声，都是怀旧的养料。
+ 王琦瑶认识的便是其中一个，今年二十六岁。
+ 人们叫他“老克腊”，是带点反讽的意思，指的是他的小。
+ 他在一所中学做体育教师，平时总穿一身运动衣裤，头发是板刷式的那种。
+ 由于室外作业，长年都是黝黑的皮肤。
+ 在学校里少言寡语，与同事没有私交，谁也不会想到他其实弹了一手好吉它，西班牙式的，家里存有上百张爵士乐的唱片。
+ 他家住虹口一条老式弄堂房子，父母都是勤俭老实的职员，姐姐已经出嫁。
+ 他自己住一个三层阁，将棕绷放在地上，唱机也放在地上，进去就脱了鞋，席地而坐，自成一统的天下。
+ 他的老虎天窗开出去就是一片下斜的屋瓦，夏天有时候他在屋瓦上铺一张席子，再用根背包带系了腰，拴在窗台上，爬出去躺着。
+ 眼前便是一片深蓝的天空，悬挂着一些星星。
+ 远处有一家工厂，有隐约的轰鸣声传来，那烟囱里的一柱烟，在夜空里是白色的。
+ 一些琐细的夜声沉淀下去，他就像被空气溶解了似的，思无所思，想无所想。
+ 他还没有女朋友。
+ 在一起玩的男女中，虽也不乏相互有好感的，但只到好朋友这一层上，便停止了发展，因为没有进一步的需要。
+ 他对生活也没什么理想，只要有事干就行，也晓得事情是要自己去找，因此还是抱积极的态度。
+ 没有远的目标，近的目标是有的。
+ 所以，他便也没有大的烦恼，只不过有时会有一些无名的忧郁。
+ 这点忧郁，也是有安慰的，就是那些二十年代的爵士乐。
+ 萨克斯管里夹带着唱片的走针声，嘶嘶的，就有了些贴肤可感的意思。
+ 他是有些老调子的，新东西讨不得他欢心，觉着是暴发户的味道，没底气的。
+ 但老也不要老得太过，老得太过便是老八股，亦太荒凉，只须有百十年的时间尽够了。
+ 要的是那刚开始的少数人的繁华，黑漆漆的夜空里，那一小丛灿烂，平整的蛋硌路上，一座欧式洋房，还有那万籁俱寂中的一点蜿蜒曲折的音响。
+ 说起来，其实就是那老爵士乐可以代表和概括的。
+ 老克腊的那些男女青年朋友，都是摩登的人物，他们与老克腊处在事物的两极，他们是走在潮流的最前列。
+ 这城市有网球场了，他们是第一批顾客；某宾馆进得保龄球了，他们也是第一批顾客。
+ 他们是老克腊读体育系时的同学，以体育的精神独领风骚，也体现了当今世界的潮流特征。
+ 只看那些名牌：耐克，彪马，几乎都来自于运动服装，而西装的老牌子“皮尔·卡丹”，却是在衰落下去。
+ 他们这一列人出现在马路上的形象，多是骑着摩托车，后座上有个姑娘，长发从头盔下飘起来，一阵风地过去。
+ 迪斯科舞厅中最疯狂的一伙也是他们。
+ 他们以各种方式，总能结识一个或两个外国人，参加在其中，使他们这一群人有了国际的面目，并可自由出入一些国际场所。
+ 老克腊在其中是默默无闻的一个，没有建树的一个。
+ 别人热闹的时候，他大多是靠边站，有他没他都行的。
+ 他看上去是有些寂寞的，但正是这寂寞，为这个快乐新潮的群体增添了底蕴。
+ 所以，有他和没他还是不一样的。
+ 对他来说呢，也是需要有一个摩登背景衬底，真将他抛入茫茫人海，无依无托的，他的那个老调子，难免会被淹没。
+ 因那老调子是有着过时的表象，为世人所难以识辨，它只有在一个崭崭新的座子上，才可显出价值。
+ 就好像一件古董是要放在天鹅绒华丽的底子上，倘若没这底子，就会被人扔进垃圾箱了。
+ 所以，他也离不开这个群体，虽然是寂寞的，但要是离开了，就连寂寞也没有，有的只是同流合俗。
+ 老克腊的父母，将他看作一个老实的孩子：不抽烟，不喝酒，有正经的工作，也有正经的业余生活，亦不乱交女朋友。
+ 他们年轻的时候，也都不是贪玩的人，每周看一回电影，便是他们所有的娱乐。
+ 他母亲曾有一度，热衷于收集电影说明书，“文化大革命”时自觉烧掉了她的收藏，后来的电影院也再不出售说明书了。
+ 再往后，他们因有了电视机，就不去电影院了。
+ 每天晚饭吃过，打开电视机，一直看到十一点。
+ 有了电视机，他们的晚年便很完美了。
+ 儿子在阁楼上放的老音乐，在他们听来是有些耳熟，更使他们认定儿子是个老实的孩子。
+ 他的少言寡语，也叫他们放心。
+ 他们即便在一张桌上吃饭，从头到尾都说不上几个字。
+ 其实彼此是陌生的，但因为朝夕相处，也不把这陌生当回事，本该如此似的。
+ 说到底，这都是些真正的老实人，收着手脚，也收着心，无论物质还是精神，都只顾一小点空间就够用了。
+ 在上海弄堂的屋顶下，密密匝匝地存着许多这样的节约的生涯。
+ 有时你会觉着那里比较嘈杂，推开窗便噪声盈耳，你不要怪它，这就是简约人生聚沙成塔的动静。
+ 他们毕竟是活泼泼的，也是要有些声响的。
+ 在夏夜的屋顶上，躺着看星空的其实不止一个孩子，他们心里都是有些鼓荡，不知要往哪里去，就来到屋顶。
+ 那里就开阔多了，也自由多了，连鸽子也栖了，让出了它们的领空。
+ 那嘈杂都在底下了，而他们浮了上来，漂流一会儿就会好的。
+ 像这样有老虎天窗的弄堂，也是有些不同凡响的心曲，那硬是被挤压出来的，老虎天窗就是它的歌喉。
+ 真了解老克腊的是上海西区的马路。
+ 他在那儿常来常往，有树阴罩着他。
+ 这树阴也是有历史的，遮了一百年的阳光，茂名路是由闹至静，闹和静都是有年头的。
+ 他就爱在那里走动，时光倒流的感觉。
+ 他想，路面上有着电车轨道，将是什么样的情形，那电车里面对面的木条长椅间，演的都是黑白的默片，那老饭店的建筑，砖缝和石棱里都是有字的，耐心去读，可读出一番旧风雨。
+ 上海东区的马路也了解老克腊，条条马路通江岸，那风景比西区粗犷，也爽利，演的黑白默片是史诗题材，旧风雨也是狂飙式的。
+ 江鸥飞翔，是没有岁月的，和鸽子一样，他要的就是这没有岁月。
+ 要的也不过分，不是地老天荒的一种，只是五十年的流萤。
+ 就像这城市的日出，不是从海平线和地平线上起来的，而是从屋脊上起来的，总归是掐头去尾，有节制的。
+ 论起来，这城市还是个孩子，真没多少回头望的日子。
+ 但像老克腊这样的孩子，却又成了个老人，一下地就在叙旧似的，心里话都是与旧情景说的。
+ 总算那海关大钟还在敲，是烟消云灭中的一个不灭，他听到的又是昔日的那一响。
+ 老克腊走在马路上，有风迎面吹来。
+ 是从楼缝中挤过来的变了形的风，他看上去没什么声色，心却是活跃的，甚至有些歌舞的感觉。
+ 他就喜欢这城市的落日，落日里的街景像一幅褪了色的油画，最合乎这城市的心境。
+ 这一天，朋友说谁家举行一个派对，来人有谁谁谁，据说还有一个当年的上海小姐。
+ 他坐在朋友的摩托车后座，一路西去，来到靠近机场的一片新型住宅区。
+ 那朋友住一幢侨汇房的十三楼，是他国外亲戚买下后托他照管的。
+ 平时他并不来住，只是三天两头地开派对，将各种的朋友汇集起来，过一个快乐的夜晚，或者快乐的白天。
+ 他的派对渐渐地有了名声，一传十，十传百的，来的人呢，也是一带十，十带百，他全是欢迎。
+ 人多了，难免鱼目混珠，掺和进来一些不正经的人，就会有不愉快的事情发生，比如撬窃的案子。
+ 但按照概率来说，人多了也会沙里淘金地出现精英。
+ 因此，有时他的派推对上会有特别的人物出场，比如电影明星，乐团的首席提琴手，记者，某共产党或国民党将领的子孙。
+ 他的派对就像一个小政协似的，许多旧闻和新闻在客厅上空交相流传，可真是热闹。
+ 在这新区，推开窗户，便可看见如林的高楼，窗户有亮有暗，天空显得很辽阔，星月反而远了。
+ 低头看去，宽阔笔直的马路上跑着如豆的汽车，成串的亮珠子。
+ 不远处永远有一个工地，彻夜的灯光，电力打夯机的声音充满在夜空底下，有节律地涌动着。
+ 空气里有一些水泥的粉末，风又很浩荡，在楼之间行军。
+ 那宾馆区的灯光却因为天地楼群的大和高，显得有些寂寥，却是璀璨的寂寥，有一些透心的快乐似的。
+ 这真是新区，是坦荡荡的胸襟，不像市区，怀着曲折衷肠，叫人猜不透。
+ 到新区来，总有点出城的感觉，那种马路和楼房的格式全是另一路的，横平竖直是讲道理讲出来的，不像市区，全是掏心窝掏出来的。
+ 在新区的夜空底下，这幢侨汇房十三楼里的欢声笑语，一下子就消散了，音乐声也消散了。
+ 这点快乐在新区算得上什么？
+ 在那高楼的蜂窝般的窗洞里，全是新鲜的快乐。
+ 还没加上四星或五星级的酒店里的，那里每晚都举行着冷餐会，舞会，招待会。
+ 还储留着一些艳情，那也是响当当的，名正言顺，门口挂着“请勿打扰”的牌子。
+ 那里的快乐因有着各色人种的参加，带着普天同庆的意思。
+ 尤其到了圣诞节，圣诞歌一唱，你真分不清是中国还是外国。
+ 这地方一上来就显得有些没心肺，无忧虑，是因为它没来得及积蓄起什么回忆，它的头脑里还是空白一片，还用不着使用记忆力。
+ 这就是一整个新区的精神状态。
+ 十三楼里那点笑闹，只是沧海一粟罢了。
+ 只有开电梯的那女人有些不耐烦，这一群群，一伙伙，手里拿着酒或捧着花，涌进和涌出电梯，又大多是生人，形形色色的。
+ 老克腊来到时，已不知是第十几批了。
+ 门半开着，里面满是人影晃动。
+ 他们走进去，谁也不注意他们，音响开着，有很暴烈的乐声放出。
+ 通往阳台的一间屋里，掩着门坐了一些人在看电视里的连续剧。
+ 阳台门开着，风把窗幔卷进卷出，很鼓荡的样子。
+ 屋角里坐着一个女人，白皙的皮肤，略施淡妆，穿一件丝麻的藕荷色套裙。
+ 她抱着胳膊，身体略向前倾，看着电视屏幕。
+ 窗幔有时从她裙边扫过去，也没叫她分心。
+ 当屏幕上的光陡地亮起来，便可看见她下眼睑略微下坠，这才显出了年纪。
+ 但这年纪也瞬息即过，是被悉心包藏起来，收在骨子里。
+ 是蹑着手脚走过来的岁月，唯恐留下痕迹，却还是不得已留下了。
+ 这就是一九八五年的王琦瑶。
+ 其时，在一些回忆旧上海的文章中，再现了一九四六年的繁盛场景，于是，王琦瑶的名字便跃然而出。
+ 也有那么一两个好事者，追根溯源来找王琦瑶，写一些报屁股文章，却并没有引起反响，于是便销声匿迹了。
+ 到底是年经月久，再大的辉煌，一旦坠入时间的黑洞，能有些个光的渣就算不错了。
+ 四十年前的这道光环，也像王琦瑶的人一样，不尽人意地衰老了。
+ 这道光环，甚至还给王琦瑶添了年纪，给她标上了纪年。
+ 它就像箱底的旧衣服一样，好是好，可是错过了年头，披挂上身，一看就是个陈年累月的人，所以它还是给王琦瑶添旧的。
+ 唯有张永红受了感动，她起先不相信，后来相信了，便涌出无数个问题。
+ 王琦瑶开始矜持着，渐渐就打开了话匣子，更是有无数个回答等着她来问的。
+ 许多事情她本以为忘了，不料竟是一提就起，连同那些琐琐碎碎的细节，点点滴滴的，全都汇流成河。
+ 这是一个女人的风头，淮海路上的争奇斗艳的女孩，要的不就是它？
+ 那一代接一代的新潮流，推波助澜的，不就是抢一个风头？
+ 张永红掂得出那光荣的分量，她说：你真是叫人羡慕啊！
+ 她向她每一任男友介绍王琦瑶，将王琦瑶邀请到各类聚会上。
+ 这些大都是年轻人的聚会上，王琦瑶总是很识时务地坐在一边，却让她的光辉为聚会添一笔奇色异彩。
+ 人们常常是看不见她，也无余暇看她，但都知道，今夜有一位“上海小姐”到场。
+ 有时候，人们会从始至终地等她莅临，岂不知她就坐在墙角，直到曲终人散。
+ 她穿着那么得体，态度且优雅，一点不扫人兴的，一点不碍人事情的。
+ 她就像一个摆设，一幅壁上的画，装点了客厅。
+ 这摆设和画，是沉稳的色调，酱黄底的，是真正的华丽，褪色不褪本。
+ 其余一切，均是浮光掠影。
+ 老克腊就是在此情此景下见到王琦瑶的，他想：这就是人们说的“上海小姐”吗？
+ 他要走开时，见王琦瑶抬起了眼睛，扫了一下又低下了。
+ 这一眼带了些惊恐失措，并没有对谁的一种茫茫然的哀恳，要求原谅的表情。
+ 老克腊这才意识到他的不公平，他想，“上海小姐”已是近四十年的事情了。
+ 再看王琦瑶，眼前便有些发虚，焦点没对准似的，恍惚间，他看见了三十多年前的那个影。
+ 然后，那影又一点一点清晰，凸现，有了些细节。
+ 但这些细节终不那么真实，浮在面上的，它们刺痛了老克腊的心。
+ 他觉出了一个残酷的事实，那就是时间的腐蚀力。
+ 在他二十六岁的年纪里，本是不该知道时间的深浅，时间还没把道理教给他，所以他才敢怀旧呢，他才敢说时间好呢！
+ 老爵士乐里头的时间，确是个好东西，它将东西打磨得又结实又细腻，把东西浮浅的表面光泽磨去，呈现出细密的纹路，烈火见真金的意思。
+ 可他今天看见的，不是老爵士乐那样的旧物，而是个人，他真不知说什么好了。
+ 事情竟是有些惨烈，他这才真触及到旧时光的核了，以前他都是在旧时光的皮肉里穿行。
+ 老克腊没走开，有什么拖住了他的脚步。
+ 他就端着一杯酒，倚在门框上，眼睛看着电视。
+ 后来，王琦瑶从屋角走出来想是要去洗手间。
+ 走过他身边时，他微笑了一下。
+ 她立即将这微笑接了过去，流露出感激的神情，回了一笑。
+ 等她回来，他便对她说，要不要替她去倒杯饮料？
+ 她指了屋角，说那里有她的一杯茶，不必了。
+ 他又请她跳舞，她略迟疑一下，接受了。
+ 客厅里在放着迪斯科的音乐，他们跳的却是四步，把节奏放慢一倍的。
+ 在一片激烈摇动之中，唯有他们不动，狂潮中的孤岛似的。
+ 她抱歉道，他还是跳迪斯科去吧，别陪她磨洋工了。
+ 他则说他就喜欢这个。
+ 他扶在她腰上的手，觉出她身体微妙的律动，以不变应万变，什么样的节奏里都能找到自己的那一种律动，穿越了时光。
+ 他有些感动，沉默着，忽听她在说话，夸他跳得好，是老派的拉丁风。
+ 接下来的舞曲，也有别人来邀请王琦瑶了。
+ 他们各自和舞伴悠然走步，有时目光相遇，便会心地一笑，带着些邂逅的喜悦。
+ 这一晚是国庆夜，有哪幢楼的平台上，放起礼花，孤零零的一朵，在湛黑的天空上缓缓地舒开叶瓣，又缓缓凋零成细细的流星，渐渐消失，空中还留有一团浅白的影。
+ 许久，才融入黑夜。
+
+ The Madness Years
+ China, 1967
+ The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days.
+ Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.
+ The Red Union commander was anxious, though not because of the defenders he faced.
+ The more than two hundred Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were mere greenhorns compared with the veteran Red Guards of the Red Union, which was formed at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in early 1966.
+ The Red Union had been tempered by the tumultuous experience of revolutionary tours around the country and seeing Chairman Mao in the great rallies in Tiananmen Square.
+ But the commander was afraid of the dozen or so iron stoves inside the building, filled with explosives and connected to each other by electric detonators.
+ He couldn't see them, but he could feel their presence like iron sensing the pull of a nearby magnet.
+ If a defender flipped the switch, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike would all die in one giant ball of fire.
+ And the young Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were indeed capable of such madness.
+ Compared with the weathered men and women of the first generation of Red Guards, the new rebels were a pack of wolves on hot coals, crazier than crazy.
+ The slender figure of a beautiful young girl emerged at the top of the building, waving the giant red banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade.
+ Her appearance was greeted immediately by a cacophony of gunshots.
+ The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears.
+ Together, they formed a condensed version of modern history.
+ Numerous members of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade had engaged in similar displays before.
+ They'd stand on top of the building, wave a flag, shout slogans through megaphones, and scatter flyers at the attackers below.
+ Every time, the courageous man or woman had been able to retreat safely from the hailstorm of bullets and earn glory for their valor.
+ The new girl clearly thought she'd be just as lucky.
+ She waved the battle banner as though brandishing her burning youth, trusting that the enemy would be burnt to ashes in the revolutionary flames, imagining that an ideal world would be born tomorrow from the ardor and zeal coursing through her blood....
+ She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest.
+ Her fifteen-year-old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it and whistled in the air behind her.
+ The young Red Guard tumbled down along with her flag, her light form descending even more slowly than the piece of red fabric, like a little bird unwilling to leave the sky.
+ The Red Union warriors shouted in joy.
+ A few rushed to the foot of the building, tore away the battle banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, and seized the slender, lifeless body.
+ They raised their trophy overhead and flaunted it for a while before tossing it toward the top of the metal gate of the compound.
+ Most of the gate's metal bars, capped with sharp tips, had been pulled down at the beginning of the factional civil wars to be used as spears, but two still remained.
+ As their sharp tips caught the girl, life seemed to return momentarily to her body.
+ The Red Guards backed up some distance and began to use the impaled body for target practice.
+ For her, the dense storm of bullets was now no different from a gentle rain, as she could no longer feel anything.
+ From time to time, her vinelike arms jerked across her body softly, as though she were flicking off drops of rain.
+ And then half of her young head was blown away, and only a single, beautiful eye remained to stare at the blue sky of 1967.
+ There was no pain in that gaze, only solidified devotion and yearning.
+ And yet, compared to some others, she was fortunate.
+ At least she died in the throes of passionately sacrificing herself for an ideal.
+ Battles like this one raged across Beijing like a multitude of CPUs working in parallel, their combined output, the Cultural Revolution.
+ A flood of madness drowned the city and seeped into every nook and cranny.
+ At the edge of the city, on the exercise grounds of Tsinghua University, a mass "struggle session" attended by thousands had been going on for nearly two hours.
+ This was a public rally intended to humiliate and break down the enemies of the revolution through verbal and physical abuse until they confessed to their crimes before the crowd.
+ As the revolutionaries had splintered into numerous factions, opposing forces everywhere engaged in complex maneuvers and contests.
+ Within the university, intense conflicts erupted between the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution Working Group, the Workers' Propaganda Team, and the Military Propaganda Team.
+ And each faction divided into new rebel groups from time to time, each based on different backgrounds and agendas, leading to even more ruthless fighting.
+ But for this mass struggle session, the victims were the reactionary bourgeois academic authorities.
+ These were the enemies of every faction, and they had no choice but to endure cruel attacks from every side.
+ Compared to other "Monsters and Demons," reactionary academic authorities were special:
+ During the earliest struggle sessions, they had been both arrogant and stubborn.
+ That was also the stage in which they had died in the largest numbers.
+ Over a period of forty days, in Beijing alone, more than seventeen hundred victims of struggle sessions were beaten to death.
+ Many others picked an easier path to avoid the madness:
+ Lao She, Wu Han, Jian Bozan, Fu Lei, Zhao Jiuzhang, Yi Qun, Wen Jie, Hai Mo, and other once-respected intellectuals had all chosen to end their lives.
+ Those who survived that initial period gradually became numb as the ruthless struggle sessions continued.
+ The protective mental shell helped them avoid total breakdown.
+ They often seemed to be half asleep during the sessions and would only startle awake when someone screamed in their faces to make them mechanically recite their confessions, already repeated countless times.
+ Then, some of them entered a third stage.
+ The constant, unceasing struggle sessions injected vivid political images into their consciousness like mercury, until their minds, erected upon knowledge and rationality, collapsed under the assault.
+ They began to really believe that they were guilty, to see how they had harmed the great cause of the revolution.
+ They cried, and their repentance was far deeper and more sincere than that of those Monsters and Demons who were not intellectuals.
+ For the Red Guards, heaping abuse upon victims in those two latter mental stages was utterly boring.
+ Only those Monsters and Demons who were still in the initial stage could give their overstimulated brains the thrill they craved, like the red cape of the matador.
+ But such desirable victims had grown scarce.
+ In Tsinghua there was probably only one left.
+ Because he was so rare, he was reserved for the very end of the struggle session.
+ Ye Zhetai had survived the Cultural Revolution so far, but he remained in the first mental stage.
+ He refused to repent, to kill himself, or to become numb.
+ When this physics professor walked onto the stage in front of the crowd, his expression clearly said: Let the cross I bear be even heavier.
+ The Red Guards did indeed have him carry a burden, but it wasn't a cross.
+ Other victims wore tall hats made from bamboo frames, but his was welded from thick steel bars.
+ And the plaque he wore around his neck wasn't wooden, like the others, but an iron door taken from a laboratory oven.
+ His name was written on the door in striking black characters, and two red diagonals were drawn across them in a large X.
+ Twice the number of Red Guards used for other victims escorted Ye onto the stage: two men and four women.
+ The two young men strode with confidence and purpose, the very image of mature Bolshevik youths.
+ They were both fourth-year students majoring in theoretical physics, and Ye was their professor.
+ The women, really girls, were much younger, second-year students from the junior high school attached to the university. Dressed in military uniforms and equipped with bandoliers, they exuded youthful vigor and surrounded Ye Zhetai like four green flames.
+ His appearance excited the crowd.
+ The shouting of slogans, which had slackened a bit, now picked up with renewed force and drowned out everything else like a resurgent tide.
+ After waiting patiently for the noise to subside, one of the male Red Guards turned to the victim.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you are an expert in mechanics.
+ You should see how strong the great unified force you're resisting is.
+ To remain so stubborn will lead only to your death!
+ Today, we will continue the agenda from the last time.
+ There's no need to waste words.
+ Answer the following question without your typical deceit: Between the years of 1962 and 1965, did you not decide on your own to add relativity to the intro physics course?"
+ "Relativity is part of the fundamental theories of physics," Ye answered.
+ "How can a basic survey course not teach it?"
+ "You lie!" a female Red Guard by his side shouted.
+ "Einstein is a reactionary academic authority.
+ He would serve any master who dangled money in front of him.
+ He even went to the American Imperialists and helped them build the atom bomb!
+ To develop a revolutionary science, we must overthrow the black banner of capitalism represented by the theory of relativity!"
+ Ye remained silent.
+ Enduring the pain brought by the heavy iron hat and the iron plaque hanging from his neck, he had no energy to answer questions that were not worth answering.
+ Behind him, one of his students also frowned.
+ The girl who had spoken was the most intelligent of the four female Red Guards, and she was clearly prepared, as she had been seen memorizing the struggle session script before coming onstage.
+ But against someone like Ye Zhetai, a few slogans like that were insufficient.
+ The Red Guards decided to bring out the new weapon they had prepared against their teacher.
+ One of them waved to someone offstage.
+ Ye's wife, physics professor Shao Lin, stood up from the crowd's front row.
+ She walked onto the stage dressed in an ill-fitting green outfit, clearly intended to imitate the military uniform of the Red Guards.
+ Those who knew her remembered that she had often taught class in an elegant qipao, and her current appearance felt forced and awkward.
+ "Ye Zhetai!"
+ She was clearly unused to such theater, and though she tried to make her voice louder, the effort magnified the tremors in it.
+ "You didn't think I would stand up and expose you, criticize you?
+ Yes, in the past, I was fooled by you.
+ You covered my eyes with your reactionary view of the world and science!
+ But now I am awake and alert.
+ With the help of the revolutionary youths, I want to stand on the side of the revolution, the side of the people!"
+ She turned to face the crowd.
+ "Comrades, revolutionary youths, revolutionary faculty and staff, we must clearly understand the reactionary nature of Einstein's theory of relativity.
+ This is most apparent in general relativity: Its static model of the universe negates the dynamic nature of matter.
+ It is anti-dialectical!
+ It treats the universe as limited, which is absolutely a form of reactionary idealism...."
+ As he listened to his wife's lecture, Ye allowed himself a wry smile.
+ Lin, I fooled you?
+ Indeed, in my heart you've always been a mystery.
+ One time, I praised your genius to your father—he's lucky to have died early and escaped this catastrophe—and he shook his head, telling me that he did not think you would ever achieve much academically.
+ What he said next turned out to be so important to the second half of my life: "Lin Lin is too smart.
+ To work in fundamental theory, one must be stupid."
+ In later years, I began to understand his words more and more.
+ Lin, you truly are too smart.
+ Even a few years ago, you could feel the political winds shifting in academia and prepared yourself.
+ For example, when you taught, you changed the names of many physical laws and constants: Ohm's law you called resistance law, Maxwell's equations you called electromagnetic equations, Planck's constant you called the quantum constant....
+ You explained to your students that all scientific accomplishments resulted from the wisdom of the working masses, and those capitalist academic authorities only stole these fruits and put their names on them.
+ But even so, you couldn't be accepted by the revolutionary mainstream.
+ Look at you now: You're not allowed to wear the red armband of the "revolutionary faculty and staff"; you had to come up here empty-handed, without the status to carry a Little Red Book....
+ You can't overcome the fault of being born to a prominent family in pre-revolutionary China and of having such famous scholars as parents.
+ But you actually have more to confess about Einstein than I do.
+ In the winter of 1922, Einstein visited Shanghai.
+ Because your father spoke fluent German, he was asked to accompany Einstein on his tour.
+ You told me many times that your father went into physics because of Einstein's encouragement, and you chose physics because of your father's influence.
+ So, in a way, Einstein can be said to have indirectly been your teacher.
+ And you once felt so proud and lucky to have such a connection.
+ Later, I found out that your father had told you a white lie.
+ He and Einstein had only one very brief conversation.
+ The morning of November 13, 1922, he accompanied Einstein on a walk along Nanjing Road.
+ Others who went on the walk included Yu Youren, president of Shanghai University, and Cao Gubing, general manager of the newspaper Ta Kung Pao.
+ When they passed a maintenance site in the road bed, Einstein stopped next to a worker who was smashing stones and silently observed this boy with torn clothes and dirty face and hands.
+ He asked your father how much the boy earned each day.
+ After asking the boy, he told Einstein: five cents.
+ This was the only time he spoke with the great scientist who changed the world.
+ There was no discussion of physics, of relativity, only cold, harsh reality.
+ According to your father, Einstein stood there for a long time after hearing the answer, watching the boy's mechanical movements, not even bothering to smoke his pipe as the embers went out.
+ After your father recounted this memory to me, he sighed and said, "In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground.
+ The gravity of reality is too strong."
+ "Lower your head!" one of the male Red Guards shouted.
+ This may actually have been a gesture of mercy from his former student.
+ All victims being struggled against were supposed to lower their heads.
+ If Ye did lower his head, the tall, heavy iron hat would fall off, and if he kept his head lowered, there would be no reason to put it back on him.
+ But Ye refused and held his head high, supporting the heavy weight with his thin neck.
+ "Lower your head, you stubborn reactionary!"
+ One of the girl Red Guards took off her belt and swung it at Ye.
+ The copper belt buckle struck his forehead and left a clear impression that was quickly blurred by oozing blood.
+ He swayed unsteadily for a few moments, then stood straight and firm again.
+ One of the male Red Guards said, "When you taught quantum mechanics, you also mixed in many reactionary ideas."
+ Then he nodded at Shao Lin, indicating that she should continue.
+ Shao was happy to oblige.
+ She had to keep on talking, otherwise her fragile mind, already hanging on only by a thin thread, would collapse completely.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you cannot deny this charge!
+ You have often lectured students on the reactionary Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics."
+ "It is, after all, the explanation recognized to be most in line with experimental results."
+ His tone, so calm and collected, surprised and frightened Shao Lin.
+ "This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function.
+ This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
+ "Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?"
+ Ye's sudden counterattack shocked those leading the struggle session.
+ For a moment they did not know what to do.
+ "Of course it should be the correct philosophy of Marxism that guides scientific experiments!" one of the male Red Guards finally said.
+ "Then that's equivalent to saying that the correct philosophy falls out of the sky.
+ This is against the idea that the truth emerges from experience.
+ It's counter to the principles of how Marxism seeks to understand nature."
+ Shao Lin and the two college student Red Guards had no answer for this.
+ Unlike the Red Guards who were still in junior high school, they couldn't completely ignore logic.
+ But the four junior high girls had their own revolutionary methods that they believed were invincible.
+ The girl who had hit Ye before took out her belt and whipped Ye again.
+ The other three girls also took off their belts to strike at Ye.
+ With their companion displaying such revolutionary fervor, they had to display even more, or at least the same amount.
+ The two male Red Guards didn't interfere.
+ If they tried to intervene now, they would be suspected of being insufficiently revolutionary.
+ "You also taught the big bang theory.
+ This is the most reactionary of all scientific theories."
+ One of the male Red Guards spoke up, trying to change the subject.
+ "Maybe in the future this theory will be disproven.
+ But two great cosmological discoveries of this century—
+ Hubble's law, and observation of the cosmic microwave background–show that the big bang theory is currently the most plausible explanation for the origin of the universe."
+ "Lies!"
+ Shao Lin shouted.
+ Then she began a long lecture about the big bang theory, remembering to splice in insightful critiques of the theory's extremely reactionary nature.
+ But the freshness of the theory attracted the most intelligent of the four girls, who couldn't help but ask, "Time began with the singularity?
+ So what was there before the singularity?"
+ "Nothing," Ye said, the way he would answer a question from any curious young person.
+ He turned to look at the girl kindly.
+ With his injuries and the tall iron hat, the motion was very difficult.
+ "No ... nothing?
+ That's reactionary!
+ Completely reactionary!" the frightened girl shouted.
+ She turned to Shao Lin, who gladly came to her aid.
+ "The theory leaves open a place to be filled by God."
+ Shao nodded at the girl.
+ The young Red Guard, confused by these new thoughts, finally found her footing.
+ She raised her hand, still holding the belt, and pointed at Ye.
+ "You: you're trying to say that God exists?"
+ "I don't know."
+ "What?"
+ "I'm saying I don't know.
+ If by 'God' you mean some kind of superconsciousness outside the universe, I don't know if it exists or not.
+ Science has given no evidence either way."
+ Actually, in this nightmarish moment, Ye was leaning toward believing that God did not exist.
+ This extremely reactionary statement caused a commotion in the crowd.
+ Led by one of the Red Guards on stage, another tide of slogan-shouting exploded.
+ "Down with reactionary academic authority Ye Zhetai!"
+ "Down with all reactionary academic authorities!"
+ "Down with all reactionary doctrines!"
+ Once the slogans died down, the girl shouted, "God does not exist.
+ All religions are tools concocted by the ruling class to paralyze the spirit of the people!"
+ "That is a very one-sided view," Ye said calmly.
+ The young Red Guard, embarrassed and angry, reached the conclusion that, against this dangerous enemy, all talk was useless.
+ She picked up her belt and rushed at Ye, and her three companions followed.
+ Ye was tall, and the four fourteen-year-olds had to swing their belts upward to reach his head, still held high.
+ After a few strikes, the tall iron hat, which had protected him a little, fell off.
+ The continuing barrage of strikes by the metal buckles finally made him fall down.
+ The young Red Guards, encouraged by their success, became even more devoted to this glorious struggle.
+ They were fighting for faith, for ideals.
+ They were intoxicated by the bright light cast on them by history, proud of their own bravery....
+ Ye's two students had finally had enough.
+ "The chairman instructed us to 'rely on eloquence rather than violence'!"
+ They rushed over and pulled the four semicrazed girls off Ye.
+ But it was already too late.
+ The physicist lay quietly on the ground, his eyes still open as blood oozed from his head.
+ The frenzied crowd sank into silence.
+ The only thing that moved was a thin stream of blood.
+ Like a red snake, it slowly meandered across the stage, reached the edge, and dripped onto a chest below.
+ The rhythmic sound made by the blood drops was like the steps of someone walking away.
+ A cackling laugh broke the silence.
+ The sound came from Shao Lin, whose mind had finally broken.
+ The laughter frightened the attendees, who began to leave the struggle session, first in trickles, and then in a flood.
+ The exercise grounds soon emptied, leaving only one young woman below the stage.
+ She was Ye Wenjie, Ye Zhetai's daughter.
+ As the four girls were taking her father's life, she had tried to rush onto the stage.
+ But two old university janitors held her down and whispered into her ear that she would lose her own life if she went.
+ The mass struggle session had turned into a scene of madness, and her appearance would only incite more violence.
+ She had screamed and screamed, but she had been drowned out by the frenzied waves of slogans and cheers.
+ When it was finally quiet again, she was no longer capable of making any sound.
+ She stared at her father's lifeless body, and the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.
+ After the crowd dispersed, she remained like a stone statue, her body and limbs in the positions they were in when the two old janitors had held her back.
+ After a long time, she finally let her arms down, walked slowly onto the stage, sat next to her father's body, and held one of his already-cold hands, her eyes staring emptily into the distance.
+ When they finally came to carry away the body, she took something from her pocket and put it into her father's hand: his pipe.
+ Wenjie quietly left the exercise grounds, empty save for the trash left by the crowd, and headed home.
+ When she reached the foot of the faculty housing apartment building, she heard peals of crazy laughter coming out of the second-floor window of her home.
+ That was the woman she had once called mother.
+ Wenjie turned around, not caring where her feet would carry her.
+ Finally, she found herself at the door of Professor Ruan Wen.
+ Throughout the four years of Wenjie's college life, Professor Ruan had been her advisor and her closest friend.
+ During the two years after that, when Wenjie had been a graduate student in the Astrophysics Department, and through the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Professor Ruan remained her closest confidante, other than her father.
+ Ruan had studied at Cambridge University, and her home had once fascinated Wenjie: refined books, paintings, and records brought back from Europe; a piano; a set of European-style pipes arranged on a delicate wooden stand, some made from Mediterranean briar, some from Turkish meerschaum.
+ Each of them seemed suffused with the wisdom of the man who had once held the bowl in his hand or clamped the stem between his teeth, deep in thought, though Ruan had never mentioned the man's name.
+ The pipe that had belonged to Wenjie's father had in fact been a gift from Ruan.
+ This elegant, warm home had once been a safe harbor for Wenjie when she needed to escape the storms of the larger world, but that was before Ruan's home had been searched and her possessions seized by the Red Guards.
+ Like Wenjie's father, Ruan had suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution.
+ During her struggle sessions, the Red Guards had hung a pair of high heels around her neck and streaked her face with lipstick to show how she had lived the corrupt lifestyle of a capitalist.
+ Wenjie pushed open the door to Ruan's home, and she saw that the chaos left by the Red Guards had been cleaned up: The torn oil paintings had been glued back together and rehung on the walls; the toppled piano had been set upright and wiped clean, though it was broken and could no longer be played; the few books left behind had been put back neatly on the shelf....
+ Ruan was sitting on the chair before her desk, her eyes closed.
+ Wenjie stood next to Ruan and gently caressed her professor's forehead, face, and hands—all cold.
+ Wenjie had noticed the empty sleeping pill bottle on the desk as soon as she came in.
+ She stood there for a while, silent.
+ Then she turned and walked away.
+ She could no longer feel grief.
+ She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero.
+ But as she was about to leave Ruan's home, Wenjie turned around for a final look.
+ She noticed that Professor Ruan had put on makeup.
+ She was wearing a light coat of lipstick and a pair of high heels.
+
+ 疯狂年代
+ 中国，1967年。
+ “红色联合”对“四·二八兵团”总部大楼的攻击已持续了两天，他们的旗帜在大楼周围躁动地飘扬着，仿佛渴望干柴的火种。
+ “红色联合”的指挥官心急如焚，他并不惧怕大楼的守卫者，那二百多名“四·二八”战士，与诞生于l966年初、经历过大检阅和大串联的“红色联合”相比要稚嫩许多。
+ 他怕的是大楼中那十几个大铁炉子，里面塞满了烈性炸药，用电雷管串联起来，他看不到它们，但能感觉到它们磁石般的存在，开关一合，玉石俱焚，而“四·二八”的那些小红卫兵们是有这个精神力量的。
+ 比起已经在风雨中成熟了许多的第一代红卫兵，新生的造反派们像火炭上的狼群，除了疯狂还是疯狂。
+ 大楼顶上出现了一个娇小的身影，那个美丽的女孩子挥动着一面“四·二八”的大旗，她的出现立刻招来了一阵杂乱的枪声，射击的武器五花八门，有陈旧的美式卡宾枪、捷克式机枪和三八大盖，也有崭新的制式步枪和冲锋枪——后者是在“八月社论”发表之后从军队中偷抢来的——连同那些梭标和大刀等冷兵器，构成了一部浓缩的近现代史……
+ “四·二八”的人在前面多次玩过这个游戏，在楼顶上站出来的人，除了挥舞旗帜外，有时还用喇叭筒喊口号或向下撒传单，每次他们都能在弹雨中全身而退，为自己挣到了崇高的荣誉。
+ 这次出来的女孩儿显然也相信自己还有那样的幸运。
+ 她挥舞着战旗，挥动着自己燃烧的青春，敌人将在这火焰中化为灰烬，理想世界明天就会在她那沸腾的热血中诞生……
+ 她陶醉在这鲜红灿烂的梦幻中，直到被一颗步枪子弹洞穿了胸膛，十五岁少女的胸膛是那么柔嫩，那颗子弹穿过后基本上没有减速，在她身后的空中发出一声啾鸣。
+ 年轻的红卫兵同她的旗帜一起从楼顶落下，她那轻盈的身体落得甚至比旗帜还慢，仿佛小鸟眷恋着天空。
+ “红色联合”的战士们欢呼起来，几个人冲到楼下，掀开四·二八的旗帜，抬起下面纤小的遗体，作为一个战利品炫耀地举了一段，然后将她高高地扔向大院的铁门。
+ 铁门上带尖的金属栅条大部分在武斗初期就被抽走当梭镖了，剩下的两条正好挂住了她，那一瞬间，生命似乎又回到了那个柔软的躯体。
+ 红色联合的红卫兵们退后一段距离，将那个挂在高处的躯体当靶子练习射击，密集的子弹对她来说已柔和如雨，不再带来任何感觉。
+ 她那春藤般的手臂不时轻挥一下，仿佛拂去落在身上的雨滴，直到那颗年轻的头颅被打掉了一半，仅剩的一只美丽的眼睛仍然凝视着一九六七年的蓝天，目光中没有痛苦，只有凝固的激情和渴望。
+ 其实，比起另外一些人来，她还是幸运的，至少是在为理想献身的壮丽激情中死去。
+ 这样的热点遍布整座城市，像无数并行运算的CPU，将“文革大革命”联为一个整体。
+ 疯狂如同无形的洪水，将城市淹没其中，并渗透到每一个细微的角落和缝隙。
+ 在城市边缘的那所著名大学的操场上，一场几千人参加的批斗会已经进行了近两个小时。
+ 在这个派别林立的年代，任何一处都有错综复杂的对立派别在格斗。
+ 在校园中，红卫兵、文革工作组、工宣队和军宣队，相互之间都在爆发尖锐的冲突，而每种派别的内部又时时分化出新的对立派系，捍卫着各自不同的背景和纲领，爆发更为残酷的较量。
+ 但这次被批斗的反动学术权威，却是任何一方均无异议的斗争目标，他们也只能同时承受来自各方的残酷打击。
+ 与其他的牛鬼蛇神相比，反动学术权威有他们的特点：当打击最初到来时，他们的表现往往是高傲而顽固的，这也是他们伤亡率最高的阶段。
+ 在首都，四十天的时间里就有一千七百多名批斗对象被活活打死，更多的人选择了更快捷的路径来逃避疯狂：老舍、吴晗、翦伯赞、傅雷、赵九章、以群、闻捷、海默等，都自己结束了他们那曾经让人肃然起敬的生命。
+ 从这一阶段幸存下来的人，在持续的残酷打击下渐渐麻木，这是一种自我保护的精神外壳，使他们避免最后的崩溃。
+ 他们在批斗会上常常进入半睡眠状态，只有一声恫吓才能使其惊醒过来，机械地重复那已说过无数遍的认罪词。
+ 然后，他们中的一部分人便进入了第三阶段，旷日持久的批判将鲜明的政治图像如水银般注入了他们的意识，将他们那由知识和理性构筑的思想大厦彻底摧毁，他们真的相信自己有罪，真的看到了自己对伟大事业构成的损害，并为此痛哭流涕，他们的忏悔往往比那此非知识分子的牛鬼蛇神要深刻得多，也真诚得多。
+ 而对于红卫兵来说，进入后两个阶段的批判对象是最乏味的，只有处于第一阶段的牛鬼蛇神才能对他们那早已过度兴奋的神经产生有效的刺激，如同斗牛士手上的红布，但这样的对象越来越少了，在这所大学中可能只剩下一个，他由于自己的珍稀而被留到批判大会最后出场。
+ 叶哲泰从文革开始一直活到了现在，并且一直处于第一阶段，他不认罪，不自杀，也不麻木。
+ 当这位物理学教授走上批判台时，他那神情分明在说：让我背负的十字架更沉重一些吧！
+ 红卫兵们让他负担的东西确实很重，但不是十字架。
+ 别的批判对象戴的高帽子都是用竹条扎的框架，而他戴的这顶却是用一指粗的钢筋焊成的，还有他挂在胸前的那块牌子，也不是别人挂的木板，而是从实验室的一个烤箱上拆下的铁门，上面用黑色醒目地写着他的名字，并沿对角线画上了一个红色的大叉。
+ 押送叶哲泰上台的红卫兵比别的批判对象多了一倍，有六人，两男四女。
+ 两个男青年步伐稳健有力，一副成熟的青年布尔什维克形象，他们都是物理系理论物理专业大四年级的，叶哲泰曾是他们的老师；那四名女孩子要年轻得多，都是大学附中的初二学生，这些穿着军装扎着武装带的小战士挟带着逼人的青春活力，像四团绿色的火焰包围着叶哲泰。
+ 叶哲泰的出现使下面的人群兴奋起来，刚才已有些乏力的口号声又像新一轮海潮般重新高昂起来，淹没了一切。
+ 耐心地等口号声平息下去后，台上两名男红卫兵中的一人转向批判对象：“叶哲泰，你精通各种力学，应该看到自己正在抗拒的这股伟大的合力是多么强大，顽固下去是死路一条！
+ 今天继续上次大会的议程，废话就不多说了。
+ 老实回答下面的问题：在六二至六五届的基础课中，你是不是擅自加入了大量的相对论内容？！”
+ “相对论已经成为物理学的古典理论，基础课怎么能不涉及它呢？”
+ 叶哲泰回答说。
+ “你胡说！”
+ 旁边的一名女红卫兵厉声说，“爱因斯坦是反动的学术权威，他有奶便是娘，跑去为美帝国主义造原子弹！
+ 要建立起革命的科学，就要打倒以相对论为代表的资产阶级理论黑旗！”
+ 叶哲泰沉默着，他在忍受着头上铁高帽和胸前铁板带来的痛苦，不值得回应的问题就沉默了。
+ 在他身后，他的学生也微微皱了一下眉头。
+ 说话的女孩儿是这四个中学红卫兵中天资最聪颖的一个，并且显然有备而来，刚才上台前还看到她在背批判稿，但要对付叶哲泰，仅凭她那几句口号是不行的。
+ 他们决定亮出今天为老师准备的新武器，其中的一人对台下挥了一下手。
+ 叶哲泰的妻子，同系的物理学教授绍琳从台下的前排站起来，走上台。
+ 她身穿一件很不合体的草绿色衣服，显然想与红卫兵的色彩拉近距离，但熟悉绍琳的人联想到以前常穿精致旗袍讲课的她，总觉得别扭。
+ “叶哲泰！”
+ 绍琳指着丈夫喝道，她显然不习惯于这种场合，尽量拔高自己的声音，却连其中的颤抖也放大了，“你没有想到我会站出来揭发你，批判你吧！？
+ 是的，我以前受你欺骗，你用自己那反动的世界观和科学观蒙蔽了我！
+ 现在我醒悟了，在革命小将的帮助下，我要站到革命的一边，人民的一边！”
+ 她转向台下，“同志们、革命小将们、革命的教职员工们，我们应该认清爱因斯坦相对论的反动本质，这种本质，广义相对论体现得最清楚：它提出的静态宇宙模型，否定了物质的运动本性，是反辩证法的！
+ 它认为宇宙有限，更是彻头彻尾的反动唯心主义……”
+ 听着妻子滔滔不绝的演讲，叶哲泰苦笑了一下。
+ 琳，我蒙蔽了你？
+ 其实你在我心中倒一直是个谜。
+ 一次，我对你父亲称赞你那过人的天资——他很幸运，去得早，躲过了这场灾难——老人家摇摇头，说我女儿不可能在学术上有什么建树；接着，他说出了对我后半生很重要的一句话：琳琳太聪明了，可是搞基础理论，不笨不行啊。
+ 以后的许多年里，我不断悟出这话的深意。
+ 琳，你真的太聪明了，早在几年前，你就嗅出了知识界的政治风向，做出了一些超前的举动，比如你在教学中，把大部分物理定律和参数都改了名字，欧姆定律改叫电阻定律，麦克斯韦方程改名成电磁方程，普朗克常数叫成了量子常数……
+ 你对学生们解释说：所有的科学成果都是广大劳动人民智慧的结晶，那些资产阶级学术权威不过是窃取了这些智慧。
+ 但即使这样，你仍然没有被“革命主流”所接纳，看看现在的你，衣袖上没有“革命教职员工”都戴着的红袖章；你两手空空地上来，连一本语录都没资格拿……
+ 谁让你出生在旧中国那样一个显赫的家庭，你父母又都是那么著名的学者。
+ 说起爱因斯坦，你比我有更多的东西需要交待。
+ 1922年冬天，爱因斯坦到上海访问，你父亲因德语很好被安排为接待陪同者之一。
+ 你多次告诉我，父亲是在爱因斯坦的亲自教诲下走上物理学之路的，而你选择物理专业又是受了父亲的影响，所以爱翁也可以看作你的间接导师，你为此感到无比的自豪和幸福。
+ 后来我知道，父亲对你讲了善意的谎言，他与爱因斯坦只有过一次短得不能再短的交流。
+ 那是l922年11月l3日上午，他陪爱因斯坦到南京路散步，同行的好像还有上海大学校长于右任、《大公报》经理曹谷冰等人，经过一个路基维修点，爱因斯坦在一名砸石子的小工身旁停下，默默看着这个在寒风中衣衫破烂、手脸污黑的男孩子，问你父亲：他一天挣多少钱？
+ 问过小工后，你父亲回答：五分。
+ 这就是他与改变世界的科学大师唯一的一次交流，没有物理学，没有相对论，只有冰冷的现实。
+ 据你父亲说，爱因斯坦听到他的回答后又默默地站在那里好一会儿，看着小工麻木的劳作，手里的烟斗都灭了也没有吸一口。
+ 你父亲在回忆这件事后，对我发出这样的感叹：在中国，任何超脱飞扬的思想都会砰然坠地的，现实的引力太沉重了。
+ “低下头！”
+ 一名男红卫兵大声命令。
+ 这也许是自己的学生对老师一丝残存的同情，被批斗者都要低头，但叶哲泰要这样，那顶沉重的铁高帽就会掉下去，以后只要他一直低着头，就没有理由再给他戴上。
+ 但叶哲泰仍昂着头，用瘦弱的脖颈支撑着那束沉重的钢铁。
+ “低头！
+ 你个反动顽固分子！ ！”
+ 旁边一名女红卫兵解下腰间的皮带朝叶哲泰挥去，黄铜带扣正打在他脑门上，在那里精确地留下了带扣的形状，但很快又被淤血模糊成黑紫的一团。
+ 他摇晃了一下，又站稳了。
+ 一名男红卫兵质问叶哲泰：“在量子力学的教学中，你也散布过大量的反动言论！”
+ 说完对绍琳点点头，示意她继续。
+ 绍琳迫不及待地要继续下去了，她必须不停顿地说下去，以维持自己那摇摇欲坠的精神免于彻底垮掉。
+ “叶哲泰，这一点你是无法抵赖的！
+ 你多次向学生散布反动的哥本哈根解释！”
+ “这毕竟是目前公认的最符合实验结果的解释。”
+ 叶哲泰说，在受到如此重击后，他的口气还如此从容，这让绍琳很吃惊，也很恐惧。
+ “这个解释认为，是外部的观察导致了量子波函数的坍缩，这是反动唯心论的另一种表现形式，而且是一种最猖狂的表现！”
+ “是哲学指引实验还是实验指引哲学？”
+ 叶哲泰问道，他这突然的反击令批判者们一时不知所措。
+ “当然是正确的马克思主义哲学指引科学实验！”
+ 一名男红卫兵说。
+ “这等于说正确的哲学是从天上掉下来的。
+ 这反对实践出真知，恰恰是违背马克思主义对自然界的认知原则的。”
+ 绍琳和两名大学红卫兵无言以对，与中学和社会上的红卫兵不同，他们不可能一点儿道理也不讲。
+ 但来自附中的四位小将自有她们“无坚不摧”的革命方式，刚才动手的那个女孩儿又狠抽了叶哲泰一皮带，另外三个女孩子也都分别抡起皮带抽了一下，当同伴革命时，她们必须表现得更革命，至少要同样革命。
+ 两名男红卫兵没有过问，他们要是现在管这事，也有不革命的嫌疑。
+ “你还在教学中散布宇宙大爆炸理论，这是所有科学理论中最反动的一个！”
+ 一名男红卫兵试图转移话题。
+ “也许以后这个理论会被推翻，但本世纪的两大宇宙学发现：哈勃红移和3K宇宙背景辐射，使大爆炸学说成为目前为止最可信的宇宙起源理论。”
+ “胡说！”
+ 绍琳大叫起来，又接着滔滔不绝地讲起了宇宙大爆炸，自然不忘深刻地剖析其反动本质。
+ 但这理论的超级新奇吸引了四个小女孩儿中最聪明的那一个，她不由自主地问道：“连时间都是从那个奇点开始的！？
+ 那奇点以前有什么？”
+ “什么都没有。”
+ 叶哲泰说，像回答任何一个小女孩儿的问题那样，他转头慈祥地看着她，铁高帽和已受的重伤，使他这动作很艰难。
+ “什么…… 都没有？！
+ 反动！
+ 反动透顶！ ！”
+ 那女孩儿惊恐万状地大叫起来，她不知所措地转向绍琳寻求帮助，立刻得到了回应。
+ “这给上帝的存在留下了位置。”
+ 绍琳对女孩儿点点头提示说。
+ 小红卫兵那茫然的思路立刻找到了立脚点，她举起紧握皮带的手指着叶哲泰，“你，是想说有上帝？！”
+ “我不知道。”
+ “你说什么！”
+ “我是说不知道，如果上帝是指宇宙之外的超意识的话，我不知道它是不是存在；正反两方面，科学都没给出确实的证据。”
+ 其实，在这噩梦般的时刻，叶哲泰已倾向于相信它不存在了。
+ 这句大逆不道的话在整个会场引起了骚动，在台上一名红卫兵的带领下，又爆发了一波波的口号声。
+ “打倒反动学术权威叶哲泰！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学术权威！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学说！！” ……
+ “上帝是不存在的，一切宗教，都是统治阶级编造出来的麻痹人民的精神工具！”
+ 口号平息后，那个小女孩儿大声说。
+ “这种看法是片面的。”
+ 叶哲泰平静地说。
+ 恼羞成怒的小红卫兵立刻做出了判断，对于眼前这个危险的敌人，一切语言都无意义了。
+ 她抡起皮带冲上去，她的三个小同志立刻跟上。
+ 叶哲泰的个子很高，这四个十四岁的女孩儿只能朝上抡皮带才能打到他那不肯低下的头。
+ 在开始的几下打击后，他头上能起一定保护作用的铁高帽被打掉了，接下来带铜扣的宽皮带如雨点般打在他的头上和身上——他终于倒下了。
+ 这鼓舞了小红卫兵们，她们更加投入地继续着这“崇高”的战斗，她们在为信念而战，为理想而战，她们为历史给予自己的光辉使命所陶醉，为自己的英勇而自豪……
+ “最高指示：要文斗不要武斗！”
+ 叶哲泰的两名学生终于下定了决心，喊出了这句话，两人同时冲过去，拉开了已处于半疯狂状态的四个小女孩儿。
+ 但已经晚了，物理学家静静地躺在地上，半睁的双眼看着从他的头颅上流出的血迹，疯狂的会场瞬间陷入了一片死寂。
+ 那条血迹是唯一在动的东西，它像一条红蛇缓慢地蜿蜒爬行着，到达台沿后一滴滴地滴在下面一个空箱子上，发出有节奏的“哒哒”声，像渐行渐远的脚步。
+ 一阵怪笑声打破了寂静，这声音是精神已彻底崩溃的绍琳发出的，听起来十分恐怖。
+ 人们开始离去，最后发展成一场大溃逃，每个人想都尽快逃离这个地方。
+ 会场很快空了下来，只剩下一个姑娘站在台下。
+ 她是叶哲泰的女儿叶文洁。
+ 当那四个女孩儿施暴夺去父亲生命时，她曾想冲上台去，但身边的两名老校工死死抓住她，并在耳边低声告诉她别连自己的命也不要了，当时会场已经处于彻底的癫狂，她的出现只会引出更多的暴徒。
+ 她曾声嘶力竭地哭叫，但声音淹没在会场上疯狂的口号和助威声中，当一切寂静下来时，她自己也发不出任何声音了，只是凝视台上父亲已没有生命的躯体，那没有哭出和喊出的东西在她的血液中弥漫、溶解，将伴她一生。
+ 人群散去后，她站在那里，身体和四肢仍保持着老校工抓着她时的姿态，一动不动，像石化了一般。
+ 过了好久，她才将悬空的手臂放下来，缓缓起身走上台，坐在父亲的遗体边，握起他的一只已凉下来的手，两眼失神地看着远方。
+ 当遗体要被抬走时，叶文洁从衣袋中拿出一样东西放到父亲的那只手中，那是父亲的烟斗。
+ 文洁默默地离开了已经空无一人一片狼藉的操场，走上回家的路。
+ 当她走到教工宿舍楼下时，听到了从二楼自家窗口传出的一阵阵痴笑声，这声音是那个她曾叫做妈妈的女人发出的。
+ 文洁默默地转身走去，任双脚将她带向别处。
+ 她最后发现自己来到了阮雯的家门前。
+ 在大学四年中，阮老师一直是她的班主任，也是她最亲密的朋友。
+ 在叶文洁读天体物理专业研究生的两年里，再到后来停课闹革命至今，阮老师一直是她除父亲外最亲近的人。
+ 阮雯曾留学剑桥，她的家曾对叶文洁充满了吸引力，那里有许多从欧洲带回来的精致的书籍、油画和唱片，一架钢琴；还有一排放在精致小木架上的欧式烟斗，父亲那只就是她送的，这些烟斗有地中海石楠根的，有土耳其海泡石的，每一个都仿佛浸透了曾将它们拿在手中和含在嘴里深思的那个男人的智慧，但阮雯从未提起过他。
+ 这个雅致温暖的小世界成为文洁逃避尘世风暴的港湾。
+ 但那是阮雯的家被抄之前的事，她在运动中受到的冲击和文洁父亲一样重。
+ 在批斗会上，红卫兵把高跟鞋挂到她脖子上，用口红在她的脸上划出许多道子，以展示她那腐朽的资产阶级生活方式。
+ 叶文洁推开阮雯的家门，发现抄家后混乱的房间变得整洁了，那几幅被撕的油画又贴糊好挂在墙上，歪倒的钢琴也端正地立在原位，虽然已被砸坏不能弹了，但还是擦得很干净，残存的几本精装书籍也被整齐地放回书架上……
+ 阮雯端坐在写字台前的那把转椅上，安详地闭着双眼。
+ 叶文洁站在她身边，摸摸她的额头、脸和手，都是冰凉的，其实文洁在进门后就注意到了写字台上倒放着的那个已空的安眠药瓶。
+ 她默默地站了一会儿，转身走去，悲伤已感觉不到了，她现在就像一台盖革计数仪，当置身于超量的辐射中时，反而不再有任何反应，没有声响，读数为零。
+ 但当她就要出门时，还是回过头来最后看了阮雯一眼，她发现阮老师很好地上了妆，她抹了口红，也穿上了高跟鞋。
+
+ The location for the Three Body players' meet-up was a small, out-of-the-way coffee shop.
+ Wang had always imagined game meet-ups would be lively events full of people, but this meet-up consisted of only seven players, including himself.
+ Like Wang, the other six did not look like gaming enthusiasts.
+ Only two were relatively young.
+ Another three, including a woman, were middle-aged.
+ There was also an old man who appeared to be in his sixties or seventies.
+ Wang had originally thought that as soon as they met they'd begin a lively discussion of Three Body, but he was wrong.
+ The profound but strange content of Three Body had had a psychological impact on the participants.
+ All the players, including Wang himself, couldn't bring it up easily.
+ They only made simple self-introductions.
+ The old man took out a refined pipe, filled it with tobacco, and smoked as he strolled around, admiring the paintings on the walls.
+ The others sat silently, waiting for the meet-up organizer to show up.
+ They had all come early.
+ Actually, of the six, Wang already knew two.
+ The old man was a famous scholar who had made his name by imbuing Eastern philosophy with the content of modern science.
+ The strangely dressed woman was a famous writer, one of those rare novelists who wrote in an avant-garde style but still had many readers.
+ You could start one of her books on any page.
+ Of the two middle-aged men, one was a vice president at China's largest software company, plainly and casually dressed so that his status wasn't obvious at all; and the other was a high-level executive at the State Power Corporation.
+ Of the two young men, one was a reporter with a major media outlet, and the other was a doctoral student in the sciences.
+ Wang now realized that a considerable number of Three Body players were probably social elites like them.
+ The meet-up organizer showed up not long after.
+ Wang's heart began to beat faster as soon as he saw the man: it was Pan Han, prime suspect for the murder of Shen Yufei.
+ He took out his phone when no one was looking and texted Shi Qiang.
+ "Haha, everyone got here early!"
+ Pan greeted them in a relaxed manner, as though nothing was wrong.
+ Appearing in the media, he usually looked disheveled, like a vagrant, but today, he was dressed sharply in a suit and dress shoes.
+ "You're just like I imagined.
+ Three Body is intended for people in your class because the common crowd cannot appreciate its meaning and mood.
+ To play it well requires knowledge and understanding that ordinary people do not possess."
+ Wang sent out his text: Spotted Pan Han.
+ At Yunhe Coffee Shop in Xicheng District.
+ Pan continued.
+ "Everyone here is an excellent Three Body player.
+ You have the best scores and are devoted to it.
+ I believe that Three Body is already an important part of your lives."
+ "It's part of what keeps me alive," the young doctoral student said.
+ "I saw it by accident on my grandson's computer," the old philosopher said, lifting his pipe stem.
+ "The young man abandoned it after a few tries, saying it was too abstruse.
+ But I was attracted to it.
+ I find it strange, terrible, but also beautiful.
+ So much information is hidden beneath a simple representation."
+ A few players nodded at this description, including Wang himself.
+ Wang received Da Shi's reply text: We also see him.
+ No worries.
+ Carry on.
+ Play the fanatic in front of them, but not so much that you can't pull it off.
+ "Yes," the author agreed, and nodded.
+ "I like the literary elements of Three Body.
+ The rises and falls of two hundred and three civilizations evoke the qualities of epics in a new form."
+ She mentioned 203 civilizations, but Wang had only experienced 184.
+ This told Wang that Three Body progressed independently for each player, possibly with different worlds.
+ "I'm a bit sick of the real world," the young reporter said.
+ "Three Body is already my second reality."
+ "Really?"
+ Pan asked, interested.
+ "Me too," the software company vice president said.
+ "Compared to Three Body, reality is so vulgar and unexciting."
+ "It's too bad that it's only a game," said the power company executive.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ Wang noticed his eyes sparkling with excitement.
+ "I have a question that I think everyone wants to know the answer to," Wang said.
+ "I know what it is.
+ But you might as well ask."
+ "Is Three Body only a game?"
+ The other players nodded.
+ Clearly the question was also on their minds.
+ Pan stood up and said solemnly, "The world of Three Body, or Trisolaris, really does exist."
+ "Where is it?" several players asked in unison.
+ After looking at each of them in turn, Pan sat down and spoke.
+ "Some questions I can answer.
+ Others I cannot.
+ But if you are meant to be with Trisolaris, all your questions will be answered someday."
+ "Then ... does the game really portray Trisolaris accurately?" the reporter asked.
+ "First, the ability of Trisolarans to dehydrate through its many cycles of civilization is real.
+ In order to adapt to the unpredictable natural environment and avoid extreme environmental conditions unsuitable for life, they can completely expel the water in their bodies and turn into dry, fibrous objects."
+ "What do Trisolarans look like?"
+ Pan shook his head.
+ "I don't know.
+ I really don't.
+ In every cycle of civilization, the appearance of Trisolarans is different.
+ However, the game does portray something else that really existed on Trisolaris: the Trisolaran-formation computer."
+ "Ha!
+ I thought that was the most unrealistic aspect," the software company vice president said.
+ "I conducted a test with more than a hundred employees at my company.
+ Even if the idea worked, a computer made of people would probably operate at a speed slower than manual computation."
+ Pan gave a mysterious smile.
+ "You're right.
+ But suppose that of the thirty million soldiers forming the computer, each one is capable of raising and lowering the black and white flags a hundred thousand times per second, and suppose also that the light cavalry soldiers on the main bus can run at several times the speed of sound, or even faster.
+ Then the result would be very different.
+ "You asked about the appearance of the Trisolarans just now.
+ According to some signs, the bodies of the Trisolarans who formed the computer were covered by a purely reflective surface, which probably evolved as a response to survival under extreme conditions of sunlight.
+ The mirrorlike surface could be deformed into any shape, and they communicated with each other by focusing light with their bodies.
+ This kind of light-speech could transmit information extremely rapidly and was the foundation of the Trisolaran-formation computer.
+ Of course, this was still a very inefficient machine, but it was capable of completing calculations that were too difficult to be performed manually.
+ The computer did in fact make its first appearance in Trisolaris as formations of people, before becoming mechanical and then electronic."
+ Pan stood up and paced behind the players.
+ "As a game, Three Body only borrows the background of human society to simulate the development of Trisolaris.
+ This is done to give players a familiar environment.
+ The real Trisolaris is very different from the world of the game, but the existence of the three suns is real.
+ They're the foundation of the Trisolaran environment."
+ "Developing this game must have cost an enormous amount of effort," the vice president said.
+ "But the goal is clearly not profit."
+ "The goal of Three Body is very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals," Pan said.
+ "What ideals do we have in common, exactly?"
+ Wang immediately regretted the question.
+ He wondered whether asking it sounded hostile.
+ Pan studied everyone meaningfully, and then added in a soft voice, "How would you feel if Trisolaran civilization were to enter our world?"
+ "I would be happy."
+ The young reporter was the first to break the silence.
+ "I've lost hope in the human race after what I've seen in recent years.
+ Human society is incapable of self-improvement, and we need the intervention of an outside force."
+ "I agree!" the author shouted.
+ She was very excited, as though finally finding an outlet for pent-up feelings.
+ "The human race is hideous.
+ I've spent the first half of my life unveiling this ugliness with the scalpel of literature, but now I'm even sick of the work of dissection.
+ I yearn for Trisolaran civilization to bring real beauty to this world."
+ Pan said nothing.
+ That glint of excitement appeared in his eyes again.
+ The old philosopher waved his pipe, which had gone out.
+ He spoke with a serious mien.
+ "Let's discuss this question with a bit more depth: What is your impression of the Aztecs?"
+ "Dark and bloody," the author said.
+ "Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests.
+ Those are my impressions."
+ The philosopher nodded.
+ "Very good.
+ Then try to imagine: If the Spanish Conquistadors did not intervene, what would have been the influence of that civilization on human history?"
+ "You're calling black white and white black," the software company vice president said.
+ "The Conquistadors who invaded the Americas were nothing more than murderers and robbers."
+ "Even so, at least they prevented the Aztecs from developing without bound, turning the Americas into a bloody, dark great empire.
+ Then civilization as we know it wouldn't have appeared in the Americas, and democracy wouldn't have thrived until much later.
+ Indeed, maybe they wouldn't have appeared at all.
+ This is the key to the question: No matter what the Trisolarans are like, their arrival will be good news for the terminally ill human race."
+ "But have you thought through the fact that the Aztecs were completely destroyed by the Western invaders?" the power company executive asked.
+ He looked around, as though seeing these people for the first time.
+ "Your thoughts are very dangerous."
+ "You mean profound!" the doctoral student said, raising a finger.
+ He nodded vigorously at the philosopher.
+ "I had the same thought, but I didn't know how to express it.
+ You said it so well!"
+ After a moment of silence, Pan turned to Wang.
+ "The other six have all given their views.
+ What about you?"
+ "I stand with them," Wang said, pointing to the reporter and the philosopher.
+ He kept his answer simple.
+ The less said the better.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ He turned to the software company vice president and the power company executive.
+ "The two of you are no longer welcome at this meet-up, and you are no longer appropriate players for Three Body.
+ Your IDs will be deleted.
+ Please leave now.
+ Thank you."
+ The two stood up and looked at each other; then glanced around, confused, and left.
+ Pan held out his hand to the remaining five, shaking each person's hand in turn.
+ Then he said, solemnly, "We are comrades now."
+
+ 《三体》网友的聚会地点是一处僻静的小咖啡厅。
+ 在汪淼的印象中，这个时代的游戏网友聚会都是人数众多的热闹盛会，但这次来的连自己在内也只有七个人，而那六位，同自己一样，不论怎么看都不像游戏爱好者。
+ 比较年轻的只有两位，另外五位，包括一位女士，都是中年人，还有一个老者，看上去有六七十岁了。
+ 汪淼本以为大家一见面就会对《三体》展开热烈的讨论，但现在发现自己想错了。
+ 《三体》那诡异而深远的内涵，已对其参与者产生了很深的心理影响，使得每个人，包括汪淼自己，都很难轻易谈起它。
+ 大家只是简单地相互做了自我介绍，那位老者，掏出一把很精致的烟斗，装上烟丝抽了起来，踱到墙边去欣赏墙上的油画。
+ 其他人则都坐着等待聚会组织者的到来，他们都来得早了。
+ 其实这六个人中，汪淼有两个已经认识。
+ 那位鹤发童颜的老者，是一位著名学者，以给东方哲学赋予现代科学内涵而闻名。
+ 那位穿着怪异的女士，是著名作家，是少见的风格前卫却拥有众多读者的小说家，她写的书，从哪一页开始看都行。
+ 其他四位，两名中年人，一位是国内最大软件公司的副总裁（穿着朴素随意，丝毫看不出来），另一位是国家电力公司的高层领导。
+ 两名年轻人，一位是国内大媒体的记者，另一位是在读的理科博士生。
+ 汪淼现在意识到，《三体》的玩家，可能相当一部分是他们这样的社会精英。
+ 聚会的组织者很快来了，汪淼见到他，心跳骤然加快，这人竟是潘寒，杀死申玉菲的头号嫌疑人。
+ 他悄悄掏出手机，在桌下给大史发短信。
+ “呵呵，大家来得真早！”
+ 潘寒轻松地打招呼，似乎什么事都没有发生。
+ 他一改往常在媒体上那副脏兮兮的流浪汉模样，西装革履，显得风度翩翩，“你们和我想象的差不多，都是精英人士，《三体》就是为你们这样的阶层准备的，它的内涵和意境，常人难以理解；玩它所需要的知识，其层次之高，内容之深，也是常人不可能具备的。”
+ 汪淼的短信已经发出：见到潘寒，在西城区云河咖啡馆。
+ 潘寒接着说：“在座的各位都是《三体》的优秀玩家，成绩最好，也都很投人。
+ 我相信，《三体》已成为你们生活中的一部分。”
+ “是生命中的一部分。”
+ 那位年轻的博士生说。
+ “我是从孙子的电脑上偶然看到它的，”老哲学家翘着烟斗柄说，“年轻人玩了几下就放弃了，说太深奥。
+ 我却被它吸引，那深邃的内涵，诡异恐怖又充满美感的意境，逻辑严密的世界设定，隐藏在简洁表象下海量的信息和精确的细节，都令我们着迷。”
+ 包括汪淼在内的几位网友都连连点头。
+ 这时汪淼收到了大史回的短信：我们也看到他了，没事，该干什么干什么。
+ 注意，在他们面前你要尽量表现得极端些，但不要太过了，那样装不像。
+ “是的，”女作家点头赞同。
+ “从文学角度看，《三体》也是卓越的，那二百零三轮文明的兴衰，真是一首首精美的史诗。”
+ 她提到二百零三轮文明，而汪淼经历的是一百九十一轮，这让汪淼再次确信了一点：《三体》对每个玩家都有一个独立的进程。
+ “我对现实世界真有些厌倦了，《三体》已成为我的第二现实。”
+ 年轻的记者说。
+ “是吗？”
+ 潘寒很有兴趣地插问一句。
+ “我也是，与《三体》相比，现实是那么的平庸和低俗。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “可惜啊，只是个游戏。”
+ 国电公司领导说。
+ “很好。”
+ 潘寒点点头，汪淼注意到他眼中放出兴奋的光来。
+ “有一个问题，我想是我们大家都渴望知道的。”
+ 汪淼说。
+ “我知道是什么，不过你问吧。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “《三体》仅仅是个游戏吗？”
+ 网友们纷纷点头，显然这也是他们急切想问的。
+ 潘寒站起来，郑重地说：“三体世界是真实存在的。”
+ “在哪里？”
+ 几个网友异口同声地问。
+ 潘寒坐下，沉默良久才开口：“有些问题我能够回答，有些不能，但如果各位与三体世界有缘，总有一天所有的问题都能得到解答。”
+ “那么，游戏中是否表现了三体世界的某些真实成分呢？”
+ 记者问。
+ “首先，在很多轮文明中，三体人的脱水功能是真实的，为了应对变幻莫测的自然环境，他们随时可以将自己体内的水分完全排出，变成干燥的纤维状物体，以躲过完全不适合生存的恶劣气候。”
+ “三体人是什么样子的？”
+ 潘寒摇摇头：“不知道，真的不知道。
+ 每一轮文明中，三体人的外形都完全不同，另外，游戏中还反映了一个三体世界中的真实存在：人列计算机。”
+ “哈，我觉得那是最不真实的！”
+ IT副总裁说，“我用公司的上百名员工进行过一个简单的测试，即使这想法真能实现，人列计算机的运算速度可能比一个人的手工计算都慢。”
+ 潘寒露出神秘的笑容说：“不错，但假如构成计算机的三千万个士兵，每个人在一秒钟内可以挥动黑白小旗十万次，总线上的轻骑兵的奔跑速度是几倍音速甚至更快，结果就不一样了。
+ 你们刚才问过三体人的外形，据一些迹象推测，构成人列计算机的三体人，外表可能覆盖着一层全反射镜面，这种镜面可能是为了在恶劣的日照条件下生存而进化出来的，镜面可以变化出各种形状，他们之间就通过镜面聚焦的光线来交流，这种光线语言信息传输的速度是很快的，这就是人列计算机得以存在的基础。
+ 当然，这仍是一台效率很低的机器，但确实能够完成人类手工力不能及的运算。
+ 计算机在三体世界首先确实是以人列形式出现，然后才是机械式和电子式的。”
+ 潘寒站起来，围着网友们的背后踱步：
+ “我现在能告诉大家的只是：作为一个游戏，《三体》只是借用人类的背景来模拟三体世界的发展，这样做只是为游戏者提供一个熟悉的环境，真实的三体世界与游戏中的差别很大，但其中三颗太阳的存在是真实的，这是三体世界自然结构的基础。”
+ “开发这个游戏肯定花费了很大的力量，但它的目的显然不是盈利。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “《三体》游戏的目的很单纯，就是为了聚集起我们这样志同道合的人。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “什么志和什么道呢？”
+ 汪淼问，但旋即有些后悔，仔细想着自己的问题是否露出了些许的敌意。
+ 这个问题果然令潘寒沉默下来，他用意味深长的目光逐个将在座的每个人打量一遍，轻轻地说：“如果三体文明要进入人类世界，你们是什么态度？”
+ “我很高兴，”年轻的记者首先打破沉默说，“这些年看到的事，让我对人类已经失望了，人类社会已经无力进行自我完善，需要一个外部力量的介入。”
+ “同意！”
+ 女作家大声说，她很激动，似乎终于找到了一个发泄某种东西的机会，“人类是什么？
+ 多么丑恶的东西，我上半生一直在用文学这把解剖刀来揭露这种丑恶，现在连这种揭露都厌倦了。
+ 我向往着三体文明能把真正的美带到这个世界上来。”
+ 潘寒没有说话，那种兴奋的光芒又在双眼中亮起来。
+ 老哲学家挥着已经熄灭的烟斗，一脸严肃地说：“让我们来稍微深入地探讨一下这个问题：你们对阿兹特克文明有什么印象？”
+ “黑暗而血腥，从林中阴森的火光照耀着鲜血流淌的金字塔。
+ 这就是我对它的印象。”
+ 女作家说。
+ 哲学家点点头：“很好，那么想象一下，假如后来没有西班牙人的介入，这个文明会对人类历史产生什么影响？”
+ “你这是颠倒黑白，”IT副总裁指着哲学家说，“那时入侵美洲的西班牙人不过是强盗和凶手！”
+ “就算如此，他们至少制止了下面事情的发生：阿兹特克无限制地发展，把美洲变成一个血腥和黑暗的庞大帝国，那时美洲和全人类的民主和文明时代就要更晚些到来，甚至根本就不会出现。
+ 这就是问题的关键之处——不管三体文明是什么样子，它们的到来对病入膏育的人类文明总是个福音。”
+ “可您想过没有，阿兹特克文明最后被西方人侵者毁灭了。”
+ 国电公司领导说， 同时环视了一下四周，仿佛是第一眼见到这些人，“这里的思想很危险。”
+ “是深刻！”
+ 博士生举起一根手指说，同时对哲学家连连点头，“我也有这个想法，但不知道如何表达，您说得太好了。”
+ 一阵沉默后，潘寒转向汪淼：“他们六人已经表明了自己的态度，您呢？”
+ “我站在他们一边。”
+ 汪淼指指记者和哲学家等人说。
+ 言多必失，他只是简单地答这一句。
+ “很好，”潘寒说着，转向了IT经理和国电公司领导，“你们二位，已经不适合这场聚会了，也不适合继续玩《三体》游戏。
+ 你们的ID将被注销，下面请你们离开。
+ 谢谢你们的到来，请！”
+ 两人站起身来对视一下，又困惑地看看周围，转身走出门去。
+ 潘寒向剩下的五个人伸出手来，挨个与他们紧紧握手。
+ 最后庄严地说：“我们，是同志了。”
+
+ The deaths of Lei and Yang were treated as accidents.
+ Everybody at the base knew that Ye and Yang were a happy couple, and no one suspected her.
+ A new commissar came to the base, and life returned to its habitual peace.
+ The tiny life inside Ye grew bigger every day, and she also felt the world outside change.
+ One day, the security platoon commander asked Ye to come to the gatehouse at the entrance to the base.
+ When she entered the gatehouse, she was surprised to see three children: two boys and a girl, about fifteen or sixteen.
+ They all wore old coats and dog fur hats, obviously locals.
+ The guard on duty told her that they came from the village of Qijiatun.
+ They had heard that the people on Radar Peak were learned and had come to ask some questions related to their studies.
+ Ye wondered how they dared to come onto Radar Peak.
+ This was a restricted military zone, and the guards were authorized to warn intruders only once before shooting.
+ The guard saw that Ye was puzzled and explained that they had just received orders that Red Coast Base's security rating had been reduced.
+ The locals were allowed onto Radar Peak as long as they stayed outside the base.
+ Several local peasants had already come yesterday to bring vegetables.
+ One of the children took out a worn-out middle school physics textbook.
+ His hands were dirty and cracked like tree bark.
+ In a thick Northeastern accent, he asked a simple physics question:
+ The textbook said that a body in free fall is under constant acceleration but will always reach a terminal velocity.
+ They had been thinking about this for several nights and could not understand why.
+ "You walked all this way just to ask this?" Ye asked.
+ "Teacher Ye, don't you know that they've restarted the exam?" the girl said excitedly.
+ "The exam?"
+ "The National College Entrance Exam!
+ Whoever studies hard and gets the best score gets to go to college!
+ It began two years ago.
+ Didn't you know?"
+ "There's no need for recommendations anymore?"
+ "No.
+ Anyone can take the exam.
+ Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it."
+ Ye was stunned.
+ This change left her with mixed feelings.
+ Only after a while did she realize that the children were still waiting with their books held up.
+ She hurriedly answered their question, explaining that it was due to air resistance reaching equilibrium against the force of gravity.
+ Then she promised that if they encountered any difficulties in their studies in the future, they could always come to her for help.
+ Three days later, seven children came to seek Ye.
+ In addition to the three who had come last time, there were four more from villages located even farther away.
+ The third time, fifteen children came to find her, and even a teacher at a small-town high school came along.
+ Because there was a shortage of teachers, he had to teach physics, math, and chemistry, and he came to ask Ye for some help on teaching.
+ The man was over fifty years old, and his face was already full of wrinkles.
+ He was very nervous in front of Ye, and spilled books everywhere.
+ After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: "Children, that was a scientist.
+ A real, bona fide scientist!"
+ After that, children would come to her for tutoring every few days.
+ Sometimes there were so many of them that the gatehouse couldn't accommodate them all.
+ With the permission of the officers in charge of base security, the guards would escort them to the cafeteria.
+ There, Ye put up a small blackboard and taught the children.
+ It was dark by the time Ye got off work on the eve of Chinese New Year, 1980.
+ Most people at the base had already left Radar Peak for the three-day holiday, and it was quiet everywhere.
+ Ye returned to her room.
+ This was once the home of her and Yang Weining, but now it was empty, her only companion the unborn child within her.
+ In the night outside, the cold wind of the Greater Khingan Mountains screamed, carrying with it the faint sound of firecrackers going off in the village of Qijiatun.
+ Loneliness pressed down on Ye like a giant hand, and she felt herself being crushed; compressed until she was so small that she disappeared into an invisible corner of the universe....
+ Just then, someone knocked on her door.
+ When she opened it, Ye first saw the guard, and then, behind him, the fire of several pine branch torches flickering in the cold wind.
+ The torches were held aloft by a crowd of children, their faces bright red from the cold, and icicles hung from their hats.
+ When they came into her room, they seemed to bring the cold air in with them.
+ Two of the boys, thinly dressed, had suffered the most.
+ They had taken off their thick coats and wrapped them around something that they carried in their arms.
+ Unwrapping the coats revealed a large pot, the fermented cabbage and pork dumplings inside still steaming hot.
+ That year, eight months after she sent her signal toward the sun, Ye went into labor.
+ Because the baby was malpositioned and her body was weak, the base clinic couldn't handle her case and had to send her to the nearest town hospital.
+ This became one of the hardest times in Ye's life.
+ After enduring a great deal of pain and losing a large amount of blood, she sank into a coma.
+ Through a blur she could only see three hot, blinding suns slowly orbiting around her, cruelly roasting her body.
+ This state lasted for some time, and she hazily thought it was probably the end for her.
+ It was her hell.
+ The fire of the three suns would torment her and burn her forever.
+ This was punishment for her betrayal, the betrayal that exceeded all others.
+ She sank into terror: not for her, but for her unborn child—was the child still in her?
+ Or had she already been born into this hell to suffer eternally with her?
+ She didn't know how much time had passed.
+ Gradually the three suns moved farther away.
+ After a certain distance, they suddenly shrank and turned into crystalline flying stars.
+ The air around her cooled, and her pain lessened.
+ She finally awoke.
+ Ye heard a cry next to her.
+ Turning her head with great effort, she saw the baby's pink, wet, little face.
+ The doctor told Ye that she had lost more than 2,000 ml of blood.
+ Dozens of peasants from Qijiatun had come to donate blood to her.
+ Many of the peasants had children who Ye had tutored, but most had no connection to her at all, having only heard her name from the children and their parents.
+ Without them, she would certainly have died.
+ Ye's living situation became a problem after the birth of her child.
+ The difficult birth had damaged her health.
+ It was impossible for her to stay at the base with the baby all by herself, and she had no relatives who could help.
+ Just then, an old couple living in Qijiatun came to talk to the base leaders and explained that they could take Ye and her baby home with them and take care of them.
+ The old man used to be a hunter and also gathered some herbs for traditional medicine.
+ Later, after the forest around the area was lost to logging, the couple had turned to farming, but people still called him Hunter Qi out of habit.
+ They had two sons and two daughters.
+ The daughters were married and had moved out.
+ One of the sons was a soldier away from home, and the other was married and lived with them.
+ The daughter-in-law had also just given birth.
+ Ye still hadn't been rehabilitated politically, and the base leadership was unsure about this suggested solution.
+ But in the end, there was no other way, and so they allowed the couple to take Ye and the baby home from the hospital on a sled.
+ Ye lived for more than half a year with this peasant family in the Greater Khingan Mountains.
+ She was so weak after giving birth that her milk did not come in.
+ During this time, the baby girl, Yang Dong, was breastfed by all the women of the village.
+ The one who nursed her the most was Hunter Qi's daughter-in-law, called Feng.
+ Feng had the strong, solid frame of the women of the Northeast.
+ She ate sorghum every day, and her large breasts were full of milk even though she was feeding two babies at the same time.
+ Other nursing women in Qijiatun also came to feed Yang Dong.
+ They liked her, saying that the baby had the same clever air as her mother.
+ Gradually, Hunter Qi's home became the gathering place for all the women of the village.
+ Old and young, matrons and maidens, they all liked to stop by when they had nothing else going on.
+ They admired Ye and were curious about her, and she found that she had many women's topics to discuss with them.
+ On countless days, Ye held Yang Dong and sat with the other women of the village in the yard, surrounded by birch posts.
+ Next to her was a lazy black dog and the playing children, bathing in the warm sunlight.
+ She paid attention especially to the women with the copper tobacco pipes.
+ Leisurely, they blew smoke out of their mouths, and the smoke, filled with sunlight, gave off a silvery glow much like the fine hairs on their plump limbs.
+ One time, one of them handed her the long-stemmed cupronickel pipe and told her it would make her feel better.
+ She took only two hits before she became dizzy, and they laughed about it for several days.
+ As for the men, Ye had little to say to them.
+ The matters that occupied them all day also seemed outside her understanding.
+ She gathered that they were interested in planting some ginseng for cash while the government seemed to be relaxing policies a little, but they didn't quite have the courage to try.
+ They all treated Ye with great respect and were very polite toward her.
+ She didn't pay much attention to this at first.
+ But after a while, after observing how those men roughly beat their wives and flirted outrageously with the widows in the village, saying things that made her blush, she finally realized how precious their respect was.
+ Every few days, one of them would bring a hare or pheasant he had caught to Hunter Qi's home.
+ They also gave Yang Dong strange and quaint toys that they'd made with their own hands.
+ In Ye's memory, these months seemed to belong to someone else, like a segment of another life that had drifted into hers like a feather.
+ This period condensed in her memory into a series of classical paintings—not Chinese brush paintings but European oil paintings.
+ Chinese brush paintings are full of blank spaces, but life in Qijiatun had no blank spaces.
+ Like classical oil paintings, it was filled with thick, rich, solid colors.
+ Everything was warm and intense: the heated kang stove-beds lined with thick layers of ura sedge, the Guandong and Mohe tobacco stuffed in copper pipes, the thick and heavy sorghum meal, the sixty-five-proof baijiu distilled from sorghum—all of these blended into a quiet and peaceful life, like the creek at the edge of the village.
+ Most memorable to Ye were the evenings.
+ Hunter Qi's son was away in the city selling mushrooms—the first to leave the village to earn money elsewhere, so she shared a room in his house with Feng.
+ Back then, there was no electricity in the village, and every evening, the two huddled around a kerosene lamp.
+ Ye would read while Feng did her needlework.
+ Ye would lean closer and closer to the lamp without noticing, and her bangs would often get singed, at which point the two of them would glance up and smile at each other.
+ Feng, of course, never had this happen to her.
+ She had very sharp eyes, and could do detailed work even in the dim light from heating charcoal.
+ The two babies, not even half a year old, would be sleeping together on the kang next to them.
+ Ye loved to watch them sleep, their even breathing the only sound in the room.
+ At first, Ye did not like sleeping on the heated kang, and often got sick, but she gradually got used to it.
+ As she slept, she would imagine herself becoming a baby sleeping in someone's warm lap.
+ The person who held her wasn't her father or mother, or her dead husband.
+ She didn't know who it was.
+ The feeling was so real that she would wake up with tears on her face.
+ One time, she put down her book and saw that Feng was holding the cloth shoe she was stitching over her knee and staring into the kerosene lamp without moving.
+ When she realized that Ye was looking at her, Feng asked, "Sister, why do you think the stars in the sky don't fall down?"
+ Ye examined Feng.
+ The kerosene lamp was a wonderful artist and created a classical painting with dignified colors and bright strokes:
+ Feng had her coat draped over her shoulders, exposing her red belly-band, and a strong, graceful arm.
+ The glow from the kerosene lamp painted her figure with vivid, warm colors, while the rest of the room dissolved into a gentle darkness.
+ Close attention revealed a dim red glow, which didn't come from the kerosene lamp, but the heating charcoal on the ground.
+ The cold air outside sculpted beautiful ice patterns on the windowpanes with the room's warm, humid air.
+ "You're afraid of the stars falling down?"
+ Ye asked softly.
+ Feng laughed and shook her head.
+ "What's there to be afraid of?
+ They're so tiny."
+ Ye did not give her the answer of an astrophysicist.
+ She only said, "They're very, very far away.
+ They can't fall."
+ Feng was satisfied with this answer, and went back to her needlework.
+ But Ye could no longer be at peace.
+ She put down her book and lay down on the warm surface of the kang, closing her eyes.
+ In her imagination, the rest of the universe around their tiny cottage disappeared, just the way the kerosene lamp hid most of the room in darkness.
+ Then she substituted the universe in Feng's heart for the real one.
+ The night sky was a black dome that was just large enough to cover the entirety of the world.
+ The surface of the dome was inlaid with countless stars shining with a crystalline silver light, none of which was bigger than the mirror on the old wooden table next to the bed.
+ The world was flat and extended very far in each direction, but ultimately there was an edge where it met the sky.
+ The flat surface was covered with mountain ranges like the Greater Khingan Mountains, and with forests dotted with tiny villages, just like Qijiatun....
+ This toy-box-like universe comforted Ye, and gradually it shifted from her imagination into her dreams.
+ In this tiny mountain hamlet deep in the Greater Khingan Mountains, something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie's heart.
+ In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared.
+ Ye eventually returned to Red Coast Base with Yang Dong.
+ Another two years passed, divided between anxiety and peace.
+ Ye then received a notice: Both she and her father had been politically rehabilitated.
+ Soon after, a letter arrived for her from Tsinghua, stating that she could return to teach right away.
+ Accompanying the letter was a sum of money: the back pay owed to her father after his rehabilitation.
+ Finally, at base meetings, her supervisors could call her comrade.
+ Ye faced all these changes with equanimity, showing no sign of excitement or elation.
+ She had no interest in the outside world, only wanting to stay at the quiet, out-of-the-way Red Coast Base.
+ But for the sake of Yang Dong's education, she finally left the base that she had once thought would be her home for the rest of her life, and returned to her alma mater.
+ Leaving the mountains, Ye felt spring was everywhere.
+ The cold winter of the Cultural Revolution really was over, and everything was springing back to life.
+ Even though the calamity had just ended, everything was in ruins, and countless men and women were licking their wounds.
+ The dawn of a new life was already evident.
+ Students with children of their own appeared on college campuses; bookstores sold out of famous literary works; technological innovation became the focus in factories; and scientific research now enjoyed a sacred halo.
+ Science and technology were the only keys to opening the door to the future, and people approached science with the faith and sincerity of elementary school students.
+ Though their efforts were naïve, they were also down-to-earth.
+ At the first National Conference on Science, Guo Moruo, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, declared that it was the season of rebirth and renewal for China's battered science establishment.
+ Was this the end of the madness?
+ Were science and rationality really coming back?
+ Ye asked herself these questions repeatedly.
+ Ye never again received any communication from Trisolaris.
+ She knew that she would have to wait at least eight years to hear that world's response to her message, and after leaving the base, she no longer had any way of receiving extraterrestrial replies.
+ It was such an important thing, and yet she had done it all by herself.
+ This gave her a sense of unreality.
+ As time passed, that sense grew ever stronger.
+ What had happened resembled an illusion, a dream.
+ Could the sun really amplify radio signals?
+ Did she really use it as an antenna to send a message about human civilization into the universe?
+ Did she really receive a message from the stars?
+ Did that blood-hued morning, when she had betrayed the entire human race, really happen?
+ And those murders ...
+ Ye tried to numb herself with work so as to forget the past—and almost succeeded.
+ A strange kind of self-protective instinct caused her to stop recalling the past, to stop thinking about the communication she had once had with another civilization.
+ Her life passed this way, day after day, in tranquility.
+ After she had been back at Tsinghua for a while, Ye took Dong Dong to see her grandmother, Shao Lin.
+ After her husband's death, Shao had soon recovered from her mental breakdown and found ways to survive in the tiny cracks of politics.
+ Her attempts to chase the political winds and shout the right slogans finally paid off, and later, during the "Return to Class, Continue the Revolution" phase, she went back to teaching.
+ But then Shao did something that no one expected.
+ She married a persecuted high-level cadre from the Education Ministry.
+ At that time, the cadre still lived in a "cowshed" for reform through labor.
+ This was part of Shao's long-term plan.
+ She knew that the chaos in society could not last long.
+ The young rebels who were attacking everything in sight had no experience in managing a country.
+ Sooner or later, the persecuted and sidelined old cadres would be back in power.
+ Her gamble paid off.
+ Even before the end of the Cultural Revolution, her husband was partially restored to his old position.
+ After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, he was soon promoted to the level of a deputy minister.
+ Based on this background, Shao Lin also rose quickly as intellectuals became favored again.
+ After becoming a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she very wisely left her old school and was promoted to be the vice president of another famous university.
+ Ye Wenjie saw this new version of her mother as the very model of an educated woman who knew how to take care of herself.
+ There was not a hint of the persecution that she went through.
+ She enthusiastically welcomed Ye and Dong Dong, inquired after Ye's life during those years with concern, exclaimed that Dong Dong was so cute and smart, and meticulously directed the cook in preparing Ye's favorite dishes.
+ Everything was done with skill, practice, and the appropriate level of care.
+ But Ye could clearly detect an invisible wall between her mother and herself.
+ They carefully avoided sensitive topics and never mentioned Ye's father.
+ After dinner, Shao Lin and her husband accompanied Ye and Dong Dong down to the street to say good-bye.
+ Then Shao Lin returned home while the deputy minister asked to have a word with Ye.
+ In a moment, the deputy minister's kind smile turned to frost, as though he had impatiently pulled off his mask.
+ "We're happy to have you and the child visit in the future under one condition: Do not try to pursue old historical debts.
+ Your mother bears no responsibility for your father's death.
+ She was a victim as well.
+ Your father clung to his own faith in a manner that was not healthy and walked all the way down a blind alley.
+ He abandoned his responsibility to his family and caused you and your mother to suffer."
+ "You have no right to speak of my father," Ye said, anger suffusing her voice.
+ "This is between my mother and me.
+ It has nothing to do with you."
+ "You're right," Shao Lin's husband said coldly.
+ "I'm only passing on a message from your mother."
+ Ye looked up at the residential apartment building reserved for high-level cadres.
+ Shao Lin had lifted a corner of the curtain to peek down at them.
+ Without a word, Ye bent down to pick up Dong Dong and left.
+ She never returned.
+ Ye searched and searched for information about the four female Red Guards who had killed her father, and eventually managed to locate three of them.
+ All three had been sent down to the countryside and then returned, and all were unemployed.
+ After Ye got their addresses, she wrote a brief letter to each of them, asking them to meet her at the exercise grounds where her father had died.
+ Just to talk.
+ Ye had no desire for revenge.
+ Back at Red Coast Base, on that morning of the transmission, she had gotten revenge against the entire human race, including those Red Guards.
+ But she wanted to hear these murderers repent, wanted to see even a hint of the return of humanity.
+ That afternoon after class, Ye waited for them on the exercise grounds.
+ She didn't have much hope, and was almost certain that they wouldn't show up.
+ But at the time of the appointment, the three old Red Guards came.
+ Ye recognized them from a distance because they were all dressed in now-rare green military uniforms.
+ When they came closer, she realized that the uniforms were likely the same ones they had worn at that mass struggle session.
+ The clothes had been laundered until their color had faded, and they had been conspicuously patched.
+ Other than the uniforms, the three women in their thirties no longer resembled the three young Red Guards who had looked so valiant on that day.
+ They had lost not only youth, but also something else.
+ The first impression Ye had was that, though the three had once seemed to be carved out of the same mold, they now looked very different from each other.
+ One had become very thin and small, and her uniform hung loose on her.
+ Already showing her age, her back was bent and her hair had a yellow tint.
+ Another had become thick framed, so that the uniform jacket she wore could not even be buttoned.
+ Her hair was messy and her face dark, as though the hardship of life had robbed her of any feminine refinement, leaving behind only numbness and rudeness.
+ The third woman still had hints of her youthful appearance, but one of her sleeves was now empty and hung loose as she walked.
+ The three old Red Guards stood in front of Ye in a row—just like they had stood against Ye Zhetai—trying to recapture their long-forgotten dignity.
+ But the demonic spiritual energy that had once propelled them was gone.
+ The thin woman's face held a mouselike expression.
+ The thickset woman's face showed only numbness.
+ The one-armed woman gazed up at the sky.
+ "Did you think we wouldn't dare to show up?" the thickset woman asked, her tone trying to be provocative.
+ "I thought we should see each other.
+ There should be some closure to the past," Ye said.
+ "The past is finished.
+ You should know that."
+ The thin woman's voice was sharp, as though she was always frightened of something.
+ "I meant spiritual closure."
+ "Then you want to hear us repent?" the thick woman asked.
+ "Don't you think you should?"
+ "Then who will repent to us?" the one-armed woman asked.
+ The thickset woman said, "Of the four of us, three had signed the big-character poster at the high school attached to Tsinghua.
+ Revolutionary tours, the great rallies in Tiananmen, the Red Guard Civil Wars, First Red Headquarters, Second Red Headquarters, Third Red Headquarters, Joint Action Committee, Western Pickets, Eastern Pickets, New Peking University Commune, Red Flag Combat Team, The East is Red—we went through every single milestone in the history of the Red Guards from birth to death."
+ The one-armed woman took over.
+ "During the Hundred-Day War at Tsinghua, two of us were with the Jinggang Mountain Corps, and the other two were with the April Fourteenth Faction.
+ I held a grenade and attacked a homemade tank from the Jinggang Mountain faction.
+ My arm was crushed by the treads on the tank.
+ My blood and muscle and bones were ground into the mud.
+ I was only fifteen years old."
+ "Then, we were sent to the wilderness!"
+ The thickset woman raised her arms.
+ "Two of us were sent to Shaanxi, the other two to Henan, all to the most remote and poorest corners.
+ When we first went, we were still idealistic, but that didn't last.
+ After a day of laboring in the fields, we were so tired that we couldn't even wash our clothes.
+ We lay in leaky straw huts and listened to wolves cry in the night, and gradually we woke from our dreams.
+ We were stuck in those forgotten villages and no one cared about us at all."
+ The one-armed woman stared at the ground numbly.
+ "While we were down in the countryside, sometimes, on a trail across the barren hill, I'd bump into another Red Guard comrade or an enemy.
+ We'd look at each other: the same ragged clothes, the same dirt and cow shit covering us.
+ We had nothing to say to each other."
+ The thickset woman stared at Ye.
+ "Tang Hongjing was the girl who gave your father the fatal strike with her belt.
+ She drowned in the Yellow River.
+ There was a flood that carried off a few of the sheep kept by the production team.
+ So the Party secretary called to the sent-down students, 'Revolutionary youths!
+ It's time to test your mettle!'
+ And so, Hongjing and three other students jumped into the river to save the sheep.
+ It was early spring, and the surface of the river was still covered by a thin layer of ice.
+ All four died, and no one knew if it was from drowning or freezing.
+ When I saw their bodies ...
+ I ... I ... can't fucking talk about this anymore."
+ She covered her eyes and sobbed.
+ The thin woman sighed, tears in her eyes.
+ "Then, later, we returned to the city.
+ But so what if we're back?
+ We still have nothing.
+ Rusticated youths who have returned don't lead very good lives.
+ We can't even find the worst jobs.
+ No job, no money, no future.
+ We have nothing."
+ Ye had no words.
+ The one-armed woman said, "There was a movie called Maple recently.
+ I don't know if you've seen it.
+ At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who had died during the faction civil wars.
+ The child asks the adult, 'Are they heroes?'
+ The adult says no.
+ The child asks, 'Are they enemies?'
+ The adult again says no.
+ The child asks, 'Then who are they?'
+ The adult says, 'History.'"
+ "Did you hear that?"
+ The thickset woman waved an arm excitedly at Ye.
+ "History!
+ History!
+ It's a new age now.
+ Who will remember us?
+ Who will think of us, including you?
+ Everyone will forget all this completely!"
+ The three old Red Guards departed, leaving only Ye on the exercise grounds.
+ More than a dozen years ago, on that rainy afternoon, she had stood alone here as well, gazing at her dead father.
+ The old Red Guard's final remark echoed endlessly in her mind....
+ The setting sun cast a long shadow from Ye's slender figure.
+ The small sliver of hope for society that had emerged in her soul had evaporated like a drop of dew in the sun.
+ Her tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had also disappeared without a trace.
+
+ 雷志成和杨卫宁遇难后，上级很快以普通工作事故处理了这件事，在基地所有人眼中，叶文洁和杨卫宁感情很好，谁也没有对她起疑心。
+ 新来的基地政委很快上任，生活又恢复了以往的宁静，叶文洁腹中的小生命一天天长大，同时，她也感到了外部世界的变化。
+ 这天，警卫排排长叫叶文洁到门岗去一趟。
+ 她走进岗亭，吃了一惊：这里有三个孩子，两男一女，十五六岁的样子，都穿着旧棉袄，戴着狗皮帽，一看就是当地人。
+ 哨兵告诉她，他们是齐家屯的，听说雷达峰上都是有学问的人，就想来问几个学习上的问题。
+ 叶文洁暗想，他们怎么敢上雷达峰？
+ 这里是绝对的军事禁区，岗哨对擅自接近者只需警告一次就可以开枪。
+ 哨兵看出了叶文洁的疑惑，告诉她刚接到命令，红岸基地的保密级别降低了，当地人只要不进入基地，就可以上雷达峰来，昨天已经来过几个当地农民，是来送菜的。
+ 一个孩子拿出一本已经翻得很破旧的初中物理课本，他的手黑乎乎的，像树皮一般满是皴裂，他用浓重的东北口音问了一个中学物理的问题：课本上说自由落体开始一直加速，但最后总会以匀速下落，他们想了几个晚上，都想不明白。
+ “你们跑这么远，就为问这个？”
+ 叶文洁问。
+ “叶老师，您不知道吗？
+ 外头高考了！”
+ 那女孩儿兴高采烈地说。
+ “高考？”
+ “就是上大学呀！
+ 谁学习好，谁考的分高谁就能上！
+ 一年前就是了，您还不知道？！”
+ “不推荐了？”
+ “不了，谁都可以考，连村里‘黑五类’的娃都行呢！”
+ 叶文洁愣了半天，这个变化很让她感慨。
+ 过了好一会儿，她才发现面前捧着书的孩子们还等着，赶忙紧回答他们的问题，告诉他们那是由于空气阻力与重力平衡的缘故；同时还许诺，如果以后有学习上的困难，可以随时来找她。
+ 三天后，又有七个孩子来找叶文洁，除了上次来过的三个外，其他四个都是从更远的村镇来的。
+ 第三次来找她的孩子是十五个，同来的还有一位镇中学的老师，由于缺人，他物理、数学和化学都教，他来向叶文洁请教一些教学上的问题。
+ 这人已年过半百，满脸风霜，在叶文洁面前手忙脚乱，书什么的倒了一地。
+ 走出岗亭后，叶文洁听到他对学生们说：“娃娃们，科学家，这可是正儿八经的科学家啊！”
+ 以后隔三差五地就有孩子来请教，有时来的人很多，岗亭里站不下，经过基地负责安全警卫的领导同意，由哨兵带着他们到食堂的饭厅里，叶文洁就在那儿支起一块小黑板给孩子们讲课。
+ 1978年的除夕夜，叶文洁下班后天已经完全黑了，基地的人大部分已在三天假期中下了山，到处都是一片寂静。
+ 叶文洁回到自己的房间，这里曾是她和杨卫宁的家，现在空荡荡的，只有腹中的孩子陪伴着她。
+ 外面的寒夜中，大兴安岭的寒风呼啸着，风中隐隐传来远处齐家屯的鞭炮声。
+ 孤寂像一只巨掌压着叶文洁，她觉得自己被越压越小，最后缩到这个世界看不到的一个小角落去了……
+ 就在这时，响起了敲门声，开门后叶文洁首先看到哨兵，他身后有几支松明子的火光在寒风中摇曳着，举火把的是一群孩子，他们脸冻得通红，狗皮帽上有冰碴子，进屋后带着一股寒气。
+ 有两个男孩子冻得最厉害，他们穿得很单薄，却用两件厚棉衣裹着一个什么东西抱在怀里，把棉衣打开来，是一个大瓷盆，里面的酸菜猪肉馅饺子还冒着热气。
+ 那一年，在向太阳发出信号八个月后，叶文洁临产了，由于胎位不正，她的身体又很弱，基地卫生所没有条件接生，就把她送到了最近的镇医院。
+ 这竟是叶文洁的一个鬼门关，她遇到了难产，在剧痛和大出血后陷入昏迷，冥冥中只看到三个灼热刺眼的太阳围绕着她缓缓转动，残酷地炙烤着她。
+ 这情景持续了很长时间后，她在朦胧中想到，这可能就是她永恒的归宿了，这就是她的地狱，三个太阳构成的地狱之火将永远灼烧着她，这是她因那个超级背叛受到的惩罚。
+ 她陷入强烈的恐惧中，不是为自己，而是为孩子——孩子还在腹中吗？
+ 还是随着她来到这地狱中蒙受永恒的痛苦？
+ 不知过了多久，三个太阳渐渐后退了，退到一定距离后突然缩小，变成了晶莹的飞星，周围凉爽了，疼痛也在减轻，她终于醒了过来。
+ 叶文洁听到耳边的一声啼哭，她吃力地转过脸，看到了婴儿粉嘟嘟、湿乎乎的小脸儿。
+ 医生告诉叶文洁，她出血达两千多毫升，齐家屯的几十位农民来给她献血，他们中很多人的孩子她都辅导过，但更多的是素昧平生，只是听孩子和他们的父母说起过她，要不是他们的话，她死定了。
+ 以后的日子成了问题，叶文洁产后虚弱，在基地自己带孩子是不可能的，她又无亲无故。
+ 这时，齐家屯的一对老人来找基地领导，说他们可以把叶文洁和孩子带回家去照顾。
+ 男的原来是个猎户，也采些药材，后来周围的林子越来越少，就种地了，但人们还是叫他齐猎头儿。
+ 他们有两儿两女，女孩都嫁出去了，一个儿子在外地当兵，另一个成家后与他们一起过，儿媳妇也是刚生了娃。
+ 叶文洁这时还没有平反，基地领导很是为难，但也只有这一个办法了，就让他们用雪橇把叶文洁从镇医院接回了家。
+ 叶文洁在这个大兴安岭的农家住了半年多，她产后虚弱，没有奶水，这期间，杨冬吃着百家奶长大了。
+ 喂她最多的是齐猎头儿的儿媳妇，叫大凤，这个健壮的东北妮子每天吃着高粱米大渣子，同时奶两个娃，奶水还是旺旺的。
+ 屯子里其他处于哺乳期的媳妇们也都来喂杨冬，她们很喜欢她，说这娃儿有她妈的灵气儿。
+ 渐渐地，齐猎头儿家成了屯里女人们的聚集地，老的少的，出嫁了的和大闺女，没事儿都爱向这儿跑，她们对叶文洁充满了羡慕和好奇，她也发现自己与她们有很多女人间的话可谈。
+ 记不清有多少个晴朗的日子，叶文洁抱着杨冬同屯子里的女人们坐在白桦树柱围成的院子里，旁边有玩耍的孩子和懒洋洋的大黑狗，温暖的阳光拥抱着这一切。
+ 她每次都特别注意看那几个举着铜烟袋锅儿的，她们嘴里悠然吐出的烟浸满了阳光，同她们那丰满肌肤上的汗毛一样，发出银亮的柔光。
+ 有一次她们中的一位将长长的白铜烟锅递给她，让她“解解乏”，她只抽了两口，就被冲得头昏脑涨，让她们笑了好几天。
+ 同男人们叶文洁倒是没什么话说，他们每天关心的事儿她也听不太明白，大意是想趁着政策松下来种些人参，但又不太敢干。
+ 他们对叶文洁都很敬重，在她面前彬彬有礼。
+ 她最初对此没有在意，但日子长了后，当她看到那些汉子如何粗暴地打老婆，如何同屯里的寡妇打情骂俏时，说出那些让她听半句都脸红的话，才感到这种敬重的珍贵。
+ 隔三差五，他们总有人把打到的野兔山鸡什么的送到齐猎头儿家，还给杨冬带来许多自己做的奇特而古朴的玩具。
+ 在叶文洁的记忆中，这段日子不像是属于自己的，仿佛是从别的人生中飘落的片断，像一片羽毛般飞入自己的生活。
+ 这段记忆被浓缩成一幅幅欧洲古典油画，很奇怪，不是中国画，就是油画，中国画上空白太多，但齐家屯的生活是没有空白的，像古典的油画那样，充满着浓郁得化不开的色彩。
+ 一切都是浓烈和温热的：铺着厚厚乌拉草的火坑、铜烟锅里的关东烟和莫合烟、厚实的高粱饭、六十五度的高粱酒……
+ 但这一切，又都在宁静与平和中流逝着，像屯子边上的小溪一样。
+ 最令叶文洁难忘的是那些夜晚。
+ 齐猎头儿的儿子到城里卖蘑菇去了，他是屯里第一个外出挣钱的人，她就和大凤住在一起。
+ 那时齐家屯还没通电，每天晚上，她们俩守在一盏油灯旁，叶文洁看书，大凤做针线活。
+ 叶文洁总是不自觉地将书和眼睛凑近油灯，常常刘海被烤得吱啦一下，这时她俩就抬头相视而笑。
+ 大凤从来没出过这事儿，她的眼神极好，借着炭火的光也能干细活儿。
+ 两个不到半周岁的孩子睡在她身边的炕上，他们的睡相令人陶醉，屋里能听到的，只有他们均匀的呼吸声。
+ 叶文洁最初睡不惯火炕，总是上火，后来习惯了，睡梦中，她常常感觉自己变成了婴儿，躺在一个人温暖的怀抱里，这感觉是那么真切，她几次醒后都泪流满面——但那个人不是父亲和母亲，也不是死去的丈夫，她不知道是谁。
+ 有一次，她放下书，看到大凤把纳着的鞋底放到膝上，呆呆地看着灯花。
+ 发现叶文洁在看自己，大凤突然问：“姐，你说天上的星星咋的就不会掉下来呢？”
+ 叶文洁细看大凤，油灯是一位卓越的画家，创作了这幅凝重色调中又带着明快的古典油画：
+ 大凤披着棉袄，红肚兜和一条圆润的胳膊露出来，油灯突出了她的形象，在她最美的部位涂上了最醒目的色彩，将其余部分高明地隐没于黑暗中。
+ 背景也隐去了，一切都淹没于一片柔和的黑暗中，但细看还是能看到一片暗红的光晕，这光晕不是来自油灯，而是地上的炭火照出来的，可以看到，外面的严寒已开始用屋里温暖的湿气在窗户上雕出美丽的冰纹了。
+ “你害怕星星掉下来吗？”
+ 叶文洁轻轻地问。
+ 大凤笑着摇摇头，“怕啥呢？
+ 它们那么小。”
+ 叶文洁终于还是没有做出一个天体物理学家的回答，她只是说：“它们都很远很远，掉不下来的。”
+ 大凤对这回答已经很满意，又埋头做起针线活儿来。
+ 但叶文洁却心绪起伏，她放下书，躺到温暖的炕面上，微闭着双眼，在想象中隐去这间小屋周围的整个宇宙，就像油灯将小屋中的大部分隐没于黑暗中一样。
+ 然后，她将大凤心中的宇宙置换过来。
+ 这时，夜空是一个黑色的巨大球面，大小正好把世界扣在其中，球面上镶着无数的星星，晶莹地发着银光，每个都不比床边旧木桌上的那面圆镜子大。
+ 世界是平的，向各个方向延伸到很远很远，但总是有边的。
+ 这个大平面上布满了大兴安岭这样的山脉，也布满了森林，林间点缀着一个个像齐家屯一样的村庄……
+ 这个玩具盒般的宇宙令她感到分外舒适，渐渐地这宇宙由想象变成了梦乡。
+ 在这个大兴安岭深处的小山村里，叶文洁心中的什么东西渐渐融化了，在她心灵的冰原上，融出了小小的一汪清澈的湖泊。
+ 杨冬出生后，在红岸基地，时间在紧张和平静中又过去了两年多。
+ 这时，叶文洁接到了通知，她和父亲的案件都被彻底平反；不久之后又收到了母校的信，说她可以立刻回去工作。
+ 与信同来的还有一大笔汇款，这是父亲落实政策后补发的工资。
+ 在基地会议上，领导终于称她为叶文洁同志了。
+ 叶文洁很平静地面对这一切，没有激动和兴奋。
+ 她对外面的世界不感兴趣，宁愿一直在僻静的红岸基地待下去，但为了孩子的教育，她还是离开了本以为要度过一生的红岸基地，返回了母校。
+ 走出深山，叶文洁充满了春天的感觉，“文革”的严冬确实结束了，一切都在复苏之中。
+ 虽然浩劫刚刚结束，举目望去一片废墟，无数人在默默地舔着自己的伤口，但在人们眼中，未来新生活的曙光已经显现。
+ 大学中出现了带着孩子的学生，书店中文学名著被抢购一空，工厂中的技术革新成了一件最了不起的事情，科学研究更是被罩上了一层神圣的光环。
+ 科学和技术一时成了打开未来之门的唯一钥匙，人们像小学生那样真诚地接近科学，他们的奋斗虽是天真的，但也是脚踏实地的。
+ 在第一次全国科学大会上，郭沫若宣布科学的春天到来了。
+ 这是疯狂的终结吗？
+ 科学和理智开始回归了？
+ 叶文洁不止一次地问自己。
+ 直到离开红岸基地，叶文洁再也没有收到来自三体世界的消息。
+ 她知道，要想收到那个世界对她那条信息的回答，最少要等八年，何况她离开了基地后，已经不具备接收外星回信的条件了。
+ 那件事实在太重大了，却由她一个人静悄悄地做完，这就产生了一种不真实的感觉。
+ 随着时间的流逝，这种虚幻感越来越强烈，那件事越来越像自己的幻觉，像一场梦。
+ 太阳真的能够放大电波吗？
+ 她真的把太阳作为天线，向宇宙中发射过人类文明的信息吗？
+ 真的收到过外星文明的信息吗？
+ 她背叛整个人类文明的那个血色清晨真的存在过？
+ 还有那一次谋杀……
+ 叶文洁试着在工作中麻木自己，以便忘掉过去——她竟然几乎成功了，一种奇怪的自我保护本能使她不再回忆往事，不再想起她与外星文明曾经有过的联系，日子就这样在平静中一天天过去。
+ 回到母校一段时间后，叶文洁带着冬冬去了母亲绍琳那里。
+ 丈夫惨死后，绍琳很快从精神错乱中恢复过来，继续在政治夹缝中求生存。
+ 她紧跟形势高喊口号，终于得到了一点报偿，在后来的“复课闹革命”中重新走上了讲台。
+ 但这时，绍琳却做出了一件出人意料的事，与一位受迫害的教育部高干结了婚，当时那名高干还在干校住“牛棚”劳改中。
+ 对此绍琳有自己的深思熟虑，她心里清楚，社会上的混乱不可能长久，目前这帮夺权的年轻造反派根本没有管理国家的经验，现在靠边站和受迫害的这批老干部迟早还是要上台执政的。
+ 后来的事实证明她这次赌博是正确的，“文革”还没有结束，她的丈夫已经部分恢复了职位，十一届三中全会后，他迅速升到了副部级。
+ 绍琳凭着这个背景，在这知识分子重新得到礼遇的时候，很快青云直上。
+ 在成为科学院学部委员之后，她很聪明地调离了原来的学校，很快升为另一所名牌大学的副校长。
+ 叶文洁见到的母亲，是一位保养得很好的知识女性形象，丝毫没有过去受磨难的痕迹。
+ 她热情地接待了叶文洁母女，关切地询问她这些年是怎么过来的，惊叹冬冬是多么的聪明可爱，细致入微地对做饭的保姆交代叶文洁喜欢吃的菜……
+ 这一切都做得那么得体，那么熟练，那么恰到好处。
+ 但叶文洁清楚地感觉到她们之间的隔阂，她们小心地避开敏感的话题，没有谈到叶文洁的父亲。
+ 晚饭后，绍琳和丈夫送叶文洁和孩子走了很远，副部长说要和叶文洁说句话，绍琳就先回去了。
+ 这时，副部长的脸色一瞬间由温暖的微笑变得冷若冰霜，像不耐烦地扯下一副面具，他说：“以后欢迎你带孩子常来，但有一条，不要来追究历史旧账。
+ 对于你父亲的死，你母亲没有责任，她也是受害者。
+ 倒是你父亲这个人，对自己那些信念的执著有些变态了，一条道走到黑，抛弃了对家庭的责任，让你们母女受了这么多的苦。”
+ “您没资格谈我的父亲，”叶文洁气愤地说，“这是我和母亲间的事，与别人无关。”
+ “确实与我无关，”绍琳的丈夫冷冷地点点头，“我是在转达你母亲的意思。”
+ 叶文洁回头看，在那座带院子的高干小楼上，绍琳正撩开窗帘的一角向这边偷窥。
+ 叶文洁无言地抱起冬冬走了，以后再也没有回去过。
+ 叶文洁多方查访当年打死父亲的那四个红卫兵，居然查到了她们中的三个。
+ 这三个人都是返城知青，现在她们都没有工作。
+ 叶文洁得知她们的地址后，分别给她们写了一封简单的信，约她们到当年父亲遇害的操场上谈谈。
+ 叶文洁并没有什么复仇的打算。
+ 在红岸基地的那个旭日初升的早晨，她已向包括她们在内的全人类复了仇，她只想听到这些凶手的忏悔，看到哪怕是一点点人性的复归。
+ 这天下午下课后，叶文洁在操场上等着她们。
+ 她并没有抱多大希望，几乎肯定她们是不会来的，但在约定的时间，三个老红卫兵来了。
+ 叶文洁远远就认出了那三个人，因为她们都穿着现在已经很少见的绿军装。
+ 走近后，她发现这很可能就是她们当年在批判会上穿的那身衣服，衣服都已洗得发白，有显眼的补丁。
+ 但除此以外，这三个三十左右的女人与当年那三名英姿飒爽的红卫兵已没有任何相似之处了，从她们身上消逝的，除了青春，显然还有更多的东西。
+ 叶文洁的第一印象就是，与当年的整齐划一相比，她们之间的差异变大了。
+ 其中的一人变得很瘦小，当年的衣服穿在身上居然还有些大了，她的背有些弯，头发发黄，已显出一丝老态；另一位却变得十分粗壮，那身衣服套在她粗笨的身体上扣不上扣子，她头发蓬乱，脸黑黑的，显然已被艰难的生活磨去了所有女性的精致，只剩下粗鲁和麻木了；第三个女人身上倒还有些年轻时的影子，但她的一只袖管是空的，走路时荡来荡去。
+ 三个老红卫兵走到叶文洁面前，面对着她站成了一排——当年，她们也是这样面对叶哲泰的——试图再现那早已忘却的尊严，但她们当年那魔鬼般的精神力量显然已荡然无存。
+ 瘦小女人的脸上有一种老鼠的表情，粗壮女人的脸上只有麻木，独臂女人的两眼望着天空。
+ “你以为我们不敢来？”
+ 粗壮女人挑衅似的问道。
+ “我觉得我们应该见见面，过去的事情总该有个了结的。”叶文洁说。
+ “已经了结了，你应该听说过的。”
+ 瘦小女人说，她的声音尖尖的，仿佛时刻都带着一种不知从何而来的惊恐。
+ “我是说从精神上。”
+ “那你是准备听我们忏悔了？”粗壮女人问。
+ “你们不该忏悔吗？”
+ “那谁对我们忏悔呢？”
+ 一直沉默的独臂女人说。
+ 粗壮女人说：“我们四个人中，有三个在清华附中的那张大字报上签过名，从大串联、大检阅到大武斗，从‘一司’、‘二司’、‘三司’到‘联动’、‘西纠’、‘东纠’，再到‘新北大公社’、‘红旗战斗队’和‘东方红’，我们经历过红卫兵从生到死的全过程。”
+ 独臂女人接着说：“在清华校园的百日大武斗中，我们四个人，两个在‘井冈山’，两个在‘四·一四’。
+ 我曾经举着手榴弹冲向‘井冈山’的土造坦克，这只手被坦克轮子压碎了，当时血肉和骨头在地上和成了泥——那年我才十五岁啊。”
+ “后来我们走向广阔天地了！”
+ 粗壮女人扬起双手说，“我们四个，两个去了陕西，两个去了河南，都是最偏僻最穷困的地方。
+ 刚去的时候还意气风发呢，可日子久了，干完一天的农活，累得连衣服都洗不动；
+ 躺在漏雨的草屋里，听着远处的狼叫，慢慢从梦里回到现实。
+ 我们待在穷乡僻壤里，真是叫天天不语，叫地地不应啊。”
+ 独臂女人呆呆地看着地面说：“有时，在荒山小径上，遇到了昔日的红卫兵战友，或是武斗中的敌人，双方互相看看，一样的衣衫破烂，一样的满身尘土和牛粪，相视无语啊。”
+ “唐红静，”粗壮女人盯着叶文洁说，“就是那个朝你父亲的头抽了最要命一皮带的女孩儿，在黄河中淹死了。
+ 洪水把队里的羊冲走了几只，队支书就冲知青们喊：革命小将们，考验你们的时候到了！
+ 于是，红静就和另外三个知青跳下河去捞羊，那时还是凌汛，水面上还浮着一层冰呢！
+ 四个人全死了，谁知是淹死的还是冻死的。
+ 见到他们尸首的时候……
+ 我…… 我他妈说不下去了……”
+ 她捂着脸哭了起来。
+ 瘦小女人流着泪长叹一声，“后来回城了，可回来又怎么样呢？
+ 还是一无所有，回来的知青日子都不好过，而我们这样的人最次的工作都找不到，没有工作没有钱没有前途，什么都没有了。”
+ 叶文洁彻底无语了。
+ 独臂女人说：“最近有一部电影，叫《枫》，不知你看过没有？
+ 结尾处，一个大人和一个小孩儿站在死于武斗的红卫兵墓前，那孩子问大人：他们是烈士吗？
+ 大人说不是；孩子又问：他们是敌人吗？
+ 大人说也不是；孩子再问：那他们是什么？
+ 大人说：是历史。”
+ “听到了吗？
+ 是历史！
+ 是历史了！”
+ 粗壮女人兴奋地对叶文洁挥着一只大手说，“现在是新时期了，谁还会记得我们，拿咱们当回事儿？
+ 大家很快就会忘干净的！”
+ 三个老红卫兵走了，把叶文洁一个人留在操场上，十多年前那个阴雨霏霏的下午，她也是这样孤独地站在这里，看着死去的父亲。
+ 那个老红卫兵最后的一句话在她脑海中不停地回响着……
+ 夕阳给叶文洁瘦弱的身躯投下长长的影子。
+ 在她的心灵中，对社会刚刚出现的一点希望像烈日下的露水般蒸发了，对自己已经做出的超级背叛的那一丝怀疑也消失得无影无踪，将宇宙间更高等的文明引入人类世界，终于成为叶文洁坚定不移的理想。
+
+ "Don't worry," Shi Qiang said to Wang, as he sat down next to him at the meeting table.
+ "I'm not radioactive anymore.
+ The last couple of days they've washed me inside and outside like a flour sack.
+ They didn't originally think you needed to attend this meeting, but I insisted.
+ Heh.
+ I bet the two of us are going to be important this time."
+ As Da Shi spoke, he picked a cigar butt out of the ashtray, lit it, and took a long drag.
+ He nodded, and, in a slow, relaxed manner, blew the smoke into the faces of the attendees sitting on the other side of the table.
+ One of the people sitting opposite him was the original owner of the cigar, Colonel Stanton of the U.S. Marine Corps.
+ He gave Da Shi a contemptuous look.
+ Many more foreign military officers were at this meeting than the last.
+ They were all in uniform.
+ For the first time in human history, the armed forces of the world's nations faced the same enemy.
+ General Chang said, "Comrades, everyone at this meeting now has the same basic understanding of the situation.
+ Or, as Da Shi here would put it, we have information parity.
+ The war between alien invaders and humanity has begun.
+ Our descendants won't face the Trisolarans for another four and a half centuries.
+ For now, our opponents are still human.
+ Yet, in essence, these traitors to the human race can also be seen as enemies from outside human civilization.
+ We have never faced an enemy like this.
+ The next war objective is very clear: We must capture the intercepted Trisolaran messages stored on Judgment Day.
+ These messages may have great significance for our survival.
+ "We haven't yet done anything to draw the suspicion of Judgment Day.
+ The ship still sails the Atlantic freely.
+ It has already submitted plans to the Panama Canal Authority to pass through the canal in four days.
+ This is a great opportunity for us.
+ As the situation develops, such an opportunity may never arise again.
+ Right now, all the Battle Command Centers around the globe are drafting up operation plans, and Central will select one within ten hours and begin implementation.
+ The purpose of this meeting is to discuss possible plans of operation, and then report one to three of our best suggestions to Central.
+ Time is of the essence, and we must work efficiently.
+ "Note that any plan must guarantee one thing: the secure capture of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Judgment Day was rebuilt from an old tanker, and both the superstructure and the interior have been extensively renovated with complex structures to contain many new rooms and passageways.
+ Supposedly even the crew relies on a map when entering unfamiliar areas.
+ We, of course, know even less about the ship's layout.
+ Right now, we cannot even be certain of the location of the computing center on Judgment Day, and we don't know whether the intercepted Trisolaran messages are stored in servers located in the computing center, or how many copies they have.
+ The only way to achieve our objective is to completely capture and control Judgment Day.
+ "The most difficult part is preventing the enemy from erasing Trisolaran data during our attack.
+ Destroying the data would be very easy.
+ The enemy would not use conventional methods to erase the data during an attack, because it's easy to recover the data using known technology.
+ But if they just emptied a cartridge clip at the server hard drive or other storage media, it would all be over, and doing so would take no more than ten seconds.
+ So we must disable all enemies near the storage equipment within ten seconds of their detecting an attack.
+ Since we don't know the exact location of the data storage or the number of copies, we must eliminate all enemies on Judgment Day within a very brief period of time, before the target has been alerted.
+ At the same time, we can't heavily damage the facilities within, especially computer equipment.
+ Thus, this is a very difficult task.
+ Some think it's impossible."
+ A Japanese Self-Defense Forces officer said, "We believe that the only chance for success is to rely on spies on Judgment Day.
+ If they're familiar with where the Trisolaran information is stored, they can control the area or move the storage equipment elsewhere right before our operation."
+ Someone asked, "Reconnaissance and monitoring of Judgment Day have always been the responsibility of NATO military intelligence and the CIA.
+ Do we have such spies?"
+ "No," the NATO liaison said.
+ "Then we have nothing more to discuss except bullshit," said Da Shi.
+ He was met with annoyed looks.
+ Colonel Stanton said, "Since the objective is eliminating all personnel within an enclosed structure without harming other equipment within, our first thought was to use a ball lightning weapon."
+ Ding Yi shook his head.
+ "The existence of this kind of weapon is now public knowledge.
+ We don't know if the ship has been equipped with magnetic walls to shield against ball lightning.
+ Even if it hasn't, a ball lightning weapon can indeed kill all personnel within the ship, but it cannot do so simultaneously.
+ Also, after the ball lightning enters the ship, it may hover in the air for some time before releasing its energy.
+ This wait time can last from a dozen seconds to a minute or longer.
+ They will have enough time to realize they've been attacked and destroy the data."
+ Colonel Stanton asked, "What about a neutron bomb?"
+ "Colonel, you should know that's not going to work."
+ The speaker was a Russian officer.
+ "The radiation from a neutron bomb cannot kill right away.
+ After a neutron bomb attack, the amount of time left to the enemy would be more than enough for them to have a meeting just like this one."
+ "Another thought was to use nerve gas," a NATO officer said.
+ "But releasing it and having it spread throughout the ship would take time, so it still doesn't achieve General Chang's requirements."
+ "Then the only choices left are concussion bombs and infrasonic waves," Colonel Stanton said.
+ Others waited for him to finish his thought, but he said nothing more.
+ Da Shi said, "I use concussion bombs in police work, but they're toys.
+ They're indeed capable of stunning people inside a building into unconsciousness, but they're only good for a room or two.
+ Do you have any concussion bombs big enough to stun a whole oil tanker full of people?"
+ Stanton shook his head.
+ "No.
+ Even if we did, such a large explosive device would certainly damage equipment inside the ship."
+ "So what about infrasonic weapons?" someone asked.
+ "They're still experimental and cannot be used in live combat.
+ Also, the ship is very large.
+ At the power level available to current experimental prototypes, the most that a full assault on Judgment Day could do is to make the people inside feel dizzy and nauseous."
+ "Ha!"
+ Da Shi extinguished the cigar butt, now as tiny as a peanut.
+ "I told you all we have left to discuss is bullshit.
+ We've been at it for a while now.
+ Let's remember what the general said: 'Time is of the essence!'"
+ He gave a sly grin to the translator, a female first lieutenant who looked unhappy with his language.
+ "Not easy to translate, eh, comrade?
+ Just get the approximate meaning across."
+ But Stanton seemed to understand what he was saying.
+ He pointed at Shi Qiang with a fresh cigar that he had just taken out.
+ "Who does this policeman think he is, that he can talk to us this way?"
+ "Who do you think you are?"
+ Da Shi asked.
+ "Colonel Stanton is an expert in special ops," a NATO officer said.
+ "He has been a part of every major military operation since the Vietnam War."
+ "Then let me tell you who I am.
+ More than thirty years ago, my reconnaissance squad managed to sneak dozens of kilometers behind Vietnamese lines and capture a hydroelectric station under heavy guard.
+ We prevented the Vietnamese plan to demolish the dam with explosives, which would have flooded the attack route for our army.
+ That's who I am.
+ I defeated an enemy who once defeated you."
+ "That's enough!"
+ General Chang slammed the table.
+ "Don't bring up irrelevant matters.
+ If you have a plan, say what it is."
+ "I don't think we need to waste time on this policeman,"
+ Colonel Stanton said contemptuously, as he lit his cigar.
+ Without waiting for a translation, Da Shi jumped up.
+ "'Pao-Li-Si'—I heard that word twice.
+ What?
+ You look down on the police?
+ If you're talking about dropping some bombs and turning that ship into smithereens, yeah, you military are the experts.
+ But if you're talking about retrieving something out of it without damage, I don't care how many stars are on your shoulder, you aren't even as good as a thief.
+ For this kind of thing, you have to think outside the box.
+ OUT. OF. THE. BOX!
+ You will never be as good at it as criminals, masters of out-of-the-box thinking.
+ "You know how good they are?
+ I once handled a robbery where the criminals managed to steal one car out of a moving train.
+ They reconnected the cars before and after the one they were interested in so that the train got all the way to its destination without anyone noticing.
+ The only tools they used were a length of wire cable and a few steel hooks.
+ Those are the real special ops experts.
+ And someone like me, a criminal cop who has been playing cat and mouse with them for more than a decade, has received the best education and training from them."
+ "Tell us your plan, then," General Chang said.
+ "Otherwise, shut up!"
+ "There are so many important people here that I didn't think it was my place to speak.
+ And I was afraid that you, General, would say I was being rude again."
+ "You're already the definition of rudeness.
+ Enough!
+ Tell me what your out-of-the-box plan is."
+ Da Shi picked up a pen and drew two parallel curves on the table.
+ "That's the canal."
+ He put the ashtray between the two lines.
+ "This is Judgment Day."
+ Then he reached across the table and pulled Colonel Stanton's just-lit cigar out of his mouth.
+ "I can no longer tolerate this idiot!" the colonel shouted, standing up.
+ "Da Shi, get out of here!" General Chang said.
+ "Give me one minute.
+ I'll be done soon."
+ Da Shi extended a hand in front of Colonel Stanton.
+ "What do you want?" the colonel asked, puzzled.
+ "Give me another one."
+ Stanton hesitated for a second before taking another cigar out of a beautiful wooden box and handing it to Da Shi.
+ Da Shi took the smoking end of the first cigar and pressed it against the table so that it stood on the shore of the Panama Canal that he'd drawn on the table.
+ He flattened the end of the other cigar and erected it on the other shore of the canal.
+ "We set up two pillars on the shores of the canal, and then between them we string many parallel, thin filaments, about half a meter apart.
+ The filaments should be made from the nanomaterial called 'Flying Blade,' developed by Professor Wang.
+ A very appropriate name, in this case."
+ After Shi Qiang finished speaking, he stood and waited a few seconds.
+ Then he raised his hands, said to the stunned crowd, "That's it," turned, and left.
+ The air seemed frozen.
+ Everyone present stayed still like stone statues.
+ Even the droning from the computers all around them seemed more careful.
+ After a long while, someone timidly broke the silence, "Professor Wang, is 'Flying Blade' really in the form of filaments?"
+ Wang nodded.
+ "Given our current molecular construction technique, the only form we can make is a filament.
+ The thickness is about one-hundredth the thickness of human hair....
+ Officer Shi got this information from me before the meeting."
+ "Do you have enough material?"
+ "How wide is the canal?
+ And how tall is the ship?"
+ "The narrowest point of the canal is one hundred fifty meters wide.
+ Judgment Day is thirty-one meters tall, with a draft of eight meters or so."
+ Wang stared at the cigars on the table and did some mental calculations.
+ "I think I should have enough."
+ Another long silence.
+ Everyone was trying to recover from their astonishment.
+ "What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?"
+ "That doesn't seem likely."
+ "Even if they were sliced," a computer expert said, "it's not a big deal.
+ The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth.
+ Given that premise, whether it's hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data."
+ "Anyone got a better idea?"
+ Chang looked around the table.
+ No one spoke.
+ "All right.
+ Then let's focus on this and work out the details."
+ Colonel Stanton, who had been silent the whole time, stood up.
+ "I will go and ask Officer Shi to come back."
+ General Chang indicated that he should remain seated.
+ Then he called out, "Da Shi!"
+ Da Shi returned, grinning at everyone.
+ He picked up the cigars on the table.
+ The one that had been lit he put into his mouth, and the other he stuffed into his pocket.
+ Someone asked, "When Judgment Day passes, can those two pillars bear the force applied against the Flying Blade filaments?
+ Maybe the pillars would be sliced apart first."
+ Wang said, "That's easy to solve.
+ We have some small amounts of Flying Blade material that are flat sheets.
+ We can use them to protect the parts of the column where the filaments are attached."
+ The discussion after that was mainly between the naval officers and navigation experts.
+ "Judgment Day is at the upper limit in terms of tonnage that can pass through the Panama Canal.
+ It has a deep draft, so we have to consider installing filaments below the waterline."
+ "That will be very difficult.
+ If there's not enough time, I don't think we should worry about it.
+ The parts of the ship below the waterline are used for engines, fuel, and ballast, causing a lot of noise, vibration, and interference.
+ The conditions are too poor for computing centers and other similar facilities to be located there.
+ But for the parts above water, a tighter nanofilament net will give better results."
+ "Then it's best to set the trap at one of the locks along the canal.
+ Judgment Day is built to Panamax specifications, just enough to fill the thirty-two-meter locks.
+ Then we would only need to make the Flying Blade filaments thirty-two meters long.
+ This will also make it easier to erect the pillars and string the filaments between them, especially for the underwater parts."
+ "No.
+ The situation around the locks is too unpredictable.
+ Also, a ship inside the lock must be pulled forward by four 'mules,' electric locomotives on rails.
+ They move slowly, and the time inside the locks will also be when the crew is most alert.
+ An attempt to slice through the ship during that time would most likely be discovered."
+ "What about the Bridge of the Americas, right outside the Miraflores Locks?
+ The abutments at the two ends of the bridge can serve as the pillars for stringing the filaments."
+ "No.
+ The distance between the abutments is too great.
+ We don't have enough Flying Blade material."
+ "Then it's decided: The site of operation should be the narrowest point of the Gaillard Cut, a hundred and fifty meters across.
+ Add in some slack for the pillars ... let's call it a hundred seventy meters."
+ Wang said, "If that's the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters.
+ I don't have enough material for a tighter net."
+ "In other words, we have to make sure the ship crosses during the day," Da Shi said, blowing out another mouthful of smoke.
+ "Why?"
+ "At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they'll all be lying down.
+ Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap.
+ But during the day, even if they're sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient."
+ A few scattered laughs.
+ The attendees, all under heavy stress, felt a bit of release tinged with the smell of blood.
+ "You're truly a demon," a female UN official said to Da Shi.
+ "Will innocent bystanders be hurt?"
+ Wang asked, his voice trembling.
+ A naval officer replied, "When the ship goes through the locks, more than a dozen cable workers will come onboard, but they'll all get off after the ship passes.
+ The Panama Canal pilot will have to accompany the ship the entire eighty-two kilometers, so the pilot will have to be sacrificed."
+ A CIA officer said, "And some of the crew aboard Judgment Day probably don't know the real purpose of the ship."
+ "Professor," General Chang said, "do not concern yourself with these thoughts.
+ The information we need to obtain has to do with the very survival of human civilization.
+ Someone else will make the call."
+ As the meeting ended, Colonel Stanton pushed the beautiful cigar box in front of Shi Qiang.
+ "Captain, the best Havana has to offer.
+ They're yours."
+ Four days later, Gaillard Cut, Panama Canal
+ Wang could not even tell that he was in a foreign country.
+ He knew that to the west, not too far away, was beautiful Gatun Lake.
+ To the east was the magnificent Bridge of the Americas and Panama City.
+ But he had had no chance to see either of them.
+ Two days earlier, he had arrived by direct flight from China to Tocumen International Airport near Panama City and then rode a helicopter here.
+ The sight before him was very common: The construction work under way to widen the canal caused the tropical forest on both slopes to be quite sparse, revealing large patches of yellow earth.
+ The color felt familiar to Wang.
+ The canal didn't seem very special, probably because it was so narrow here, but a hundred thousand people had dug out this part of the canal in the previous century, one hoe at a time.
+ Wang and Colonel Stanton sat on lounge chairs under an awning halfway up the slope.
+ Both wore loose, colorful shirts, with their Panama hats tossed to the side, looking like two tourists.
+ Below, on each shore of the canal, a twenty-four-meter steel pillar lay flat against the ground, parallel to the shore.
+ Fifty ultrastrong nanofilaments, each 160 meters long, were strung between the pillars.
+ At the end on the eastern shore, every filament was connected to a length of regular steel wire.
+ This was to give the filaments enough slack so that they could sink to the bottom of the canal, aided by attached weights.
+ The setup permitted other ships safe passage.
+ Luckily, traffic along the canal wasn't quite as busy as Wang had imagined.
+ On average, only about forty large ships passed through each day.
+ The operation's code name was "Guzheng," based on the similarity between the structure and the ancient Chinese zither by that name.
+ The slicing net of nanofilaments was thus called the "zither."
+ An hour earlier, Judgment Day had entered the Gaillard Cut from Gatun Lake.
+ Stanton asked Wang whether he had ever been to Panama before.
+ Wang said no.
+ "I came here in 1989," the colonel said.
+ "Because of that war?"
+ "Yes, that was one of those wars that left me with no impression.
+ I only remember being in front of the Vatican embassy as 'Nowhere to Run' by Martha and the Vandellas played for the holed-up Noriega.
+ That was my idea, by the way."
+ In the canal below them, a pure white French cruise ship slowly sailed past.
+ Several passengers in colorful clothing strolled leisurely on the green-carpeted deck.
+ "Second Observation Post reporting: There are no more ships in front of the target."
+ Stanton's walkie-talkie squawked.
+ Stanton gave the order.
+ "Raise the zither."
+ Several men wearing hard hats appeared on both shores, looking like maintenance workers.
+ Wang stood up, but the colonel pulled him down.
+ "Professor, don't worry.
+ They know what to do."
+ Wang watched as those on the eastern shore rapidly winched back the steel wires attached to the nanofilaments and secured the tightened nanofilaments to the pillar.
+ Then, slowly, the two pillars were stood upright using their mechanical hinges.
+ As a disguise, the pillars were decorated with some navigational markings and water depth indicators.
+ The workers proceeded leisurely, as though they were simply carrying out their boring jobs.
+ Wang gazed at the space between the pillars.
+ There seemed to be nothing there, but the deadly zither was already in place.
+ "Target is four kilometers from the zither," the voice in the walkie-talkie said.
+ Stanton put the walkie-talkie down.
+ He continued the conversation with Wang.
+ "The second time I came to Panama was in 1999, to attend the ceremony for the handover of the canal to Panama.
+ Oddly, by the time we got to the Authority's building, the Stars and Stripes were already gone.
+ Supposedly the U.S. government had requested that the flag be lowered a day early to avoid the embarrassment of lowering the flag in front of a crowd....
+ Back then, I thought I was witnessing history.
+ But now that seems so insignificant."
+ "Target is three kilometers from the zither."
+ "Yes, insignificant," Wang mumbled.
+ He wasn't listening to Stanton at all.
+ The rest of the world had ceased to exist for him.
+ All of his attention was focused on the spot where Judgment Day would appear.
+ By now the sun that had risen over the Atlantic was falling toward the Pacific.
+ The canal sparkled with golden light.
+ Close by, the deadly zither stood quietly.
+ The two steel pillars were dark and reflected no sunlight, looking even older than the canal that flowed between them.
+ "Target is two kilometers from the zither."
+ Stanton seemed to not have heard the voice from the walkie-talkie.
+ He continued, "After learning that the alien fleet is coming toward the Earth, I've been suffering from amnesia.
+ It's so strange.
+ I can't recall many things from the past.
+ I don't remember the details of the wars I experienced.
+ Like I just said, those wars all seem so insignificant.
+ After learning this truth, everyone becomes a new person spiritually, and sees the world anew.
+ I've been thinking: Suppose two thousand years ago, or even earlier, humanity learned that an alien invasion fleet would arrive a few thousand years later.
+ What would human civilization be like now?
+ Professor, can you imagine it?"
+ "Ah, no..."
+ Wang answered perfunctorily, his mind elsewhere.
+ "Target is one point five kilometers from the zither."
+ "Professor, I think you will be the Gaillard of this new era.
+ We're waiting for your new Panama Canal to be built.
+ Indeed, the space elevator is a canal.
+ Just as the Panama Canal connected two oceans, the space elevator will connect space with the Earth."
+ Wang knew that the colonel's babbling was meant to help him through this very difficult time.
+ He was grateful, but it wasn't working.
+ "Target is one kilometer from the zither."
+ Judgment Day appeared.
+ In the light from the setting sun coming over the hills to the side, it was a dark silhouette against the golden waves of the canal.
+ The sixty-thousand-ton ship was much larger than Wang had imagined.
+ Its appearance was like another peak abruptly inserted among the hills.
+ Even though Wang knew that the canal was capable of accommodating ships as large as seventy thousand tons, witnessing such a large ship in such a narrow waterway was a strange feeling.
+ Given its immensity, the canal below seemed to no longer exist.
+ The ship was a mountain gliding across solid earth.
+ After he grew used to the sunlight, Wang saw that Judgment Day's hull was pitch black, and the superstructure was painted pure white.
+ The giant antenna was gone.
+ They heard the roar from the ship's engines, accompanied by the churning sound of waves that had been generated by the round prow slapping against the shores of the canal.
+ As the distance between Judgment Day and the deadly zither closed, Wang's heart began to beat faster, and his breath became short.
+ He had a desire to run away, but he felt so weak that he could no longer control his body.
+ All at once, he was overwhelmed by a deep hatred for Shi Qiang.
+ How could the bastard have come up with such an idea?
+ Like that UN official said, he is a demon!
+ But the feeling passed.
+ He thought that if Da Shi were by his side, he would probably feel better.
+ Colonel Stanton had invited Shi Qiang to come, but General Chang refused to give permission because he said that Da Shi was needed where he was.
+ Wang felt the colonel's hand on his back.
+ "Professor, all this will pass."
+ Judgment Day was below them now, passing through the deadly zither.
+ When its prow first contacted the plane between the two steel pillars, the space that seemed empty, Wang's scalp tightened.
+ But nothing happened.
+ The immense hull of the ship continued to slowly sail past the two steel pillars.
+ When half the ship had passed, Wang began to doubt whether the nanofilaments between the steel pillars really existed.
+ But a small sign soon negated his doubt.
+ He noticed a thin antenna located at the very top of the superstructure breaking at its base, and the antenna tumbling down.
+ Soon, there was a second sign indicating the presence of the nanofilaments, a sign that almost made Wang break down.
+ Judgment Day's wide deck was empty save for one man standing near the stern hosing down the ship's bollards.
+ From his vantage point, Wang saw everything clearly.
+ The moment that that section of the ship passed between the pillars, the hose broke into two pieces not too far from the man, and water spilled out.
+ The man's body stiffened, and the nozzle tumbled from his hand.
+ He remained standing for a few seconds, then fell.
+ As his body contacted the deck, it came apart in two halves.
+ The top half crawled through the expanding pool of blood, but had to use two arms that were bloody stumps.
+ The hands had been cleanly sliced off.
+ After the stern of the ship went between the two pillars, Judgment Day continued to sail forward at the same speed, and everything seemed normal.
+ But then Wang heard the sound of the engine shift into a strange whine, before turning into chaotic noise.
+ It sounded like a wrench being thrown into the rotor of a large motor—no, many, many wrenches.
+ He knew this was the result of the rotating parts of the engine having been cut.
+ After a piercing, tearing sound, a hole appeared in the side of the stern of Judgment Day, made by a large metallic piece punching through the hull.
+ A broken component flew out of the hole and fell into the water, causing a large column of water to shoot up.
+ As it briefly flew past, Wang recognized it as a section of the engine crankshaft.
+ A thick column of smoke poured out of the hole.
+ Judgment Day, which had been sailing along the right shore, now began to turn, dragging this smoky tail.
+ Soon it crossed over the canal and smashed into the left shore.
+ As Wang looked, the giant prow deformed as it collided into the slope, slicing open the hill like water, causing waves of earth to spill in all directions.
+ At the same time, Judgment Day began to separate into more than forty slices, each slice half a meter thick.
+ The slices near the top moved faster than the slices near the bottom, and the ship spread open like a deck of cards.
+ As the forty-some metal slices moved past each other, the piercing noise was like countless giant fingernails scratching against glass.
+ By the time the intolerable noise ended, Judgment Day was spilled on the shore like a stack of plates carried by a stumbling waiter, the plates near the top having traveled the farthest.
+ The slices looked as soft as cloth, and rapidly deformed into complicated shapes impossible to imagine as having once belonged to a ship.
+ Soldiers rushed toward the shore from the slope.
+ Wang was surprised to find so many men hidden nearby.
+ A fleet of helicopters arrived along the canal with their engines roaring; crossed the canal surface, which was now covered by an iridescent oil slick; hovered over the wreckage of Judgment Day; and began to drop large quantities of fire suppression foam and powder.
+ Shortly, the fire in the wreckage was under control, and three other helicopters began to drop searchers into the wreckage with cables.
+ Colonel Stanton had already left.
+ Wang picked up the binoculars he'd left on top of his hat.
+ Overcoming his trembling hands, he observed Judgment Day.
+ By this time, the wreckage was mostly covered by fire-extinguishing foam and powder, but the edges of some of the slices were left exposed.
+ Wang saw the cut surfaces, smooth as mirrors.
+ They reflected the fiery red light of dusk perfectly.
+ He also saw a deep red spot on the mirror surface.
+ He wasn't sure if it was blood.
+ Three days later
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you understand Trisolaran civilization?
+ YE WENJIE: No.
+ We received only very limited information.
+ No one has real, detailed knowledge of Trisolaran civilization except Mike Evans and other core members of the Adventists who intercepted their messages.
+ INTERROGATOR: Then why do you have such hope for it, thinking that it can reform and perfect human society?
+ YE: If they can cross the distance between the stars to come to our world, their science must have developed to a very advanced stage.
+ A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards.
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific?
+ YE: ...
+ INTERROGATOR: Let me presume to guess: Your father was deeply influenced by your grandfather's belief that only science could save China.
+ And you were deeply influenced by your father.
+ YE: (sighing quietly) I don't know.
+ INTERROGATOR: We have already obtained all the Trisolaran messages intercepted by the Adventists.
+ YE: Oh ... what happened to Evans?
+ INTERROGATOR: He died during the operation to capture Judgment Day.
+ But the posture of his body pointed us to the computers holding copies of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Thankfully, they were all encoded with the same self-interpreting code used by Red Coast.
+ YE: Was there a lot of data?
+ INTERROGATOR: Yes, about twenty-eight gigabytes.
+ YE: That's impossible.
+ Interstellar communication is very inefficient.
+ How can so much data have been transmitted?
+ INTERROGATOR: We thought so at first, too.
+ But things were not at all as we had imagined—not even in our boldest, most fantastic imaginations.
+ How about this?
+ Please read this section of the preliminary analysis of the captured data, and you can see the reality of the Trisolaran civilization, compared with your beautiful fantasies.
+
+ “没关系，我已经没有放射性了。”
+ 史强对坐在旁边的汪淼说，“这两天，我让人家像洗面口袋似的翻出来洗了个遍。
+ 这次会议本来没安排你参加，是我坚决要求请你来的，嘿，我保准咱哥俩这次准能出风头的。”
+ 史强说着，从会议桌上的烟灰缸中拣出一只雪茄屁股，点上后抽一口，点点头，心旷神怡地把烟徐徐吐到对面与会者的面前，其中就有这支雪茄的原主人斯坦顿，一名美国海军陆战队上校，他向大史投去鄙夷的目光。
+ 这次与会的有更多的外国军人，而且都穿上了军装。
+ 在人类历史上，全世界的武装力量第一次面对共同的敌人。
+ 常伟思将军说：“同志们，这次与会的所有人，对目前形势都有了基本的了解，用大史的话说，信息对等了。
+ 人类与外星侵略者的战争已经开始，虽然在四个半世纪后，我们的子孙才会真正面对来自异星的三体人侵者，我们现在与之作战的仍是人类；但从本质上讲，这些人类的背叛者也可以看成来自地球文明之外的敌人，我们是第一次面对这样的敌人。
+ 下一步的作战目标十分明确，就是要夺取‘审判日’号上被截留的三体信息，这些信息，可能对人类文明的存亡具有重要意义。”
+ “我们还没有惊动‘审判日’号，这艘巨轮目前仍以合法的身份行驶在大西洋上，它已向巴拿马运河管理局提出申请，将于四天后通过运河。
+ 这是我们采取行动的一次绝好的机会，随着形势的发展，很可能不会再有这样的机会了。
+ 现在，全球的各个作战中心都在制定行动方案，这些方案将由总部在十小时之内选择并确定一个。
+ 我们这次会议的任务，就是讨论行动方案，最后确定一至三个最可行的上报总部。
+ 各位，时间很紧，我们必须以最高效率工作。”
+ “请注意，所有方案都要确保一点：保证‘审判日’号上三体信息的安全并夺取得它。
+ ‘审判日’号是由油轮改装的，船体上层和内部都增加了复杂的结构，据说即使是船员，在进人不常去的区域时也要凭借地图认路，我们对其结构的了解就更少了。
+ 目前，我们甚至不知道‘审判日’号计算机中心的确切位置，也不知道被截留的三体信息是否存贮于计算机中心的服务器上、有几个备份。
+ 我们要达到目标的唯一途径，就是全面占领和控制‘审判日’号，这中间最困难的，就是在攻击行动中避免敌人删除三体信息。
+ 删除这些信息极其容易，敌人在紧急时刻不太可能进行常规删除，因为以目前的技术很容易恢复，但只需对服务器硬盘或其他存贮装置打上一梭子，一切就都完了，这前后在十秒钟内就能完成。
+ 而我们，必须在行动被觉察前十秒之内，使存贮装置附近的敌人失去行动能力。
+ 由于存贮装置的位置不明，备份数量也不清楚，所以必须在极短的时间内，在被目标觉察之前，消灭‘审判日’号上的全部敌人，同时又不能对其内部的其他设施，特别是计算机设备造成重大损坏。
+ 因此，这次任务十分困难，有人甚至认为是不可能完成的。”
+ 一名日本自卫队军官说：“我们认为，唯一可能成功的行动，是借助于我方潜伏在‘审判日’号内部，并对三体信息的存贮位置熟悉的侦察人员，在行动前控制或转移存贮设备。”
+ 有人问：“对‘审判日’号的监视和侦察一直是由北约军事情报机构和CIA负责的，有这样的潜伏者吗？”
+ “没有。”
+ 北约协调员说。
+ “那我们后面剩下的，就是扯淡了。”
+ 大史插上一句，立刻遭到很多人的白眼。
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“消灭一个封闭结构内部的人员，同时对其中的其他设施又不造成损坏，我们首先想到的就是球状闪电武器。”
+ 丁仪摇摇头：“不行，这种武器已广为人知，我们不知道船体是否装备了屏蔽球状闪电的磁场墙；即使没有，球状闪电虽然可以保证消灭船内的所有人员，但也不能保证同时性；而且，球状闪电进入船体内部后，可能还要在空中游荡一段时间才会释放能量，这段时间短则十几秒钟，长就有可能达到一分钟甚至更多，他们完全有时间察觉到袭击并采取毁灭信息的行动。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“那么中子弹呢？”
+ “上校，您应该知道那也是不行的！”
+ 一名俄罗斯军官说，“中子辐射不能瞬间致死，中子弹攻击后，船里敌人剩下的时间够开一次我们这样的会了。”
+ “另一个方案就是神经毒气，但由于其在船内的释放和扩散有一个过程，也不可能达到将军所说的目标。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “剩下的选择就是震荡炸弹和次声波了。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说，人们都期待着他的下文，但他却没有接着说出什么来。
+ 大史说：“震荡炸弹是我们警方用的玩意儿，确实可以一下子把建筑物里的人震昏，但目前好像只对一两个房间有用。
+ 你们有能一次震昏一船人那么大个儿的吗？”
+ 斯坦顿摇摇头，“没有，即使有，那样大的爆炸物也不可能不破坏船内的设施。”
+ “次声波武器呢？”
+ 有人问。
+ “还在实验阶段，无法用于实战。
+ 特别是那船十分巨大，以现在试验中的次声波武器的功率，如果对整个‘审判日’号同时攻击，最多也就是让里面的晕恶心而已。”
+ “哈，”大史抽得只剩下一粒花生大小的雪茄头说，“我说过剩下的就是扯淡了吧，都扯这么长了，大家记住首长的话：时间紧迫！”
+ 他坏笑着转向译员，一名一脸不自在的漂亮女中尉，“回吧同志，意思到了就行。”
+ 但斯坦顿居然似乎听懂了，他用刚刚抽出的一根雪茄指着史强说：“这个警察有什么资格这么对我们讲话？”
+ “你的资格呢？”
+ 大史反问。
+ “斯坦顿上校是资深的特种作战专家，他几乎参加过越战以来所有的重大军事行动。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “那告诉你我的资格：二十多年前，我所在的侦察排，穿插到越军纵深几十公里，占领了那里的一座严密设防的水电站，阻止了越南人炸坝阻断我军进攻道路的计划。
+ 这就是我的资格：我战胜过打败了你们的敌人。”
+ “够了大史！”
+ 常伟思拍拍桌子说，“不要扯远了，你可以说出自己的方案。”
+ “我看没必要在这个警察身上浪费时间。”
+ 斯坦顿上校轻蔑地说，同时开始点雪茄。
+ 没等译员翻译，大史就跳起来说：“泡立死（Police），我两次听出这个词了，咋的，看不起警察？
+ 要说甩一堆炸弹把那大船炸成碎末，那你们军人行；但要是从里面完好地取出什么东西，别看你肩上扛着几颗星，还不如小偷儿。
+ 这种事儿，要出邪招，绝对的邪招！
+ 这个，你们远比不上罪犯，他们是出邪招的大师！
+ 知道那招儿能邪到什么程度？
+ 我办过一个盗窃案，罪犯能把行驶中的列车中间的一节车厢偷了，前后的其余部分又完好地接起来开到终点站，用的工具只是一根钢丝绳和几只铁钩子。
+ 这才是特种作战专家！
+ 而像我这样儿在基层摸爬滚打了十几年的重案刑警，受到了他们最好的培养和教育。”
+ “说你的方案，否则就不要再发言了！”
+ 常伟思指着大史说。
+ “这儿这么多重量级人物，我刚才怕轮不上我，那样老领导您又会说我这人没礼貌了。”
+ “你已经没礼貌到家了！
+ 快些。
+ 说你的邪招！”
+ 史强拿起一支笔，在桌面上画了两条弯曲的平行线，“这是运河，”
+ 又拿起烟灰缸放到两条线之间，“这是‘审判日’号。”
+ 然后，他探身越过桌面，一把扯下了斯坦顿上校刚点燃的雪茄。
+ “我不能容忍这个白痴了！”
+ 上校站起来大叫。
+ “史强，出去。”
+ 常伟思厉声说。
+ “等我说完，就一分钟。”
+ 大史说着，向斯坦顿伸出另一只手。
+ “什么？”
+ 上校不解地问。
+ “再给我一支。”
+ 斯坦顿犹豫了一下，从一个精致的木盒中又拿出一支雪茄递给史强，后者将第一支雪茄冒烟的一头按到桌面上，使它竖立在桌子上画的巴拿马运河岸边，将另一支的一头弄平，立到“运河”的另一边。
+ “在运河两岸立两根柱子，柱子之间平行地扯上许多细丝，间距半米左右，这些细丝是汪教授他们制造出来的那种叫‘飞刃’的纳米材料。”
+ 史强说完，站在那里等了几秒钟，举起双手对着还没有反应过来的人们说：“完了，就这些。”
+ 说完转身走出了会场。
+ 空气凝固了，所有人像石化般一动不动，连周围电脑的嗡嗡声似乎都变得小心翼翼。
+ 不知过了多久，才有人怯生生地打破沉寂：“江教授，‘飞刃’是丝状的吗？”
+ 汪淼点点头，“用我们现有的分子建筑技术，只能生产出丝状的材料，粗细大约相当于头发丝的十分之一……
+ 这些史警官会前向我了解过。”
+ “现有的数量够吗？”
+ “运河有多宽？
+ 船的高度？”
+ “运河最窄处一百五十米，‘审判日’号高三十一米，吃水八米左右。”
+ 汪淼盯着桌上的雪茄，粗略计算了一下，“基本上够吧。”
+ 又是一阵漫长的沉默，与会者都在试图使自己从震惊中恢复过来。
+ “如果存贮三体信息的设备，硬盘光盘之类的，也被切割呢？”有人问。
+ “几率不大吧。”
+ “被切割也问题不大，”一名计算机专家说，“那种细丝极其锋利，切口一定很齐，在这种状态下，无论是硬盘光盘，还是集成电路存贮体，其中的信息绝大部分都可以恢复。”
+ “还有别的更可行的方案吗？”
+ 常伟恩看看会场，没人说话，“好，下面就集中讨论这个方案，开始研究细节吧。”
+ 一直沉默的斯坦顿上校站了起来，“我去叫警官回来。”
+ 常伟思挥挥手示意他坐下，然后喊了一声：“大史！”
+ 史强走了进来，带着那一脸坏笑看了看众人，拿起桌上“运河”边上的两支雪茄，把点过的塞到嘴里，另一支揣进口袋。
+ 有人问：“‘审判日’号通过时，那两根柱子能承受‘飞刃’吗？
+ 会不会柱子首先被割断呢？”
+ 汪淼说：“这个能解决，有少量片状的‘飞刃’材料，可以用作细丝在柱子上固定处的垫片。”
+ 下面的讨论主要是在海军军官和航海专家们之间进行了。
+ “‘审判日’号是巴拿马运河能通过的最大吨位的船只了，吃水很深，所以还要考虑纳米丝在水下的布设。”
+ “水下部分比较困难，如果时间来不及倒是可以放弃，那里主要放置发动机、燃油和一些压舱物，噪音、震动和干扰都很大，环境恶劣，计算机中心和类似的机构不太可能设在那个位置。
+ 倒是在水上部分，如果纳米丝的间距再小一些，效果肯定更好。”
+ “那在运河的三个船闸之一动手是最好的了，‘审判日’号是巴拿马尺型船，通过时正好填满船闸，‘飞刃’丝的长度只需三十二米左右，间距可以很小，立柱子和拉丝的操作相对也容易些，特别是水下部分。”
+ “不行，船闸处情况复杂，船在闸中要由四台轨道机车牵引通过，速度很慢，而这时也肯定是‘审判日’号上最警觉的时候，在切割过程中时极有可能被发现。”
+ “是否可以考虑米拉弗洛莱斯船闸外面的美洲大桥？
+ 桥墩就可以用作拉丝的柱子。”
+ “不行，桥墩的间距太宽，‘飞刃’材料肯定不够的。”
+ “那么我们就确定下来，行动位置是盖拉德水道的最窄处，一百五十米宽，算上建支柱的余量，按一百七十米吧。”
+ 汪淼说：“要这样，拉丝的间距最小就是五十厘米，再小，材料不够了。”
+ “那就是说，”大史吐出一口烟，“得想法让那船白天过运河。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “夜里船上的人睡觉啊，都是躺着的，五十厘米的空当太大了，白天他们就是坐着或蹲着，也够了。”
+ 响起了零星的几声笑，重压下的人们感到了一丝带着血腥味的轻松。
+ “你真是个魔鬼。”
+ 一位联合国女官员对大史说。
+ “会伤及无辜吗？”
+ 汪淼问，他的声音中带着明显可以听出来的颤抖。
+ 一名海军军官回答：“过船闸时要有十几名接缆工人上船，不过船通过后他们就下去了。
+ 巴拿马引水员要随船走完八十二公里的运河，肯定要牺牲掉。”
+ 一名CIA官员说：“还有‘审判日’号上的一部分船员，他们对这船是干什么的可能并不知情。”
+ “教授，这些事现在不用想，这不是你们要考虑的事情。
+ 我们要取得的信息关系到人类文明的存亡，会有人做出最后决定的。”
+ 常伟思说。
+ 散会时，斯坦顿上校把那个精致的雪茄木盒推到史强面前：“警官，上好的哈瓦纳，送给你了。”
+ 四天后，巴拿马运河盖拉德水道。
+ 汪淼没有一点儿身处异国他乡的感觉。
+ 他知道，西面不远处是美丽的加通湖，东面则是壮丽的美洲大桥和巴拿马城，但他都无缘见到，两天前他乘坐飞机从国内直接飞到巴拿马城附近的托库门军用机场，然后就乘直升机直接来到这里。
+ 眼前的景色太平常了，正在进行的运河拓宽工程使两岸山坡上的热带雨林变得稀稀拉拉，坡上露出了大片黄土，那色彩真的使汪淼感到对这里很熟悉。
+ 运河看上去也很普通，可能是因为在这一段它十分狭窄的缘故。
+ 这段水道是在上世纪初由十万人一锹锹开凿出来的。
+ 汪淼和斯坦顿上校坐在半山坡一座凉亭的躺椅上，两人都穿着宽大的花衬衣，大草帽扔在一边，看上去就是两个普通的游客。
+ 在这个位置，下面的运河尽收眼底。
+ 就在他们下方的运河两岸上，分别平放着两根二十四米长的钢柱，五十根一百六十米的超强度纳米丝已经按约零点五米的间距连接在两根钢柱上，只是每根纳米丝靠右岸的一端还连接了一段普通钢丝，这可以使纳米丝随着系在上面的坠物沉入河底，这样做是为了让其他的船只通过。
+ 好在运河上的运输并不像汪淼想象的那么繁忙，平均每天只有四十艘左右的大型船舶通过。
+ 两根钢柱的一端都与活动铰结相连，只有等待“审判日”号前面的最后一艘船通过，才能拉回普通钢丝，把纳米丝在右岸钢柱上做最后固定，然后钢柱才能立起来。
+ 行动的代号是“古筝”，这是很自然的联想，而纳米丝构成的切割网则被称为“琴”。
+ 一小时前，“审判日”号已由加通湖驶人盖拉德水道。
+ 斯坦顿问汪淼以前是否来过巴拿马，汪淼说没有。
+ “我在1989年来过。”
+ 上校说。
+ “是那次战争吧？”
+ “是，但对我来说是最没有印象的一次战争，只记得在梵蒂冈大使馆前为被包围的诺列加总统播放杰克逊的摇滚舞曲《无处可逃》，那是我的主意。”
+ 下面的运河中，一艘通体雪白的法国游轮正在缓缓驶过，铺着绿地毯的甲板上，有几名穿得花花绿绿的游客在闲逛。
+ “二号观察哨报告，目标前方已没有任何船只。”
+ 斯坦顿的步话机响了起来。
+ “把‘琴’立起来。”斯坦顿命令道。
+ 几名头戴安全帽工人模样的人出现在两岸。
+ 汪淼站起身来，但上校拉住了他，“教授，你不用管，他们会干得很好。”
+ 汪淼看着右岸的人利索地抽回连接纳米丝的普通钢丝，把已经绷紧的纳米丝在钢柱上固定好。
+ 然后，两岸的人同时拉动几根长钢索，使两根钢柱缓缓竖立起来。
+ 为了伪装，两根钢柱上都挂了一些航标和水位标志。
+ 他们干得很从容，甚至看上去有些懒洋洋的，像是在从事一件平淡乏味的工作。
+ 汪淼盯着钢柱之间的空间看，那里看上去一无所有，但死亡之琴已经就位。
+ “目标距琴四公里！”
+ 步话机里的声音说。
+ 斯坦顿放下步话机，又继续刚才的话题，“我第二次来巴拿马是1999年，参加过运河主权交接的仪式，很奇怪，当我们来到管理局大楼前时，看到星条旗已经降下了，据说是应美国政府要求提前一天降下的，以避免在众人面前降旗的尴尬场面出现……
+ 那时以为是在目睹一个历史性的时刻，现在想想，这些事情是多么的微不足道。”
+ “目标距琴三公里！”
+ “是啊，微不足道。”
+ 汪淼附和道。
+ 他根本没有听清斯坦顿在说什么，世界的其余部分对他来说已经不存在，他的全部注意力都集中到还没有在视野中出现的“审判日”号上。
+ 这时，早晨从太平洋东海岸升起的太阳正向太平洋西海岸落下，运河中金光粼粼，更近的下方，死亡之琴静静地立着，两根钢柱黑乎乎的，反射不出一点儿阳光，看上去比流过它们中间的运河更古老。
+ “目标距琴两公里！”
+ 斯坦顿似乎没有听到步话机中的声音，仍在滔滔不绝地说着：“自从得知外星人的舰队正在向地球飞来后，我就得了失忆症。
+ 很奇怪，过去的事都记不清了，我指的是自己经历过的那些战争，都记不清了，像刚才所说的，那些战争都那么微不足道。
+ 知道这件事以后，每个人在精神上都将成为新人，世界也将成为新的世界。
+ 我一直在想，假设在两千年前或更早的时间，人们知道有一支外星入侵舰队将在几千年后到达，那现在的人类文明是什么样子？
+ 教授，你能设想一下吗？”
+ “哦，不能……”
+ 汪淼心不在焉地敷衍着。
+ “目标距琴一点五公里！”
+ “教授，我想您将成为新世纪的盖拉德，我们期待着您的‘巴拿马运河’建成。
+ 不是吗？
+ 太空电梯其实就是一条运河，像巴拿马运河连接了两个大洋一样，太空电梯将地球和太空连接起来……”
+ 汪淼现在知道，上校唠叨着这些无意义的废话，其实是想帮他度过这一艰难时刻。
+ 他很感激，但这作用不大。
+ “目标距琴一公里！”
+ “审判日”号出现了，在从侧面山脊上照过来的落日光芒中，它是河面一片金波上的一个黑色剪影。
+ 这艘六万吨级的巨轮比汪淼想象的要大得多，它出现时，仿佛西边又突现了一座山峰，虽然汪淼知道运河可以通过七万吨级的船舶，但目睹这样的巨轮在如此窄小的河道中行驶，确实有一种奇怪的感觉。
+ 与它的巨大相比，下面的河流似乎已不存在，它像一座在陆地上移动的大山。
+ 适应了朝阳的光芒后，汪淼看到“审判日”号的船体是黑色的，上层建筑是雪白的，那面巨型天线不见了。
+ 巨轮发动机的轰鸣声已经可以听到，还有一阵轰轰的水声，那是它浑圆的船首推起的浪排冲击运河两岸发出的。
+ 随着“审判日”号与死亡之琴距离的缩短，汪淼的心跳骤然加速，呼吸也急促起来，他有一种立刻逃离的冲动，但一阵虚弱使他已无法控制自己的身体。
+ 他的心中突然涌起了一阵对史强的憎恨，这个王八蛋怎么会想出这样的主意？！
+ 正像那位联合国女官员所说，他是个魔鬼！
+ 但这种感觉转瞬即逝，他想到如果现在大史在身边，那自己的情况会好得多。
+ 斯坦顿上校曾申请大史同来，但常伟思没批准，那边现在更需要他。
+ 汪淼感觉到上校拍了拍他的手。
+ “教授，一切都会过去的。”
+ “审判日”号正在过去，它在通过死亡之琴。
+ 当它的舰首接触两根钢技之间似乎空无一物的平面时，汪淼头皮一紧，但什么都没有发生，巨轮庞大的船体从两根钢技间徐徐驶过。
+ 当船体通过一半时，汪淼甚至怀疑钢柱间的纳米丝是不是真的就不存在。
+ 但一个小小的迹象否定了他的怀疑，他注意到船体上层建筑最高处的一根细长的天线从下部折断了，天线滚落下来。
+ 很快，纳米丝存在的第二个迹象出现了，而这险些让汪淼彻底崩溃。
+ “审判日”号宽阔的甲板上很空荡，只是后甲板上有一个人在用水龙头冲洗缆桩，汪淼从高处看得很清楚，当船的这一部分从钢柱间移过的瞬间，那人的身体突然僵硬了，水龙头从他手里滑落；与此同时，连接龙头的胶皮水带也在不远处断成两截，水从那里白花花地喷了出来，那人直直地站了几秒钟就倒下了，他的身体在接触甲板的同时分成两截。
+ 那人的上半部分还在血泊中爬行，但只能用两只半条的手臂爬，因为他的手臂也被切断了一半。
+ 船尾通过了两根钢柱后，“审判日”号仍在以不变的速度向前行驶，一时看不出更多的异样。
+ 但汪淼听到发动机的声音发生了怪异的扭曲，接着被一阵杂乱的巨响所代替，那声音听起来像一台大马达的转子中被扔进去一个扳手，不，是很多个扳手一一他知道，这是发动机的转动部分被切割后发出的。
+ 在一声刺耳的破裂声后，“审判日”号的船尾一侧出现了一个破洞，这洞是被一个巨大的金属构件撞出的。
+ 那个飞出的构件旋即落人水中，激起了高高的水柱，在它一闪而过之际，汪淼看出那是船上发动机的一段曲轴。
+ 一股浓烟从破洞中涌出，在右岸直线航行了一段的“审判日”号就拖着这道烟尾开始转向，很快越过河面，撞到左岸上。
+ 汪淼看到，冲上岸坡的巨大船首在急剧变形的同时，将土坡像水那样冲开，激起汹涌的土浪。
+ 与此同时，“审判日”号开始散成四十多片薄片，每一片的厚度是半米，从这个距离看去是一片片薄板，上部的薄片前冲速度最快，与下面的逐级错开来，这艘巨轮像一叠被向前推开的扑克牌，这四十多个巨大的薄片滑动时相互磨擦，发出一阵尖利的怪音，像无数只巨指在划玻璃。
+ 在这令人无法忍受的声音消失后，“审判日”号已经化做一堆岸上的薄片，越靠上前冲得越远，像从一个绊倒的服务生手中向前倾倒的一摞盘子。
+ 那些薄片看上去像布片般柔软，很快变形，形成了一堆复杂的形状，让人无法想象它曾是一艘巨轮。
+ 大批士兵开始从山坡上冲向河岸，汪淼很惊奇附近究竟在什么时候什么地方隐蔽了这么多人。
+ 直升机群轰鸣着沿运河飞来，越过覆盖着一层色彩斑斓的油膜的河面，悬停在“审判日”号的残骸上空，抛撒大量的白色灭火剂和泡沫，很快控制了残骸中正在蔓延的火势，另外三架直升机迅速用缆索向残骸放下搜索人员。
+ 斯坦顿上校已经离开了，汪淼拿起了他放在草帽上的望远镜，克服着双手的颤抖观察被“飞刃”切割成四十多片的“审判日”号。
+ 这时，它有一大半已被灭火粉剂和泡沫所覆盖，但仍有一部分暴露着。
+ 汪淼看到了切割面，像镜面般光滑，毫不走形地映着天空火红的朝霞。
+ 他还看到了镜面上一块深红色的圆斑，不知是不是血。
+ 三天以后。
+ 审问者：你了解三体文明吗？
+ 叶文洁：不了解，我们得到的信息很有限，事实上，三体文明真实和详细的面貌，除了伊文斯等截留三体信息的降临派核心人员，谁都不清楚。
+ 审问者：那你为什么对其抱有那样的期望，认为它们能够改造和完善人类社会呢？
+ 叶文洁：如果他们能够跨越星际来到我们的世界，说明他们的科学已经发展到相当的高度，一个科学如此昌明的社会，必然拥有更高的文明和道德水准。
+ 审问者：你认为这个结论，本身科学吗？
+ 叶文洁：……
+ 审问者：让我冒昧推测一下：你的父亲深受你祖父科学救国思想的影响，而你又深受父亲的影响。
+ 叶文治（不为人察觉地叹息一声）：我不知道。
+ 审问者：现在告诉你，我们已经得到了被降临派截留的全部三体信息。
+ 叶文洁：哦…… 伊文斯怎么样了？
+ 审问者：在对”审判日”号采取行动的过程中，他死了。
+ （伊文斯被“飞刃”切割成三段。
+ 当时他身处“审判日”号的指挥中心，他最上面的那部分向前爬行了一米多，死的时候双眼盯着爬向的那个方向，正是在那个方向的一台电脑中，找到了被截留的三体信息。 ）
+ 叶文洁：信息很多吗？
+ 审问者：很多，约28G。
+ 叶文洁：这不可能，星际间超远程通讯的效率很低，怎么可能传送这么大的信息量？！
+ 审问者：开始时我们也这样想，但事情远远超过了所有人的想象，即使是最大胆、最离奇的想象。
+ 这样吧，请你阅读这些信息的一部分，你将看到自己美好幻想中的三体文明是什么样子。
+
+ At twenty-one, I was placed in a production team for reeducation in Yunnan.
+ That year Chen Qingyang was twenty-six and a doctor who happened to work where I did.
+ I was on the fourteenth production team down the mountain, and she was on the fifteenth team up the mountain.
+ One day she came down the mountain to see me, to discuss the fact that she was not damaged goods.
+ I didn't know her too well at the time, barely you might say.
+ The issue she wanted to discuss was this: Despite the fact that everyone believed she was damaged goods, she didn't think she was.
+ Because, to be damaged goods she had to have cheated on her husband, but she never did.
+ Although her husband had been in prison for a year, she hadn't slept with another man, nor had she ever done anything like that.
+ Therefore she simply couldn't understand why people kept calling her damaged goods.
+ If I'd wanted to comfort her, it wouldn't have been hard; I could prove logically that she was not damaged goods.
+ If Chen Qingyang were damaged goods, she would have had to have cheated on her husband, and therefore, there must be a man with whom she'd cheated.
+ Since at present no one could point out such a man, the proposition that Chen Qingyang had slept with another man was untenable.
+ Yet I insisted on saying that Chen Qingyang was damaged goods, and that this was beyond question.
+ Chen Qingyang came to me to ask me to prove she wasn't damaged goods because I had come to her for a shot.
+ The whole thing unfolded as follows: During the farm's busy season our team leader would not assign me to plow fields.
+ Instead he made me plant rice seedlings so that I could not stand straight most of the time.
+ Anyone familiar with me knew about the injury to my lower back, not to mention that I was a tall man, over six feet.
+ Having worked like this for a month, the pain in my lower back became so intolerable that I couldn't fall asleep without steroid injections.
+ The clinic at our team had a bunch of needles whose coating had completely peeled off, with tips all bent like fishhooks, which often pulled flesh from my lower back.
+ After a while my waist looked like it had been peppered by a shotgun, and the scars didn't fade for a long time.
+ Under the circumstances, I recalled that the doctor at the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, had graduated from Beijing Medical School.
+ Maybe she would be able to tell the difference between a hypodermic and a crotchet needle.
+ So I went to see her.
+ Not half an hour after my visit, she chased after me to my room, wanting me to prove that she wasn't damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said she didn't look down on damaged goods at all.
+ In fact, from what she observed, damaged goods seemed to have soft hearts, loved to help others and, most of all, hated to disappoint people.
+ Therefore, she even had a sneaking admiration for people like them.
+ However, the problem was not whether damaged goods were good or not good, but lay in the fact that she was not damaged goods at all, just as a cat was not a dog.
+ If a cat were called a dog, it wouldn't feel comfortable.
+ Now everyone called her damaged goods, which drove her to distraction and made her almost forget who she was.
+ As Chen Qingyang sat in my thatched shack and poured out her troubles, she had on a white smock that left her arms and legs exposed, the same outfit she had worn earlier in her clinic.
+ The only differences were that she had tied back her long, loose hair with a handkerchief and put on a pair of sandals.
+ As I looked at her, I began to wonder what was under her white smock, whether she had something on—or nothing at all, which would show what a beautiful woman Chen Qingyang was because she believed that it didn't really matter whether or not she wore underwear.
+ That kind of confidence needs to have been built up from childhood.
+ I told her that she was definitely damaged goods, and even enumerated several reasons to convince her.
+ I said that so-called damaged goods was just a denotation.
+ If people say you're damaged goods, then you must be damaged goods—there isn't much logic to it; if people say you slept with another man, you must have done it—there is not much logic to that either.
+ As for why they say you're damaged goods, in my opinion it's because of this: People generally agree that if a married woman hasn't cheated on her husband, her face must be leathery, and her breasts must sag.
+ Now your face is not dark but fair, your breasts are not hanging down but jutting out, so you must be damaged goods.
+ If you don't want to be damaged goods, you should try to darken your face and make your breasts sag so people won't accuse you of being damaged goods, which, of course, is a raw deal for you.
+ If you don't want a raw deal, sleep with another man so you can think of yourself as damaged goods, too.
+ Other people are not obliged to find out if you are damaged goods before calling you that, but you are obliged to stop them from calling you damaged goods.
+ As Chen Qingyang listened to my words, her face flushed and her eyes widened with anger.
+ She looked like she was about to slap me.
+ This woman was famous for her slapping; many men had felt her slaps.
+ However, suddenly disheartened, she said, "All right, let me be damaged goods.
+ As far as drooping or not drooping, dark or not dark, that's none of your business."
+ She also said that if I spent too much time pondering these matters, I would very likely get slapped.
+ Imagine the scene twenty years ago, when Chen Qingyang and I discussed the damaged goods issue.
+ Back then, my face was baked brown, my lips were dry and chapped, with bits of paper and tobacco stuck to them, my hair was matted like a coconut husk, the many holes in the ragged army greatcoat I wore were patched with bandages, as I sat, legs crossed, on the wooden bed, looking like a total hooligan.
+ You can imagine when Chen Qingyang heard such a person talking about whether her breasts drooped or not, how the palm of her hand itched.
+ She was a little oversensitive, but that was because many strong men went to see her who weren't sick at all.
+ What they wanted to see was damaged goods, not a doctor.
+ I was the only exception.
+ My lower back looked like it had been struck by Pigsy's rake.
+ Whether my back really hurt or not, those holes alone would justify my visit to the doctor.
+ Those holes also made her hope she might be able to convince me she was not damaged goods.
+ Even if there were just one person who believed she wasn't damaged goods, it would be very different than no one believing her.
+ But I intentionally disappointed her.
+ This is what I thought: if I wanted to prove she was not damaged goods and I could, then things would be too easy.
+ The truth was I couldn't prove anything, except things that didn't need proving.
+ In spring, our team leader claimed I was the one who had shot out the left eye of his dog, which was why the dog always looked at people with its head tilted, as if she were dancing ballet.
+ From then on, he always gave me a hard time.
+ Three things could have proved my innocence: 1. The team leader had no dog; 2. The dog was born blind in the left eye; 3. I'm a man with no hands who can't aim a gun.
+ Finally, none of the three requirements could be established: the team leader did have a brown dog; her left eye was indeed blinded by a shot; I could not only aim a gun but was also was an excellent marksman.
+ To make matters worse, I'd borrowed an air rifle from Luo Xiaosi not long before the incident, and using a bowl of mung beans as bullets, killed a couple of pounds of mice in an empty granary.
+ Of course, there were other crack shots on our production team, and one of them was Luo Xiaosi.
+ When he fired at the team leader's dog, I stood right beside him watching.
+ But I couldn't inform on other people, and my relationship with Luo Xiaosi was not bad.
+ Besides, if the team leader could have handled Luo Xiaosi, he wouldn't have accused me.
+ So I kept quiet.
+ To keep silent meant to acquiesce.
+ That was why in the spring I had to plant rice seedlings, stooped over in the field like a broken electricity pole; in the autumn I had to herd cattle, so I couldn't get a hot meal.
+ Of course, I could not take this lying down.
+ One day as I walked on the mountain, the team leader's dog came into view.
+ I happened to have Luo Xiaosi's air rifle with me, so I fired a bullet and blinded her right eye.
+ With neither left eye nor right eye, the dog couldn't get back to the team leader's house—God knows where she went.
+ I remember in those days, besides herding cattle on the mountain and lying in bed, I didn't have anything to do and nothing seemed to matter.
+ But Chen Qingyang came down the mountain again to see me.
+ There was another rumor in the air that she was having an affair with me and this time she wanted me to prove our innocence.
+ I told her that we would have to prove two things first before our innocence could be established: 1. Chen Qingyang was a virgin; 2. Castrated at birth, I was unable to have sex.
+ These two things would be hard to prove, so we couldn't prove our innocence.
+ I preferred to prove our guilt.
+ On hearing my words, Chen Qingyang's face first turned pale and then blushed all over.
+ Finally she stood up and left without saying a word.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that I had always been a scoundrel.
+ The first time she wanted me to prove her innocence, I looked up at the ceiling and began to talk nonsense; the next time she wanted me to prove our innocence, I earnestly suggested having intercourse with her.
+ So she decided she was going to slap me sooner or later.
+ If I had guessed her plan at the time, the things that happened later might never have happened.
+ On my twenty-first birthday, I was herding buffalo at the riverside.
+ In the afternoon I fell asleep on the grass.
+ I remembered covering myself with a few banana leaves before I fell asleep, but by the time I woke up I found nothing on my body. (Perhaps the buffalo had eaten the leaves.)
+ The sunshine in the subtropical dry season had burned my entire body red, leaving me in an agony of burning and itching.
+ My little Buddha pointed to the sky like an arrow, bigger than ever.
+ That was how I spent my birthday.
+ When I woke up, the sun glared down on me from a frighteningly blue sky.
+ A layer of fine dust, like a coating of talcum powder, covered my whole body.
+ I'd experienced numerous erections in my life, but none as vigorous and magnificent as that time.
+ Perhaps it was because of the location, so isolated from the villages that not even a soul could be seen.
+ I got up to check on my buffalo, only to find them all crouching at the far fork of the rivers, chewing grass quietly.
+ It was a surpassingly still moment, and the white wind was gently blowing across the field.
+ On the bank, several pairs of bulls from the mountain village were fighting each other.
+ Their eyes had turned red, and saliva drooled from the corner of their mouths.
+ This sort of bull had tightly packed balls and protruding penises.
+ Our bulls were not like that.
+ They would lie on the ground and stay put no matter how hard the other bulls tried to provoke them.
+ To prevent our bulls from hurting each other and slowing down the spring plowing, we castrated all of them.
+ I was present every time they castrated the bulls.
+ Ordinary bulls could just be cut with a knife.
+ But for extremely wild ones, you have to employ the art of hammer-smashing, which is to cut open their scrotums, take out the balls, and then use a wooden hammer to pulverize them.
+ From then on these altered bulls knew nothing but grazing and working.
+ No need to tie them down if you wanted to kill them.
+ Our team leader, the one who always wielded the hammer, had no doubts that surgery of this kind would also work on humans.
+ He would shout at us all the time: You young bulls!
+ You need a good hammering to make you behave.
+ In his way of thinking, this red, stiff, foot-long thing on my body was the incarnation of evil.
+ Of course, I had a different opinion.
+ To me, the thing was extremely important, as important as my existence itself.
+ The darkness began to settle in, and a cloud drifted idly across the sky.
+ The lower half of the cloud was immersed in darkness and the upper half still floated in sunshine.
+ That day I was twentyone, and in the golden age of my life.
+ I had so many desires; I wanted to love, to eat, and to be turned in a flash into the halfbright and half-dark cloud in the sky.
+ Only much later did I realize that life is a slow process of being hammered.
+ People grow old day after day, their desire disappears little by little, and finally they become like those hammered bulls.
+ However, that idea never crossed my mind on my twenty-first birthday.
+ I thought I would always be lively and strong, and that nothing could beat me.
+ I had invited Chen Qingyang over to eat fish with me that night, so I was supposed to catch fish in the afternoon.
+ But not until five o'clock did I remember I needed to go to where the fish were supposed to have been trapped to take a look.
+ Before I reached the small fork of the rivers, two Jingpo boys ran up, hurling mud at one another all the way.
+ Some landed on me.
+ They stopped fighting only after I picked them up by their ears.
+ I shouted at them, "You pricks, where're the fish?"
+ The older one said, "It was all that prick Le Long's fault!
+ He sat on the dam all the time, so the dam fucking collapsed."
+ Le Long roared back, "Wang Er, the fucking dam you built wasn't strong enough!"
+ I said, "That's bullshit!
+ I built the dam with sod.
+ What prick has the nerve to say it wasn't strong enough?"
+ I went down to see for myself.
+ Whether Le Long's fault or mine, the dam was gone anyway.
+ The water we bailed out all flowed back, any hope of catching fish went down the drain, and the whole day went to waste.
+ Of course, I wouldn't admit it was my fault.
+ Instead I yelled at Le Long.
+ Le Du (the other boy) also chimed in.
+ Le Long began to get angry.
+ He jumped up a couple of feet and roared, "Wang Er!
+ Le Du!
+ You pricks!
+ You are ganging up on me!
+ I'm going to tell my father.
+ He'll shoot the two of you with his bronze-barreled shotgun!"
+ After saying this, the little bastard tried to leap onto the bank to escape.
+ I caught his ankle and pulled him back.
+ "You want to run off and leave us to herd your buffalo?
+ You're fucking dreaming!"
+ The little bastard wailed wa-wa and tried to bite me.
+ But I grabbed him, pinned him to the ground, and held him hard.
+ He frothed at the mouth, cursing me in a mix of Mandarin, Jingpo, and Thai.
+ I talked back in standard Beijing dialect.
+ All of a sudden, he stopped cursing, eyeing the lower part of my body with envy.
+ I looked down and found my little Buddha standing up again.
+ I heard Le Long click his tongue admiringly, "Wow!
+ Want to fuck Le Du's sister?"
+ I immediately dropped him to put on my pants.
+ When I lit the gas lamp at the pump house, Chen Qingyang would often arrive unexpectedly and complain that life was meaningless.
+ She also said that she believed she was innocent in every respect.
+ I said that the way she dared claim innocence was itself the biggest sin.
+ In my opinion, craving good food and aversion to hard work, together with lust for beauty and sex, make up a human being's basic nature.
+ If you were a hard worker who lived a frugal and chaste life, you would commit the sin of hypocrisy, which was more disgusting than greed, sensuality, or laziness.
+ Words like this seemed to please her, although she never agreed with what I said out loud.
+ However, when I lit the gas lamp that night, she didn't show up for a long time.
+ It was not until nine that she appeared at my door and called my name, "Wang Er, you stinker!
+ Come out!"
+ I went out to see what was going on.
+ Dressed all in white, she looked especially smart, although her expression seemed tense.
+ She said, You invited me over to eat fish and have a heart-to-heart, but where is the fish?
+ I had to admit that the fish were still in the river.
+ All right, she said, at least we can still have a heart-to-heart.
+ Then let's talk.
+ I said, How about we go inside first?
+ She said that's fine, too.
+ So she went in and found herself a place to sit.
+ She looked angry.
+ I had planned to seduce Chen Qingyang on my twenty-first birthday, because she was my friend; and she had a full bosom, a slender waist, and shapely buttocks; besides, her neck was long and graceful and her face was pretty, too.
+ I wanted to have sex with her and thought she shouldn't refuse.
+ Because if she'd needed my body to practice vivisection, I would have lent it to her without giving it a second thought; likewise, if I needed to use her body for pleasure, it shouldn't be a problem either.
+ But she was a woman, and women in general were more or less small-minded.
+ For that reason, I needed to expand her mind, so I began to explain what "brotherhood" was.
+ In my opinion, brotherhood was the kind of great friendship that only existed among the outlaws of the forest.
+ Take the heroes in The Legend of the Water Margins for example.
+ Those guys would kill and set fires as soon as eat.
+ But as long as they heard the great name of Timely Rain, they would fall to their knees and kowtow.
+ Like them, I believed in nothing but brotherhood.
+ If you were my friend, even if you committed a crime beyond Heaven's forgiveness, I would still stand by you.
+ That night, I offered my great friendship to Chen Qingyang and she was immediately moved to tears.
+ She accepted my friendship right away, and, what was more, even expressed her wish to reward me with a greater friendship, saying that she would never betray me even if I turned out to be a low-down, shifty little scoundrel.
+ Relieved by her words, naturally I told her what was really on my mind: I'm twenty-one, but I've never experienced what happens between a man and a woman.
+ I really can't resign myself to that.
+ She stared at me blankly after hearing my words—maybe she was not prepared for this.
+ I kept persuading her, which didn't seem to work, so I put my hand on her shoulder and felt the tension in her muscles.
+ The woman could change her mind any minute and slap me—if that occurred, it would only prove that women didn't understand what great friendship meant.
+ But to my surprise, she didn't slap me.
+ Instead she snorted and then started laughing.
+ How stupid I am!
+ To be tricked so easily!
+ What trick?
+ What are you talking about?
+ I played dumb.
+ She said, I didn't say anything.
+ I asked her will you do it or not?
+ She said "Pah!" and she blushed.
+ It looked like she was a little shy, so I decided to take the initiative and began to get fresh with her.
+ She tried to push me away a few times, and then said, No, not here.
+ Let's go up to the mountain.
+ So I followed her all the way up to the mountain.
+ Later on, Chen Qingyang told me that she had never been able to figure out whether my great friendship was true or just a lie that I had made up then to trick her.
+ But she said that those words enchanted her like a spell, and that even if she lost everything because of it she'd have no regrets.
+ Actually, the great friendship was neither true nor false, like everything else in the world.
+ It was true if you believed it, and false if you didn't; my words were also neither true nor false, but I was prepared to stand by my words anytime and wouldn't back off even if the sky collapsed and the earth cracked open.
+ Because of this attitude of mine, no one really believed me, which explained why I made no more than a couple of friends, including Chen Qingyang, even though I took it on as a lifelong cause.
+ That night, halfway up the mountain, Chen Qingyang told me that she needed to go back to her place to get something, telling me to wait for her on the other side of the mountain.
+ I suspected that she might want to stand me up, but I didn't say anything.
+ I went straight to the other side of the mountain and smoked.
+ After a while, she arrived.
+ Chen Qingyang said that the first time I went to her for a shot, she was dozing at her desk.
+ In Yunnan everyone had plenty of time to nap, so they always seemed half asleep and half awake.
+ When I walked into her clinic, the room dimmed for a moment because it was a thatched mud hut where most of the sunshine came in through the door.
+ She awakened right then, raised her head, and asked what I was doing there.
+ I said my lower back hurt and she told me to lie down so that she could take a look at it.
+ I threw myself headlong onto the bamboo bed and nearly crushed it—my lower back hurt so much that I simply could not bend.
+ If it hadn't been for that I wouldn't have gone to see her.
+ Chen Qingyang said my mouth had lines around it even when I was very young, and dark circles always showed under my eyes.
+ I was a tall man of few words in worn-out clothes.
+ She gave me a shot and I left.
+ Maybe I thanked her, or maybe I didn't.
+ When she had the idea I could prove she wasn't damaged goods, only half a minute passed.
+ She ran out and found me taking a shortcut to the fourteenth team.
+ I strode down the slope, leaping over the ditches and mounds whenever there was one, descending rapidly along the mountain slope.
+ It was a morning in the dry season, and the wind blew up from the foot of the mountain, so I couldn't have heard anything even if she'd called me, not to mention that I never looked back anyway.
+ So that was the way I left.
+ Chen Qingyang said she had wanted to go after me then, but felt it would be hard to catch up, and besides I might not be able to prove her innocence.
+ So she walked back to the clinic.
+ She changed her mind later because she realized since everyone accused her of being damaged goods, they were all her enemies.
+ It was possible that I was not her enemy.
+ She didn't want to risk turning me into an enemy also.
+ I smoked on the back slope of the mountain that night.
+ Even though it was evening I could see into the distance, because the moonlight was bright, and the air was clear in that region.
+ Every now and then, I could hear dogs barking in the distance.
+ I spotted Chen Qingyang as soon as she came out of the fifteenth team—I doubted if I could see that far during the day.
+ But it felt different from the day.
+ Perhaps because there was no one around.
+ I couldn't tell whether there were people around or not in the evening, because it was silver-gray everywhere.
+ If you traveled with a torch, it meant you wanted the whole world to know where you were; if you didn't, it would be like wearing a cape of invisibility—people who knew you were there could see you, and people who didn't couldn't.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang slowly coming toward me, my heart began to pound, and it occurred to me without any instruction that we should have a little foreplay before getting down to business.
+ Chen Qingyang reacted pretty coldly to this.
+ Her lips were icy, and she didn't respond to my caresses at all.
+ By the time I tried to unbutton her dress, all thumbs, she pushed me away and started taking off her clothes by herself, piece by piece.
+ She folded her clothes neatly and put them aside.
+ Then she lay down stiffly on the grass.
+ Her naked body was extremely beautiful.
+ I took off my clothes in a hurry and crawled over to her.
+ Again she pushed me off, handing me something, saying, "Know how to use this?
+ Want me to teach you?"
+ It was a condom.
+ I was at the height of my excitement and the tone of her voice upset me a little.
+ But I put on the condom anyway and crawled on top of her.
+ Heart racing and out of breath, I fumbled for quite a while and couldn't get it right.
+ Again I heard her cold voice, "Hey, do you know what you're doing?"
+ I said, Of course I do.
+ Could you please move a little closer?
+ I want to study your anatomy in the light.
+ Then with a sound as loud as a thunderclap at my ear, I realized she'd given me a big slap.
+ I jumped to my feet, grabbed my clothes, and ran.
+
+ 我二十一岁时，正在云南插队。
+ 陈清扬当时二十六岁，就在我插队的地方当医生。
+ 我在山下十四队，她在山上十五队。
+ 有一天她从山上下来，和我讨论她不是破鞋的问题。
+ 那时我还不大认识她，只能说有一点知道。
+ 她要讨论的事是这祥的：虽然所有的人都说她是一个破鞋，但她以为自己不是的。
+ 因为破鞋偷汉，而她没有偷过汉。
+ 虽然她丈夫已经住了一年监狱，但她没有偷过汉。
+ 在此之前也未偷过汉。
+ 所以她简直不明白，人们为什么要说她是破鞋。
+ 如果我要安慰她，并不困难。
+ 我可以从逻辑上证明她不是破鞋。
+ 如果陈清扬是破鞋，即陈清扬偷汉，则起码有一个某人为其所偷。
+ 如今不能指出某人，所以陈清扬偷汉不能成立。
+ 但是我偏说，陈清扬就是破鞋，而且这一点毋庸置疑。
+ 陈清扬找我证明她不是破鞋，起因是我找她打针。
+ 这事经过如下：农忙时队长不叫我犁田，而是叫我去插秧，这样我的腰就不能经常直立。
+ 认识我的人都知道，我的腰上有旧伤，而且我身高在一米九以上。
+ 如此插了一个月，我腰痛难忍，不打封闭就不能入睡。
+ 我们队医务室那一把针头镀层剥落，而且都有倒钩，经常把我腰上的肉钩下来。
+ 后来我的腰就像中了散弹枪，伤痕久久不褪。
+ 就在这种情况下，我想起十五队的队医陈清扬是北医大毕业的大夫，对针头和勾针大概还能分清，所以我去找她看病。
+ 看完病回来，不到半个小时，她就追到我屋里来，要我证明她不是破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她丝毫也不藐视破鞋。
+ 据她观察，破鞋都很善良，乐于助人，而且最不乐意让人失望。
+ 因此她对破鞋还有一点钦佩。
+ 问题不在于破鞋好不好，而在于她根本不是破鞋。
+ 就如一只猫不是一只狗一样。
+ 假如一只猫被人叫成一只狗，它也会感到很不自在。
+ 现在大家都管她叫破鞋，弄得她魂不守舍，几乎连自己是谁都不知道了。
+ 陈清扬在我的草房里时，裸臂赤腿穿一件白大褂，和她在山上那间医务室里装束一样。
+ 所不同的是披散的长发用个手绢束住，脚上也多了一双拖鞋。
+ 看了她的样子，我就开始捉摸：她那件白大褂底下是穿了点什么呢，还是什么都没穿。
+ 这一点可以说明陈清扬很漂亮，因为她觉得穿什么不穿什么无所谓。
+ 这是从小培养起来的自信心。
+ 我对她说，她确实是个破鞋。
+ 还举出一些理由来：所谓破鞋者，乃是一个指称，大家都说你是破鞋，你就是破鞋，没什么道理可讲。
+ 大家说你偷了汉，你就是偷了汉，这也没什么道理可讲。
+ 至于大家为什么要说你是破鞋，照我看是这样：大家都认为，结了婚的女人不偷汉，就该面色黝黑，乳房下垂。
+ 而你脸不黑而且白，乳房不下垂而且高耸，所以你是破鞋。
+ 假如你不想当破鞋，就要把脸弄黑，把乳房弄下垂，以后别人就不说你是破鞋。
+ 当然这样很吃亏，假如你不想吃亏，就该去偷个汉来。
+ 这样你自己也认为自己是个破鞋。
+ 别人没有义务先弄明白你是否偷汉再决定是否管你叫破鞋。
+ 你倒有义务叫别人无法叫你破鞋。
+ 陈清扬听了这话，脸色发红，怒目圆睁，几乎就要打我一耳光。
+ 这女人打人耳光出了名，好多人吃过她的耳光。
+ 但是她忽然泄了气，说：好吧，破鞋就破鞋吧。
+ 但是垂不垂黑不黑的，不是你的事。
+ 她还说，假如我在这些事上琢磨得太多，很可能会吃耳光。
+ 倒退到二十年前，想像我和陈清扬讨论破鞋问题时的情景。
+ 那时我面色焦黄，嘴唇干裂，上面沾了碎纸和烟丝，头发乱如败棕，身穿一件破军衣，上面好多破洞都是橡皮膏粘上的，跷着二郎腿，坐在木板床上，完全是一副流氓相。
+ 你可以想像陈清扬听到这么个人说起她的乳房下垂不下垂时，手心是何等的发痒。
+ 她有点神经质，都是因为有很多精壮的男人找她看病，其实却没有病。
+ 那些人其实不是去看大夫，而是去看破鞋。
+ 只有我例外。
+ 我的后腰上好像被猪八戒筑了两耙。
+ 不管腰疼真不真，光那些窟窿也能成为看医生的理由。
+ 这些窟窿使她产生一个希望，就是也许能向我证明，她不是破鞋。
+ 有一个人承认她不是破鞋，和没人承认大不一样。
+ 可是我偏让她失望。
+ 我是这么想的：假如我想证明她不是破鞋，就能证明她不是破鞋，那事情未免太容易了。
+ 实际上我什么都不能证明，除了那些不需证明的东西。
+ 春天里，队长说我打瞎了他家母狗的左眼，使它老是偏过头来看人，好像在跳芭蕾舞。
+ 从此后他总给我小鞋穿。
+ 我想证明我自己的清白无辜，只有以下三个途径：1、队长家不存在一只母狗；2、该母狗天生没有左眼；3、我是无手之人，不能持枪射击。
+ 结果是三条一条也不成立。
+ 队长家确有一棕色母狗，该母狗的左眼确是后天打瞎，而我不但能持枪射击，而且枪法极精。
+ 在此之前不久，我还借了罗小四的汽枪，用一碗绿豆做子弹，在空粮库里打下了二斤耗子。
+ 当然，这队里枪法好的人还有不少，其中包括罗小四。
+ 汽枪就是他的，而且他打瞎队长的母狗时，我就在一边看着。
+ 但是我不能揭发别人，罗小四和我也不错。
+ 何况队长要是能惹得起罗小四，也不会认准了是我。
+ 所以我保持沉默。
+ 沉默就是默认。
+ 所以春天我去插秧，撅在地里像一根半截电线杆，秋收后我又去放牛，吃不上热饭。
+ 当然，我也不肯无所作为。
+ 有一天在山上，我正好借了罗小四的汽枪，队长家的母狗正好跑到山上叫我看见，我就射出一颗子弹打瞎了它的右眼。
+ 该狗既无左眼，又无右眼，也就不能跑回去让队长看见——天知道它跑到哪儿去了。
+ 我记得那些日子里，除了上山放牛和在家里躺着，似乎什么也没做。
+ 我觉得什么都与我无关。
+ 可是陈清扬又从山上跑下来找我。
+ 原来又有了另一种传闻，说她在和我搞破鞋。
+ 她要我给出我们清白无辜的证明。
+ 我说，要证明我们无辜，只有证明以下两点：1、陈清扬是处女；2、我是天阉之人，没有性交能力。
+ 这两点都难以证明。
+ 所以我们不能证明自己无辜。
+ 我倒倾向于证明自己不无辜。
+ 陈清扬听了这些话，先是气得脸白，然后满面通红，最后一声不吭地站起来走了。
+ 陈清扬说，我始终是一个恶棍。
+ 她第一次要我证明她清白无辜时，我翻了一串白眼，然后开始胡说八道。
+ 第二次她要我证明我们俩无辜，我又一本正经地向她建议举行一次性交。
+ 所以她就决定，早晚要打我一个耳光。
+ 假如我知道她有这样的打算，也许后面的事情就不会发生。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，正在河边放牛。
+ 下午我躺在草地上睡着了。
+ 我睡去时，身上盖了几片芭蕉叶子，醒来时身上已经一无所有（叶子可能被牛吃了）。
+ 亚热带旱季的阳光把我晒得浑身赤红，痛痒难当，我的小和尚直翘翘地指向天空，尺寸空前。
+ 这就是我过生日时的情形。
+ 我醒来时觉得阳光耀眼，天蓝得吓人，身上落了一层细细的尘土，好像一层爽身粉。
+ 我一生经历的无数次勃起，都不及那一次雄浑有力，大概是因为在极荒僻的地方，四野无人。
+ 我爬起来看牛，发现它们都卧在远处的河岔里静静地嚼草。
+ 那时节万籁无声，田野上刮着白色的风。
+ 河岸上有几对寨子里的牛在斗架，斗得眼珠通红，口角流涎。
+ 这种牛阴囊紧缩，阳具挺直。
+ 我们的牛不干这种事。
+ 任凭别人上门挑衅，我们的牛依旧安卧不动。
+ 为了防止斗架伤身，影响春耕，我们把它们都阉了。
+ 每次阉牛我都在场。
+ 对于一般的公牛，只用刀割去即可。
+ 但是对于格外生性者，就须采取锤骟术，也就是割开阴囊，掏出睾九，一木锤砸个稀烂。
+ 从此后受术者只知道吃草干活，别的什么都不知道，连杀都不用捆。
+ 掌锤的队长毫不怀疑这种手术施之于人类也能得到同等的效力，每回他都对我们呐喊：你们这些生牛蛋子，就欠砸上一锤才能老实！
+ 按他的逻辑，我身上这个通红通红，直不愣登，长约一尺的东西就是罪恶的化身。
+ 当然，我对此有不同的意见。
+ 在我看来，这东西无比重要，就如我之存在本身。
+ 天色微微向晚，天上飘着懒洋洋的云彩。
+ 下半截沉在黑暗里，上半截仍浮在阳光中。
+ 那一天我二十一岁，在我一生的黄金时代， 我有好多奢望。
+ 我想爱，想吃，还想在一瞬间变成天上半明半暗的云。
+ 后来我才知道，生活就是个缓慢受锤的过程，人一天天老下去，奢望也一天天消失，最后变得像挨了锤的牛一样。
+ 可是我过二十一岁生日时没有预见到这一点。
+ 我觉得自己会永远生猛下去，什么也锤不了我。
+ 那天晚上我请陈清扬来吃鱼，所以应该在下午把鱼弄到手。
+ 到下午五点多钟我才想起到戽鱼的现场去看看。
+ 还没走进那条小河岔，两个景颇族孩子就从里面一路打出来，烂泥横飞，我身上也挨了好几块，直到我拎住他们的耳朵，他们才罢手。
+ 我喝问一声：“鸡巴，鱼呢？”
+ 那个年记大点的说：“都怪鸡巴勒农！
+ 他老坐在坝上，把坝坐鸡巴倒了！”
+ 勒农直着嗓子吼：“王二！
+ 坝打得不鸡巴牢！”
+ 我说：“放屁！
+ 老子砍草皮打的坝，哪个鸡巴敢说不牢？”
+ 到里面一看，不管是因为勒农坐的也好，还是因为我的坝没打好也罢，反正坝是倒了，戽出来的水又流回去，鱼全泡了汤，一整天的劳动全都白费。
+ 我当然不能承认是我的错，就痛骂勒农。
+ 勒都（就是那另一个孩子）也附合我。
+ 勒农上了火，一跳三尺高，嘴里吼道：“王二！
+ 勒都！
+ 鸡巴！
+ 你们姐夫舅子合伙搞我！
+ 我去告诉我家爹，拿铜炮枪打你们！”
+ 说完这小免崽子就往河岸上窜，想一走了之。
+ 我一把薅住他脚脖子，把他揪下来。
+ “你走了我们给你赶牛哇？
+ 做你娘的美梦！”
+ 这小子哇哇叫着要咬我，被我劈开手按在地上。
+ 他口吐白沫，杂着汉话、景颇话、傣话骂我，我用正庄京片子回骂。
+ 忽然间他不骂了，往我下体看去，脸上露出无限羡慕之情。
+ 我低头一看，我的小和尚又直立起来了。
+ 只听勒农啧啧赞美道： “哇！
+ 想日勒都家姐啊！”
+ 我赶紧扔下他去穿裤子。
+ 晚上我在水泵房点起汽灯，陈清扬就会忽然到来，谈起她觉得活着很没意思，还说到她在每件事上都是清白无辜。
+ 我说她竟敢觉得自己清白无辜，这本身就是最大的罪孽。
+ 照我的看法，每个人的本性都是好吃懒作，好色贪淫，假如你克勤克俭，守身如玉，这就犯了矫饰之罪，比好吃懒作、好色贪淫更可恶。
+ 这些话她好像很听得进去，但是从不附合。
+ 那天晚上我在河边上点起汽灯，陈清扬却迟迟不至，直到九点钟以后，她才到门前来喊我：“王二，混蛋！
+ 你出来！”
+ 我出去一口看，她穿了一身白，打扮得格外整齐，但是表情不大轻松。
+ 她说道：你请我来吃鱼，做倾心之谈，鱼在哪里？
+ 我只好说，鱼还在河里。
+ 她说好吧，还剩下一个倾心之谈。
+ 就在这儿谈罢。
+ 我说进屋去谈，她说那也无妨，就进屋来坐着，看样子火气甚盛。
+ 我过二十一岁生日那天，打算在晚上引诱陈清扬，因为陈清扬是我的朋友，而且胸部很丰满，腰很细，屁股浑圆。
+ 除此之外，她的脖子端正修长，脸也很漂亮。
+ 我想和她性交，而且认为她不应该不同意。
+ 假如她想借我的身体练开膛，我准让她开。
+ 所以我借她身体一用也没什么不可以。
+ 唯一的问题是她是个女人，女人家总有点小器。
+ 为此我要启发她，所以我开始阐明什么叫作“义气”。
+ 在我看来，义气就是江湖好汉中那种伟大友谊。
+ 水浒中的豪杰们，杀人放火的事是家常便饭，可一听说及时雨的大名，立即倒身便拜。
+ 我也像那些草莽英雄，什么都不信，唯一不能违背的就是义气。
+ 只要你是我的朋友，哪怕你十恶不赦，为天地所不容，我也要站到你身边。
+ 那天晚上我把我的伟大友谊奉献给陈清扬，她大为感动，当即表示道：这友谊她接受了。
+ 不但如此，她还说要以更伟大的友谊还报我，哪怕我是个卑鄙小人也不背叛。
+ 我听她如此说，大为放心，就把底下的话也说了出来：我已经二十一岁了，男女间的事情还没体验过，真是不甘心。
+ 她听了以后就开始发愣，大概是没有思想准备。
+ 说了半天她毫无反应。
+ 我把手放到她的肩膀上去，感觉她的肌肉绷得很紧。
+ 这娘们随时可能翻了脸给我一耳光，假定如此，就证明女人不懂什么是交情。
+ 可是她没有。
+ 忽然间她哼了一声，就笑起来。
+ 还说：我真笨！
+ 这么容易就着了你的道儿！
+ 我说：什么道儿？
+ 你说什么？
+ 她说：我什么也没有说。
+ 我问她我刚才说的事儿你答应不答应？
+ 她说呸，而且满面通红。
+ 我看她有点不好意思，就采取主动，动手动脚。
+ 她搡了我几把，后来说，不在这儿，咱们到山上去。
+ 我就和她一块到山上去了。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她始终没搞明白我那个伟大友谊是真的呢，还是临时编出来骗她。
+ 但是她又说，那些话就像咒语一样让她着迷，哪怕为此丧失一切，也不懊侮。
+ 其实伟大友谊不真也不假，就如世上一切东西一样，你信它是真，它就真下去。
+ 你疑它是假，它就是假的。
+ 我的话也半真不假。
+ 但是我随时准备兑现我的话，哪怕天崩地裂也不退却。
+ 就因为这种态度，别人都不相信我。
+ 我虽然把交朋友当成终身的事业，所交到的朋友不过陈清扬等二三人而已。
+ 那天晚上我们到山上去，走到半路她说要回家一趟，要我到后山上等她。
+ 我有点怀疑她要晾我，但是我没说出来，径直走到后山上去抽烟。
+ 等了一些时间，她来了。
+ 陈清扬说，我第一次去找她打针时，她正在伏案打瞌睡。
+ 在云南每个人都有很多时间打瞌睡，所以总是半睡半醒。
+ 我走进去时，屋子里暗了一下，因为是草顶土坯房，大多数光从门口进来。
+ 她就在那一刻醒来，抬头问我干什么。
+ 我说腰疼，她说躺下让我看看。
+ 我就一头倒下去，扑到竹板床上，几乎把床砸塌。
+ 我的腰痛得厉害，完全不能打弯。
+ 要不是这样，我也不会来找她。
+ 陈清扬说，我很年轻时就饿纹入嘴，眼睛下面乌黑。
+ 我的身材很高，衣服很破，而且不爱说话。
+ 她给我打过针，我就走了，好像说了一声谢了，又好像没说。
+ 等到她想起可以让我证明她不是破鞋时，已经过了半分钟。
+ 她追了出来，看见我正取近路走回十四队。
+ 我从土坡上走下去，逢沟跳沟，逢坎跃坎，顺着山势下得飞快。
+ 那时正逢旱季的上午，风从山下吹来，喊我也听不见。
+ 而且我从来也不回头。
+ 我就这样走掉了。
+ 陈清扬说，当时她想去追我，可是觉得很难追上。
+ 而且我也不一定能够证明她不是破鞋。
+ 所以她走回医务室去。
+ 后来她又改变了主意去找我，是因为所有的人都说她是破鞋，因此所有的人都是敌人。
+ 而我可能不是敌人。
+ 她不愿错过了机会，让我也变成敌人。
+ 那天晚上我在后山上抽烟。
+ 虽然在夜里，我能看见很远的地方。
+ 因为月光很明亮，当地的空气又很干净。
+ 我还能听见远处的狗叫声。
+ 陈清扬一出十五队我就看见了，白天未必能看这么远。
+ 虽然如此，还是和白天不一样。
+ 也许是因为到处都没人。
+ 我也说不准夜里这片山上有人没人，因为到处是银灰色的一片。
+ 假如有人打着火把行路，那就是说，希望全世界的人都知道他在那里。
+ 假如你不打火把，就如穿上了隐身衣，知道你在那里的人能看见，不知道的人不能看见。
+ 我看见陈清扬慢慢走近，怦然心动，无师自通地想到，做那事之前应该亲热一番。
+ 陈清扬对此的反应是冷冰冰的。
+ 她的嘴唇冷冰冰，对爱抚也毫无反应。
+ 等到我毛手毛脚给她解扣子时，她把我推开，自己把衣服一件件脱下来，叠好放在一边，自己直挺挺躺在草地上。
+ 陈清扬的裸体美极了。
+ 我赶紧脱了衣服爬过去，她又一把把我推开，递给我一个东西说：“会用吗？
+ 要不要我教你？”
+ 那是一个避孕套。
+ 我正在兴头上，对她这种口气只微感不快。
+ 套上之后又爬到她身上去，心慌气躁地好一阵乱弄，也没弄对。
+ 忽然她冷冰冰他说： “喂！
+ 你知道自己在干什么吗？”
+ 我说当然知道。
+ 能不能劳你大驾躺过来一点？
+ 我要就着亮儿研究一下你的结构。
+ 只听啪的一声巨响，好似一声耳边雷，她给我一个大耳光。
+ 我跳起来，拿了自己的衣服，拔腿就走。
+
+ Finally we were taken into custody and forced to write confessions for a long time.
+ At first I wrote the following: Chen Qingyang and I have an indecent relationship.
+ That was all.
+ But it came down from above that what I wrote was too simple, and they asked me to start over.
+ Later on I wrote that Chen Qingyang and I had an indecent relationship, and that I had screwed her many times, and she liked being screwed by me.
+ This time the opinions from above said it needed more detail.
+ So I added detail: The fortieth time that we made illegal love, the location was the thatched hut I secretly built on the mountain.
+ It was either the fifteenth or the sixteenth by the lunar calendar—whatever the date, the moon shone brightly.
+ Chen Qingyang sat on the bamboo bed, her body gleaming in the moonlight that shone through the door.
+ I stood on the ground, and she locked her legs around my waist.
+ We chatted for a while.
+ I told her that her breasts were not just full, but also shapely; her navel not only round, but shallow too.
+ All of this was very good.
+ She said, Really?
+ I had no idea.
+ After a while the moonlight moved away.
+ I lit a cigarette, but she took it from me after I finished half of it, taking several drags.
+ She pinched my nose, for the locals believed that a virgin's nose would be very hard, and a man dying of too much sex would have a soft nose.
+ On some of these occasions she lazed on the bed, leaning against the bamboo wall; other times she held me like a koala bear, blowing warm breath on my face.
+ At last the moonlight shone through the window opposite the door and we were separate by then.
+ However, I wrote these confessions not for the military deputy — he was no longer our military deputy, having been discharged from the army and gone back home.
+ It didn't matter whether he was our military deputy or not, we had to write confessions about our errors anyway.
+ Years later, I had a good relationship with the director of personnel at our school.
+ He told me that the great thing about the job was that you could read other people's confessions, which I believe included mine.
+ I thought of all the confessions mine would be the richest and most vivid.
+ That was because I wrote it in a hotel, with nothing else to do, like a professional writer.
+ In the evening I made my escape.
+ That morning, I asked the mess officer for a day off because I needed to go to Jingkan to buy toothpaste.
+ I worked under the mess officer, who also had the task of watching me.
+ He was supposed to keep an eye on me every minute, but I disappeared as soon as it got dark.
+ In the morning I brought him a lot of loquats, all very good.
+ The loquats growing on the plain aren't edible, because of the ant colonies in them.
+ Only the ones on the mountain don't have ants.
+ The mess officer said since we got along, and the military deputy wasn't around, he'd allow me to go buy toothpaste.
+ But he also said the military deputy might return any minute.
+ If I were not here by the time the military deputy returned, he couldn't cover for me.
+ I left my team and climbed to the fifteenth team's mountainside, holding a small piece of mirror to reflect light on Chen Qingyang's back window.
+ After a while, she came up the mountain and told me that since people had been keeping a close eye on her for the past two days, she hadn't been able to get out.
+ And right now she was having her period.
+ She said that shouldn't be a problem and we could still do it.
+ I said that wasn't going to work.
+ When we said goodbye to each other, she insisted on giving me two hundred yuan.
+ I refused at first, but then took it after a while.
+ Later Chen Qingyang told me that nobody had been keeping a close eye on her those two days, and she hadn't been having her period when she saw me.
+ In fact, people in the fifteenth team didn't pay attention to her at all.
+ People there were used to accusing the innocent of being damaged goods, but as for real damaged goods, they just let them do whatever they wanted.
+ The reason that she didn't come up the mountain and kept me waiting for nothing was because she began to feel tired of it.
+ She couldn't do it unless she was in the right mood; having sex wouldn't necessarily put her in a good mood.
+ Of course, after her deception she felt guilty.
+ That was why she gave me two hundred yuan.
+ I thought since she might have trouble spending the two hundred yuan, I wouldn't mind helping her.
+ So I brought the money with me to Jingkan and bought a double-barreled shotgun for myself.
+ Later when I wrote my confessions, the double-barreled shotgun was also an issue.
+ They suspected that I might want to kill someone with it.
+ Actually, if I'd wanted to kill someone, it wouldn't have made any difference whether I used a two hundred-yuan double-barreled shotgun or a forty-yuan bronze-barreled gun.
+ A bronze-barreled gun, normally used to shoot wild ducks by the water, was not practical at all in the mountains; besides, it was as heavy as a corpse.
+ When I got to the street in Jingkan that day, it was already afternoon, and since it wasn't a market day, there was just a deserted dirt road and a few deserted state-run stores.
+ Inside one store a saleswoman dozed while a swarm of flies circled around.
+ The shelf display read "aloomenum wokk" and "aloomenum kittel," and underneath were aluminum woks and aluminum kettles.
+ I chatted awhile with the saleswoman, who was from Shandong Province, and she let me go in their storeroom to look around myself.
+ In there I saw a shotgun made in Shanghai.
+ So I bought it even though it had sat there for nearly two years.
+ At dusk I tested it on the riverbank and killed a heron.
+ The military deputy happened to return from the farm headquarters right then and was shocked to see my shotgun.
+ He went on about how it was not right that everyone could have a gun, and that someone had to talk to the team leader and confiscate Wang Er's gun.
+ When I heard this, I felt the urge to fire at his belly.
+ If I had, it would probably have killed him.
+ Then most likely I wouldn't be around today.
+ On the way back from Jingkan that afternoon, I waded through the paddy field and stood among the rice seedlings for a while.
+ I saw leeches swimming out like fish and sticking to my legs.
+ I was naked to the waist then, because I had used my clothes to wrap brown sugar buns (the only kind of food sold in the town's restaurant), and with the buns in my hands and a gun slung over my back, I felt really loaded down.
+ So I ignored the leeches.
+ Only when I got up the bank did I start pulling them off one by one and burning them.
+ They turned soft and blistery in the fire.
+ All of a sudden, I felt very frustrated and tired, nothing like a twenty-one-year-old.
+ I realized I would get old quickly if things continued like this.
+ After a while, I ran into Le Du, who told me that they had caught all the fish at the fork of the rivers.
+ My share had been dried into stockfish and stored at his sister's place.
+ His sister wanted me to come get it.
+ I knew his sister very well; she was a dark, pretty girl.
+ I told him that I couldn't get there for a while.
+ I gave him all my brown sugar buns and asked him to take a message to the fifteenth team, telling Chen Qingyang that I'd bought a gun with her money.
+ Le Du went to the fifteenth team and told Chen Qingyang.
+ She was afraid that I might shoot the military deputy.
+ This concern was not completely unreasonable.
+ By the evening I really began to consider taking a shot at the military deputy.
+ At dusk, when I shot the heron by the river, I ran into the military deputy.
+ As usual, I stayed mute and he kept nagging at me.
+ I got really angry.
+ For more than two weeks, he had been holding forth on the same subject over and over, that I was a bad person and needed thought reform.
+ People shouldn't let up on me for a minute.
+ I'd been hearing that sort of thing all my life but never got angrier than that night.
+ After a while, he said he had wonderful good news to announce later that day, but wouldn't reveal what it was except that "the rotten whore" Chen Qingyang and I were going to have a really hard time from now on.
+ Infuriated by what he said, I was tempted to choke him right on the spot, but my curiosity about the great news got the better of me.
+ However, he went on talking nonsense to keep me guessing.
+ Not until we reached our team did he say, Come to the meeting tonight.
+ I'll announce the news at the meeting.
+ But I didn't go to the meeting that evening.
+ I packed my stuff, ready to flee back to the mountains.
+ I believed that some major event must have happened to give the military deputy a way to take care of Chen Qingyang and me.
+ As for what the event was, I couldn't figure it out—in those days anything could happen.
+ I even imagined that the emperor had been restored and the military deputy had become the local chief.
+ He could castrate me with a hammer and then take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ By the time I finished my packing and was about to leave, I realized that things were not that bad.
+ People were shouting slogans at the meeting that I could hear even from my room.
+ It turned out that our state-run farm had been changed into an Army Production Corps, and the military deputy might be promoted to Regimental Commander.
+ At any rate, he couldn't castrate me, or take Chen Qingyang as his concubine.
+ After a few minutes' hesitation, I slung the pack on my back.
+ Then I hacked up everything in the place with a machete, found a piece of charcoal, and wrote "xxx (the military deputy's name), fuck your mother!" on the wall.
+ After that I left and headed up the mountain.
+ That was how I ran away from the fourteenth team.
+ I also included these things in my confessions.
+ To summarize, it went like this: The military deputy had a personal grudge against me, which was twofold.
+ Firstly, I told the relief delegation that I had been beaten unconscious, which made the military deputy lose face; secondly, he and I fought over a woman, which was why he was always trying to screw me.
+ So, when I learned he was about to become Regimental Commander, I felt that I couldn't take it anymore and fled into the mountains.
+ Even today I still believe that was the true reason for my escape.
+ But they said that the military deputy hadn't become Regimental Commander, so my explanation for running away wouldn't stand up.
+ So, they said my confessions were unconvincing.
+ A convincing confession would be that Chen Qingyang and I were having a love affair.
+ As the saying goes: For sex, a man would dare anything.
+ We would do anything for it — well, there's some truth to that.
+ But when I ran away from our team, I didn't plan to see Chen Qingyang, thinking that I could just leave without telling anyone.
+ When I reached the edge of the mountains I realized that after all Chen Qingyang was a friend of mine and I should go back to say goodbye to her.
+ I hadn't expected Chen Qingyang to say she wanted to run away with me.
+ She said if she didn't join me in such an adventure, we would throw our great friendship to the dogs.
+ So she packed some stuff in a hurry and took off with me.
+ Without her and what she packed, I would have gotten sick and died on the mountain for sure.
+ The supplies she packed included lots of malaria medicine, and plenty of jumbo-sized condoms.
+ After Chen Qingyang and I escaped to the mountains, the farm panicked for a while.
+ They believed we had run off to Burma.
+ It wouldn't have been good for any of us if that news had gotten out.
+ So they didn't report us, only issued a wanted poster on the farm.
+ Both Chen Qingyang and I were easily recognized, and, besides, the double-barreled shotgun we brought along was hard to hide.
+ But for some reason nobody found us until half a year later when each of us returned to our own teams.
+ And then after another month, the public security section summoned us to write our confessions.
+ It was our bad luck to be the victims of a new political campaign and have someone inform on us.
+ The office of public security was located at the entrance to our farm's headquarters.
+ It was a lonely mud-brick house.
+ You could see it from far off, because it was whitewashed and set on a hill.
+ When people went to the market at headquarters, they could see it from a distance.
+ A patch of sisal hemp, a perennial dark green in color, surrounded the house, but the clay underneath was red.
+ I confessed my errors there, making a clean breast of everything.
+ We went up the mountains, and first we planted some corn on the back slope of the fifteenth team.
+ The soil there was poor, and half the corn didn't grow.
+ And then we left, sleeping in the daytime and walking at night, looking for other places to settle.
+ Finally we remembered an abandoned mill on the mountain, where there was a large, deserted area of fertile ground.
+ Since an escapee from the leper colony, whom people called Grandpa Liu, lived there, no one visited except Chen Qingyang, prompted by her sense of duty as a doctor.
+ We finally went there for shelter, living in the valley behind the mill.
+ Chen Qingyang treated Grandpa Liu's leprosy, and I tended the land for him.
+ After a while, I traveled to the market in Qingping and ran into some classmates.
+ They told me that the military deputy had been transferred someplace else and nobody remembered our affair anymore.
+ So we came back.
+ That was how the whole business went.
+ I remained in the public security section for a long time.
+ For a while the atmosphere was not bad.
+ They said my problem was pretty clear and all I needed to do was to write confessions.
+ But after a while the situation turned more serious; they suspected that we had gone abroad, colluded with the enemy, and come back on a mission.
+ So they took Chen Qingyang to the office, interrogating her severely.
+ While they interrogated her, I looked out the window—the sky was filled with clouds.
+ They wanted me to confess how I had slipped across the border.
+ As far as border-crossing went, I wasn't completely innocent.
+ I did cross the border.
+ I disguised myself as a Thai to go to the market on the other side.
+ I bought a few boxes of matches and salt.
+ But it was unnecessary to tell them about this.
+ Things unnecessary to say shouldn't be said.
+ Later I led those security people to our place to investigate.
+ The thatched hut that I built on the back slope of the fifteenth team had leaks in the roof, the cornfield attracted many birds, and the heap of used condoms behind our hut supplied ironclad evidence of our former occupancy.
+ The locals didn't like to use condoms, holding that condoms block exchange between yin and yang and gradually weaken people.
+ Actually, those local condoms were better than any other ones I used later.
+ They were made of 100 percent natural rubber.
+ Afterward I refused to take them there again.
+ Anyway, I told them I had never crossed the border, and they didn't believe me;
+ I showed them the place, but they still didn't believe me.
+ Things unnecessary to do shouldn't be done.
+ I stayed mute all day long, and so did Chen Qingyang.
+ The investigators asked us questions at first, but got lazy after a while.
+ On market day, many Thais and Jingpos came by, carrying fresh fruits and vegetables on their backs, and our interrogators got fewer and fewer.
+ Finally there was only one person left.
+ He also wanted to go to the market, but it wasn't time to release us yet and leaving us unattended was against the rules.
+ So he went outside to call someone.
+ He ordered a few passing women to stop.
+ They didn't stop but sped up.
+ We smiled when we saw this.
+ The security comrade finally stopped a woman.
+ Chen Qingyang rose to her feet, smoothed out her hair, straightened the collar of her shirt, and then turned around, putting her hands behind her back.
+ The woman tied her up, starting from her hands and then running the rope over her neck and arms to make a knot.
+ She apologized, I'm just hopeless at tying people up.
+ The security comrade said, That's good enough.
+ Then he tied me up, sat us back-to-back in two separate chairs, and roped the whole thing together.
+ He locked the door and went to the market.
+ After a long time, he came back to get something from the office desk.
+ He asked, Want to go to the bathroom?
+ It's still early.
+ I'll come back after a while and then let you two leave.
+ Then he went out again.
+ When he finally came to set us free, Chen Qingyang wiggled her fingers, smoothed her hair, and brushed the dust from her clothes.
+ Then we returned to our hotel room.
+ We went to the public security section every day and would be tied up every market day.
+ Beyond that, we had to go to every team to accept public denouncement with other bad elements.
+ They threatened, more than once, to use other methods of the proletarian dictatorship on us—that was how our investigation went.
+ Later on they stopped suspecting we had gone abroad.
+ They began to deal with Chen Qingyang in a more civilized way, often asking her to go to the hospital and treat the prostatitis of the chief of staff.
+ At that time, our farm had admitted a large number of retired army cadres, many of whom suffered from prostatitis.
+ Through the investigation, they found that Chen Qingyang was the only one on our entire farm who knew there was such a thing as a prostate gland in a human.
+ The security comrades told us to confess our love affair.
+ I said, How do you know we had a love affair?
+ Did you see it?
+ They said, Then confess your speculation problem.
+ Again I asked, How do you know I had a speculation problem?
+ They said, A traitorship problem would do.
+ Anyway, you have to confess something.
+ As far as what specific problem you want to confess, that's up to you.
+ If you confess nothing, we won't release you.
+ After discussing it, Chen Qingyang and I decided to confess our love affair.
+ She said, Things we actually did we shouldn't be afraid to confess.
+ That was how I got started writing confessions like a writer.
+ The first thing I confessed was what happened the night we ran away.
+ After a few drafts, I finally wrote that Chen Qingyang looked like a koala bear.
+ She admitted that she was very excited that night and really felt like a koala bear.
+ She finally had a chance to fulfill her great friendship.
+ So she locked her legs around my waist, grabbed my shoulder with her hands, and imagining that I was a tall tree, tried to climb up several times.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang again, it was already the nineties.
+ She told me that she had divorced her husband and was now living with her daughter in Shanghai.
+ She came to Beijing on a business trip.
+ As soon as she got to Beijing, she began to recall that Wang Er lived here and she might be able to see me.
+ Subsequently, she did run into me at Dragon-Lair Lake Temple Fair.
+ I had the same old look—deep wrinkles stretching toward my mouth, dark circles under my eyes, and I wore an old-fashioned cotton jacket.
+ Squatting on the ground, I was eating spiced giblets and baked pancakes that fancy places wouldn't serve.
+ The only difference was that my fingers had been burned yellow by nitric acid.
+ Chen Qingyang had changed a lot.
+ She wore a thin beige coat, a tweed skirt, high-heeled leather boots and a pair of goldrimmed glasses, like a public relations person in a big company.
+ If she hadn't called my name, I wouldn't have recognized her.
+ At that moment it dawned on me that everyone had his own essence, which would shine in the right setting.
+ I was essentially a rascal or bandit.
+ Now that I was a city dweller and a schoolteacher, mine didn't look quite right.
+ Chen Qingyang said her daughter had gone into her sophomore year at the university.
+ Recently she found out about our affair and wanted to meet me.
+ What occasioned this was: Her hospital wanted to promote Chen Qingyang, but they found this pile of confessions in her dossier.
+ After a discussion, the leaders decided they were persecutory materials from the Cultural Revolution and should be discarded.
+ So they sent someone to Yunnan to investigate her case, spent over ten thousand yuan on the trip, and finally removed all the confessions from the file.
+ Since she was the author, they returned them to her.
+ She brought them home and stashed them somewhere, and her daughter found them.
+ Her daughter said, Wow!
+ So that's how the two of you made me.
+ Actually, I had nothing to do with her daughter.
+ When her daughter was conceived, I had already left Yunnan.
+ Chen Qingyang explained things to her daughter that way, too.
+ But the girl said I could have put my sperm in a test tube and mailed it to Chen Qingyang, who was still in Yunnan at that time, for artificial insemination.
+ In her words, "There's nothing you pair of jerks wouldn't do."
+ The first night we escaped to the mountains, Chen Qingyang was very aroused.
+ When I finally got to sleep at daybreak, she woke me again.
+ At that time fog was pouring through the crack in the wall.
+ She wanted me to do it again, telling me not to wear the rubber thing.
+ She was going to have a brood of babies with me.
+ Let them hang down to here in a few years.
+ Meanwhile, she pulled her breasts down by the nipples to show me where they would reach.
+ But I didn't like the idea that her breasts would droop and said, Let's think of a way to keep them from drooping.
+ That was why I continued to wear the rubber thing.
+ After that she lost interest in making love to me.
+ When I saw Chen Qingyang all those years later, I asked, How are they?
+ Did they droop?
+ She said, You bet they did.
+ They're as droopy as hell.
+ Want to see the droop?
+ I got to see them shortly after—they weren't that bad.
+ But she said, They will be that bad sooner or later.
+ There's no way out.
+ When I turned in this confession, the leaders really liked it.
+ One big shot, either the chief of staff or the commissar, received us and praised our attitudes.
+ They believed that we hadn't thrown ourselves into the enemy's embrace and betrayed our country, and our task in the future was to confess our illicit love affair.
+ If we confessed well, they would allow us to get married.
+ But we didn't want to get married.
+ So later they said if we confessed well, they would let me go back to civilization, and Chen Qingyang would get to work in a bigger hospital.
+ So I stayed in my hotel room and wrote confessions for over a month.
+ Nothing interrupted me except the government business that I had to perform.
+ I used carbon copies; the originals I kept, the duplicates I gave to her.
+ We used exactly the same confessions.
+ After a while, the security comrades came to talk to me, telling me about the big denouncement meeting they were going to hold.
+ All the people who had been investigated by the public security section would have to attend, including speculators, grafters, and all kinds of bad elements.
+ We belonged in the group, but the regimental leaders said that since we were young people, and had good attitudes, we didn't have to go.
+ But people compared their situation with ours, and asked, if everyone who'd been investigated had to be there, why were we being let off?
+ The security comrades were in a fix.
+ So we would have to take part in the meeting.
+ Finally they decided to work on mobilizing us to take part.
+ They told us that public denouncing had an impact on a person's mind, which could prevent us from committing errors in the future.
+ Since there was such an advantage, how could we miss the opportunity?
+ When the meeting day came, several thousand people flooded in from the farm headquarters and the nearby production teams.
+ We stood on the stage with many others.
+ After waiting a long time and hearing quite a few articles of denouncement read, our turn, convicts Wang and Chen, finally came.
+ It turned out that we were loose in morals and corrupted in lifestyle, and what was more, in order to evade thought reform, we had fled into the mountains.
+ Only under the influence of our party's policy did we come down the mountain to abandon darkness for sunlight.
+ Hearing comments like this, our emotions were stirred up, too.
+ So we raised our arms and shouted out the slogans: Down with Wang Er!
+ Down with Chen Qingyang!
+ After this round of public denouncement, we thought we were done with it.
+ But we still had to write confessions because the leaders wanted to read them.
+ On the back slope of the fifteenth team, Chen Qingyang, seized with an impulse once, said she was going to bear a litter of young for me, but I wasn't interested.
+ Later I thought having babies wasn't a bad idea.
+ But when I mentioned it to her, she changed her mind.
+ And she always thought that it was me who wanted to have sex.
+ She said, If you feel like it, just do it.
+ I don't care.
+ I thought it would be too selfish if it were only for me.
+ So I rarely asked for it.
+ Besides, cultivating the wilderness was very tiring and I didn't have the energy for it.
+ What I could confess was that I fondled her breasts when we rested at the edge of the field.
+ When we cultivated the wilderness in the dry season, hot air was all around.
+ We didn't sweat at all, but our muscles felt dry and painful.
+ On the hottest days, we could only sleep under a tree, with heads pillowed on bamboo stalks and bodies lying on palmbark rain capes.
+ I wondered why nobody asked me to confess about the palm-bark rain cape, one of the labor-protection supplies for our farm, and very expensive.
+ I brought two along; one was mine, the other one I picked up conveniently from someone's doorway.
+ I returned neither of them to the farm.
+ Even when I left Yunnan, no one asked me to return the palm-bark rain capes.
+ During our break at the edge of the field, Chen Qingyang covered her face with a bamboo hat, opened her shirt collar, and immediately fell asleep.
+ I reached in, feeling the beautiful curves.
+ After a while, I unbuttoned a few more buttons, seeing that her skin was pink.
+ Even though she always worked with her clothes on, the sunshine still got through the thin fabric.
+ As for me, working bare to the waist, I had turned as black as a devil.
+ Chen Qingyang's breasts were two firm scoops, even when she lay back.
+ But the other parts of her body were very slender.
+ She hadn't changed much in twenty years, except that her nipples had grown a little bit bigger and darker.
+ She said the culprit was her daughter.
+ When the child was a newborn, she looked like a pink baby pig.
+ With eyes closed, she swooped down on her mother's nipples sucking with all her might, until her mother became an old woman and she a beautiful young woman, a young version of her mother.
+ An older woman now, Chen Qingyang had become more sensitive.
+ When we relived our old days in the hotel, she seemed nervous about such subjects.
+ She hadn't been that way before.
+ Back when I hesitated to mention her breasts in the confessions, she said, Just write it down.
+ I said, You'd be exposed then.
+ She said, Let me be exposed.
+ I don't care.
+ She also said her breasts were made this way.
+ It wasn't like she had done something to fake them.
+ As for what other people thought when they heard about them, it wasn't her problem.
+ After all those years, I just discovered that Chen Qingyang was actually my ex-wife.
+ After we finished our confessions, they wanted us to get married.
+ I thought it was unnecessary.
+ But the leaders said that not getting married would have a very bad influence and insisted that we register.
+ So we registered to get married in the morning and divorced in the afternoon.
+ I thought it hadn't counted.
+ In the confusion they forgot to take our marriage certificate back, and so Chen Qingyang kept one for herself.
+ We used this shabby certificate issued to us twenty years ago to get a double room.
+ Without this, we wouldn't be allowed to stay in the same room.
+ It was different twenty years ago.
+ Twenty years ago they let us stay in the same hotel room to write our confessions, and back then we didn't even have the marriage certificate.
+ I wrote about what we had done on the back slope.
+ But the regional leaders asked the security comrades to pass on a message to me, saying that I could skip over the irrelevant details.
+ Just move on to the next case.
+ Hearing this, I lost my stubborn-as-amule temper: The motherfuckers!
+ Is this a case?
+ Chen Qingyang tried to help me understand: How many people are there in the world?
+ How many times do people do it every day?
+ And how many of them are important enough to be called cases?
+ I said actually they were all cases.
+ It was just that the leaders couldn't check on them all.
+ She said, Well then, just confess.
+ So I confessed: That night, we left the back slope and returned to the scene of the crime.
+
+ 最后我们被关了起来，写了很长时间的交待材料。
+ 起初我是这么写的：我和陈清扬有不正当的关系。
+ 这就是全部。
+ 上面说，这样写太简单， 叫我重写。
+ 后来我写，我和陈清扬有不正当关系，我干了她很多回，她也乐意让我干。
+ 上面说，这样写缺少细节。
+ 后来又加上了这样的细节：我们俩第四十次非法性交，地点是我在山上偷盖的草房。
+ 那天不是阴历十五就是阴历十六，反正月亮很亮。
+ 陈清扬坐在竹床上，月光从门里照进来，照在她身上。
+ 我站在地上，她用腿圈着我的腰。
+ 我们还聊了几句，我说她的乳房不但圆，而且长的很端正，脐窝不但圆，而且很浅。
+ 这些都很好。
+ 她说是吗，我自己不知道。
+ 后来月光移走了，我点了一根烟，抽到一半她拿走了，接着吸了几口。
+ 她还捏过我的鼻子，因为本地有一种说法，说童男的鼻子很硬，而纵欲过度行将死去的人鼻子很软。
+ 这些时候她懒懒地躺在床上，倚着竹板墙。
+ 其它的时间她像澳大利亚考拉熊一样抱住我，往我脸上吹热气。
+ 最后月亮从门对面的窗子里照进来。
+ 这时我和她分开。
+ 但是我写这些材料，不是给军代表看。
+ 他那时早就不是军代表了，而且已经复员回家去。
+ 他是不是代表不重要，反正犯了我们这种错误，总是要写交待材料。
+ 我后来和我们学校人事科长关系不错。
+ 他说当人事干部最大的好处就是可以看到别人写的交待材料。
+ 我想他说的包括了我写的交待材料。
+ 我以为我的交待材料最有文彩。
+ 因为我写这些材料时住在招待所，没有别的事可干，就像专业作家一样。
+ 我逃跑是晚上的事。
+ 那天上午，我找司务长请假，要到井坎镇买牙膏。
+ 我归司务长领导，他还有监视我的任务。
+ 他应该随时随地看住我，可是天一黑我就不见了。
+ 早上我带给他很多酸琶果，都是好的。
+ 平原上的酸琶果都不能吃，因为里面是一窝蚂蚁。
+ 只有山里的酸琶果才没蚂蚁。
+ 司务长说，他个人和我关系不坏，而且军代表不在。
+ 他可以准我去买牙膏。
+ 但是司务长又说，军代表随时会回来。
+ 要是他回来时我不在，司务长也不能包庇我。
+ 我从队里出去，爬上十五队的后山，拿个镜片晃陈清扬的后窗。
+ 过一会儿，她到山上来，说是头两天人家把她盯得特紧，跑不出来。
+ 而这几天她又来月经。
+ 她说这没关系，干吧。
+ 我说那不行。
+ 分手时她硬要给我二百块钱。
+ 起初我不要，后来还是收下了。
+ 后来陈清扬告诉我，头两天人家没有把她盯得特紧，后来她也没有来月经。
+ 事实上，十五队的人根本就不管她。
+ 那里的人习惯于把一切不是破鞋的人说成破鞋，而对真的破鞋放任自流。
+ 她之所以不肯上山来，让我空等了好几天，是因为对此事感到厌倦。
+ 她总要等有了好心情才肯性交，不是只要性交就有好心情。
+ 当然这样做了以后，她也不无内疚之心。
+ 所以她给我二百块钱。
+ 我想既然她有二百块钱花不掉，我就替她花。
+ 所以我拿了那些钱到井坎镇上，买了一条双筒猎枪。
+ 后来我写交待材料，双筒猎枪也是一个主题。
+ 人家怀疑我拿了它要打死谁。
+ 其实要打死人，用二百块钱的双筒猎枪和四十块钱的铜炮枪打都一样。
+ 那种枪是用来在水边打野鸭子的，在山里一点不实用，而且像死人一样沉。
+ 那天我到井坎街上时，已经是下午时分，又不是赶街的日子，所以只有一条空空落落的土路和几间空空落落的国营商店。
+ 商店里有一个售货员在打瞌睡，还有很多苍蝇在飞。
+ 货架上写着“吕过吕乎”，放着铝锅铝壶。
+ 我和那个胶东籍的售货员聊了一会天，她叫我到库房里看了看。
+ 在那儿我看见那条上海出的猎枪，就不顾它已经放了两年没卖出去的事实，把它买下了。
+ 傍晚时我拿它到小河边试放，打死了一只鹭鸶。
+ 这时军代表从场部回来，看见我手里有枪，很吃了一惊。
+ 他唠叨说，这件事很不对，不能什么人手里都有枪。
+ 应该和队里说一下，把王二的枪没收掉。
+ 我听了这话，几乎要朝他肚子上打一枪。
+ 如果打了的话，恐怕会把他打死。
+ 那样多半我也活不到现在了。
+ 那天下午我从井坎回队的路上，涉水从田里经过，曾经在稻棵里站了一会。
+ 我看见很多蚂蝗像鱼一样游出来，叮上了我的腿。
+ 那时我光着膀子，衣服包了很多红糖馅的包子（镇上饭馆只卖这一种食品），双手提包子，背上还背了枪，很累赘。
+ 所以我也没管那些蚂蝗。
+ 到了岸上我才把它们一条条揪下来用火烧死。
+ 烧得它们一条条发软起泡。
+ 忽然间我感到很烦很累，不像二十一岁的人。
+ 我想，这样下去很快就会老了。
+ 后来我遇上了勒都。
+ 他告诉我说，他们把那条河岔里的鱼都捉到手了。
+ 我那一份已经晒成了鱼干，在他姐姐手里。
+ 他姐姐叫我去。
+ 他姐姐和我也很熟，是个微黑俏丽的小姑娘。
+ 我说一时去不了。
+ 我把那一包包子都给了勒都，叫他给我到十五队送个信，告诉陈清扬，我用她给我的钱买了一条枪。
+ 勒都去了十五队，把这话告诉陈清扬，她听了很害怕，觉得我会把军代表打死。
+ 这种想法也不是没有道理，傍晚时我就想打军代表一枪。
+ 傍晚时分我在河边打鹭鸶，碰上了军代表。
+ 像往常一样，我一声不吭，他喋喋不休。
+ 我很愤怒，因为已经有半个多月了，他一直对我喋喋不休，说着同样的话：我很坏，需要思想改造。
+ 对我一刻也不能放松。
+ 这样的话我听了一辈子，从来没有像那天晚上那么火。
+ 后来他又说，今天他有一个特大好消息，要向大家公布。
+ 但是他又不说是什么，只说我和我的“臭婊子”陈清扬今后的日子会很不好过。
+ 我听了这话格外恼火，想把他就地掐死，又想听他说出是什么好消息以后再下手。
+ 他却不说，一直卖着关子，只说些没要紧的话，到了队里以后才说，晚上你来听会吧，会上我会宣布的。
+ 晚上我没去听会，在屋里收拾东西，准备逃上山去。
+ 我想一定发生了什么大事，以致军代表有了好办法来收拾我和陈清扬，至于是什么事我没想出来，那年头的事很难猜。
+ 我甚至想到可能中国已经复辟了帝制，军代表已经当上了此地的土司。
+ 他可以把我锤骟掉，再把陈清扬拉去当妃子。
+ 等我收拾好要出门，才知道没有那么严重。
+ 因为会场上喊口号，我在屋里也能听见。
+ 原来是此地将从国营农场改做军垦兵团。
+ 军代表可能要当个团长。
+ 不管怎么说，他不能把我阉掉，也不能把陈清扬拉走。
+ 我犹豫了几分钟，还是把装好的东西背上了肩，还用砍刀把屋里的一切都砍坏，并且用木炭在墙上写了：“XXX（军代表名），操你妈！”
+ 然后出了门，上山去了。
+ 我从十四队逃跑的事就是这样。
+ 这些经过我也在交待材料里写了。
+ 概括地说，是这样的：我和军代表有私仇，这私仇有两个方面：
+ 一是我在慰问团面前说出了曾经被打晕的事，叫军代表很没面子；二是争风吃醋，所以他一直修理我。
+ 当他要当团长时，我感到不堪忍受，逃到山上去了。
+ 我到现在还以为这是我逃上山的原因。
+ 但是人家说，军代表根本就没当上团长，我逃跑的理由不能成立。
+ 所以人家说，这样的交待材料不可信。
+ 可信的材料应该是，我和陈清扬有私情。
+ 俗话说，色胆包天，我们什么事都能干出来。
+ 这话也有一点道理，可是我从队里逃出来时，原本不打算找陈清扬，打算一走算了。
+ 走到山边上才想到，不管怎样，陈是我的一个朋友，该去告别。
+ 谁知陈清扬说，她要和我一起逃跑。
+ 她还说，假如这种事她不加入，那伟大友谊岂不是喂了狗。
+ 于是她匆匆忙忙收拾了一些东西跟我走了。
+ 假如没有她和她收拾的东西，我一定会病死在山上。
+ 那些东西里有很多治疟疾的药，还有大量的大号避孕套。
+ 我和陈清扬逃上山以后，农场很惊慌了一阵。
+ 他们以为我们跑到缅甸去了。
+ 这件事传出去对谁都没好处，所以就没向上报告，只是在农场内部通缉王二和陈清扬。
+ 我们的样子很好认，还带了一条别人没有的双筒猎枪，很容易被人发现，可是一直没人找到我们。
+ 直到半年后以后，我们自己回到农场来，各回各的队，又过了一个多月，才被人保组叫去写交待。
+ 也是我们流年不利，碰上了一个运动，被人揭发了出来。
+ 人保组的房子在场部的路口上，是一座孤零零的土坯房。
+ 你从很远的地方就能看见，因为它粉刷得很白，还因为它在高岗上。
+ 大家到场部赶街，老远就看见那间房子。
+ 它周围是一片剑麻地，剑麻总是睛绿色，剑麻下的土总是鲜红色。
+ 我在那里交待问题，把什么都交待了。
+ 我们上了山，先在十五队后山上种玉米，那里土不好，玉米有一半没出苗。
+ 我们就离开，昼伏夜行，找别的地方定居。
+ 最后想起山上有个废水碾，那里有很大一片丢荒了的好地。
+ 水碾里住了一个麻疯寨跑出来的刘大爹。
+ 谁也不到那里去，只有陈清扬有一回想起自己是大夫，去看过一回。
+ 我们最后去了刘大爹那里，住在水碾背后的山洼里，陈清扬给刘大爹看病，我给刘大爹种地。
+ 过了一些时候，我到清平赶街，遇上了同学。
+ 他们说，军代表调走了，没人记着我们的事。
+ 我们就回来。
+ 整个事情就是这样的。
+ 我在人保组里呆了很长时间。
+ 有一段时间，气氛还好，人家说，问题清楚了，你准备写材料。
+ 后来忽然又严重起来，怀疑我们去了境外，勾结了敌对势力，领了任务回来。
+ 于是他们把陈清扬也叫到人保组，严加审讯。
+ 问她时，我往窗外看。
+ 天上有很多云。
+ 人家叫我交待偷越国境的事。
+ 其实这件事上，我也不是清白无辜。
+ 我确实去过境外。
+ 我曾经打扮成老傣的模样，到对面赶过街。
+ 我在那里买了些火柴和盐。
+ 但是这没有必要说出来。
+ 没必要说的话就不说。
+ 后来我带人保组的人到我们住过的地方去勘查。
+ 我在十五队后山上搭的小草房已经漏了顶，玉米地招来很多鸟。
+ 草房后面有很多用过的避孕套，这是我们在此住过的铁证。
+ 当地人不喜欢避孕套，说那东西阻断了阴阳交流，会使人一天天弱下去。
+ 其实当地那种避孕套，比我后来用过的任何一种都好。
+ 那是百分之百的天然橡胶。
+ 后来我再不肯带他们去那些地方看，反正我说我没去国外，他们不信。
+ 带他们去看了，他们还是不信。
+ 没必要做的事就别做。
+ 我整天一声不吭。
+ 陈清扬也一声不吭。
+ 问案的人开头还在问，后来也懒得吭声。
+ 街子天里有好多老傣、老景颇背着新鲜的水果蔬菜走过，问案的人也越来越少。
+ 最后只剩了一个人。
+ 他也想去赶街，可是不到放我们回去的时候，让我们呆在这里无人看管，又不合规定。
+ 他就到门口去喊人，叫过路的大嫂站住。
+ 但是人家经常不肯站住，而是加快了脚步。
+ 见到这种情况，我们就笑起来。
+ 人保组的同志终于叫住了一个大嫂。
+ 陈清扬站起来，整理好头发，把衬衣领子折起来，然后背过手去。
+ 那位大嫂就把她捆起来，先捆紧双手，再把绳子在脖子和胳膊上扣住。
+ 那大嫂抱歉地说，捆人我不会啦。
+ 人保组的同志说，可以了。
+ 然后他再把我捆起来，让我们在两张椅子上背靠背坐好，用绳子拦腰捆上一道，然后他锁上门，也去赶集。
+ 过了好半天他才回来，到办公桌里拿东西，问道：要不要上厕所？
+ 时间还早，一会回来放你们。
+ 然后又出去。
+ 到他最后来放开我们的时候，陈清扬活动一下手指，整理好头发，把身上的灰土掸干净，我们俩回招待所去。
+ 我们每天都到人保组去，每到街子天就被捆起来，除此之外，有时还和别人一道到各队去挨斗。
+ 他们还一再威胁说，要对我们采取其它专政手段——我们受审查的事就是这样的。
+ 后来人家又不怀疑我们去了国外，开始对她比较客气，经常叫她到医院去，给参谋长看前列腺炎。
+ 那时我们农场来了一大批军队下来的老干部，很多人有前列腺炎。
+ 经过调查，发现整个农场只有陈清扬知道人身上还有前列腺。
+ 人保组的同志说，要我们交待男女关系问题。
+ 我说，你怎知我们有男女关系问题？
+ 你看见了吗？
+ 他们说，那你就交待投机倒把问题。
+ 我又说，你怎知我有投机倒把问题？
+ 他们说，那你还是交待投敌叛变的问题。
+ 反正要交待问题，具体交待什么，你们自己去商量。
+ 要是什么都不交待，就不放你。
+ 我和陈清扬商量以后，决定交待男女关系问题。
+ 她说，做了的事就不怕交待。
+ 于是我就像作家一样写起交待材料来。
+ 首先交待的就是逃跑上山那天晚上的事。
+ 写了好几遍，终于写出陈清扬像考拉熊。
+ 她承认她那天心情非常激动，确实像考拉熊。
+ 因为她终于有了机会，来实践她的伟大友谊。
+ 于是她腿圈住我的腰，手抓住我的肩膀，把我想像成一棵大树，几次想爬上去。
+ 后来我又见到陈清扬，已经到了九十年代。
+ 她说她离了婚和女儿住在上海，到北京出差。
+ 到了北京就想到，王二在这里，也许能见到。
+ 结果真的在龙潭湖庙会上见到了我。
+ 我还是老样子，饿纹入嘴，眼窝下乌青，穿过了时的棉袄，蹲在地上吃不登大雅之堂的卤煮火烧。
+ 唯一和过去不同的是手上被硝酸染得焦黄。
+ 陈清扬的样子变了不少，她穿着薄呢子大衣，花格呢裙子，高跟皮靴，戴金丝眼镜，像个公司的公关职员，她不叫我，我绝不敢认。
+ 于是我想到每个人都有自己的本质，放到合适的地方就大放光彩。
+ 我的本质是流氓土匪一类，现在做个城里的市民，学校的教员，就很不像样。
+ 陈清扬说，她女儿已经上了大二，最近知道了我们的事，很想见我。
+ 这事的起因是这样的：她们医院想提拔她，发现她档案里还有一堆东西。
+ 领导上讨论之后，认为是文革时整人的材料，应予撤销。
+ 于是派人到云南外调，花了一万元差旅费，终于把它拿了出来。
+ 因为是本人写的，交还本人。
+ 她把它拿回家去放着，被女儿看见了。
+ 该女儿说，好哇，你们原来是这么造的我！
+ 其实我和她女儿没有任何关系。
+ 她女儿产生时，我已经离开云南了。
+ 陈清扬也是这么解释的，可是那女孩说，我可以把精液放到试管里，寄到云南让陈清扬人工授精。
+ 用她原话来说就是：你们两个混蛋什么干不出来。
+ 我们逃进山里的第一个夜晚，陈清扬兴奋得很。
+ 天明时我睡着了，她又把我叫起来，那时节大雾正从墙缝里流进来。
+ 她让我再干那件事，别戴那捞什子。
+ 她要给我生一窝小崽子，过几年就耷拉到这里。
+ 同时她揪住乳头往下拉，以示耷拉之状。
+ 我觉得耷拉不好看，就说，咱们还是想想办法，别叫它耷拉。
+ 所以我还是戴着那捞什子。
+ 以后她对这件事就失去了兴趣。
+ 后来我再见陈清扬时，问道，怎么样，耷拉了吧？
+ 她说可不是，耷拉得一塌糊涂。
+ 你想不想看看有多耷拉。
+ 后来我看见了，并没有一蹋糊涂。
+ 不过她说，早晚要一塌糊涂，没有别的出路。
+ 我写了这篇交待材料交上去，领导上很欣赏。
+ 有个大头儿，不是团参谋长就是政委，接见了我们，说我们的态度很好。
+ 领导上相信我们没有投敌叛变。
+ 今后主要的任务就是交待男女关系问题。
+ 假如交待得好，就让我们结婚。
+ 但是我们并不想结婚。
+ 后来又说，交待得好，就让我调回内地。
+ 陈清扬也可以调上级医院。
+ 所以我在招待所写了一个多月交待材料，除了出公差，没人打搅，我用复写纸写，正本是我的，副本是她的。
+ 我们有一模一样的交待材料。
+ 后来人保组的同志找我商量，说是要开个大的批斗会。
+ 所有在人保组受过审查的人都要参加，包括投机倒把分子，贪污犯，以及各种坏人。
+ 我们本该属于同一类，可是团领导说了，我们年轻，交待问题的态度好，所以又可以不参加。
+ 但是有人攀我们，说都受审查，他们为什么不参加。
+ 人保组也难办。
+ 所以我们必须参加。
+ 最后的决定是来做工作，动员我们参加。
+ 据说受受批斗，思想上有了震动，以后可以少犯错误。
+ 既然有这样的好处，为什么不参加。
+ 到了开会的日子，场部和附近生产队来了好几千人。
+ 我们和好多别的人站到台上去。
+ 等了好半天，听了好几篇批判稿，才轮到我们王陈二犯。
+ 原来我们的问题是思想淫乱，作风腐败，为了逃避思想改造，逃到山里去。
+ 后来在党的政策感召下，下山弃暗投明。
+ 听了这样的评价，我们心情激动，和大家一起振臂高呼：打倒王二！
+ 打倒陈清扬！
+ 斗过这一台，我们就算没事了。
+ 但是还得写交待，因为团领导要看。
+ 在十五队后山上，陈清扬有一回很冲动，要给我生一群小崽子，我没要。
+ 后来我想，生生也不妨，再跟她说，她却不肯生了。
+ 而且她总是理解成我要干那件事。
+ 她说，要干就干，没什么关系。
+ 我想纯粹为我，这样太自私了，所以就很少干。
+ 何况开荒很累，没力气干。
+ 我所能交待的事就是在地头休息时摸她的乳房。
+ 旱季里开荒时，到处是热风，身上没有汗，可是肌肉干疼。
+ 最热时，只能躺在树下睡觉。
+ 枕着竹筒，睡在棕皮蓑衣上。
+ 我奇怪为什么没人让我交待蓑衣的事。
+ 那是农场的劳保用品，非常贵。
+ 我带进山两件，一件是我的，一件是从别人门口顺手拿来的。
+ 一件也没拿回来。
+ 一直到我离开云南，也没人让我交还蓑衣。
+ 我们在地头休息时，陈清扬拿斗笠盖住脸，敞开衬衣的领口，马上就睡着了。
+ 我把手伸进去，有很优美的浑圆的感觉。
+ 后来我把扣子又解开几个，看见她的皮肤是浅红色。
+ 虽然她总穿着衣服干活，可是阳光透过了薄薄的布料。
+ 至于我，总是光膀子，已经黑得像鬼一样。
+ 陈清扬的乳房是很结实的两块，躺着的时候给人这样的感觉。
+ 但是其它地方很纤细。
+ 过了二十多年，大模样没怎么变，只是乳头变得有点大，有点黑。
+ 她说这是女儿做的孽。
+ 那孩子刚出世，像个粉红色的小猪，闭着眼一口叼住她那个地方狠命地吃，一直把她吃成个老太太，自己却长成个漂亮大姑娘，和她当年一样。
+ 年纪大了，陈清扬变得有点敏感。
+ 我和她在饭店里重温旧情，说到这类话题，她就有恐慌之感。
+ 当年不是这样。
+ 那时候在交待材料里写到她的乳房，我还有点犹豫。
+ 她说，就这么写。
+ 我说，这样你就暴露了。
+ 她说，暴露就暴露，我不怕！
+ 她还说是自然长成这样，又不是她捣了鬼。
+ 至于别人听说了有什么想法，不是她的问题。
+ 过了这么多年我才发现，陈清扬是我的前妻哩。
+ 交待完问题人家叫我们结婚。
+ 我觉得没什么必要了。
+ 可是领导上说，不结婚影响太坏，非叫去登记不可。
+ 上午登记结婚，下午离婚。
+ 我以为不算呢。
+ 乱秧秧的，人家忘了把发的结婚证要回去。
+ 结果陈清扬留了一张。
+ 我们拿这二十年前发的破纸头登记了一间双人房。
+ 要是没有这东西，就不许住在一间房子里。
+ 二十年前不这样。
+ 二十年前他们让我们住在一间房子里写交待材料，当时也没这个东西。
+ 我写了我们住在后山上的事。
+ 团领导要人保组的人带话说，枝节问题不要讲太多，交待下一个案子罢。
+ 听了这话，我发了犟驴脾气：妈妈的，这是案子吗？
+ 陈清扬开导我说：这世界上有多少人，每天要干多少这种事，又有几个有资格成为案子。
+ 我说其实这都是案子，只不过领导上查不过来。
+ 她说既然如此，你就交待罢。
+ 所以我交待道：那天夜里，我们离开了后山，向做案现场进发。
+
+ Later I saw Chen Qingyang again.
+ We registered for a room at a hotel, went in together, and then I helped her take off her coat.
+ Chen Qingyang said, Wang Er has become civilized.
+ It meant I had changed a lot.
+ In the old days, I did not just look ferocious, but also acted ferociously.
+ Chen Qingyang and I committed the crime one more time in the hotel.
+ The room was well heated, and the windows were glazed with tea-colored panes.
+ I sat on the sofa, and she sat in the bed.
+ We chatted for a while, and then the criminal atmosphere began to build.
+ I said, Didn't you want me to see how they sag now?
+ Let me take a look!
+ So she got to her feet and took off her sweater—she had on a flowery shirt underneath.
+ Then she sat back and said, It's still early.
+ After a while, the attendant brought us boiling water.
+ They had keys, so they just came in without even knocking on the door.
+ I asked, What would the attendant say if he came in right in the middle of things?
+ She said she had never gotten caught in the act, but she had heard that the attendant would slam the door shut and curse, Motherfuckers!
+ Disgusting!
+ Before Chen Qingyang and I escaped into the mountains, I cooked pig feed for a while.
+ At the time I had to tend the fire, chop the pig feed (the so-called pig feed consisted of things like sweet potato vine and water hyacinth), and add chaff and water to the wok all by myself.
+ As I bustled around doing several things at once, the military deputy stood beside me, talking his head off.
+ He went on nagging about how bad I was, and how bad Chen Qingyang was, even asking me to pass the message to my "stinking whore" Chen Qingyang.
+ All of a sudden, I flew into a fury.
+ I grabbed a machete and slashed at a bottle gourd used for storing pumpkin seeds that hung on the beam, cutting it in half.
+ Frightened, the military deputy leaped out of the room.
+ If he had kept scolding, I would have cut his head off.
+ I appeared especially ferocious, because I didn't speak.
+ Later, in the public security office, I didn't talk much either, even when they were tying me up.
+ So my hands often turned dark blue.
+ Chen Qingyang talked all the time.
+ She would say something like this: Big sister, it hurts! or, Big sister, can you tuck a handkerchief under the rope?
+ There is a handkerchief holding my hair.
+ She cooperated at every point, which was why she suffered much less than I did.
+ We were different in every way.
+ Chen Qingyang said that back then I wasn't very civilized.
+ When we went back to the public security office, people untied us.
+ The rope left lines of smudge on her shirt, which was because the rope was stored in a kitchen shed and picked up ash from the bottom of woks and bits of firewood.
+ She tried to flick the ashes off with her stiff fingers, but could only do the front, not the back.
+ By the time she wanted to ask me to help her, I had already strode out of the room.
+ She followed out the door, but I had gone pretty far.
+ I walked very fast, never looking back.
+ Because of these things, she didn't love me at all; she didn't even like me.
+ According to the leaders, what we did on the back slope was not considered a primary offense—except the time that she looked like a koala bear.
+ For example, the thing we did while cultivating the wilderness was just a secondary offense.
+ So I didn't finish my confession.
+ There was actually something more.
+ A hot wind blew really hard at the time and Chen Qingyang slept soundly with her arms under her head.
+ I unbuttoned all the buttons on her shirt so she was half naked.
+ It looked like she had done it herself.
+ The sky was so blue and bright that you could even see blue light in the shadows.
+ All of a sudden, I felt tenderness in my heart, so I bent over her reddened body.
+ I'd forgotten what I did then.
+ When I mentioned this to Chen Qingyang, I thought she'd have forgotten.
+ But she said, "I remember, I remember.
+ I was already awake by that time.
+ You kissed my belly button, right?
+ I was just on the edge—I almost fell in love with you at that moment."
+ Chen Qingyang said that she had just awakened in time to see my tousled head on her belly, and then she felt a gentle touch on her navel.
+ For a moment she could hardly restrain herself, but she still pretended to sleep, waiting to see what else I would do.
+ But I didn't do anything.
+ I raised my head and looked around.
+ And then I walked away.
+ My confession says that on that night, we left the back slope and set off for the crime scene.
+ We carried pots and pans on our backs and planned to settle down on the mountain in the south.
+ Over there the soil was so much richer that the grasses on both sides of the road stood as tall as people, unlike the back slope of the fifteenth team where they were about half a foot.
+ The moon shone that night.
+ We even walked on the road for a while.
+ By the time fog rose at daybreak, we had walked twelve miles and went up to the mountain in the south.
+ To be more specific, we arrived at the grassland to the south of Zhang Feng village and the forest wasn't far off.
+ We camped under a huge green tree, picking up two pieces of cow dung to start a fire, and spread a plastic sheet on the ground.
+ Then we took off all our clothes (the clothes were drenched by then), cuddled into each other, wrapped ourselves in three blankets, and then fell asleep.
+ We woke up frozen after an hour.
+ The three layers of blankets were all soaked, and the dung fire had died out, too.
+ Dewdrops fell from the trees in a downpour, and even the drops floating in the air were as big as mung beans.
+ This was in January, the coldest days of the dry season.
+ The shady side of the mountain could be that damp.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she woke up she heard my teeth chattering like a machine gun by her ear.
+ The upper teeth were clicking against the lower more than once a second.
+ I already had a temperature.
+ Once I caught a cold, it would be hard to recover unless I got a shot.
+ So she sat up and said, Enough.
+ Both of us will get sick this way.
+ Hurry, we have to do the thing.
+ Not wanting to move, I said, Hold on for a bit.
+ The sun is coming out soon.
+ After a few minutes I said, Do you think I have energy to do it now?
+ That was the situation prior to the offense.
+ The offense went as follows: Chen Qingyang rode my body, up and down; behind her back was a broad expanse of white fog.
+ It didn't feel that cold anymore, and the sound of buffalo bells floated all around.
+ Since Thai people here didn't pen their buffaloes, they would ramble at daybreak.
+ Hung with wooden bells, the buffaloes would make clunking sounds as they walked.
+ A hulk suddenly turned up beside us, with dewdrops dangling from a hairy ear.
+ It was a white buffalo, who turned its head and stared at us with one of its eyes.
+ A white buffalo's horn can be used to make a knife handle, glittering and crystal clear, very pretty.
+ But its texture is brittle, easy to crack.
+ I used to have a dagger with a white-horn handle that didn't have any cracks, which was very unusual.
+ The blade was also made of excellent materials.
+ Unfortunately public security confiscated it.
+ I asked them to return it to me after my case was cleared.
+ They said they couldn't find it.
+ They didn't return my hunting gun either.
+ Old Guo from the public security section promised shamelessly to buy it, but he only wanted to pay fifty yuan.
+ In the end I got nothing back, not my gun or my knife.
+ Chen Qingyang and I chatted for a long time before we committed our crime in the hotel room.
+ Finally, she took off her shirt, but still wore her skirt and leather boots.
+ I went over to sit next to her and moved her hair back; some of it had turned gray.
+ Chen Qingyang had permed her hair.
+ She said she used to have excellent hair and didn't want to perm it.
+ Now it didn't matter anymore.
+ As the assistant head of the hospital, she was very busy and couldn't even find time to wash her hair every day.
+ Other than that, the corners of her eyes and her neck had begun to crease.
+ She said her daughter suggested that she have plastic surgery, but she couldn't find time to do it.
+ At last she said, OK, now take a look at them.
+ So she started to undo her bra.
+ I wanted to help her, but I couldn't.
+ The clasp was in the front, but I reached around to her back.
+ She said, Looks like you haven't learned what it takes to be bad.
+ And then she turned to let me see her breasts.
+ I looked carefully at them for a while, and gave her my opinion.
+ For some reason, her face blushed a little.
+ She said, Well, you've seen them.
+ What else do you want to do?
+ As she said this, she began to put her bra back on.
+ I said, What's the hurry?
+ Leave them out.
+ She said, What?
+ Still want to study my anatomy?
+ I said, Of course.
+ But let's not rush.
+ We can talk a little longer.
+ The color in her face deepened.
+ She said, Wang Er, you'll never learn how to be good.
+ You'll always be a bastard!
+ When I was detained in the public security section, Luo Xiaosi came to see me.
+ He leaned on the windowsill and found me tied up like a package.
+ Believing that my case was very serious and I might be shot soon, he tossed a box of cigarettes in from the window and said, Brother Er, just a little gift.
+ Then he burst into tears.
+ Luo Xiaosi was a sentimental man, easily touched.
+ I asked him to light a cigarette and hand it to me through the window.
+ He did as I asked, almost dislocating his shoulder to reach me.
+ After that he asked me what else he could do for me.
+ I said nothing else.
+ I also said, Don't bring a crowd to see me.
+ He promised he wouldn't.
+ After he was gone, a gang of boys climbed up to the window ledge to see me.
+ Right then the cigarette smoke choked me, and with one eye open and the other closed I looked terrible.
+ The leader of the boys couldn't help crying out: Hooligan!
+ I answered back, Your father and mother are hooligans!
+ If they're not hooligans, where did a little hooligan like you come from?
+ The boy grabbed some dirt and flung it at me.
+ After I was released, I went to see the boy's father and said: Today I was in the public security office.
+ I was hog-tied.
+ Your son is young, but he has great ambition.
+ He took the opportunity to fling dirt at me.
+ After hearing this, the man grabbed his son and beat the shit out of the little bastard.
+ I didn't leave until I witnessed the whole episode.
+ When Chen Qingyang heard this, she commented, Wang Er, you're a bastard!
+ Actually I'm not always a bastard.
+ Now that I have a wife and family, I have learned a lot about how to be good.
+ After finishing the cigarette, I drew her to me, fondled her breasts skillfully for a while, and then wanted to take off her skirt.
+ She said, No rush.
+ Let's talk a little more.
+ Give me a cigarette too.
+ So I lit a cigarette, took a drag, and handed it to her.
+ Chen Qingyang said on Mount Zhang Feng, when she rode up and down on my body, she looked far and near, and saw nothing but gray, watery fog floating in the air.
+ All of a sudden, she felt very alone, very lonely.
+ Even though a part of me was rubbing inside her body, she still felt sad and lonely.
+ After a while I came back to life and said: Let's switch.
+ Here we go.
+ So I rolled over onto her body.
+ She said, That time, you were a bigger bastard than ever.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was a bigger bastard than ever, she meant that I suddenly noticed her feet were cute and pretty.
+ I said, Old Chen, I've decided to be a foot fetishist.
+ Then I raised her legs and started to kiss the soles of her feet.
+ Chen Qingyang lay on the grass with her arms spread out and her hands grabbing the grass, and then she turned her head aside, her hair covering her face, and moaned.
+ In my confession I wrote: I let go of her legs and parted the hair on her face.
+ She struggled violently to break free, tears rolling down from her eyes, but she didn't slap me.
+ There were two unhealthy red spots on her cheeks.
+ After a while, she no longer struggled and said, You bastard!
+ What are you going to do with me?
+ I said, What's wrong?
+ She smiled and said, Nothing.
+ Keep going.
+ So I raised her legs again.
+ She lay like that motionless, her arms spread out, teeth biting her lower lip without uttering a sound.
+ If I looked at her again, she smiled back.
+ I remember her face was extremely pale, and her hair was especially dark.
+ That's how the whole thing went.
+ Chen Qingyang said when she lay in the cold rain that time, she felt the chill penetrate every pore.
+ She felt an endless flow of sorrow.
+ Just then a huge surge of orgasm sliced through her body.
+ Cold fog and icy rain both seeped into her body.
+ For a moment she wanted to die.
+ She couldn't stand it; she wanted to cry out.
+ But at the sight of me she changed her mind.
+ There was no man in this world who could make her scream in front of him.
+ She felt disconnected from everyone.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she was deeply troubled every time I made love to her.
+ In the depth of her heart, she wanted to cry out, hug me, and kiss me passionately, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.
+ She didn't want to love other people, not even one.
+ But still, when I kissed the soles of her feet that time, a sharp feeling still bored its way into her heart.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I made love on Mount Zhang Feng, an old buffalo alongside us watched.
+ Later it lowed and ran away, leaving the two of us alone there.
+ After a long while, the sky gradually lightened and the fog began to disappear from above us.
+ Chen Qingyang's body glistened with dew.
+ I let go of her and rose to my feet, to find that we were actually not far from the village.
+ So I said, Let's go.
+ We left that place and never went back.
+ In my confession, I admitted that Chen Qingyang and I had committed crimes on numerous occasions on Grandpa Liu's back mountain.
+ This was because Grandpa Liu's fields had already been cultivated and didn't need much work.
+ So our life was relatively easy there.
+ And since we didn't have to worry about food and shelter, we thought more about sex.
+ There was nobody else on that part of the mountain, and Grandpa Liu lay on his deathbed.
+ The mountain was either rainy or foggy.
+ Chen Qingyang fastened my belt around her waist, with a knife dangling from it.
+ She wore high boots, and nothing else.
+ Chen Qingyang told me later that she had made only one friend in her life, and that was me.
+ She said all that happened came about because I talked about great friendship in my small house by the river.
+ A person had to accomplish a few things in life and this was one of them.
+ After that she didn't have deep relationships with other people.
+ It's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ I've had a feeling about this all along.
+ So whenever I asked her for sex, I would say, Old pal, how about strengthening our great friendship now?
+ Married couples have a code of ethics to strengthen, and we don't have that, so we can only strengthen our friendship.
+ She said, No problem.
+ How do you want to strengthen it, from the front or from the back?
+ I said, From the back.
+ We were at the edge of the field then.
+ Because it was from the back, we had to spread two palm-bark rain capes on the ground.
+ She knelt on her hands and knees, like a horse, and said, You'd better hurry.
+ It's time to give Grandpa Liu a shot.
+ I wrote all these things in my confessions, but the leaders wanted me to confess in response to the following: 1. Who is Comrade Strain-thing Eh-thics?
+ 2. What does "strengthening the great friendship" mean?
+ 3. What is strengthening it from the back?
+ And what is strengthening it from the front?
+ After I cleared things up, the leaders told me not to play word games.
+ Whatever my crimes were, they said, I needed to confess them.
+ While we were strengthening our great friendship on the mountain, white breath puffed from our mouths.
+ It was not that cold, but very humid.
+ You could grab a handful of air and wring water out of it.
+ Worms wriggled next to our palm-bark rain capes.
+ That piece of land was really rich.
+ Later on, before the corn fully ripened, we picked the ears and ground the kernels in a mortar.
+ The Jingpos in the mountains prepared corn cakes that way, and they weren't bad at all.
+ Storing them in cold water could preserve them for a long time.
+ As Chen Qingyang crouched on her hands and knees in the cold rain, her breasts felt like cool apples.
+ Her skin all over was as smooth as a piece of burnished marble.
+ After a while I pulled my little Buddha out and ejaculated onto the field.
+ She looked back at this with a surprised and fearful expression.
+ I told her that it would fertilize the land.
+ She said, I know.
+ And a moment later she asked, Will a little Wang Er grow out of the land?— Does this sound like something a doctor would say?
+ When the rainy season passed, we dressed like Thais and went to Qingping market.
+ As I've already written before, I met a classmate in Qingping.
+ Although I was dressed like a Thai, he still recognized me on sight.
+ I was too tall to be a Thai.
+ He said, Hi, brother Er, where have you been?
+ I said, I'm hopeless at speaking Mandarin.
+ Despite the fact that I tried very hard to speak in a weird accent, it still sounded like the Beijing dialect.
+ That one sentence gave me away.
+ It was her idea to go back to the farm.
+ Since I myself had decided to go up the mountain, I was determined not to go back.
+ She'd come to the mountains for the sake of our great friendship, so I couldn't refuse to go down the mountain with her.
+ Actually, we could have left anytime, but she didn't want to.
+ She said our current life was fun.
+ Later Chen Qingyang said life on the mountain was also fun.
+ When cold mist drifted over the mountain, she would tuck a knife into her belt, put on a pair of rain boots, and enter the drizzle.
+ But it's no fun doing the same things over and over.
+ That was why she still wanted to come down the mountain, to put up with the torment of human society.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I relived our great friendship in the hotel room, we spoke of the time we came down the mountain and reached a junction of roads.
+ There were four byroads at that place, and each of them led in a single direction.
+ East, west, south, north didn't really matter.
+ One led abroad, to an unknown place; one to the interior; one to the farm; and one back to where we came from, and that road also led to Husha.
+ In Husha there were a lot of Ahcang blacksmiths, who had passed on the skill from generation to generation.
+ Though I didn't come from a family of smiths, I could have been a blacksmith.
+ I knew those people very well; they all admired my skill.
+ Ahcang women were all very pretty, their bodies adorned with many bronze bracelets and necklaces and silver coins.
+ That kind of dress fascinated Chen Qingyang, and she wanted to go up to the mountains and become one of them.
+ At the time, the rainy season had just passed, and clouds rose up from every direction.
+ Threads of sunshine flashed in the sky.
+ We could have made any choice and set off in any direction.
+ So I stood at the crossroads for a long time.
+ Later when I was going back to the interior, waiting for the bus by the road, I also had two choices: I could keep waiting, or return to the farm.
+ When I walked along one path, I often thought about things that might happen on another path.
+ Then I would feel confused.
+ Chen Qingyang once said I was a man of average intelligence but with skillful hands, and very nutty, which all meant something.
+ Her saying my intelligence was only average, I didn't agree with; her saying I was nutty, I couldn't deny because it's a fact; as to my skillful hands, she probably knew that from her own body.
+ My hands are indeed very skillful, which wasn't just shown by how I touched women.
+ My palms are not big, but my fingers are unusually long and able to perform any delicate and complex task.
+ Those Ahcang blacksmiths on the mountain were better than me at forging blades, but for etching designs on a knife no one could match me.
+ So, at least twenty blacksmiths invited us to move in with them.
+ Each suggested that he would forge the blades and I would etch the designs, and we would make a good team.
+ If I had moved in then, I probably would have forgotten how to speak Mandarin.
+ If I had moved in with an Ahcang big brother, I would be etching designs on Husha knives in that dark, deep blacksmith shop now.
+ In the muddy backyard of his house, there would be a brood of little children, comprised of four combinations: 1. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and me; 2. Those produced by Ahcang big brother and Ahcang big sister; 3. Those produced by Ahcang big sister and me; 4. Those produced by Chen Qingyang and Ahcang big brother.
+ When Chen Qingyang would come down from the mountain with firewood on her back, she would pull up her clothes, revealing her full and firm breasts, and, without making any distinction, feed one of the babies.
+ If I had returned to the mountains then, that would have happened.
+ Chen Qingyang said such things wouldn't happen because they didn't happen.
+ What really happened was that we returned to the farm, wrote confessions, and went on denouncement trips.
+ Even though we could have run away at any minute, we never did.
+ That was what really happened.
+ When Chen Qingyang said I was of average intelligence, she obviously didn't consider my literary talent.
+ Everyone loved to read the confessions I wrote.
+ When I first started writing those things, I was dead set against it.
+ But as I wrote more, I became obsessed, clearly because the things I wrote all happened.
+ Things that really happen have incomparable charm.
+ I wrote down almost every detail in my confessions except the things that happened below: On the back mountain of the fifteenth team, after making love in our thatched hut, Chen Qingyang and I went to a creek to play in the water.
+ The water from the mountain had washed away the red soil, exposing the blue clay underneath.
+ We lay on the blue clay to sun ourselves.
+ After I recovered my warmth, my little Buddha stood up again.
+ Since he had been relieved not long before, I was not as eager as a sex maniac.
+ So I lay on my side behind her, pillowed on her long hair and entered her body from behind.
+ Later in the hotel room, we relived our great friendship in the same way.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on our sides on the blue clay, it was getting dark and the wind had cooled a bit.
+ It felt very peaceful lying together, and sometimes we moved a little.
+ I've heard that dolphins had two ways of doing it, one for procreation and the other for entertainment, which is to say that dolphins also have the great friendship.
+ Chen Qingyang and I were connected, just like a pair of dolphins.
+ When Chen Qingyang and I lay on the blue clay with our eyes closed, we felt like a pair of dolphins swimming in the sea.
+ It was getting darker and the sunlight gradually reddened.
+ A cloud came over the horizon, pale as countless dead fish bellies turned up and countless dead fish eyes gaping.
+ A current of wind slipped down the mountain without a sound, without a breath, and a sadness in the air filled every space between the sky and the earth.
+ Chen Qingyang shed a lot of tears.
+ She said the scene depressed her.
+ I still keep the duplicates of my confessions from back then.
+ Once, I showed them to a friend who majored in English and American literature.
+ He said they were all very good, with the charm of Victorian underground novels.
+ As for the details I had cut out, he said it was a good idea to cut them out, because those details destroyed the unity of the story.
+ My friend is really erudite.
+ I was very young when I wrote the confessions and didn't have any learning (I still don't have much learning), or any idea what Victorian underground novels were.
+ What I had in my mind was that I shouldn't be an instigator.
+ Many people would read my confessions.
+ If after reading them they couldn't help screwing damaged goods, that wasn't so bad; but if they learned the other thing, that would be really bad.
+ I also left out the facts that follow, for the same reason mentioned above.
+ We had committed many errors and deserved execution.
+ But the leaders decided to save us, making me write confessions.
+ How forgiving of them!
+ So I made up my mind that I would only write about how bad we were.
+ When we lived on Grandpa Liu's back slope, Chen Qingyang made a Thai skirt for herself, disguising herself as a Thai woman so she could go to Qingping on market days.
+ But after putting the skirt on she could barely walk.
+ South of Qingping, we ran into a river.
+ The mountain water was ice-cold, and green as marinated mustard.
+ The water reached to my waist, and the current was very swift.
+ I walked over to her, hoisted her onto my shoulder, went right across the river, and then put her down.
+ Her waist was exactly the width of my shoulder.
+ I remember her face turning deep red then.
+ I said, I could carry you to Qingping and back, faster than your swishy walking.
+ She said, Go take a crap.
+ A Thai skirt is like a cloth sheath.
+ The hem is only about a foot around.
+ People who know how to wear them can do all kinds of things with them on, including peeing on the street without squatting down.
+ Chen Qingyang said she could never learn that trick.
+ After conducting an observation for a while in Qingping market, she drew the conclusion that if she wanted to disguise herself like someone, she would rather be an Ahcang woman.
+ On the way back, the mountain road was all uphill, and she was exhausted, too.
+ So whenever we needed to jump over a ditch or cross a ridge, she would find a stump, gracefully mount it, and let me carry her.
+ So on the way home I carried her on my shoulder climbing the hills.
+ The dry season had just arrived, white clouds coasted through the sky, and the sun gave brilliant light.
+ But in the mountains it would drizzle from time to time.
+ The red clay was very slippery.
+ Walking on slabs of red mud was like learning to skate for the first time.
+ So with my right hand locked around her thighs and my left hand carrying the rifle, not to mention the basket on my back, I could hardly manage the slippery incline.
+ All of a sudden, I slipped to the left, and was about to fall into the valley.
+ Fortunately I had a rifle, which I used to hold me up.
+ I tensed my whole body and struggled to keep us from going over.
+ But the idiot picked that moment to give me trouble, flopping around on my back and demanding that I put her down.
+ We almost lost our lives that time.
+ As soon as I caught my breath, I switched the rifle to my right hand, raised my left hand, and slapped her bottom really hard.
+ Through the layer of thin cloth, it felt unusually smooth.
+ Her bottom was very round.
+ Fuck, I felt terrific.
+ She immediately behaved herself after getting spanked.
+ She became very submissive, not saying another word.
+ Of course, it was wrong to slap her bottom, but I thought this kind of thing might not be what other damaged goods and their lovers get into.
+ So the incident seemed beside the point and I didn't write about it.
+
+ 我后来又见到陈清扬，和她在饭店里登记了房间，然后一起到房间里去，我伸手帮她脱下大衣。
+ 陈清扬说，王二变得文明了。
+ 这说明我已经变了很多。
+ 以前我不但相貌凶恶，行为也很凶恶。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里又做了一回案。
+ 那里暖气烧得很暖，还装着茶色玻璃。
+ 我坐在沙发上，她坐在床上，聊了一会儿天， 逐渐有了犯罪的气氛。
+ 我说，不是让我看有多耷拉吗，我看看。
+ 她就站起来，脱了外衣，里面穿着大花的衬衫。
+ 然后她又坐下去，说，还早一点。
+ 过一会服务员来送开水。
+ 他们有钥匙，连门都不敲就进来了。
+ 我问她，碰上了人家怎么说？
+ 她说，她没被碰上过。
+ 但是听说人家会把门一摔，在外面说：真他妈的讨厌！
+ 我和陈清扬逃进山以前，有一次我在猪场煮猪食。
+ 那时我要烧火，要把猪菜切碎（所谓猪菜，是番薯藤、水葫芦一类东西），要往锅里加糠添水。
+ 我同时做着好几样事情。
+ 而军代表却在一边碟碟不休，说我是如何之坏。
+ 他还让我去告诉我的“臭婊子”陈清扬，她是如何之坏。
+ 忽然间我暴怒起来，抡起长勺，照着粱上挂的盛南瓜籽的葫芦劈去，把它劈成两半。
+ 军代表吓得一步跳出房去。
+ 如果他还要继续数落我，我就要砍他脑袋了。
+ 我是那样凶恶，因为我不说话。
+ 后来在人保组，我也不大说话，包括人家捆我的时候。
+ 所以我的手经常被捆得乌青。
+ 陈清扬经常说话。
+ 她说：大嫂，捆疼了。
+ 或者：大嫂，给我拿手绢垫一垫。
+ 我头发上系了一块手绢。
+ 她处处与人合作，苦头吃得少。
+ 我们处处都不一样。
+ 陈清扬说，以前我不够文明。
+ 在人保组里，人家给我们松了绑。
+ 那条绳子在她的衬衣上留下了很多道痕迹。
+ 这是因为那绳子平时放在烧火的棚子里，沾上了锅灰和柴草沫。
+ 她用不灵活的手把痕迹掸掉，只掸了前面，掸不了后面。
+ 等到她想叫我来掸时，我已经一步跨出门去。
+ 等到她追出门去，我已经走了很远，我走路很快，而且从来不回头看。
+ 就因为这些原因，她根本就不爱我，也说不上喜欢。
+ 照领导定的性，我们在后山上干的事，除了她像考拉那次之外，都不算案子。
+ 像我们在开荒时干的事，只能算枝节问题。
+ 所以我没有继续交待下去。
+ 其实还有别的事。
+ 当时热风正烈，陈清扬头枕双臂睡得很熟。
+ 我把她的衣襟完全解开了。
+ 这样她袒露出上身，好像是故意的一样。
+ 天又蓝又亮，以致阴影里都是蓝黝黝的光。
+ 忽然间我心里一动，在她红彤彤的身体上俯身下去。
+ 我都忘了自己干了些什么了。
+ 我把这事说了出来，以为陈清扬一定不记得。
+ 可是她说，“记得记得！
+ 那会儿我醒了。
+ 你在我肚脐上亲了一下吧？
+ 好危险，差一点爱上你。”
+ 陈清扬说，当时她刚好醒来，看见我那颗乱蓬蓬的头正在她肚子上，然后肚脐上轻柔的一触。
+ 那一刻她也不能自持。
+ 但是她还是假装睡着，看我还要干什么。
+ 可是我什么都没干，抬起头来往四下看看，就走开了。
+ 我写的交待材料里说，那天夜里，我们离开后山，向做案现场进发，背上背了很多坛坛罐罐，计划是到南边山里定居。
+ 那边土地肥沃，公路两边就是一人深的草。
+ 不像十五队后山，草只有半尺高。
+ 那天夜里有月亮，我们还走了一段公路，所以到天明将起雾时，已经走了二十公里，上了南面的山。
+ 具体地说，到了章风寨南面的草地上，再走就是森林。
+ 我们在一棵大青树下露营，拣了两块干牛粪生了一堆火，在地上铺了一块塑料布。
+ 然后脱了一切衣服（衣服已经湿了），搂在一起，裹上三条毯子，滚成一个球，就睡着了。
+ 睡了一个小时就被冻醒。
+ 三重毯子都湿透了，牛粪火也灭了。
+ 树上的水滴像倾盆大雨往下掉。
+ 空气里漂着的水点有绿豆大小。
+ 那是在一月里，旱季最冷的几天。
+ 山的阴面就有这么潮。
+ 陈清扬说，她醒时，听见我在她耳边打机关枪。
+ 上牙碰下牙，一秒钟不只一下。
+ 而且我已经有了热度。
+ 我一感冒就不容易好，必须打针。
+ 她就爬起来说，不行，这样两个人都要病。
+ 快干那事。
+ 我不肯动，说道：忍忍罢。
+ 一会儿就出太阳。
+ 后来又说：你看我干得了吗？
+ 案发前的情况就是这样的。
+ 案发时的情形是这样：陈清扬骑在我身上，一起一落，她背后的天上是白茫茫的雾气。
+ 这时好像不那么冷了，四下里传来牛铃声。
+ 这地方的老傣不关牛，天一亮水牛就自己跑出来。
+ 那些牛身上拴着木制的铃裆，走起来发出闷闷的响声。
+ 一个庞然大物骤然出现在我们身边，耳边的刚毛上挂着水珠。
+ 那是一条白水牛，它侧过头来，用一只眼睛看我们。
+ 白水牛的角可以做刀把，晶莹透明很好看。
+ 可是质脆容易裂。
+ 我有一把匕首，也是白牛角把，却一点不裂，很难得。
+ 刃的材料也好，可是被人保组收走了。
+ 后来没事了，找他们要，却说找不到了。
+ 还有我的猎枪，也不肯还我。
+ 人保组的老郭死乞白咧地说要买，可是只肯出五十块钱。
+ 最后连枪带刀，我一样也没要回来。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里做案之前聊了好半天。
+ 最后她把衬衣也脱下来，还穿着裙子和皮靴。
+ 我走过去坐在她身边，把她的头发撩了起来。
+ 她的头发有不少白的了。
+ 陈清扬烫了头。
+ 她说，以前她的头发好，舍不得烫。
+ 现在没关系了。
+ 她现在当了副院长，非常忙，也不能每天洗头。
+ 除此之外，眼角脖子下有不少皱纹。
+ 她说，女儿建议她去做整容手术。
+ 但是她没时间做。
+ 后来她说，好啦，看罢。
+ 就去解乳罩。
+ 我想帮她一把，也没帮上。
+ 扣在前面，我把手伸到后面去了。
+ 她说看来你没学坏，就转过身来让我看。
+ 我仔细看了一阵，提了一点意见。
+ 不知为什么，她有点脸红，说，好啦，看也看过了。
+ 还要干什么？
+ 就要把乳罩戴上。
+ 我说，别忙，就这样罢。
+ 她说，怎么，还要研究我的结构？
+ 我说，那当然。
+ 现在不着急，再聊一会。
+ 她的脸更红了，说道：王二，你一辈子学不了好，永远是个混蛋。
+ 我在人保组，罗小四来看我，趴窗户一看，我被捆得像粽子一样。
+ 他以为案情严重，我会被枪毙掉，把一盒烟从窗里扔进来，说道：二哥，哥们儿一点意思。
+ 然后哭了。
+ 罗小四感情丰富，很容易哭。
+ 我让他点着了烟从窗口递进来，他照办了，差点肩关节脱臼才递到我嘴上。
+ 然后他问我还有什么事要办，我说没有。
+ 我还说，你别招一大群人来看我。
+ 他也照办了。
+ 他走后，又有一帮孩子爬上窗台看，正看见我被烟熏的睁一眼闭一眼，样子非常难看。
+ 打头的一个不禁说道：耍流氓。
+ 我说，你爸你妈才耍流氓，他们不流氓能有你？
+ 那孩子抓了些泥巴扔我。
+ 等把我放开，我就去找他爸，说道：今天我在人保组，被人像捆猪一样捆上。
+ 令郎人小志大，趁那时朝我扔泥巴。
+ 那人一听，揪住他儿子就揍。
+ 我在一边看完了才走。
+ 陈清扬听说这事，就有这种评价：王二，你是个混蛋。
+ 其实我并非永远是混蛋。
+ 我现在有家有口，已经学了不少好。
+ 抽完了那根烟，我把她抱过来，很熟练地在她胸前爱抚一番，然后就想脱她的裙子。
+ 她说：别忙，再聊会儿。
+ 你给我也来支烟。
+ 我点了一支烟，抽着了给她。
+ 陈清杨说，在章风山她骑在我身上一上一下，极目四野，都是灰蒙蒙的水雾。
+ 忽然间觉得非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 虽然我的一部分在她身体里磨擦，她还是非常寂寞，非常孤独。
+ 后来我活过来了，说道：换换，你看我的，我就翻到上面去。
+ 她说， 那一回你比哪回都混蛋。
+ 陈清扬说，那回我比哪回都混蛋，是指我忽然发现她的脚很小巧好看。
+ 因此我说，老陈，我准备当个拜脚狂。
+ 然后我把她两腿捧起来，吻她的脚心。
+ 陈清扬平躺在草地上，两手摊开，抓着草。
+ 忽然她一晃头，用头发盖住了脸，然后哼了一声。
+ 我在交待材料里写道，那时我放开她的腿，把她脸上的头发抚开。
+ 陈清扬猛烈地挣扎，流着眼泪，但是没有动手。
+ 她脸上有两点很不健康的红晕。
+ 后来她不挣扎了，对我说，混蛋，你要把我怎么办。
+ 我说，怎么了。
+ 她又笑，说道：不怎么。
+ 接着来。
+ 所以我又捧起她的双腿。
+ 她就那么躺着不动，双手平摊，牙咬着下唇，一声不响。
+ 如果我多看她一眼，她就笑笑。
+ 我记得她脸特别白，头发特别黑，整个情况就是这样的。
+ 陈清扬说，那一回她躺在冷雨里，忽然觉得每一个毛孔都进了冷雨。
+ 她感到悲从中来，不可断绝。
+ 忽然间一股巨大的快感劈进来。
+ 冷雾，雨水，都沁进了她的身体。
+ 那时节她很想死去。
+ 她不能忍耐，想叫出来，但是看见了我她又不想叫出来。
+ 世界上还没有一个男人能叫她肯当着他的面叫出来。
+ 她和任何人都格格不入。
+ 陈清扬后来和我说，每回和我做爱都深受折磨。
+ 在内心深处她很想叫出来，想抱住我狂吻，但是她不乐意。
+ 她不想爱别人，任何人都不爱；尽管如此，我吻她脚心时，一股辛辣的感觉还是钻到她心里来。
+ 我和陈清扬在章风山上做爱，有一只老水牛在一边看。
+ 后来它哞了一声跑开了，只剩我们两人。
+ 过了很长时间，天渐渐亮了。
+ 雾从天顶消散。
+ 陈清扬的身体沾了露水，闪起光来。
+ 我把她放开，站起来，看见离寨子很近，就说：走。
+ 于是离开了那个地方，再没回去过。
+ 我在交待材料里说，我和陈清扬在刘大爹后山上作案无数。
+ 这是因为刘大爹的地是熟地，开起来不那么费力。
+ 生活也安定，所以温饱生淫欲。
+ 那片山上没人，刘大爹躺在床上要死了。
+ 山上非雾即雨，陈清扬腰上束着我的板带，上面挂着刀子。
+ 脚上穿高筒雨靴，除此之外不着一丝。
+ 陈清扬后来说，她一辈子只交了我一个朋友。
+ 她说，这一切都是因为我在河边的小屋里谈到伟大友谊。
+ 人活着总要做几件事情，这就是其中之一。
+ 以后她就没和任何人有过交情。
+ 同样的事做多了没意思。
+ 我对此早有预感。
+ 所以我向她要求此事时就说：老兄，咱们敦敦伟大友谊如何？
+ 人家夫妇敦伦，我们无伦可言，只好敦友谊。
+ 她说好。
+ 怎么敦？
+ 正着敦反着敦？
+ 我说反着敦。
+ 那时正在地头上。
+ 因为是反着敦，就把两件蓑衣铺在地上，她趴在上面，像一匹马，说道：你最好快一点，刘大爹该打针了。
+ 我把这些事写进了交待材料，领导上让我交待：1. 谁是“郭伦”；2. 什么叫“郭郭”伟大友谊；3 .什么叫正着郭，什么叫反着郭。
+ 把这些都说清以后，领导上又叫我以后少掉文，是什么问题就交待什么问题。
+ 在山上敦伟大友谊时，嘴里喷出白气。
+ 天不那么凉，可是很湿，抓过一把能拧出水来。
+ 就在蓑衣旁边，蚯蚓在爬。
+ 那片地真肥。
+ 后来玉米还没熟透，我们就把它放在捣臼里捣，这是山上老景颇的做法。
+ 做出的玉米粑粑很不坏。
+ 在冷水里放着，好多天不坏。
+ 陈清扬趴在冷雨里，乳房摸起来像冷苹果。
+ 她浑身的皮肤绷紧，好像抛过光的大理石。
+ 后来我把小和尚拔出来，把精液射到地里。
+ 她在一边看着，面带惊恐之状。
+ 我告诉她：这样地会更肥。
+ 她说：我知道。
+ 后来又说：地里会不会长出小王二来——这像个大夫说的话吗？
+ 雨季过去后，我们化装成老傣，到清平赶街。
+ 后来的事我已经写过，我在清平遇上了同学。
+ 虽然化了装，人家还是一眼就认出我来。
+ 我的个子太高，装不矮。
+ 人家对我说：二哥，你跑哪儿去了？
+ 我说：我不会讲汉话哟！
+ 虽然尽力加上一点怪腔，还是京片子。
+ 一句就露馅了。
+ 回到农场是她的主意。
+ 我自己既然上了山，就不准备下去。
+ 她和我上山，是为了伟大友谊。
+ 我也不能不陪她下去。
+ 其实我们随时可以逃走，但她不乐意。
+ 她说现在的生活很有趣。
+ 陈清扬后来说，在山上她也觉得很有趣。
+ 漫山冷雾时，腰上别着刀子，足蹬高统雨靴，走到雨丝里去。
+ 但是同样的事做多了就不再有趣。
+ 所以她还想下山，忍受人世的摧残。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里重温伟大友谊，说到那回从山上下来，走到岔路口上。
+ 那地方有四条岔路，各通一方。
+ 东西南北没有关系，一条通到国外，是未知之地； 一条通到内地；一条通到农场； 一条是我们来的路。
+ 那条路还通到户撒。
+ 那里有很多阿伧铁匠，那些人世世代代当铁匠。
+ 我虽然不是世世代代，但我也能当铁匠。
+ 我和那些人熟得很，他们都佩服我的技术。
+ 阿伧族的女人都很漂亮，身上挂了很多铜箍和银钱。
+ 陈清扬对那种打扮十分神往，她很想到山上去当个阿伧。
+ 那时雨季刚过，云从四面八方升起来。
+ 天顶上闪过一缕缕阳光。
+ 我们有各种选择，可以到各方向去。
+ 所以我在路口上站了很久。
+ 后来我回内地时，站在公路上等汽车，也有两种选择，可以等下去，也可以回农场去。
+ 当我沿着一条路走下去的时候，心里总想着另一条路上的事。
+ 这种时候我心里很乱。
+ 陈清扬说过，我天资中等，手很巧，人特别混。
+ 这都是有所指的。
+ 说我天资中等，我不大同意。
+ 说我特别混，事实俱在，不容抵赖。
+ 至于说我手巧，可能是自己身上体会出来的。
+ 我的手的确很巧，不光表现在摸女人方面。
+ 手掌不大，手指特长，可以做任何精细的工作。
+ 山上那些阿伧铁匠打刀刃比我好，可是要比在刀上刻花纹，没有任何人能比得上。
+ 所以起码有二十个铁匠提出过，让我们搬过去，他打刀刃我刻花纹，我们搭一伙。
+ 假如当初搬了过去，可能现在连汉话都不会说了。
+ 假如我搬到一位阿伧大哥那里去住，现在准在黑洞洞的铁匠铺里给户撒刀刻花纹。
+ 在他家泥泞的后院里，准有一大窝小崽子，共有四种组合形式：1. 陈清扬和我的；2. 阿伧大哥和阿伧大嫂的；3. 我和阿伧大嫂的；4. 陈清扬和阿伧大哥的。
+ 陈清扬从山上背柴回来，撩起衣裳，露出极壮硕的乳房，不分青红皂白，就给其中一个喂奶。
+ 假如当初我退回山上去，这样的事就会发生。
+ 陈清扬说，这样的事不会发生，因为它没有发生，实际发生的是，我们回了农场，写交待材料出斗争差。
+ 虽然随时都可以跑掉，但是没有跑。
+ 这是真实发生了的事。
+ 陈清扬说，我天资平常，她显然没把我的文学才能考虑在内。
+ 我写的交待材料人人都爱看。
+ 刚开始写那些东西时，我有很大抵触情绪。
+ 写着写着就入了迷。
+ 这显然是因为我写的全是发生过的事。
+ 发生过的事有无比的魅力。
+ 我在交待材料里写下了一切细节，但是没有写以下已经发生的事情：我和陈清扬在十五队后山上，在草房里干完后，到山涧里戏水。
+ 山上下来的水把红土剥光，露出下面的蓝粘土来。
+ 我们爬到蓝粘土上晒太阳。
+ 暖过来后，小和尚又直立起来。
+ 但是刚发泄过，不像急色鬼。
+ 于是我侧躺在她身后，枕着她的头发进入她的身体。
+ 我们在饭店里，后来也是这么重温伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬侧躺在蓝粘土上，那时天色将晚，风也有点凉。
+ 躺在一起心平气和，有时轻轻动一下。
+ 据说海豚之间有生殖性的和娱乐性的两种搞法，这就是说，海豚也有伟大友谊。
+ 我和陈清扬连在一起，好像两只海豚一样。
+ 我和陈清扬在蓝粘土上，闭上眼睛，好像两只海豚在海里游动。
+ 天黑下来，阳光逐渐红下去。
+ 天边起了一片云，惨白惨白，翻着无数死鱼肚皮，瞪起无数死鱼眼睛。
+ 山上有一股风，无声无息地吹下去。
+ 天地间充满了悲惨的气氛。
+ 陈清扬流了很多眼泪。
+ 她说是触景伤情。
+ 我还存了当年交待材料的副本，有一回拿给一位搞英美文学的朋友看，他说很好，有维多利亚时期地下小说的韵味。
+ 至于删去的细节，他也说删得好，那些细节破坏了故事的完整性。
+ 我的朋友真有大学问。
+ 我写交待材料时很年轻，没什么学问（到现在也没有学问），不知道什么是维多利亚时期地下小说。
+ 我想的是不能教会了别人。
+ 我这份交待材料不少人要看，假如他们看了情不自禁，也去搞破鞋，那倒不伤大雅，要是学会了这个，那可不大好。
+ 我在交待材料里还漏掉了以下事实，理由如前所述。
+ 我们犯了错误，本该被枪毙，领导上挽救我们，让我写交待材料，这是多么大的宽大！
+ 所以我下定决心，只写出我们是多么坏。
+ 我们俩在刘大爹后山上时，陈清扬给自己做了一件筒裙，想穿了它化装成老傣，到清平去赶街。
+ 可是她穿上以后连路都走不了啦。
+ 走到清平南边遇到一条河，山上下来的水像冰一样凉，像腌雪里一样绿。
+ 那水有齐腰深，非常急。
+ 我走过去，把她用一个肩膀扛起来，径直走过河才放下来。
+ 我的一边肩膀正好和陈清扬的腰等宽，记得那时她的脸红得厉害。
+ 我还说，我可以把你扛到清平去，再扛回来，比你扭扭捏捏地走更快。
+ 她说，去你妈的吧。
+ 筒裙就像个布筒子，下口只有一尺宽。
+ 会穿的人在里面可以干各种事，包括在大街上撒尿，不用蹲下来。
+ 陈清扬说，这一手她永远学不会。
+ 在清平集上观摩了一阵，她得到了要扮就扮阿伧的结论。
+ 回来的路是上山，而且她的力气都耗光了。
+ 每到跨沟越坎之处，她就找个树墩子，姿仪万方地站上去，让我扛她。
+ 回来的路上扛着她爬坡。
+ 那时旱季刚到，天上白云纵横，阳光灿烂。
+ 可是山里还时有小雨。
+ 红土的大板块就分外地滑。
+ 我走上那块烂泥板，就像初次上冰场。
+ 那时我右手扣住她的大腿，左手提着猎枪，背上还有一个背篓，走在那滑溜溜的斜面上，十分吃力。
+ 忽然间我向左边滑动，马上要滑进山沟，幸亏手里有条枪，拿枪拄在地上。
+ 那时我全身绷紧，拼了老命，总算支持住了。
+ 可这个笨蛋还来添乱，在我背上扑腾起来，让我放她下去。
+ 那一回差一点死了。
+ 等我刚能喘过气来，就把枪带交到右手，抡起左手在她屁股上狠狠打了两巴掌。
+ 隔了薄薄一层布，倒显得格外光滑。
+ 她的屁股很圆。
+ 鸡巴，感觉非常之好的啦！
+ 她挨了那两下登时老实了。
+ 非常地乖，一声也不吭。
+ 当然打陈清扬屁股也不是好事，但是我想别的破鞋和野汉子之间未必有这样的事。
+ 这件事离了题，所以就没写。
+
+ When we relived our great friendship later in the hotel room, we talked about all kinds of things.
+ We talked about everything we could have done back then, the confessions I wrote, and even the little Buddha of mine.
+ As soon as the thing heard people talking about him, he became excited and began to stir.
+ So I concluded: back then they'd wanted to hammer us but failed.
+ I was still as hard as ever.
+ For the sake of our great friendship, I would even run three times around the block, bare assed.
+ A person like me never cares much about saving face.
+ After all, that was my golden age, even though I was considered a hooligan.
+ I knew a lot of people there, including the nomads in caravans, the old Jingpos living on the mountains, and so on.
+ When you mentioned Wang Er who knew how to fix watches, everyone knew who he was.
+ I could sit with them by the fire and drink the kind of wine that only costs twenty fen for half a gallon.
+ I could drink a lot.
+ I was very popular there.
+ Other than those people, the pigs in the farm also liked me.
+ That was because when I fed them, I used three times more bran than others did.
+ Because of that I fought with the mess chief.
+ I said, at least our pigs should have enough food.
+ I always had a lot of friendship, and would have liked to share it with everyone.
+ Since they didn't want my friendship, I unloaded all of it on Chen Qingyang.
+ The strengthening of our great friendship that Chen Qingyang and I did while in the hotel room was of the recreational sort.
+ I pulled out once in the middle of it and found my little Buddha smeared with blood.
+ She said, An older woman's insides get a bit thin, don't push too hard.
+ She also said she'd stayed in the south so long that her hands cracked when she came to the north.
+ The quality of skin cream had declined and it was no use putting it on her hands.
+ After saying this, she took out a small bottle of glycerin and applied some to my little Buddha.
+ Then we did it from the front so we could keep talking.
+ I felt like a wedge for splitting wood, lying between her widely opened legs.
+ In the lamplight, the network of fine lines on Chen Qingyang's face looked like pieces of golden thread.
+ I kissed her mouth, and she didn't object—that is to say her lips were soft and parted.
+ She hadn't let me kiss her mouth before, only letting me kiss the line between her chin and her neck.
+ She said this would arouse her.
+ Then we continued to talk about things past.
+ Chen Qingyang said that was also her golden age.
+ Even though people called her damaged goods, she was innocent.
+ She was still innocent now.
+ After hearing this, I laughed.
+ But she said, what we're doing now doesn't count as a sin.
+ We had a great friendship, ran away, went on denouncement trips together, and now that we met again after twenty years' separation, of course she would open her legs to let me crawl in.
+ So even if it were considered a sin, she didn't know where the sin lay.
+ More importantly, she had no knowledge of this sin.
+ Then once again, she began to breathe heavily.
+ Her face turned scarlet, her legs locked me tightly, and her body beneath me tensed while again and again muffled screams came through her clenched teeth.
+ Only after a long while did she relax.
+ Then she said it was not bad at all.
+ After the "not bad at all," she still said it was no sin.
+ Because she was like Socrates, ignorant of everything.
+ Even though she had lived more than forty years, the world before her eyes still appeared miraculous and new.
+ She didn't know why they dispatched her to a desolate place like Yunnan, nor did she know the reason for letting her return; she didn't know why they accused her of being damaged goods and escorted her to the stage to be denounced, nor could she figure out why they said she was not damaged goods and removed the confessions she had written from her file.
+ There were all kinds of explanations for these things, but she understood none of them.
+ She was so ignorant that she had to be innocent.
+ So it is written in all the law books.
+ Chen Qingyang said, People live in this world to suffer torment until they die.
+ Once you figure this out, you'll be able to bear everything calmly.
+ To explain how she came to this realization, we need to go all the way back to the time I returned from the hospital and left for the mountains from her place.
+ I asked her to come to see me and she hesitated for a long time.
+ When she finally decided and walked through the hot noon air to my thatched hut, many beautiful images went through her mind during those moments.
+ Then she entered the thatched hut and saw my little Buddha sticking up like an ugly instrument of torture.
+ She cried out then and abandoned all hope.
+ Chen Qingyang said, twenty years earlier, on a winter day, she walked into her courtyard.
+ She had on a cotton coat then, and climbed across the threshold clumsily.
+ A grain of sand suddenly got into her eye.
+ It was so painful and the cold wind was so cutting that her tears kept rolling down.
+ She couldn't bear it and wept, as if she were in her little bed trying to cry herself awake.
+ This was an old habit born with her, deeply rooted, that we are wailing our way from one dream into another—this was the extravagant hope that we all have.
+ Chen Qingyang said that when she went to look for me, golden flies danced in the woods.
+ The wind blew from every direction, penetrating her clothes and climbing her body.
+ The place I lived could be called an empty mountain without a human trace.
+ The burning sunlight dropped from the heights like shattered bits of mica.
+ Beneath her thin, white smock, she had stripped off all her underwear.
+ At that moment her heart, too, was full of extravagant hope.
+ After all, it was also her golden age, even though she was called damaged goods.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went into the mountains to look for me, she climbed over a bare hill.
+ Wind blew in from below and caressed her sensitive parts.
+ And the desire she felt then was as unpredictable as wind.
+ It dispersed just like the wild mountain wind.
+ She thought about our great friendship, thought about how I hurried down the mountain.
+ She also remembered my head of tousled hair; how directly I stared at her when I proved she was damaged goods.
+ She felt she needed me, and we could become one, female and male in a single body, just as when she crawled over the threshold as a child and felt the wind outside.
+ The sky was so blue, the sunshine so bright, and there were pigeons flying around in the sky.
+ The whistling of those pigeons you would remember for the rest of your life.
+ She wanted to talk to me at that moment, just as she longed to merge with the outside world, to dissolve into the sky and the earth.
+ If there were only one person—only her—in this world, she would feel too lonely.
+ Chen Qingyang said, when she went to my little thatched hut, she thought about everything except the little Buddha.
+ That thing was too ugly to appear in her musing.
+ Chen Qingyang wanted to wail then, but she couldn't cry out, as if someone were choking her.
+ This is the so-called truth.
+ The truth is that you can't wake up.
+ That was the moment she finally figured out what the world was made of; and the next moment she made up her mind: she stepped forward to accept the torment.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang also said, just then, she once again remembered the moment she cried without restraint in the doorway.
+ She cried and cried, but couldn't awaken from crying, and the agony was undiminished.
+ She cried for a long time, but she didn't want to give up hope, not until twenty years later when she faced the little Buddha.
+ It was not the first time that she faced the little Buddha.
+ But before then she didn't believe there was such a thing in the world.
+ Chen Qingyang said, facing this ugly thing, she remembered our great friendship.
+ When she was in the university, she had a female classmate who was as ugly as a devil (or to put it in these terms, she looked like my little Buddha).
+ But the girl insisted on sharing a bed with her.
+ What was more, when everyone fell fast sleep, the girl would kiss her mouth and fondle her breasts.
+ To tell the truth, she didn't have this particular hobby, but tolerated it for the sake of their friendship.
+ Now, here was this thing baring its teeth and unsheathing its claws, and wanting exactly the same thing.
+ Then let it be satisfied, which in addition can be a way to make friends.
+ So she stepped forward, burying its ugliness deep inside her.
+ She felt unusually happy.
+ Chen Qingyang said until then she still believed she was innocent, even after she ran away into the heart of the mountains and strengthened our great friendship almost every day.
+ She said this wouldn't prove she was bad at all because she didn't know why my little Buddha and I wanted to do this.
+ She did it for our great friendship.
+ Great friendship is a promise.
+ Keeping a promise is certainly no sin.
+ She had promised to help me in every respect.
+ But I spanked her bottom in the midst of the mountains, which completely tarnished her innocence.
+ I wrote confessions for a long time.
+ The leaders always said that I didn't confess thoroughly enough and needed to continue.
+ So I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life confessing.
+ Finally, Chen Qingyang wrote a confession without letting me see it and turned it into the public security office.
+ After that, no one asked us to write confessions or go on denouncement trips anymore.
+ What was more, Chen Qingyang began to distance herself from me.
+ I lived a listless existence for a while and went back to the interior alone.
+ What she wrote in the end, I hadn't a clue.
+ I lost everything when I came back from Yunnan: my gun, my knife, and my tools.
+ I gained one thing: a bulging file of confessions.
+ From then on, wherever I went, people would know that I was a hooligan.
+ One benefit I got was that I returned to the city earlier than the other city students.
+ But what was the good of returning earlier?
+ I still had to be reeducated in the countryside near Beijing.
+ When I went to Yunnan, I had brought a full set of tools with me: wrench, small vise, and so on.
+ Besides a set of fitter's tools, I also had a set of watchmaker's tools.
+ I used them to fix watches while living on Grandpa Liu's back slope.
+ Even though the mountain was empty and lonely, some bands of horsemen passed by from time to time.
+ Some of them let me appraise the smuggled watches.
+ Whatever the value I suggested, that would be the price, the watch would be worth that much.
+ Of course I didn't do it for free.
+ So I lived quite comfortably in the mountains.
+ If I hadn't come down, I'd be a millionaire by now.
+ As for that double-barreled shotgun, it was a treasure as well.
+ It turned out that the locals didn't value carbines and rifles much, but the double-barreled shotgun was a rarity to them.
+ The barrel was so heavy, plus there were two.
+ I could really scare people off with it.
+ Otherwise we would have been robbed long ago.
+ Nobody wanted to rob me or Grandpa Liu, but they might want to take Chen Qingyang away.
+ As for my knife, I always fastened it on a cowhide belt, and the cowhide belt was always fastened around Chen Qingyang's waist.
+ She wouldn't take it off even when she was sleeping or making love to me.
+ She thought it was charming to carry a knife with her.
+ So you can say that the knife actually belonged to Chen Qingyang.
+ As I mentioned before, both the knife and gun were confiscated by the public security office.
+ I didn't bring my tools with me when I came down the mountains; I left them on the mountain in case things didn't go smoothly.
+ By the time I went back to Beijing, I was in a hurry and didn't have time to fetch the tools.
+ That was how I was reduced to a complete zero.
+ I told Chen Qingyang that I could never figure out what she wrote in her last confession.
+ She said she couldn't tell me right then.
+ She wanted to wait until we said goodbye to each other.
+ She was going back to Shanghai the next day.
+ She asked me to see her off at the train station.
+ Chen Qingyang was different from me in every respect.
+ After daybreak, she took a cold shower (the hot water had run out), and then began to dress up.
+ From underwear to outfit, she was a perfumed lady.
+ I, on the other hand, was a genuine local hooligan from underwear to outfit.
+ No wonder people took the confessions out of her file but left mine.
+ That is to say, her hymen had grown back.
+ As for me, I never had that thing anyway.
+ Besides that, I also committed the crime of instigation.
+ We had committed many errors together and since she didn't know what her sin was, it had to be counted as mine.
+ We checked out and walked in the street.
+ Now I began to think that the last confession of hers must be extremely obscene.
+ Those who read our confessions were people with stone hearts and high political consciousness.
+ If they couldn't bear reading it, it had to be pretty bad.
+ Chen Qingyang said, in that confession, she wrote nothing but her true sin.
+ Chen Qingyang said that by her true sin she meant the incident on Mount Qingping.
+ She was being carried on my shoulder then, wearing the Thai skirt that bound her legs tightly together, and her hair hung down to my waist.
+ The white cloud in the sky hurried on its journey, and there were only two of us in the midst of mountains.
+ I had just smacked her bottom; I spanked her really hard.
+ The burning feeling was fading.
+ After that I cared about nothing else but continuing to climb the mountain.
+ Chen Qingyang said that moment she felt limp all over, so she let go of herself, hanging over my shoulder.
+ That moment she felt like a spring vine entangling a tree, or a young bird clinging to its master.
+ She no longer cared about anything else, and at that moment she had forgotten everything.
+ At that moment she fell in love with me, and that would never change.
+ At the train station, Chen Qingyang told me when she submitted this confession, the regimental commander read it immediately.
+ And after he finished reading his face was red all over, just like your little Buddha.
+ People who read this confession later all blushed too, like the little Buddha.
+ Afterward the public security people approached her several times, asking her to rewrite it.
+ But she said, This is what really happened.
+ Not a word should be changed.
+ They had no choice but to place it into her file.
+ Chen Qingyang said, admitting this amounts to admitting all her sins.
+ When she was in the public security office, they showed her all kinds of confessions, just to let her know what she couldn't write in her confession.
+ But she insisted on writing in this way.
+ She said that the reason that she wanted to write about it was because it was worse than anything else she had done.
+ She admitted before that she opened her legs; now she added that the reason she had done it was because she liked it.
+ Doing something is very different from liking it.
+ The former warranted going on denouncement trips; and the latter warranted being torn apart by five running horses or being minced by thousands of knives.
+ But no one had the power to tear us apart with five horses, so they had no choice but to set us free.
+ After Chen Qingyang told me this, the train roared away.
+ From that moment on, I never saw her again.
+
+ 后来我们在饭店里重温伟大友谊，谈到各种事情。
+ 谈到了当年的各种可能性，谈到了我写的交待材料，还谈到了我的小和尚。
+ 那东西一听别人谈到它，就激昂起来，蠢动个不停。
+ 因此我总结道，那时人家要把我们锤掉，但是没有锤动。
+ 我到今天还强硬如初。
+ 为了伟大友谊，我还能光着屁股上街跑三圈。
+ 我这个人，一向不大知道要脸。
+ 不管怎么说，那是我的黄金时代。
+ 虽然我被人当成流氓。
+ 我认识那里好多人，包括赶马帮的流浪汉，山上的老景颇等等。
+ 提起会修表的王二，大家都知道。
+ 我和他们在火边喝那种两毛钱一斤的酒，能喝很多。
+ 我在他们那里大受欢迎。
+ 除了这些人，猪场里的猪也喜欢我，因为我喂猪时，猪食里的糠比平时多三倍。
+ 然后就和司务长吵架，我说，我们猪总得吃饱吧。
+ 我身上带有很多伟大友谊，要送给一切人。
+ 因为他们都不要，所以都发泄在陈清扬身上了。
+ 我和陈清扬在饭店里敦伟大友谊，是娱乐性的。
+ 中间退出来一次，只见小和尚上血迹斑斑。
+ 她说，年纪大了，里面有点薄，你别那么使劲。
+ 她还说，在南方待久了，到了北方手就裂。
+ 而蛤蜊油的质量下降，抹在手上一点用都不管。
+ 说完了这些话，她拿出一小瓶甘油来，抹在小和尚上面。
+ 然后正着敦，说话方便。
+ 我就像一根待解的木料，躺在她分开的双腿中间。
+ 陈清扬脸上有很多浅浅的皱纹，在灯光下好像一条条金线。
+ 我吻她的嘴，她没反对。
+ 这就是说，她的嘴唇很柔软，而且分开了。
+ 以前她不让我吻她嘴唇，让我吻她下巴和脖子交界的地方。
+ 她说，这样刺激性欲。
+ 然后继续谈到过去的事。
+ 陈清扬说，那也是她的黄金时代。
+ 虽然被人称做破鞋，但是她清白无辜。
+ 她到现在还是无辜的。
+ 听了这话，我笑起来。
+ 但是她说，我们在干的事算不上罪孽。
+ 我们有伟大友谊，一起逃亡，一起出斗争差，过了二十年又见面，她当然要分开两腿让我趴进来。
+ 所以就算是罪孽，她也不知罪在何处。
+ 更主要的是，她对这罪恶一无所知。
+ 然后她又一次呼吸急促起来。
+ 她的脸变得赤红，两腿把我用力夹紧，身体在我下面绷紧，压抑的叫声一次又一次穿过牙关，过了很久才松驰下来。
+ 这时她说很不坏。
+ 很不坏之后，她还说这不是罪孽。
+ 因为她像苏格拉底，对一切都一无所知。
+ 虽然活了四十多岁，眼前还是奇妙的新世界。
+ 她不知道为什么人家要把她发到云南那个荒凉的地方，也不知为什么又放她回来。
+ 不知道为什么要说她是破鞋，把她押上台去斗争，也不知道为什么又说她不是破鞋，把写好的材料又抽出来。
+ 这些事有过各种解释，但没有一种她能听懂。
+ 她是如此无知，所以她无罪。
+ 一切法律书上都是这么写的。
+ 陈清扬说，人活在世上，就是为了忍受摧残，一直到死。
+ 想明了这一点，一切都能泰然处之。
+ 要说明她怎会有这种见识，一切都要回溯到那一回我从医院回来，从她那里经过进了山。
+ 我叫她去看我，她一直在犹豫。
+ 等到她下定了决心，穿过中午的热风，来到我的草房前面，那一瞬间，她心里有很多美丽的想像。
+ 等到她进了那间草房，看见我的小和尚直挺挺，像一件丑恶的刑具。
+ 那时她惊叫起来，放弃了一切希望。
+ 陈清扬说，在此之前二十多年前一个冬日，她走到院子里去。
+ 那时节她穿着棉衣，艰难地爬过院门的门槛。
+ 忽然一粒砂粒钻进了她的眼睛，那么的疼，冷风又是那样的割脸，眼泪不停地流。
+ 她觉得难以忍受，立刻大哭起来，企图在一张小床上哭醒。
+ 这是与生俱来的积习，根深蒂固。
+ 放声大哭从一个梦境进入另一个梦境，这是每个人都有的奢望。
+ 陈清扬说，她去找我时，树林里飞舞着金蝇。
+ 风从所有的方向吹来，穿过衣襟，爬到身上。
+ 我待的那个地方可算是空山无人。
+ 炎热的阳光好像细碎的云母片，从天顶落下来。
+ 在一件薄薄的白大褂下，她已经脱得精光。
+ 那时她心里也有很多奢望。
+ 不管怎么说，那也是她的黄金时代，虽然那时她被人叫作破鞋。
+ 陈清扬说，她到山里找我时，爬过光秃秃的山岗。
+ 风从衣服下面吹进来，吹过她的性敏感带，那时她感到的性欲，就如风一样捉摸不定。
+ 它放散开，就如山野上的凤。
+ 她想到了我们的伟大友谊，想起我从山上急匆匆地走下去。
+ 她还记得我长了一头乱蓬蓬的头发，论证她是破鞋时，目光笔直地看着她。
+ 她感到需要我，我们可以合并，成为雄雌一体。
+ 就如幼小时她爬出门槛，感到了外面的风。
+ 天是那么蓝，阳光是那么亮，天上还有鸽子在飞。
+ 鸽哨的声音叫人终身难忘。
+ 此时她想和我交谈，正如那时节她渴望和外面的世界合为一体，溶化到天地中去。
+ 假如世界上只有她一个人，那实在是太寂寞了。
+ 陈清扬说，她到我的小草房里去时，想到了一切东西，就是没想到小和尚。
+ 那东西太丑，简直不配出现在梦幻里。
+ 当时陈清扬也想大哭一场，但是哭不出来，好像被人捏住了喉咙。
+ 这就是所谓的真实。
+ 真实就是无法醒来。
+ 那一瞬间她终于明白了在世界上有些什么，下一瞬间她就下定了决心，走上前来，接受摧残，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬还说，那一瞬间，她又想起了在门槛上痛哭的时刻。
+ 那时她哭了又哭，总是哭不醒。
+ 而痛苦也没有一点减小的意思。
+ 她哭了很久，总是不死心。
+ 她一直不死心，直到二十年后面对小和尚。
+ 这已经不是她第一次面对小和尚。
+ 但是以前她不相信世界上还有这种东西。
+ 陈清扬说，她面对这丑恶的东西，想到了伟大友谊。
+ 大学里有个女同学，长得丑恶如鬼（或者说，长得也是这个模样），却非要和她睡一个床。
+ 不但如此，到夜深入静的时候，还要吻她的嘴，摸她的乳房。
+ 说实在的，她没有这方面的嗜好。
+ 但是为了交情，她忍住了。
+ 如今这个东西张牙舞爪，所要求的不过是同一种东西。
+ 就让它如愿以尝，也算是交友之道。
+ 所以她走上前来，把它的丑恶深深埋葬，心里快乐异常。
+ 陈清扬说，到那时她还相信自己是无辜的。
+ 甚至直到她和我逃进深山里去，几乎每天都敦伟大友谊。
+ 她说这丝毫也不能说明她有多么坏，因为她不知道我和我的小和尚为什么要这样。
+ 她这样做是为了伟大友谊，伟大友谊是一种诺言。
+ 守信肯定不是罪孽。
+ 她许诺过要帮助我，而且是在一切方面。
+ 但是我在深山里在她屁股上打了两下，彻底玷污了她的清白。
+ 我写了很长时间交待材料，领导上总说，交待得不彻底，还要继续交待。
+ 所以我以为，我的下半辈子要在交待中度过。
+ 最后陈清扬写了一篇交待材料，没给我看，就交到了人保组。
+ 此后就再没让我们写材料。
+ 不但如此，也不叫我们出斗争差。
+ 不但如此，陈清扬对我也冷淡起来。
+ 我没情没绪地过了一段时间，自己回了内地。
+ 她到底写了什么，我怎么也猜不出来。
+ 从云南回来时我损失了一切东西：我的枪，我的刀，我的工具，只多了一样东西，就是档案袋鼓了起来。
+ 那里面有我自己写的材料，从此不管我到什么地方，人家都能知道我是流氓。
+ 所得的好处是比别人早回城，但是早回来没什么好，还得到京郊插队。
+ 我到云南时，带了很全的工具，桌拿子、小台钳都有。
+ 除了钳工家具，还有一套修表工具。
+ 住在刘大爹后山上时，我用它给人看手表。
+ 虽然空山寂寂，有些马帮却从那里过。
+ 有人让我鉴定走私表，我说值多少就值多少。
+ 当然不是白干。
+ 所以我在山上很活得过。
+ 要是不下来，现在也是万元户。
+ 至于那把双筒猎枪，也是一宝。
+ 原来当地卡宾枪老套筒都不希罕，就是没见过那玩意。
+ 筒子那么粗，又是两个管，我拿了它很能唬人。
+ 要不人家早把我们抢了。
+ 我，特别是刘老爹，人家不会抢，恐怕要把陈清扬抢走。
+ 至于我的刀，老拴在一条牛皮大带上。
+ 牛皮大带又老拴陈清扬腰上。
+ 睡觉做爱都不摘下来。
+ 她觉得带刀很气派。
+ 所以这把刀可以说已经属于陈清扬。
+ 枪和刀我已说过，被人保组要走了。
+ 我的工具下山时就没带下来，就放在山上，准备不顺利时再往山上跑。
+ 回来时行色匆匆，没顾上去拿，因此我成了彻底的穷光蛋。
+ 我对陈清扬说，我怎么也想不出来在最后一篇交待里她写了什么。
+ 她说，现在不能告诉我。
+ 要告诉我这件事，只能等到了分手的时候。
+ 第二天她要回上海，她叫我送她上车站。
+ 陈清扬在各个方面都和我不同。
+ 天亮以后，洗了个冷水澡（没有热水了），她穿戴起来。
+ 从内衣到外衣，她都是一个香喷喷的LADY。
+ 而我从内衣到外衣都是一个地道的土流氓。
+ 无怪人家把她的交待材料抽了出来，不肯抽出我的。
+ 这就是说，她那破裂的处女膜长了起来。
+ 而我呢，根本就没长过那个东西。
+ 除此之外，我还犯了教唆之罪，我们在一起犯了很多错误，既然她不知罪，只好都算在我账上。
+ 我们结了账，走到街上去。
+ 这时我想，她那篇交待材料一定淫秽万分。
+ 看交待材料的人都心硬如铁，水平无比之高，能叫人家看了受不住，那还好得了？
+ 陈清扬说，那篇材料里什么也没写，只有她真实的罪孽。
+ 陈清扬说她真实的罪孽，是指在清平山上。
+ 那时她被架在我的肩上，穿着紧裹住双腿的筒裙，头发低垂下去，直到我的腰际。
+ 天上白云匆匆，深山里只有我们两个人。
+ 我刚在她屁股上打了两下，打得非常之重，火烧火撩的感觉正在飘散。
+ 打过之后我就不管别的事，继续往山上攀登。
+ 陈清扬说，那一刻她感到浑身无力，就瘫软下来，挂在我肩上。
+ 那一刻她觉得如春藤绕树，小鸟依人。
+ 她再也不想理会别的事，而且在那一瞬间把一切都遗忘。
+ 在那一瞬间她爱上了我，而且这件事永远不能改变。
+ 在车站上陈清扬说，这篇材料交上去，团长拿起来就看。
+ 看完了面红耳赤，就像你的小和尚。
+ 后来见过她这篇交待材料的人，一个个都面红耳赤，好像小和尚。
+ 后来人保组的人找了她好几回，让她拿回去重写，但是她说，这是真实情况，一个字都不能改。
+ 人家只好把这个东西放进了我们的档案袋。
+ 陈清扬说，承认了这个，就等于承认了一切罪孽。
+ 在人保组里，人家把各种交待材料拿给她看，就是想让她明白，谁也不这么写交待。
+ 但是她偏要这么写。
+ 她说，她之所以要把这事最后写出来，是因为它比她干过的一切事都坏。
+ 以前她承认过分开双腿，现在又加上，她做这些事是因为她喜欢。
+ 做过这事和喜欢这事大不一样。
+ 前者该当出斗争差，后者就该五马分尸千刀万剐。
+ 但是谁也没权力把我们五马分尸，所以只好把我们放了。
+ 陈清扬告诉我这件事以后，火车就开走了。
+ 以后我再也没见过她。
+
+ Along a coastal road somewhere south of the Yangtze River, a detachment of soldiers, each of them armed with a halberd, was escorting a line of seven prison carts, trudging northwards in the teeth of a bitter wind.
+ In each of the first three carts a single male prisoner was caged, identifiable by his dress as a member of the scholar class.
+ One was a white-haired old man.
+ The other two were men of middle years.
+ The four rear carts were occupied by women, the last of them by a young mother holding a baby girl at her breast.
+ The little girl was crying in a continuous wail which her mother's gentle words of comfort were powerless to console.
+ One of the soldiers marching alongside, irritated by the baby's crying, aimed a mighty kick at the cart.
+ 'Stop it!
+ Shut up!
+ Or I'll really give you something to cry about!'
+ The baby, startled by this sudden violence, cried even louder.
+ Under the eaves of a large house, some hundred yards from the road, a middle-aged scholar was standing with a ten- or eleven-year-old boy at his side.
+ He was evidently affected by this little scene, for a groan escaped his lips and he appeared to be very close to tears.
+ 'Poor creatures!' he murmured to himself.
+ 'Papa,' said the little boy, 'what have they done wrong?'
+ 'What indeed!' said the man, bitterly.
+ 'During these last two days they must have made more than thirty arrests.
+ All our best scholars.
+ And all of them innocents, caught up in the net,' he added in an undertone, for fear that the soldiers might hear him.
+ That girl's only a baby,' said the boy.
+ 'What can she possibly be guilty of?
+ It's very wrong.'
+ 'So you understand that what the Government soldiers do is wrong,' said the man.
+ 'Good for you, my son!'
+ He sighed.
+ 'They are the cleaver and we are the meat.
+ They are the cauldron and we are the deer.'
+ 'You explained "they are the cleaver and we are the meat" the other day, papa,' said the boy.
+ 'It's what they say when people are massacred or beheaded.
+ Like meat or fish being sliced up on the chopping-board.
+ Does "they are the cauldron and we are the deer" mean the same thing?'
+ 'Yes, more or less,' said the man; and since the train of soldiers and prison carts was now fast receding, he took the boy by the hand.
+ 'Let's go indoors now,' he said.
+ 'It's too windy for standing outside.'
+ Indoors the two of them went, and into his study.
+ The man picked up a writing-brush and moistened it on the ink-slab, then, on a sheet of paper, he wrote the character for a deer.
+ 'The deer is a wild animal, but although it is comparatively large, it has a very peaceable nature.
+ It eats only grass and leaves and never harms other animals.
+ So when other animals want to hurt it or to eat it, all it can do is run away.
+ If it can't escape by running away, it gets eaten.'
+ He wrote the characters for 'chasing the deer' on the sheet of paper.
+ 'That's why in ancient times they often used the deer as a symbol of Empire.
+ The common people, who are the subjects of Empire, are gentle and obedient.
+ Like the deer's, it is their lot to be cruelly treated and oppressed.
+ In the History of the Han Dynasty it says "Qin lost the deer and the world went chasing after it".
+ That means that when the Qin Emperor lost control of the Empire, ambitious men rose up everywhere and fought each other to possess it.
+ In the end it was the first Han Emperor who got this big, fat deer by defeating the Tyrant King of Chu.'
+ 'I know,' said the boy.
+ 'In my story-books it says "they chased the deer on the Central Plain".
+ That means they were all fighting each other to become Emperor.'
+ The scholar nodded, pleased with his young son's astuteness.
+ He drew a picture of a cauldron on the sheet of paper.
+ 'In olden times they didn't use a cooking-pot on the stove to cook their food in, they used a three-legged cauldron like this and lit a fire underneath it.
+ When they caught a deer they put it in a cauldron to seethe it.
+ Those ancient Emperors and great ministers were very cruel.
+ If they didn't like somebody, they would pretend that they had committed some crime or other, and then they would put them in a cauldron and boil them.
+ In the Records of an Historian Lin Xiangru says to the King of Qin, "Deceiving Your Majesty was a capital offence.
+ I beg to approach the cauldron."
+ What he meant was, "I deserve to die.
+ Put me in the cauldron and boil me."'
+ 'Often in my story-books I've seen the words "asking about the cauldrons in the Central Plain",' said the boy.
+ 'It seems to mean the same thing as "chasing the deer in the Central Plain".'
+ 'It does,' said the man.
+ 'King Yu of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty that ever was, collected metal from all the nine provinces of the Empire and used it to cast nine great cauldrons with.
+ "Metal" in those days meant bronze.
+ Each of these bronze cauldrons had the name of one of the nine provinces on it and a map showing the mountains and rivers of that province.
+ In later times whoever became master of the Empire automatically became the guardian of these cauldrons.
+ In The Chronicle of Zuo it says that when the Viscount of Chu was reviewing his troops on Zhou territory and the Zhou king sent Prince Man to him with his royal compliments, the Viscount questioned Prince Man about the size and weight of the cauldrons.
+ Of course, as ruler of the whole Empire, only the Zhou king had the right to be guardian of the cauldrons.
+ For a mere Viscount like the ruler of Chu to ask questions about them showed that he was planning to seize the Empire for himself.'
+ 'So "asking about the cauldrons" and "chasing the deer" both mean wanting to be Emperor, ' said the boy.
+ 'And "not knowing who will kill the deer" means not knowing who is going to be Emperor.'
+ 'That's right,' said the man.
+ 'As time went by these expressions came to be applied to other situations as well, but originally they were only used in the sense of wanting to be Emperor.'
+ He sighed.
+ 'For the common people though, the subjects of Empire, our role is to be the deer.
+ It may be uncertain who will kill the deer, but the deer gets killed all right.
+ There's no uncertainty about that.'
+ He walked over to the window and gazed outside.
+ The sky had now turned a leaden hue showing that snow was on its way.
+ He sighed again, 'He must be a cruel God up there.
+ Those hundreds of poor, innocent souls on the roads in this freezing weather.
+ The snow will only add to their sufferings.'
+ Two figures caught his eye, moving along the highway from the south.
+ They walked close together, side by side, each of them wearing a coolie hat and a rain-cape.
+ As they drew nearer, he recognized them with a cry of pleasure.
+ 'It's Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu,' he said to the boy as he hurried out to greet them.
+ 'Zongxi, Yanwu, what good wind blows you hither?' he called out to them.
+ The one he addressed as 'Zongxi' was a somewhat portly man with a plentiful beard covering the lower half of his face.
+ His full name was Huang Zongxi and he, like his host, was a man of Zhejiang Province.
+ The other one, a tall, thin man with a swarthy complexion, was Gu Yanwu, a native of Kunshan in Jiangsu Province.
+ Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu were two of the foremost scholars of their day.
+ Both of them, from patriotic motives, had gone into retirement when the Ming Empire collapsed, being unwilling to take office under a foreign power.
+ Gu Yanwu drew a little closer before replying.
+ 'Liuliang, we have something serious to discuss with you.
+ That's what brings us here today.'
+ Liuliang was the man's name, then—Lü Liuliang.
+ His family had lived for generations in Chongde, a prefecture in the Hangzhou district of Zhejiang Province.
+ Like Huang Zongxi and Gu Yanwu, to whom you have just been introduced, he is an historical personage, famous among those Southern gentlemen who, during the last days of the Ming dynasty and the early days of the Manchu conquest, buried themselves away on their estates and refused to take part in public life.
+ Lü Liuliang observed the grave expression on his visitors' faces.
+ Knowing of old how unfailingly Gu Yanwu's political judgement was to be trusted, he realized that what the latter had referred to as 'something serious' must be very serious indeed.
+ He clasped his hands and bowed to his guest politely.
+ 'Come inside,' he said.
+ 'Drink a few cups of wine first, to warm yourselves up a bit.'
+ As he ushered them into the study, he gave an order to the boy.
+ 'Baozhong, tell your mother that Uncle Huang and Uncle Gu are here.
+ Ask her to slice a couple of platefuls of that goat's meat pate to go with our wine.'
+ In a minute or two the boy came in again, accompanied by his younger brother.
+ They were carrying three sets of chopsticks and wine-cups which they laid on the study table.
+ An old servant followed them carrying a wine-kettle and balancing some plates of cold meat.
+ Lü Liuliang waited until the two boys and the servant were outside the room and closed the study door.
+ 'Come, my friends, ' he said.
+ 'Wine first.'
+ Huang Zongxi declined gloomily with a brief shake of the head; but Gu Yanwu, helping himself unceremoniously from the wine-kettle, downed half a dozen of the tiny cupfuls in quick succession.
+ 'I suppose your visit has something to do with this Ming History business,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ 'Precisely, ' said Huang Zongxi.
+ Gu Yanwu raised his wine-cup and, in ringing tones, recited the following couplet:
+ The cool wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the bright moon still shines everywhere.
+ 'That's a splendid couplet of yours, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'Whenever I drink wine now, I have to recite it—and do it justice, too,' he added, with a ceremonious flourish of his wine-cup.
+ In spite of Lü Liuliang's patriotic unwillingness to serve, a local official, impressed by what he had heard of Lü's reputation, had once sought to recommend him as a 'hidden talent' meriting a summons to the Manchu Court for suitable employment; but Lü had made it clear that he would die rather than accept such a tones, recited summons, and the matter had been dropped.
+ Some time later, however, when another high-ranking official sent forward his name as a 'distinguished scholar of exceptional merit', Lü realized that his continued refusal would be construed by the Court as an open slight, with fatal consequences for himself and perhaps his family.
+ Accordingly he had had himself tonsured (though not in fact with any intention of becoming a real monk), whereupon the Government officials were finally convinced of his determination and ceased urging him to come out of his retirement.
+ Gu Yanwu's enthusiasm for Lü's somewhat pedestrian couplet sprang from the fact that it contained a hidden message.
+ In Chinese the word for 'cool' is qing (the word chosen by the Manchus for their new 'Chinese' dynasty) and the word for 'bright' is ming (the name of the old Chinese dynasty they had supplanted).
+ So the couplet Gu had recited could be understood to mean: The Qing wind sways not me, howe'er it blow; For me the Ming moon still shines everywhere.
+ In other words, 'I will never bow to the Manchus, however they may threaten and cajole.
+ For me the Empire is still the Ming Empire, whose loyal subject I remain.'
+ Although the poem in which these lines occurred could not be published, they were familiar to all the like-minded scholars of Lü's wide acquaintance, and Huang, hearing them recited now by Gu, responded to the challenge by raising a wine-cup in homage.
+ 'Yes, it is a very good poem,' he said, and drained it off at a gulp.
+ 'Thank you both, but it doesn't deserve your praise,' said Lü Liuliang.
+ Chancing to glance upwards at that moment, Gu Yanwu found his attention caught by a large painting which was hanging on one of the walls.
+ It must have measured near enough four feet from top to bottom and well over three yards horizontally.
+ It was a landscape, so magnificently conceived and boldly executed that he could not forbear a cry of admiration.
+ The sole inscription on this enormous painting was the phrase 'This Lovely Land' written in very large characters at the top.
+ 'From the brushwork I should say this must be Erzhan's work,' he said.
+ 'You are absolutely right,' said Lü.
+ This Erzhan's real name was Zha Shibiao.
+ He was a well-known painter in the late Ming, early Manchu period and a good friend of the three men present.
+ 'How is it that so fine a painting lacks a signature?' said Huang.
+ Lü sighed.
+ The painting had a message, ' he said.
+ 'But you know what a stolid, careful person Erzhan is.
+ He wouldn't sign it and he wouldn't write any inscription.
+ He painted it for me on a sudden impulse when he was staying with me a month or so ago.
+ Why don't you two write a few lines on it?'
+ Gu and Huang got up and went over to examine the painting more closely.
+ It was a picture of the Yangtze, the Great River, rolling majestically eastwards between innumerable peaks, with a suitable garnishing of gnarled pines and strange misshapen rocks: a very beautiful landscape were it not for the all-pervading mist and cloud which seemed calculated to create an oppressive feeling of gloom in anyone looking at it.
+ 'This lovely land under the heel of the barbarian!' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'And we have to swallow our humiliation and go on living in it.
+ It makes my blood boil.
+ Why don't you do an inscription, Liuliang — a poem that will give voice to what Erzhan had in mind to say?'
+ 'Very well,' said Lü Liuliang, and he took the huge scroll carefully down from the wall and spread it out on the desk, while Huang Zongxi set about grinding him some ink.
+ He picked up a writing-brush and for some minutes could be observed muttering to himself in the throes of composition; then, writing straight on to the painting and with pauses only for moistening the brush, he quickly completed the following poem:
+ Is this the same of Great Song's south retreat, This lovely land that hides its face in shame?
+ Or is it after Mount Yai's fateful leap? This lovely land then scarce dared breathe its name.
+ Now that I seem to read the painter's mind, My bitter teardrops match his drizzling rain.
+ Past woes I see reborn in present time: This draws the groans that no gag can restrain.
+ Methinks the painter used poor Gaoyu's tears To mix his colours and his brush to wet.
+ 'This Lovely Land' was commentary enough; No need was there for other words to fret.
+ The blind would see, the lame would walk again, Could we but bring, back Hong Wu's glorious days.
+ With what wild joy we'd look down from each height And see the landscape free of mist and haze!
+ He threw the brush on the floor as he finished and burst into tears.
+ 'It says all there is to say, ' said Gu Yanwu.
+ 'Masterly!'
+ 'It lacks subtlety, ' said Lü.
+ 'In no way could you call it a good poem.
+ I merely wanted to put Erzhan's original idea into writing so that anyone looking at the picture in days to come will know what it is about.'
+ 'When China does eventually emerge from this time of darkness, ' said Huang, 'we shall indeed "see the landscape free of mist and haze".
+ When that time comes, we shall gaze at even the poorest, meanest, most barren landscape with a feeling of joyful liberation.
+ Then, indeed, we shall look down with "wild joy . . . from each height"!'
+ 'Your conclusion is excellent, ' said Gu.
+ 'When we do eventually rid our country of this foreign scum, the feeling of relief will be infinitely greater than the somewhat arid satisfaction we get from occasionally uncorking our feelings as we do now.'
+ Huang carefully rolled up the painting.
+ 'You won't be able to hang this up any more now, Liuliang, ' he said.
+ 'You'd better put it away somewhere safe.
+ If some evil-intentioned person like Wu Zhirong were to set eyes on it, you'd soon have the authorities round asking questions and the consequences could be serious not only for you but probably for Erzhan as well.'
+ That vermin Wu Zhirong!' said Gu Yanwu, smiting the desk with his hand.
+ 'I could willingly tear his flesh with my teeth!'
+ 'You said when you came that you had something serious to discuss with me, ' said Lü, 'yet here we are, like typical scholars, frittering our time away on poetry and painting instead of attending to business.
+ What was it, exactly, that brought you here?'
+ 'It has to do with Erzhan's kinsman Yihuang, ' said Huang.
+ The day before yesterday Gu and I learned that he has now been named in connection with the Ming History affair.'
+ 'Yihuang?' said Lü.
+ 'You mean he's been dragged into it too?'
+ 'I'm afraid so, ' said Huang.
+ 'As soon as we heard, the two of us hurried as quickly as we could to his home in Yuanhua Town, but he wasn't there.
+ They said he'd gone off to visit a friend.
+ In view of the urgency, Yanwu advised the family to make their getaway as soon as it was dark.
+ Then, remembering that Yihuang was a good friend of yours, we thought we'd come and look for him here, '
+ 'No, ' said Lü, 'no, he's not here.
+ I don't know where he can have gone.'
+ 'If he had been here, he would have shown himself by now, ' said Gu.
+ 'I left a poem for him on his study wall.
+ If he goes back home, he will understand when he reads the poem that he is to go and hide.
+ What I'm afraid of, though, is that he may not have heard the news yet and may expose himself unnecessarily outside and get himself arrested.
+ That would be terrible, '
+ 'Practically every scholar in West Zhejiang has fallen victim to this wretched Ming History business,' said Huang.
+ 'The Manchu Court has obviously got it in for us.
+ You are too well known.
+ Gu and I both think that you ought to leave here — for the time being, at any rate.
+ Find somewhere away from here where you can shelter from the storm, '
+ Lü Liuliang looked angry.
+ 'Let the Tartar Emperor have me arrested and carried off to Peking!' he said.
+ 'If I could curse him to his face and get rid of some of the anger that is pent up inside me, I think I should die happy, even though it meant having the flesh cut slice by slice from my bones!'
+ 'I admire your heroic spirit,' said Gu, 'but I don't think there's much likelihood of your meeting the Tartar Emperor face to face.
+ You would die at the hands of miserable slaves.
+ Besides, the Tartar Emperor is still a child who knows nothing about anything.
+ The Government is in the hands of the all-powerful minister Oboi.
+ Huang and I are both of the opinion that Oboi is at the back of this Ming History affair.
+ The reason they are making such a song and dance about it and pursuing it with such ferocity is that he sees in it a means of breaking the spirit of the Southern gentry.'
+ 'I'm sure you are right,' said Lü.
+ 'When the Manchu troops first came inside the Wall, they had pretty much of a free run in the whole of Northern China.
+ It wasn't till they came south that they found themselves running into resistance everywhere.
+ The scholars in particular, as guardians of Chinese culture, have given them endless trouble.
+ So Oboi is using this business to crush the Southern gentry, is he?
+ Humph!
+ What does the poet say?
+ The bush fire cannot burn them out. For next year's spring will see them sprout. —Unless, that is, he plans to wipe out the lot of us!'
+ 'Quite,' said Huang.
+ 'If we are to carry on the struggle against the Tartars, we need anyone who can be of use to stay alive.
+ Indulging in heroics at this juncture might be satisfying, but would be merely falling into their trap.'
+ Lü suddenly understood.
+ It was not only to look for Zha Yihuang that his friends had made their journey to him in the bitter cold.
+ They had come because they wanted to persuade him to escape.
+ They knew how impetuous he was and were afraid that he might throw his life away to no purpose.
+ This was true friendship and he felt grateful for it.
+ 'You give me such good advice, ' he said, 'I can hardly refuse to follow it.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll leave with the family first thing tomorrow.'
+ Huang and Gu were visibly delighted and chorused their approval of his decision, but Lü looked uncertain.
+ 'But where can we go?'
+ The whole world belonged to the Tartars now, it seemed.
+ Not a single patch of land was free of their hated presence.
+ He thought of the poet Tao Yuanming's story about the fisherman who, by following a stream that flowed between flowering peach trees, had stumbled on an earthly paradise—a place where refugees from ancient tyranny had found a haven.
+ 'Ah, Peach Tree Stream,' he murmured, 'if I could but find you!'
+ 'Come,' said Gu, 'even if there were such a place, we cannot, as individuals, opt out altogether.
+ In times like these—'
+ Before he could finish, Lü struck the desk with his hand and jumped to his feet, loudly disclaiming his own weakness, 'You do right to rebuke me, Yanwu.
+ The citizen of a conquered country still has his duty.
+ It's all very well to take temporary refuge, but to live a life of ease in some Peach Tree Haven while millions are suffering under the iron heel of the Tartars would be less than human.
+ I spoke without thinking.'
+ Gu Yanwu smiled.
+ 'I've knocked about a great deal during these last few years,' he said, 'and made friends with an extraordinary variety of people.
+ And wherever I've been, north or south of the River, I've discovered that it isn't only among educated people like ourselves that resistance to the Tartars is to be found.
+ Many of our most ardent patriots are small tradesmen, Yamen runners, or market folk—people belonging to the very lowest ranks of society.
+ If you'd care to join us, the three of us could travel to Yangzhou together.
+ I have a number of contacts there I could introduce you to.
+ What do you think?'
+ 'But that would be wonderful,' said Lü Liuliang delightedly.
+ 'We leave for Yangzhou tomorrow, then.
+ If the two of you will just sit here for a moment, I'll go and tell my wife to start getting things ready.'
+ He hurried off to the inner quarters, but was back in the study again after only a few minutes.
+ 'About this Ming History business,' he said.
+ 'I've heard a good deal of talk about it outside, but you can't believe everything people say; and in any case they conceal a lot of what they do know out of fear.
+ I'm so isolated here, I have no means of finding out the truth.
+ Tell me, how did it all begin?'
+ Gu Yanwu sighed.
+ 'We've all seen this Ming History.
+ There are, inevitably, passages in it which are not very complimentary to the Tartars.
+ It was written by Zhu Guozhen, who, as you know, was a former Chancellor at the Ming Court.
+ When he came to write about the "antics of the Paramount Chief of the Jianzhou tribe", which is how the Ming Court used to refer to the Tartars, it's a bit hard to see how he could have been polite.'
+ Lü nodded: 'I heard somewhere that a member of the Zhuang family of Huzhou paid one of Chancellor Zhu's heirs a thousand taels of silver for the manuscript and published it under his own name— never dreaming, of course, that it would lead to such terrible consequences.'
+ Gu went on to tell him the whole story.
+
+ 北风如刀，满地冰霜。
+ 江南近海滨的一条大路上，一队清兵手执刀枪，押着七辆囚车，冲风冒寒，向北而行。
+ 前面三辆囚车中分别监禁的是三个男子，都作书生打扮，一个是白发老者，两个是中年人。
+ 后面四辆囚车中坐的是女子，最后一辆囚车中是个少妇，怀中抱着个女婴。
+ 女婴啼哭不休。
+ 她母亲温言相呵，女婴只是大哭。
+ 囚车旁一清兵恼了，伸腿在车上踢了一脚，喝道：“再哭，再哭！
+ 老子踢死你！”
+ 那女婴一惊，哭得更加响了。
+ 离开道路数十丈处有座大屋，屋檐下站着一个中年文士，一个十一二岁的小孩。
+ 那文士见到这等情景，不禁长叹一声，眼眶也红了，说道：“可怜，可怜！”
+ 那小孩问道：“爹爹，他们犯了什么罪？”
+ 那文士道：“又犯了什么罪？
+ 昨日和今朝已逮去了三十几人，都是我们浙江有名的读书人，个个都是无辜株连。”
+ 他说到“无辜株连”四子，声音压得甚低，生怕给押囚车的官兵听见了。
+ 那小孩道：“那个小女孩还在吃奶，难道也犯了罪么？
+ 真没道理。”
+ 那文士道：“你懂得官兵没道理，真是好孩子。
+ 哎，人为刀俎，我为鱼肉，人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿！”
+ 那小孩道：“爹，你前几天教过我， ‘人为刀俎，我为鱼肉’，就是给人家斩割屠杀的意思。
+ 人家是切菜刀，是砧板，我们就是鱼和肉。
+ “人为鼎镬，我为麋鹿”这两句话，意思也差不多么？”
+ 那文士道：“正是！”
+ 眼见官兵和囚车已经去远，拉着小孩的手道：“外面风大，我们回屋里去。”
+ 当下父子二人走进书房。
+ 那文士提笔蘸上了墨，在纸上写了个“鹿”字，说道：“鹿这种野兽，虽是庞然大物，性子却极为平和，只吃青草和树叶，从来不伤害别的野兽。
+ 凶猛的野兽要伤它吃它，它只有逃跑，倘若逃不了，那只有给人家吃了。”
+ 又写了“逐鹿”两字，说道：“因此古人常常拿鹿来比喻天下。
+ 世上百姓都温顺善良，只有给人欺压残害的份儿。
+ 《汉书》上说：‘秦失其鹿，天下共逐之。’
+ 那就是说，秦朝失了天下，群雄并起，大家争夺，最后汉高祖打败了楚霸王，就得了这只又肥又大的鹿。”
+ 那小孩点头道：“我明白了。
+ 小说书上说‘逐鹿中原’，就是大家争着要作皇帝的意思。”
+ 那文士甚是喜欢，点了点头，在纸上画了一只鼎的图形，道：“古人煮食，不用灶头锅子，用这样三只脚的鼎，下面烧柴，捉到了鹿，就在鼎里煮来吃。
+ 皇帝和大官都很残忍，心里不喜欢谁，就说他犯了罪，把他放在鼎里活活煮熟。
+ 《史记》中记载蔺相如对秦王说：‘臣知欺大王之罪当诛也，臣请就鼎锅。’
+ 就是说：‘我该死，将我在鼎里烧死了罢！’”
+ 那小孩道：“小说书上又常说‘问鼎中原’，这跟‘逐鹿中原’好像意思差不多。”
+ 那文士道：“不错。
+ 夏禹王收九州之金，铸了九大鼎。
+ 当时所谓的“金”其实是铜。
+ 每一口鼎上铸了九州的名字和山川图形，后世为天下之主的，便保有九鼎。
+ 《左传》上说：‘楚子观兵于周疆。
+ 定王使王孙满劳楚子。
+ 楚子问鼎之大小轻重焉。’
+ 只有天下之主，方能保有九鼎。
+ 楚子只是楚国的诸侯，他问鼎的轻重大小，便是心存不轨，想取周王之位而代之。”
+ 那小孩道：“所以‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’便是想做皇帝。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，就是不知哪一个做成了皇帝。”
+ 那文士道：“正是。
+ 到得后来，‘问鼎’、‘逐鹿’，这四个字，也可借用于别处，但原来的出典，是专指做皇帝而言。”
+ 说到这里，叹了口气，道：“咱们做百姓的，总是死路一条。
+ ‘未知鹿死谁手’，只不过未知是谁来杀了这头鹿，这头鹿，却是死定了的。”
+ 他说着走到窗边，向窗外望去， 只见天色沉沉的，似要下雪，叹道：“老天爷何其不仁，数百个无辜之人，在这冰霜遍地的道上行走。
+ 下起雪来，可又多受一番折磨了。”
+ 忽见南边大道上两个人戴着斗笠，并肩而来，走到近处，认出了面貌。
+ 那文士大喜，道：“是你黄伯伯、顾伯伯来了！”
+ 快步迎将出去，叫道：“梨洲兄、亭林兄，哪一阵好风，吹得你二位光临？”
+ 右首一人身形微胖，颏下一部黑须，姓黄名宗羲，字梨洲，浙江余姚人士。
+ 左首一人又高又瘦，面目黝黑，姓顾名炎武，字亭林，江苏昆山人士。
+ 黄顾两人都是当世大儒，明亡之后，心伤国变，隐居不仕，这日连袂来到崇德。
+ 顾炎武走上几步，说道：“晚村兄，有一件要紧的事，特来和你商议。”
+ 这文士姓吕名留良，号晚村，世居浙江府崇德县，也是明末、清初一位极有名的隐士。
+ 他眼见黄顾二人脸色凝重，又知顾炎武向来极富机变，临事镇定，既说是要紧事，自然非同小可， 拱手道：“两位请进去先喝三杯，解解寒气。”
+ 当下请二人进屋，吩咐那小孩道：“葆中，去跟娘说，黄伯伯、顾伯伯到了，先切两盘羊膏来下酒。”
+ 不多时，那小孩吕葆中和兄弟毅中搬出三副杯筷，布在书房桌上。
+ 一名老仆奉上酒菜。
+ 吕留良待三人退出，关上了书房门，说道：“黄兄，顾兄，先喝三杯！”
+ 黄宗羲神色惨淡，摇了摇头。
+ 顾炎武却自斟自饮，一口气连干了六七杯。
+ 吕留良道：“二位此来，可是和‘明史’一案有关吗？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“正是。”
+ 顾炎武举起酒杯，高声吟道：
+ “‘清风虽细难吹我，明月何尝不照人？’
+ 晚村兄，你这两句诗，真是绝唱！
+ 我每逢饮酒，必诵此诗，必浮大白。”
+ 吕留良心怀故国，不肯在清朝做官。
+ 当地大吏仰慕他声名，保荐他为“山林隐逸”，应征赴朝为官，吕留良誓死相拒，大吏不敢再逼。
+ 后来又有一名大官保荐他为“博学鸿儒”，吕留良眼见若再相拒，显是轻侮朝廷，不免有杀身之祸，于是削发为僧，做了假和尚。
+ 地方官员见他意坚，从此不再劝他出山。
+ “清风、明月”这两句诗，讥刺满清，怀念前明， 虽然不敢刊行，但在志同道合的朋辈之间传诵已遍，此刻顾炎武又读了出来。
+ 黄宗羲道：“真是好诗！”
+ 举起酒杯，也喝了一杯。
+ 吕留良道：“两位谬赞了。”
+ 顾炎武一抬头，见到壁上挂着一幅高约五尺，宽约丈许的大画，绘的是一大片山水，笔势纵横，气象雄伟，不禁喝了声采，画上只题了四个大字：“如此江山”， 说道：“看这笔路，当是二瞻先生的丹青了。”
+ 留良道：“正是。”
+ 那“二瞻”姓查，名士标，是明末清初的一位大画家，也和顾黄吕诸人交好。
+ 黄宗羲道：“这等好画，如何却无题跋？”
+ 吕留良叹道：“二瞻先生此画，颇有深意。
+ 只是他为人稳重谨慎，既不落款，亦无题跋。
+ 他上个月在舍间盘桓，一时兴到，画送了我，两位便题上几句如何？”
+ 顾黄二人站起身来，走到画前仔细观看，只见大江浩浩东流，两岸峰峦无数，点缀着奇松怪石，只是画中云气弥漫，山川虽美，却令人一见之下，胸臆间顿生郁积之气。
+ 顾炎武道：“如此江山，沦于夷狄。
+ 我辈忍气吞声，偷生其间，实令人悲愤填膺。
+ 晚村兄何不便题诗一首，将二瞻先生之意，表而出之？”
+ 吕留良道：“好！”
+ 当即取下画来，平铺于桌。
+ 黄宗羲研起了墨。
+ 吕留良提笔沉吟半晌，便在画上振笔直书。
+ 顷刻诗成，诗云：
+ “ 其为宋之南渡耶？ 如此江山真可耻。
+ 其为崖山以后耶？ 如此江山不忍视。
+ 吾今始悟作画意， 痛哭流涕有若是。
+ 以今视昔昔犹今， 吞声不用枚衔嘴。
+ 画将皋羽西台泪， 研入丹青提笔泚。
+ 所以有画无诗文， 诗文尽在四字里。
+ 尝谓生逢洪武初，如瞽忽瞳跛可履。
+ 山川开霁故璧完，何处登临不狂喜？”
+ 书完，掷笔于地，不禁泪下。
+ 顾炎武道：“痛快淋漓，真是绝妙好辞。”
+ 吕留良道：“这诗殊无含蓄，算不得好，也只是将二瞻先生之原意写了出来，好教观画之人得知。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“何日故国重光，那时‘山川开霁故璧完’，纵然穷山恶水，也令人观之大畅胸怀，真所谓‘何处登临不狂喜’ 了！”
+ 顾炎武道：“此诗结得甚妙！
+ 终有一日驱除胡虏，还我大汉河山，比之徒抒悲愤，更加令人气壮。”
+ 黄宗羲慢慢将画卷了起来，说道：“这画是挂不得了，晚村兄得须妥为收藏才是。
+ 倘若给吴之荣之类的奸人见到，官府查究起来，晚村兄固然麻烦，还牵连了二瞻先生。”
+ 顾炎武拍桌骂道：“吴之荣这狗贼，我真恨不得生食其肉。”
+ 吕留良道：“二位枉顾，说道有件要紧事。
+ 我辈书生积习，作诗题画，却搁下了正事。
+ 不知究竟如何？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“我二人来此，乃是为了二瞻先生的那位本家伊璜先生。
+ 小弟和顾兄前日得到讯息，原来这场‘明史’大案，竟将伊璜先生也牵连在内。”
+ 吕留良惊道：“伊璜兄也受了牵连？”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 我二人前日晚上匆匆赶到海宁袁花镇，伊璜先生并不在家，说是出外访友去了。
+ 炎武兄眼见事势紧急，忙瞩伊璜先生家人连夜躲避；想起伊璜先生和晚村兄交好，特来探访。”
+ 吕留良道：“他…… 他却没有来。
+ 不知到了何处。”
+ 顾炎武道：“他如在府上，这会儿自已出来相见。
+ 我已在他的书房的墙壁上提诗一首，他若归家，自然明白，知所趋避，怕的是不知讯息，在外露面，给公人拿住，那可糟了。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“这‘明史’一案，令我浙西名士几乎尽遭毒手。
+ 清廷之意甚恶，晚村兄名头太大，亭林兄和小弟之意，要劝晚村兄暂且离家远游，避一避风头。”
+ 吕留良气愤道：“清廷皇帝倘若将我捉到北京，拼着千刀万剐，好歹也要痛骂他一场，出了胸中这口恶气，才痛痛快快的就死。”
+ 顾炎武道：“晚村兄豪气干云，令人好生敬佩。
+ 怕的是见不到鞑子皇帝，却死于一般的下贱奴才手里。
+ 再说，鞑子皇帝只是个小孩子，什么也不懂，朝政大权，尽操于权臣鳌拜之手。
+ 兄弟和梨洲兄推想，这次‘明史’一案所以如此大张旗鼓，雷厉风行，当是鳌拜意欲挫折我江南士人之气。”
+ 吕留良道：“两位所见甚是。
+ 清兵入关以来，在江北横行无阻，一到江南，却处处遇到反抗，尤其读书人知道华夷之防，不断跟他们捣乱。
+ 鳌拜乘此机会，对我江南士子大加镇压。
+ 哼，野火烧不尽，春风吹又生，除非他把咱们江南读书人杀得干干净净。”
+ 黄宗羲道：“是啊。
+ 因此咱们要留着有用之身，和鞑子周旋到底，倘若逞了一时血气之勇，反是堕入鞑子的算中了。”
+ 吕留良登时省悟，黄顾二人冒寒枉顾，一来固是寻觅查伊璜，二来是劝自己出避，生怕自己一时按奈不住，枉自送了性命，良友苦心，实深感激，说道：“二位金石良言，兄弟那敢不遵？
+ 明日一早，兄弟全家便出去避一避。”
+ 顾黄二人大喜，齐声道：“自该如此。”
+ 吕留良沉吟道：“却不知避向何处才好？”
+ 只觉天涯茫茫，到处是鞑子的天下，真无一片干净土地，沉吟道：“桃源何处，可避暴秦？
+ 桃源何处，可避暴秦？”
+ 顾炎武道：“当今之世，便真有桃源乐土，咱们也不能独善其身，去躲了起来……”
+ 吕留良不等他辞毕，拍案而起，大声道：“亭林兄此言责备得是。
+ 国家兴亡，匹夫有责，暂时避祸则可，但若去躲在桃花源里，逍遥自在，忍令亿万百姓在鞑子铁蹄下受苦，于心何安？
+ 兄弟失言了。”
+ 顾炎武微笑道：“兄弟近年浪迹江湖，着实结交了不少朋友。
+ 大江南北，见闻所及，不但读书人反对鞑子，而贩夫走卒、屠沽市井之中，也到处有热血满腔的豪杰。
+ 晚村兄要是有意，咱三人结伴同去扬州，兄弟给你引见几位同道中人如何？”
+ 吕留良大喜，道：“妙极，妙极！
+ 咱们明日便去扬州，二位少坐，兄弟去告知拙荆，让她收拾收拾。”
+ 说着匆匆入内。
+ 不多时吕留良回到书房，说道：“‘明史’一案，外间虽传说纷纷，但一来传闻未必确实，二来说话之人又顾忌甚多，不敢尽言。
+ 兄弟独处蜗居，未知其详，到底是何起因？”
+ 顾炎武叹了口气，道：“这部明史，咱们大家都是看过的了，其中对鞑子不大恭敬，那也是有的。
+ 此书本是出于我大明朱国桢相国之手，说到关外建州卫之事，又如何会对鞑子客气？”
+ 吕留良点头道：“听说湖州庄家花了几千两银子，从朱相国后人手中将明史原稿买了来，以己名刊行，不想竟然酿此大祸。”
+ 顾炎武道：“此中详情，兄弟倒曾打听明白。”
+ 于是将“明史案”的前因后果，原本说出来。
+
+ When Old Hai asked what he had been doing that day, Trinket told him that he had been helping supervise the confiscation of Oboi's estate.
+ He concluded his account—which of course omitted any mention of the dagger and various other valuables that he had pocketed for himself—by telling him about the two copies of the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections that had been discovered in Oboi's house.
+ The old eunuch jumped up in surprise.
+ 'Did you say there were two copies at Oboi's place?'
+ 'Yes,' said Trinket.
+ 'We were told to look for them by the Empress Dowager; otherwise I could have brought them to you without anyone knowing.'
+ Old Hai's face fell, but he soon recovered his composure.
+ 'Hm, in the Empress Dowager's hands now, are they?' he said grimly.
+ 'Well, it could be worse.'
+ Shortly after this their evening meal was brought in from the Imperial kitchens.
+ After eating barely half a bowl of rice, the old eunuch sat back, turned up his pale, unseeing eyes towards the ceiling, and appeared to be lost in thought.
+ When he had finished his own meal, Trinket decided to get a little sleep in before going to his midnight assignation with the maid-in-waiting.
+ Not wishing to disturb the old eunuch, who was still sitting motionless in his chair, he slipped over to his bed, lay down on it fully clothed, and was soon asleep.
+ After sleeping fitfully for what must have been several hours, he got up silently, stuffed the box of cakes inside his breast pocket,and made his way on tiptoe across the room, pausing at each step for fear the old eunuch might waken.
+ Then, slowly and gently, he slid back the door-bar and opened one of the leaves of the door.
+ At that very moment he heard the old eunuch's voice calling out from behind him.
+ 'Laurie, where are you going?'
+ 'I'm . . . I'm going out for a piss.'
+ 'Why can't you piss in the pot?'
+ 'I can't get to sleep,' said Trinket.
+ 'I thought I'd walk around in the garden for a bit.'
+ No point in standing there talking, he thought; better get off quickly, before the Old Devil could stop him.
+ But just as his foot crossed the threshold, he felt a tightening around the throat.
+ 'Ow!' he hollered.
+ The old eunuch had him by the collar and was propelling him back into the room.
+ 'Damn!' thought Trinket, 'Damn!' as the old man threw him down on the bed.
+ 'The Old Devil knows I want to go and see that little maid and now he's going to stop me.'
+ 'Is this to test my reactions, Goong-goong?' he said, forcing a laugh.
+ 'It's a long time since you've taught me any kungfu.
+ What do you call that grip?'
+ 'Catching a Turtle in a Jar, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Little turtle!'
+ 'Turtle yourself!' thought Trinket, but didn't dare say it out loud.
+ His eyes were darting all round him, looking for some means of escape; but the old eunuch sat himself down beside him on the bed and began addressing him in a low, almost mournful voice.
+ 'You're bold but not careless,' he said.
+ 'You're a sharp, intelligent lad.
+ You haven't shown much willingness to exert yourself, but if I could have taken you in hand and knocked you into some sort of shape, you might have made quite a promising little fighter.
+ It seems such a pity.'
+ 'What does, Goong-goong?'
+ Trinket asked.
+ 'What seems a pity?'
+ The old eunuch ignored his question and heaved a sigh.
+ After a pause he said: 'Your Peking accent is almost perfect now.
+ If your voice had sounded like this a few months ago, without a trace of the Yangzhou twang in it, I might have been taken in.'
+ Shock raised the fine hairs on Trinket's body.
+ An uncontrollable shivering took possession of him and his teeth began chattering.
+ Nevertheless he managed a nervous laugh.
+ 'G-g-goong-goong, you're speaking very—ha ha!—s-strangely tonight.'
+ The old eunuch heaved another sigh.
+ 'How old are you, child?'
+ He was speaking so calmly that Trinket's terror was somewhat allayed.
+ 'About fourteen, I think.'
+ 'If you're thirteen, you're thirteen; if you're fourteen, you're fourteen.
+ What do you mean, you "think"?'
+ 'My mother's not sure herself,' said Trinket.
+ 'I can't say exactly.'
+ This was true.
+ His mother had always been vague when asked about his age.
+ The old eunuch nodded and coughed for a bit.
+ 'A few years ago I overtaxed my body in some way while I was training.
+ It brought on this cough which just seems to get worse and worse.
+ This last year I've begun to realize there's no hope for me.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know,' said Trinket, not quite sure where this conversation was heading.
+ 'I thought your cough was getting a bit better lately.'
+ 'Better?' said the old eunuch shaking his head.
+ 'It's not the least bit better.
+ I've got a terrible pain in my chest all the time.
+ What would you know about it?'
+ 'What's it like at the moment?' said Trinket.
+ 'Would you like me to get you some of your medicine?'
+ Again the old man sighed.
+ 'I've already lost my eyesight.
+ Medicine has to be taken in the proper doses.'
+ Trinket almost stopped breathing.
+ Did this mean that the Old Devil had guessed about that as well?
+ 'You've got a lucky streak,' the old eunuch continued.
+ 'Getting yourself into the Emperor's graces like that—it could have been very useful.
+ You haven't been purified, of course, but that's no problem.
+ I could have done the cutting for you.
+ Ah, it's a pity.
+ Too late.
+ Just too late.'
+ Trinket had no idea what 'purified' meant; but everything the old eunuch was saying tonight seemed to have something odd about it.
+ 'Goong-goong,' he said, 'it's very late.
+ Shouldn't you be getting some sleep?'
+ 'Sleep?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Sleep?
+ There's plenty of sleeping to come: sleeping all day, sleeping all night, sleeping and never waking up again.
+ No more getting up in the morning, no more pains in the chest, no more coughing.
+ What do you think, boy?
+ Don't you think it would be nice?'
+ Trinket was too frightened to answer.
+ Tell me, boy,' said the old eunuch, 'who else is there besides you in your family?'
+ The question was straightforward enough and seemed to have been asked without sinister intent, yet Trinket did not know how to answer it.
+ He hadn't the faintest idea what family the late Laurie had had and feared that almost any answer he gave was likely to betray his ignorance; yet he had to say something.
+ He settled for a modified version of the truth, hoping that Old Hai himself knew nothing about Laurie's family.
+ 'My mother's the only one at home,' he said.
+ 'What's happened to the rest of the family during these past few years, I'd rather not say.'
+ 'Only a mother,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'And what word do you use for "mother" in the Fujian dialect?'
+ Here was another surprise for Trinket.
+ 'Could the real Laurie have been a Fujianese?' he wondered.
+ 'I thought he said just now that I used to have a Yangzhou accent.
+ Perhaps . . . perhaps he does know that I blinded him.'
+ Some seconds elapsed while his brain raced through a number of possibilities.
+ His final response was a lame one.
+ 'I... I—why do you ask?'
+ There was another sigh from the old eunuch.
+ 'So young and yet so wicked!
+ I wonder where you get it from.
+ Who do you most resemble, your father or your mother?'
+ 'I don't think I'm like anyone,' said Trinket.
+ 'Anyway, I'm not all that bad.
+ I may not be very good, but I don't think I'm wicked.'
+ 'I haven't always been a eunuch,' the old man said after a few more coughs.
+ 'I was already a grown man when I was purified.'
+ Trinket was horrified.
+ 'So that's what being "purified" means: having your piss-pipe and the other bits cut off.
+ I hope he doesn't think he's going to purify me.
+ Holy ding-a-ling dongs!'
+ But the old man's thoughts were on another track.
+ 'I had a son once,' he said.
+ 'Unfortunately he died when he was only eight years old.
+ If he'd lived, I might have had a grandson today of about your age.
+ Tell me, is that Whiskers Mao your father?'
+ 'No.
+ No, he's not.
+ Hot-piece momma, of course he's not!'
+ 'I didn't think he was,' said the old eunuch.
+ 'If you were my son and you were trapped here in the Palace, I would find the means of getting you out somehow, whatever the danger.'
+ Trinket forced a smile.
+ 'Pity you're not my father,' he said.
+ 'I could do with a nice, kind father like you.'
+ 'Those two kinds of Martial Art I was teaching you, the Greater Catch-Can and the Merciful Guanyin,' said the old eunuch, '—I'd only started you on them: you couldn't be said to have more than a smattering of either.'
+ 'You ought to teach me them properly, Goong-goong,' said Trinket.
+ 'You're a world champion.
+ You ought to have someone to carry on the tradition when you're gone.
+ Teach me, so that one day I can make you famous: that's what you ought to do.'
+ The old man shook his head.
+ 'I'm not a "world champion".
+ There are any number of kungfu Masters in the world as highly qualified as I am.
+ In any case, you couldn't master my two kinds of kungfu if you spent a whole lifetime studying them.'
+ After a moment he said: 'Put your fingers on your belly about three inches to the left of your navel and press.
+ Hard.
+ Tell me what you feel.'
+ Trinket did as he said.
+ A pain shot through his vitals, so intense that he cried out loud.
+ He found himself panting, and the sweat stood out on his brow.
+ As a matter of fact, for several weeks now he had from time to time been conscious of a slight pain in his left side which he put down to indigestion.
+ Since it had invariably gone away after a bit, he had not paid it much attention.
+ He had certainly never imagined that pressure on the source of this pain could produce such agony.
+ 'Interesting, isn't it!' said the old eunuch with ill-disguised satisfaction.
+ Trinket cursed him inwardly: 'Hateful Old Devil!
+ Stinking Old Turtle!'
+ But all he said was: 'It hurts a bit.
+ I wouldn't have said it was interesting exactly.'
+ 'Every morning when they deliver our food from the kitchens, you're still not back from gambling with your friends or wrestling with the Emperor, ' said the old eunuch.
+ 'I noticed some time ago that the soup they serve is in need of seasoning, so every day I've been getting out one of the little bottles from my medicine chest and tipping a little of the powder in the soup to give it a bit of flavour.
+ Only a tiny bit.
+ Too much of the poison would have too obvious an effect.
+ A smart lad like you doesn't miss much; but as I had been careful never to take soup myself anyway, you didn't suspect anything.'
+ Trinket could feel his skin crawling.
+ 'But. . . but...
+ I thought you didn't like soup,' he said.
+ 'You said it made you cough.'
+ 'I'm very fond of soup as a matter of fact,' said the old eunuch, 'but when the soup's poisoned, even if there's only a minute amount of poison in it, the effect of drinking it day after day could in the end become a little dangerous, don't you think?'
+ 'I should say it could!' said Trinket indignantly.
+ 'You think of everything, Goong-goong, don't you!'
+ 'Oh, I don't know, ' said the old eunuch with a sigh.
+ 'I'd originally been planning to let "you take the poison for about three months and then set you free so that it would have a nice long time to work on you.
+ To start with you'd just have about half-an-hour's pain every day, not very severe.
+ Then, as time went by, it would get gradually worse and the periods when you felt it would get longer.
+ After about a year you would be in pain continuously, night and day, and the pain would get so terrible that in the end you would be dashing your head against walls and tearing the flesh of your arms and legs with your teeth, '
+ He sighed again.
+ 'Unfortunately my health is getting so bad that I doubt if I can wait that long.
+ Now then, no one else has an antidote for this poison but me, so why don't you be a good little boy and tell me who you are working for?
+ Who was it that put you up to blinding me?
+ If you will give me an honest answer to that question, I promise to give you the antidote this minute. '
+ The question was unanswerable because there was no such person; but Trinket, though young, was not so naive as to believe that the old eunuch would spare his life even if he answered it.
+ 'The person I'm working for?' he said.
+ 'You'd get a nasty shock if I told you.
+ So you knew all along that I wasn't Laurie and you thought this trick up to make me suffer?
+ Well—ha ha ha!— you're the one who's been tricked.
+ Ha ha ha!
+ You've been had good and proper.'
+ He kept up the artificial laughter in order to cover up the wriggling of his body.
+ While he was talking and laughing he had managed to draw up his right leg so that he could get his hand on the dagger in his boot and draw it from its sheath.
+ Any slight sound that this operation might have given rise to was masked by his idiotic cachinnation.
+ 'What do you mean?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'How have I been had?'
+ Trinket had to go on talking in order to keep the old man's attention distracted.
+ Any old nonsense would do.
+ 'I could tell there was something funny about that soup the very first day I tasted it, ' he said.
+ 'I asked Misty about it and he told me you were trying to poison me . . .'
+ The old eunuch was clearly startled by this.
+ 'The Emperor knew this?'
+ 'Of course he did, ' said Trinket, '—though I didn't realize at the time that he was the Emperor.
+ Misty advised me not to let on that I knew.
+ He said pretend to drink the soup but don't swallow it; then afterwards you can spit it back in the bowl.
+ So that's what I did.
+ It wasn't very difficult to fool you because you couldn't see.'
+ All the while he was saying this, he was raising the dagger inch by inch and aiming it at the pit of the old man's stomach.
+ He knew that in order to succeed he would have to kill him instantly.
+ Even a correctly aimed blow, if it did not kill him at once, would cost him his own life.
+ The old eunuch wasn't sure whether to believe him or not.
+ 'If you didn't drink the soup, ' he said, 'how is it that it hurt so badly when you pressed your belly?'
+ Trinket affected a sigh.
+ 'I suppose it's because I didn't rinse my mouth after spitting it out.
+ Some of the poison must still have got into my stomach.'
+ While he was saying this he managed to move the dagger a few inches nearer.
+ 'Good!' said the old eunuch.
+ The important thing is, there's no cure; so though you've had a lighter dose, all that means is that the poison will act more slowly and you will have that much longer to suffer.'
+ Trinket began laughing loudly again.
+ Under cover of his laughter he made a tremendous stab, concentrating all the strength of his body into his right arm and aiming at a place he had chosen just beneath the old man's ribs.
+ He had worked out in advance that, after driving the dagger home, he would roll towards the corner of the bed, crawl out from under the foot of it, and make for the still open door.
+ But at that very moment the old eunuch sensed a slight coldness of the air caused by the proximity of the metal.
+ Surprised but, because of a lifetime of training, never totally off his guard, he raised his left hand almost automatically to fend off an attack—though of what nature, he had no time to think—while his right hand followed with a blow of such giant force that it knocked Trinket flying through the papered lattice of the bedside window and into the garden outside.
+ Almost at the same time the old eunuch became aware of an agonizing pain in his left hand.
+ The dagger had severed all four of the fingers on it.
+ The old man calculated that the blow must have killed Trinket instantaneously and that he was probably already dead when he crashed through the window.
+ 'Pity!' he muttered to himself, smiling grimly.
+ The little devil didn't deserve to die so quickly.'
+ When he had recovered somewhat from the shock of his own gruesome accident, he went to his medicine chest and got out some wound-powder to put on the bleeding stumps; then he tore a strip off the bed-sheet to bind up his left hand with, continuing to mutter to himself as he did so.
+ 'Where on earth could the little devil have got hold of a blade like that?
+ I've never come across anything so sharp in my life before.'
+ Forcing himself to endure the excruciating pain in his hand, he jumped through the broken window into the garden, groped his way to the place where he thought Trinket must have fallen, and began feeling around for this extraordinary weapon; but though he searched for a long time, he could not find it.
+ Because he had come to know the garden so well while he still had his sight, he retained a clear memory of where each rock and shrub was situated.
+ According to his calculation, Trinket must have fallen into the bed of peonies.
+ He could understand that the weapon might have flown from his hand and be lying at quite some distance away, but where was the body?
+ The blow that Trinket sustained had knocked all the air out of his lungs and caused an agonizing pain in his chest, coupled with the feeling that every bone in his body had been broken.
+ When he hit the ground, he very nearly fainted; but somewhere at the back of his fading consciousness there was an awareness that to lie where he was would mean certain death, for the old eunuch had not been killed and would certainly come after him to finish him off.
+ Making a supreme effort, he struggled to his feet, but after staggering no more than a couple of steps, his legs gave way and he collapsed once more onto the ground.
+ Fortunately the place where he had fallen was the beginning of a fairly steep declivity in an open part of the garden, so instead of lying where he fell, he began rolling downwards.
+ If the old eunuch had not been so distracted by pain, he would probably have heard something; though so certain was he that the boy was dead, that even if he had, he would probably have attributed the sound to some other cause.
+ The slope was a long one and Trinket must have rolled a dozen yards or more before his body came to rest.
+ He struggled to his feet and began walking again in the same direction.
+ This time, though his whole body hurt unbearably, he did not fall.
+ Incredibly, he was still holding the dagger tightly in his hand.
+ 'I think I must have a lucky streak,' he said to himself when he became aware of this.
+ 'After being knocked through the window and rolling down the bank and everything, it's a miracle I didn't cut myself.'
+ He stopped for a moment to put the dagger back inside his boot.
+ 'Well, the cat's really out of the bag now, ' he thought.
+ 'If the Old Devil knows I'm not what I'm pretending to be, I can't stay in the Palace a moment longer.
+ Pity about that half a million taels though.
+ Fancy winning all that money in a single go and then losing the lot in an evening!
+ That's what I call real style!'
+ A few minutes before this he had been nearly dead, but now, after a little boasting, he was on top of the world.
+ 'That little maid will be wondering what's become of me,' he thought.
+ 'I can't get out of the Palace anyway in the middle of the night, so I might as well still go and see her. —Aiyo!'
+ Fishing it out from inside his gown, he found that the box of honey-cakes had, as he feared, been squashed completely flat.
+ 'Better take this as evidence, in case she's feeling cross because I've kept her waiting so long, ' he thought.
+ 'I'll tell her I had a fall.
+ Ha!
+ Some fall!
+ It's turned the cakes into a cow-pat.'
+ He sampled a small piece of the sticky mess.
+ 'Hot-piece tamardy, this is really nice!
+ Have you ever eaten a piece of cow-pat?
+ Do try some, it's delicious!'
+ As he started walking again, this time in the direction of the Hall of Maternal Tranquillity, the Empress Dowager's compound, he was feeling so cock-a-hoop that he was stepping out at quite a pace.
+ The result was a most frightful pain in his chest which at once slowed him down to a shuffle.
+ When he reached his goal, however, he found the gate tightly closed.
+ 'Damn!' he thought.
+ 'I didn't think this one would be shut.
+ Now how the devil am I going to get inside?'
+ Just as he was wondering what to do next, the gate suddenly opened a bit and a girl's head popped out which he recognized in the moonlight as Blossom's.
+ She smiled at him and beckoned to him to come in.
+ He complied happily, and when he had slipped inside, she fastened the gate after him.
+ 'I thought I'd better wait here in case you had trouble getting in,' she said softly in his ear.
+ 'I've been waiting ever such a long time.'
+ 'I know, I'm late,' Trinket whispered back, 'but I had a fall on the way.
+ I tripped over a horrible old turtle.'
+ 'I didn't know there were any in the Palace,' said Blossom.
+ 'I've never seen one.
+ Did you hurt yourself?'
+ The effort of getting to this appointment had absorbed so much of his attention that it had almost taken his mind off the pain; but as soon as she asked the question he became aware that he was hurting dreadfully all over and groaned in spite of himself.
+ Blossom seized his hand in her own.
+ 'Where does it hurt?' she asked in an anxious whisper.
+ As Trinket was on the point of answering her, a shadow appeared on the ground and he looked up to see a dark figure like a great eagle floating down from the top of the garden wall and softly alighting at the foot of it.
+ He was so startled that he almost called out.
+ While he watched, the monstrous bird-shape transformed itself into a much taller, thinner shape which he could see now, in the light of the moon, was no eagle but a man—a tall, thin man with hunched shoulders and a rounded back: none other, in fact, than Old Hai the eunuch.
+ Blossom, who had her face towards Trinket and away from the wall, had not seen this apparition; but when Trinket fell silent and turned to stare at something with a startled look on his face, she turned to look as well.
+ The next moment Trinket had his hand over her mouth, holding it perhaps rather tighter than was necessary for fear she might cry out.
+ At the same time he signalled to her with his other hand to keep quiet.
+ When she nodded to show that she understood, he slowly withdrew the hand from her mouth, though all the time keeping his eyes on the old eunuch.
+ Old Hai had now straightened himself up and was standing rather stiffly with his head cocked to one side as if listening for something.
+ After a while he began, very slowly, to move forwards.
+ Trinket breathed a silent sigh of relief when he saw that he was not walking in his direction.
+ 'Who'd have thought the Old Turtle would be able to follow me all the way here in spite of being blind?' he thought.
+ 'Still, provided neither of us makes any noise, he isn't likely to find me.'
+ After taking a few steps forwards, the old eunuch made a sudden leap sideways which brought him right in front of Trinket; then, shooting out his right arm, he grasped Blossom round the neck.
+ She tried to scream, but because of the pressure on her throat, it was only a little smothered sound that came out.
+ 'It's me he's after, not this girl,' thought Trinket.
+ 'I don't think he'll kill her.'
+ He was only a couple of feet away from the old man and so scared that he was nearly wetting himself, but he dared not budge an inch, knowing that if he made the slightest movement he would be heard.
+ 'Don't make any noise,' the old eunuch hissed to Blossom.
+ 'If you don't do as I tell you, I shall strangle you.
+ Now tell me, but keep your voice down, who are you?'
+ 'I. . . I. . .' Blossom began.
+ The old eunuch ran his hand over her head, then over her face.
+ ''You're one of the maids-in-waiting, aren't you?' he said.
+ 'Yes,' said Blossom in a little voice.
+ 'So what are you doing out here in the middle of the night?'
+ 'I'm just. . . just playing,' said Blossom.
+ A faint smile appeared on the face of the old eunuch which the dim moonlight transformed into a ghastly leer.
+ 'Who is here with you?'
+ He cocked his head to listen.
+ What had enabled him to tell where Blossom was standing was the fact that she did not know how to control her breathing and had been breathing rather heavily because she was frightened.
+ He hadn't been aware of Trinket's presence because Trinket's breathing was more restrained.
+ When Trinket heard the old eunuch's question, he wanted to signal to Blossom not to let on that he was there, but dared not risk even moving his hand.
+ Fortunately Blossom's quick wits had already sensed that the old man was blind and she said 'no one' without needing to be told.
+ 'Where are the Empress Dowager's rooms?' said the old eunuch.
+ 'Take me to her!'
+ 'Goong-goong, please, ' said Blossom pleadingly, 'please don't tell her.
+ I... I promise never to do this again.'
+ She assumed that he intended to report her for being caught wandering outside at an unauthorized hour.
+ 'No use bleating,' said the old eunuch.
+ Take me to her, or I'll strangle you this minute.'
+ He increased the pressure on her throat so that she could no longer breathe and her face became swollen and purple.
+ Trinket was so frightened that he lost control of his bladder and piss soaked through his trousers and began falling drip after drip on the ground.
+ Fortunately the faint sound it made was not detected by the old eunuch; or if it was, he must have assumed that it was the little maid of honour who was wetting herself.
+ He released the pressure on her throat.
+ 'Come on!
+ Take me there!'
+ Blossom had no choice but to obey, but before they went, she shot a look full of tenderness at Trinket which seemed to say, 'Go, quickly!
+ I promise I won't give you away.'
+ 'That's the Empress Dowager's bedroom, over there,' she whispered, temporarily forgetting that the old man couldn't see.
+ She began walking, very slowly, in the direction she had indicated.
+ The old eunuch walked beside her, his right hand still encircling her throat.
+ 'The Old Devil's going to tell the Empress Dowager about me,' thought Trinket.
+ 'He'll tell her everything—how I killed Laurie and dressed up in his clothes, and how I made him blind, and he'll ask her to have me arrested.
+ But I wonder why he doesn't tell the Emperor?
+ I suppose it's because he knows the Emperor likes me and is afraid he might not do anything about it.
+ Oh help!
+ What am I going to do?
+ I have to get out of this Palace as quickly as possible.
+ Aiyo, I can't though!
+ The gates will have been shut long ago.
+ It won't be long now before the Empress Dowager gives orders for my arrest.
+ I shan't get away then, even if I grow wings.'
+
+ 海老公问起今日做了什么事，韦小宝说了到鳌拜家中抄家，至于吞没珍宝、金银、匕首等事，自然绝口不提，最后道：“太后命我到鳌拜家里拿两部《四十二章经》……”
+ 海老公突然站起，问道：“鳌拜家有两部《四十二章经》？”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊。
+ 是太后和皇上吩咐去取的，否则的话，我拿来给了你，别人也未必知道。”
+ 海老公脸色阴沉，哼了一声，冷冷的道：“落入了太后手里啦，很好，很好！”
+ 待会厨房中送了饭来，海老公只吃了小半碗便不吃了，翻着一双无神的白眼，仰起了头只是想心事。
+ 韦小宝吃完饭，心想我先睡一会，到三更时分再去和那小宫女说话玩儿，见海老公呆呆的坐着不动，便和衣上床而睡。
+ 他迷迷糊糊的睡了一会，悄悄起身，把那盒蜜饯糕饼揣在怀里，生怕惊醒海老公，慢慢一步步的蹑足而出，走到门边，轻轻拔开了门闩，再轻轻打开了一扇门，突然听得海老公问道：“小桂子，你去哪里？”
+ 韦小宝一惊，说道：“我…… 我小便去。”
+ 海老公道：“干么不在屋里小便？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我睡不着，到花园里走走。”
+ 生怕海老公阻拦，也不多说，拔步往外便走，左足刚踏出一步，只觉后领一紧，已给海老公抓住，提了回来。
+ 韦小宝“啊”的一声，尖叫了出来，当下便有个念头：“糟糕，糟糕，老乌龟知道我要去见那小宫女，不许我去。”
+ 念头还未转完，已给海老公摔在床上。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“公公，你试我武功么？
+ 好几天没教我功夫了，这一抓是什么招式？”
+ 海老公哼了一声，道：“这叫做‘瓮中抓鳖’，手到擒来。
+ 鳖便是甲鱼，捉你这只小甲鱼。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“老甲鱼捉小甲鱼！”
+ 可是毕竟不敢说出口，眼珠骨溜溜的乱转，寻思脱身之计。
+ 海老公坐在他床沿上，轻轻的道：“你胆大心细，聪明伶俐，学武虽然不肯踏实，但如果由我来好好琢磨琢磨，也可以算得是可造之材，可惜啊可惜。”
+ 韦小宝问道：“公公，可惜什么？”
+ 海老公不答，只叹了口气，过了半晌，说道：“你的京片子学得也差不多了。
+ 几个月之前，倘若就会说这样的话，不带丝毫扬州腔调，倒也不容易发觉。”
+ 韦小宝大吃一惊，霎时之间全身寒毛直竖，忍不住身子发抖，牙关轻轻相击，强笑道：“公公，你…… 你今儿晚上的说话，真是…… 嘻嘻…… 真是奇怪。”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，问道：“孩子，你今年几岁啦？”
+ 韦小宝听他语气甚和，惊惧之情渐减，道：“我…… 我是十四岁罢。”
+ 海老公道：“十三岁就十三岁，十四岁就十四岁，为什么是‘十四岁罢？’”
+ 韦小宝道：“我妈妈也记不大清楚，我自己可不知道。”
+ 这一句倒是真话，他妈妈胡里胡涂，小宝到底几岁，向来说不大准。
+ 海老公点了点头，咳嗽了几声，道：“前几年练功夫，练得走了火，惹上了这咳嗽的毛病，越咳越厉害，近年来自己知道是不大成的了。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我…… 我觉得你近来…… 近来咳得好了些。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“好什么？
+ 一点也没好。
+ 我胸口痛得好厉害，你又怎知道？”
+ 韦小宝道：“现下怎样？
+ 要不要我拿些药给你吃？”
+ 海老公叹道：“眼睛瞧不见，药是不能乱服的了。”
+ 韦小宝大气也不敢透，不知他说这些话是什么用意。
+ 海老公又道：“你机缘挺好，巴结上了皇上，本来嘛，也可以有一番大大的作为。
+ 你没净身，我给你净了也不打紧，只不过，唉，迟了，迟了。”
+ 韦小宝不懂“净身”是什么意思，只觉他今晚话说的语气说不出的古怪，轻声道：“公公，很晚了，你这就睡罢。”
+ 海老公道：“睡罢，睡罢！
+ 唉，睡觉的时候以后可多着呢，朝也睡，晚也睡，睡着了永远不醒。
+ 孩子，一个人老是睡觉，不用起身，不会心口痛，不会咳嗽得难过，那不是挺美么？”
+ 韦小宝吓得不敢作声。
+ 海老公道：“孩子，你家里还有些什么人？”
+ 这平平淡淡一句问话，韦小宝却难以回答。
+ 他可不知那死了的小桂子家中有些什么人，胡乱回答，多半立时便露出马脚，但又不能不答，只盼海老公本来不知小桂子家中底细，才这样问，便道：“我家里只有个老娘，其余的人，这些年来，唉，那也不用提了。”
+ 话中拖上这样个尾巴，倘若小桂子还有父兄姊弟，就不妨用“那也不用提了”这六字来推搪。
+ 海老公道：“只有个老娘。
+ 你们福建话，叫娘是叫什么的？”
+ 韦小宝又是一惊：“什么福建话？
+ 莫非小桂子是福建人？
+ 他说我以前的说话中有扬州腔调，恐怕…… 恐怕…… 那么他眼睛给我弄瞎这回事，他知不知道？”
+ 刹那之间，心中转过了无数念头，含含糊糊的道：“这个…… 这个…… 你问这个干么？”
+ 海老公又叹了口气，说道：“你年纪小小，就这样坏，嘿，到底是像你爹呢，还是像你妈？”
+ 韦小宝嘻嘻一笑，说道：“我是谁也不像。
+ 好是不大好，坏也不算挺坏。”
+ 海老公咳了几声，道：“我是成年之后，才净身做太监的……”
+ 韦小宝暗暗叫苦：“原来做太监要净身，那就是割去小便的东西。
+ 他说知道我没净身，要是来给我净身，那可乖乖龙的东……”
+ 只听海老公续道：“我本来有个儿子，只可惜在八岁那年就死了。
+ 倘若活到今日，我的孙儿也该有你这般大了。
+ 那个姓茅的茅十八，不是你爹爹罢？”
+ 韦小宝颤声道：“不…… 不是！
+ 辣块妈妈的，当…… 当然不是。”
+ 心中一急，扬州话冲口而出。
+ 海老公道：“我也想不是的。
+ 倘若你是我儿子，失陷在皇宫之中，就算有天大危险，我也会来救你出去。”
+ 韦小宝苦笑道：“就可惜我没你这个好爹爹。”
+ 海老公道：“我教过你两套武功，第一套‘大擒拿手’，第二套‘大慈大悲千叶手’，这两套功夫，我都没教全，你自然也没学会，只学了这么一成半成，嘿嘿，嘿嘿。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是啊，你老人家最好将这两套功夫教得我学全了。
+ 你这样天下第一的武功，总算有个人传了下来，给你老人家扬名，那才成话。”
+ 海老公摇头道：“‘天下第一’四个字，哪里敢当？
+ 世上武功高强的，可不知有多少。
+ 我这两套功夫，你这一生一世也来不及学得全了。”
+ 他顿了一顿，说道：“你吸一口气，摸到左边小腹，离开肚脐眼三寸之处，用力掀一掀，且看怎样？”
+ 韦小宝依言摸到他所说之处，用力一掀，登时痛澈心肺，不由得“啊”的一声，大叫出来，霎时间满头大汗，不住喘气。
+ 近半个多月来，左边小腹偶然也隐隐作痛，只道吃坏了肚子，何况只痛得片刻，便即止歇，从来没放在心上，不料对准了一点用力掀落，竟会痛得这等厉害。
+ 海老公阴恻恻的道：“很有趣罢？”
+ 韦小宝肚中大骂：“死老乌龟，臭老乌龟！”
+ 说道：“有一点点痛，也没什么有趣。”
+ 海老公道：“你每天早上去赌钱，又去跟皇上练武，你还没回来，饭菜就送来了。
+ 我觉得这汤可不够鲜，每天从药箱之中，取了一瓶药出来，给你在汤里加上些料。
+ 只加这么一点儿，加得多了，毒性太重，对你身子不大妥当。
+ 你这人是很细心的，可是我从来不喝汤，你一点也不疑心吗？”
+ 韦小宝毛骨悚然，道：“我…… 我以为你不爱喝汤。
+ 你…… 你又说喝了汤，会…… 会…… 咳…… 咳嗽……”
+ 海老公道：“我本来很爱喝汤的，不过汤里有了毒药，虽然份量极轻，可是天天喝下去，时日久了，总有点危险，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝愤然道：“是极，是极！
+ 公公，你当真厉害。”
+ 海老公叹了口气，道：“也不见得。
+ 本来我想让你再服三个月毒药，这才放你出宫，那时你就慢慢肚痛了。
+ 先是每天痛半个时辰，痛得也不很凶，以后越痛越厉害，痛的时刻也越来越长，大概到一年以后，那便日夜不停的大痛，要痛到你将自己脑袋到墙上去狠狠的撞，痛得将自己手上、腿上的肉，一块块咬下来。”
+ 说到这里，叹道：“可惜我身子越来越不成了，恐怕不能再等。
+ 你身上中的毒，旁人没解药，我终究是有的。
+ 小娃娃，你到底是受了谁的指使，想这计策来弄瞎我眼睛？
+ 你老实说了出来，我立刻给你解药。”
+ 韦小宝年纪虽小，也知道就算自己说了指使之人出来，他也决不能饶了自己性命，何况根本就无人指使，说道：“指使之人自然有的，说出来只怕吓你一大跳。
+ 原来你早知道我不是小桂子，想了这个法子来折磨我，哈哈，哈哈，你这可上了我的大当啦！
+ 哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 纵声大笑，身子跟着乱动，右腿一曲，右手已抓住了匕首柄，极慢极慢的从剑鞘中拔出，不发出丝毫声息，就算有了些微声，也教笑声给遮掩住了。
+ 海老公道：“我上了你什么大当啦？”
+ 韦小宝胡说八道，原是要教他分心，心想索性再胡说八道一番，说道：“汤里有毒药，第一天我就尝了出来。
+ 我跟小玄子商量，他说你在下毒害我……”
+ 海老公一惊，道：“皇上早知道了？”
+ 韦小宝道：“怎么会不知道？
+ 只不过那时我可还不知他是皇上，小玄子叫我不动声色，留神提防，喝汤之时只喝入口中，随后都吐在碗里，反正你又瞧不见。”
+ 一面说，一面将匕首半寸半寸的提起，剑尖缓缓对准了海老公心口，心想若不是一下子便将他刺死，纵然刺中了，他一掌击下来，自己还是没命。
+ 海老公将信将疑，冷笑道：“你如没喝汤，干么一按左边肚子，又会痛得这么厉害？”
+ 韦小宝叹道：“想是我虽将汤吐了出来，差着没漱口，毒药还是吃进了肚里。”
+ 说着又将匕首移近数寸。
+ 只听海老公道：“那也很好啊。
+ 反正这毒药是解不了的，你中毒浅些，发作得慢些，吃的苦头只有更大。”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，长笑声中，全身力道集于右臂，猛力戳出，直指海老公心口，只待一刀刺入，便即滚向床角，从床脚边窜出逃走。
+ 海老公陡觉一阵寒气扑面，微感诧异，只知对方已然动手，更不及多想他是如何出手，左手挥出，便往戳来的兵刃上格去，右掌随出，砰的一声，将韦小宝打得飞身而起，撞破窗格，直摔入窗外的花园，跟着只觉左手剧痛，四根手指已被匕首切断。
+ 若不是韦小宝匕首上寒气太盛，他事先没有警兆，这一下非戳中心口不可。
+ 但如是寻常刀剑，二人功力相差太远，虽然戳中心口，也不过皮肉之伤，他内劲到处，掌缘如铁，击在刀剑之上，震飞刀剑，也不会伤到自己手掌。
+ 但这匕首实在太过锋锐，海老公苦练数十年的内劲，竟然不能将之震飞脱手，反而无声息的切断了四根手指。
+ 可是他右手一掌结结实实的打在韦小宝胸口，这一掌开碑裂石，非同小可，料得定韦小宝早已五脏俱碎，人在飞出窗外之前便已死了。
+ 他冷笑一声，自言自语：“死得这般容易，可便宜了这小鬼。”
+ 定一定神，到药箱中取出金创药敷上伤口，撕下床单，包扎了左掌，喃喃的道：“这小鬼用的是什么兵刃，怎地如此厉害？”
+ 强忍手上剧痛，跃出窗去，伸手往韦小宝跌落处摸去，要找那柄自己闻所未闻、见所未见的宝刀利刃。
+ 哪知摸索良久，竟什么也没摸到。
+ 他于眼睛未瞎之时，窗外的花园早看得熟了，何处有花，何处有石，无不了然于胸。
+ 明明听得韦小宝是落在一株芍药花旁，这小鬼手中的宝剑或许已震得远远飞出，可是他的尸体怎会突然不见？
+ 韦小宝中了这掌，当时气为之窒，胸口剧痛，四肢百骸似乎都已寸寸碎裂，一摔下地，险些便即晕去。
+ 他知此刻生死系于一线，既然没能将海老公刺死，老乌龟定会出来追击，当即奋力爬起，只走得两步，脚下一软，又即摔倒，骨碌碌的从一道斜坡上直滚下去。
+ 海老公倘若手指没给割断，韦小宝滚下斜坡之声自然逃不过他耳朵，只是他重伤之余，心烦意乱，加之做梦也想不到这小鬼中了自己这一掌竟会不死，虽然听到声音，却全没想到其中缘由。
+ 这条斜坡好长，韦小宝直滚出十余丈，这才停住。
+ 他挣扎着站起，慢慢走远，周身筋骨痛楚不堪，幸好匕首还是握在手中，暗自庆幸：“刚才老乌龟将我打出窗外，我居然没将匕首插入自己身体，当真运气好极。”
+ 将匕首插入靴筒，心想：“西洋镜已经拆穿，老乌龟既知我是冒牌货，宫中是不能再住了。
+ 只可惜四十五万两银子变成了一场空欢喜。
+ 他奶奶的，一个人哪有这样好运气，横财一发便是四十五万两？
+ 总而言之，老子有过四十五万两银子的身家，只不过老子手段阔绰，一晚之间就花了个精光。
+ 你说够厉害了罢？”
+ 肚里吹牛，不禁得意起来。
+ 又想：“那小宫女还巴巴的在等我，反正三更半夜也不能出宫，我这就瞧瞧她去，啊哟……”
+ 一摸怀中那只纸盒，早已压得一塌胡涂，心道：“我还是拿去给她看看，免她等得心焦。
+ 就说我摔了一交，将蜜饯糖果压得稀烂，变成了一堆牛粪，不过这堆牛粪又甜又香，滋味挺美。
+ 哈哈，辣块妈妈，又甜又香的牛粪你吃过没有？
+ 老子就吃过。”
+ 他想想觉得好玩，加快脚步，步向太后所住的慈宁宫，只走快几步，胸口随即剧痛，只得又放慢了步子。
+ 来到慈宁宫外，见宫门紧闭，心想：“糟糕，可没想到这门会关着，那怎么进去？”
+ 正没做理会处，宫门忽然无声无息的推了开来，一个小姑娘的头探出来，月光下看得分明，正是蕊初。
+ 只见她微笑着招手，韦小宝大喜，轻轻闪身过门。
+ 蕊初又将门掩上了，在他耳畔低声道：“我怕你进不来，已在这里等了许久。”
+ 韦小宝也低声道：“我来迟啦。
+ 我在路上绊到了一只又臭又硬的老乌龟，摔了一交。”
+ 蕊初道：“花园里有大海龟吗？
+ 我倒没见过。
+ 你…… 你可摔痛了没有？”
+ 韦小宝一鼓作气的走来，身上的疼痛倒也可以耐得，给蕊初这么一问，只觉得全身筋骨无处不痛，忍不住哼了一声。
+ 蕊初拉住他手，低声问：“摔痛了哪里？”
+ 韦小宝正要回答，忽见地下有个黑影掠过，一抬头，但见一只硕大无朋的大鹰从墙头飞了进来，轻轻落地。
+ 他大吃一惊，险些骇呼出声，月光下只见那大鹰人立起来，原来不是大鹰，却是一人。
+ 这人身材瘦削，弯腰曲背，却不是海老公是谁？
+ 蕊初本来面向着他，没见到海老公进来，但见韦小宝转过了头，瞪目而视，脸上满是惊骇之色，也转过身来。
+ 韦小宝左手一探，已按住了她的嘴唇，出力奇重，竟不让她发出半点声音，跟着右手急摇，示意不可作声。
+ 蕊初点了点头。
+ 韦小宝这才慢慢放开了左手，目不转睛的瞧着海老公。
+ 只见海老公僵立当地，似在倾听动静，过了一会，才慢慢向前走去。
+ 韦小宝见他不是向自己走来，暗暗舒了口气，心道：“老乌龟好厉害，眼睛虽然瞎了，居然能追到这里。”
+ 又想：“只要我和这小宫女不发出半点声音，老乌龟就找不到我。”
+ 海老公向前走了几步，突然跃起，落在韦小宝跟前，左手一探，扠住了蕊初的脖子。
+ 蕊初“啊”的一声叫，但咽喉被卡，这一声叫得又低又闷。
+ 韦小宝心念电转：“老乌龟找的是我，又不是找这小宫女，不会杀死她的。”
+ 此时和海老公相距不过两尺，吓得几乎要撒尿，却一动也不动，知道只要自己动上一根手指，就会给他听了出来。
+ 海老公低声道：“别作声！
+ 不听话就卡死你。
+ 轻轻回答我的话。
+ 你是谁？”
+ 蕊初低声道：“我…… 我……”
+ 海老公伸出右手，摸了摸她头顶，又摸了摸她脸蛋，道：“你是个小宫女，是不是？”
+ 蕊初道：“是，是！”
+ 海老公道：“三更半夜的，在这里干什么？”
+ 蕊初道：“我…… 我在这里玩儿！”
+ 海老公脸上露出一丝微笑，在惨淡的月光下看来，反显得更加阴森可怖，问道：“还有谁在这里？”
+ 侧过了头倾听。
+ 适才蕊初不知屏息凝气，惊恐之下呼吸粗重，给海老公听出了她站立之处。
+ 韦小宝和他相距虽近，呼吸极微，他一时便未察觉。
+ 韦小宝想要打手势叫她别说，却又不敢移动手臂。
+ 幸好蕊初乖觉，发觉他双眼已盲，说道：“没…… 没有了。”
+ 海老公道：“皇太后住在哪里？
+ 你带我去见她。”
+ 蕊初惊道：“公公，你…… 你别跟皇太后说，下次…… 下次我再也不敢了。”
+ 她只道这老太监捉住了自己，要去禀报太后。
+ 海老公道：“你求也没用。
+ 不带我去，立刻便扠死你。”
+ 手上微一使劲，蕊初气为之窒，一张小脸登时胀得通红。
+ 韦小宝惊惶之下，终于撒出尿来，从裤裆里一滴一滴的往下直流，幸好海老公没留神，就算听到了，也道是蕊初吓得撒尿。
+ 海老公慢慢松开左手，低声道：“快带我去。”
+ 蕊初无奈，只得道：“好！”
+ 侧头向韦小宝瞧了一眼，脸上神色示意他快走，自己决不供他出来，低声道：“太后寝宫在那边！”
+ 慢慢移动脚步。
+ 海老公的左手仍是抓住她咽喉，和她并肩而行。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“老乌龟定是去跟皇太后说，我是冒充的小太监，小桂子是给我杀死的，他自己的眼睛是给我弄瞎的，要太后立刻下令捉拿。
+ 他为甚么不去禀报皇上？
+ 是了，他知道皇上对我好，告状多半告不进。
+ 那…… 那便如何是好？
+ 我须得立即逃出宫去。
+ 啊哟，不好，这时候宫门早闭，又怎逃得出去？
+ 只要过得片刻，太后传下命令，更是插翅难飞了。”
+
+ Trinket accompanied Big Beaver, Brother Li, and the other leaders to the main gate.
+ Outside they found the members of the Lodge already waiting, between two and three hundred of them, spread out in V-shaped formation on either side of the gate, all with eager, expectant looks on their faces.
+ After a while the same two big fellows came out carrying Whiskers between them in his hammock.
+ 'Mao, old fellow,' said Brother Li, 'you don't need to wait out here with us.
+ You're our guest.'
+ 'Just hearing about the Helmsman has always been an inspiration to me,' said Whiskers.
+ 'Now that there's a chance to actually see him, I wouldn't miss it for the world.'
+ Because of his extreme weakness his voice was still faint, but there was a flush of excitement on his pallid cheeks.
+ Presently the sound of galloping grew nearer and a party of some ten or so horsemen could be seen approaching in a little cloud of dust.
+ The three foremost of them jumped lightly from their horses while they were still at some distance from the gate.
+ Brother Li and the other leaders went forward to meet them and there was much exchange of handclasps and friendly greetings.
+ Trinket overheard one of the horsemen saying that the Helmsman was waiting somewhere 'ahead' and wanted Brother Li, Big Beaver, and one or two other seniors to come and see him.
+ After standing there some minutes in discussion, six leading members of the Lodge—Brother Li, Big Beaver, Tertius, Father Obscurus, and two others whom Trinket didn't know by name—got on to waiting horses and galloped off with the other riders.
+ 'Isn't the Helmsman coming here then?' asked Whiskers, dreadfully disappointed.
+ None of those waiting had the heart to answer him, since they were all feeling equally disappointed.
+ 'What's the matter with you all?' thought Trinket.
+ 'Anyone would think someone had borrowed ten thousand taels off you and wouldn't pay it back, or you'd lost your wife's trousers gambling or something.
+ What a miserable-looking lot!'
+ After a good while longer, another horseman arrived and read out the names of thirteen Lodge-members who were to go for interviews with the Helmsman.
+ The thirteen men, with rapturous expressions on their faces, dashed to the ready-waiting horses, jumped into the saddle, and galloped away.
+ 'Whiskers,' Trinket asked his stricken friend, 'is this Helmsman a very old man?'
+ 'I... I've never met him,' said Whiskers.
+ 'On River and Lake there's no one who doesn't look up to him, but I do know that to actually get to meet him is very, very difficult.'
+ 'Tamardy!' thought Trinket.
+ 'What a big-head!
+ Well, you don't impress me, Mr Big Shot Helmsman.
+ It's all the same to me whether I see you or not.'
+ By this time it was beginning to look as if most members of the Lodge were definitely not going to get a glimpse of their beloved leader; nevertheless they continued to stand there outside the gate, nursing a faint hope that he might after all appear.
+ Some of them, tired of standing, sat on the ground.
+ One of them urged Whiskers to go indoors and rest.
+ 'If the Helmsman does come,' he told Whiskers, 'I promise to let you know straight away.'
+ But Whiskers shook his head.
+ 'No, no, I'd rather wait here.
+ If the Helmsman did come and I wasn't waiting here outside, it would be very—well, disrespectful.'
+ He sighed wistfully.
+ 'I wonder if it will be my luck to see him before I die.'
+ In his conversations with Trinket on the long journey from Yangzhou to Peking there was hardly a well-known practitioner of the Martial Arts whom Whiskers had not at one time or other disparaged.
+ Chen Jinnan, the Helmsman, appeared to be the only expert in these matters for whom he had unqualified respect.
+ Listening to Whiskers now, Trinket could not help absorbing a little of his enthusiasm, to the extent that he now stopped thinking of rude things to say about this paragon who seemed so conscious of his own worth.
+ Suddenly there was a sound of hoofbeats once more and another party of horsemen came riding up.
+ Those Triads who had been sitting on the ground leaped to their feet and everyone craned forward, hoping that this time the summons would be for him.
+ There were four messengers this time.
+ Their leader, having dismounted from his horse, clasped his hands together respectfully: 'The Helmsman requests Mr Mao and Mr Wei to favour him with their company.'
+ Whiskers leaped up with a joyful cry, then almost immediately sank back into the hammock with a groan.
+ 'Let's go!' he said to his bearers.
+ 'Hurry!'
+ Trinket, for his part, was extremely tickled to be called 'Mr Wei'.
+ Even his surname—his mother's actually, since his paternity was unknown—was seldom used; but never in his life before had anyone called him 'Mr'.
+ Well!' he thought.
+ 'I've heard plenty of "Goong-goongs" recently; but not "Mr".
+ Ha ha!
+ Now I'm "Mr Trinket Wei".'
+ Two of the mounted men took charge of Whiskers, supporting the ends of the carrying-pole from which his hammock was suspended on their saddle-bows and riding along in parallel very slowly and carefully.
+ Another of them gave up his horse to Trinket and found himself another horse on which he rode along behind.
+ The little party of six walked their horses along the road for about a mile before taking a right-hand turn into a little side-road.
+ Along this, every few hundred yards, were little knots of two or three men, some sitting, some walking to and fro, all evidently lookouts, since the leading horseman, on seeing them, would make a sign, stretching out the last three fingers of his right hand and pointing with them downwards, whereupon the men would nod and silently answer him with some mysterious signal of their own.
+ Trinket observed that the signals they made were all different, but was unable to guess their significance.
+ After they had been riding along this side-road for about four miles, they came to a large farmhouse or grange.
+ As they arrived at the entrance, a guard on the door shouted to the people inside, 'The guests have arrived,' whereupon the door opened and out came Brother Li, Big Beaver, and two other men whom Trinket hadn't seen before.
+ One of these last clasped his hands politely and welcomed them in: 'Mr Mao, Mr Wei, welcome!
+ Our Society's Helmsman looks forward to meeting you.'
+ Trinket was thrilled.
+ The 'Mr' seemed to be sticking.
+ Whiskers struggled to get up.
+ 'I can't see the Helmsman like this.
+ It's too . . . it's too . . .' but the effort to raise himself once more ended in a groan.
+ 'You're a wounded man,' said Brother Li.
+ 'You don't need to stand on ceremony.'
+ He ushered Trinket and Whiskers' bearers into the main reception room.
+ A man offered Trinket some tea and asked him to wait there a while as the Helmsman wanted to speak to Mr Mao first.
+ Whiskers was carried through an inner door for his interview.
+ While Trinket was drinking his cup of tea, a servant came in with four plates on which were various cakes and dimsum.
+ His reaction on sampling these was unfavourable.
+ 'These aren't a patch on the ones they do in the Palace,' he thought.
+ They're not even as good as the ones they used to serve in the brothel.'
+ His estimation of the Helmsman at once went down a couple of notches.
+ However, he was feeling empty, and in quite a short time had made considerable inroads into the eatables on all four of the plates.
+ After about the time it would take to consume an average meal, Brother Li and the other three came in again, and one of the two Trinket didn't know by name, an old man with a grizzled beard, told him that the Helmsman was now ready to see him.
+ At some risk of choking, he swallowed the large mouthful he had been chewing, brushed off the crumbs with his hands, and followed the four men into one of the wings of the building which, together with the main reception room, enclosed a large courtyard on three sides.
+ There, stopping outside a doorway, the old man with the grizzled beard lifted up the door-curtain and announced them.
+ 'Mr Trinket Wei, the Little White Dragon to see you.'
+ Trinket was surprised and a little flattered that they should somehow have got hold of his made-up nom de guerre.
+ This must be Whiskers' doing, he concluded.
+ A man in his thirties dressed in the costume of a scholar rose to his feet as they entered, smiling a welcome.
+ Trinket walked in and stood for a moment darting questioning glances around him.
+ 'This is the Helmsman,' said Big Beaver.
+ Trinket stole a glance at the scholar.
+ He had a mild and gentle face, but there was a force in his flashing eyes which seemed to bore right through him and made him gasp.
+ Almost unconsciously he sank to his knees and began to kowtow; but the scholar bent down to stop him.
+ 'No, no, that's not necessary,' he said with a laugh.
+ Trinket could feel the scholar's strong hands on his arms.
+ A warm sensation passed through his body, followed by a little tremor of excitement.
+ He abandoned his kowtow and got up.
+ 'By arresting and killing Oboi, the Manchu Champion,' said the scholar, speaking to the four older men but keeping his eyes on Trinket, 'our young hero here has avenged the deaths of countless numbers of our fellow-countrymen.
+ In the course of a few days his name has become a household word.
+ To have won such fame, and so early in life too, is an almost unparalleled achievement.'
+ Although Trinket had enough cheek to shame the devil and would normally, if anyone else had praised him like this, have treated it as an excuse to show off, he found himself, in the presence of this Helmsman with his gentleness and his air of quiet authority, completely tongue-tied.
+ 'Sit down!'
+ The Helmsman pointed to a chair and sat down himself.
+ Trinket followed his example but noticed that the four older men remained standing, their arms held respectfully at their sides.
+ 'I gather that your career as a strategist began very early,' said the Helmsman, smiling.
+ 'Mr Mao tells me that already, near Victory Hill, when you were still not far from Yangzhou, you killed a Manchu officer by means of a ruse.
+ I still haven't heard how you managed to arrest Oboi though.'
+ Lifting his head slightly, Trinket caught a glimpse of those dazzling eyes and felt his heart beating faster.
+ All desire to indulge in his customary trumpet-blowing drained from him on the instant and he found himself for once giving a completely honest account of what he had done.
+ He told the Helmsman how he had become Kang Xi's favourite; how Oboi had threatened and insulted the young Emperor; and how he and the Emperor had joined forces to take Oboi prisoner.
+ Out of a sense of loyalty to Kang Xi, he said nothing about Kang Xi stabbing Oboi in the back; but he made no attempt to conceal the fact that he had blinded Oboi with incense-ash and then hit him on the head with a bronze brazier, although he was fully aware that to a man of honour like the Helmsman this would seem, if not a third-rate, certainly a pretty second-rate way of overcoming an enemy.
+ The Helmsman listened to all that Trinket had to say without making a single interruption.
+ When at last Trinket had finished, he nodded.
+ 'I see.
+ Well, clearly you didn't learn your technique from Mr Mao.
+ Who was your teacher?'
+ 'I've had a little training,' said Trinket, 'but I didn't have a proper teacher.
+ What the Old Devil taught me wasn't real Martial Arts, it was just rubbish.'
+ 'The Old Devil?'
+ The Helmsman's vast knowledge did not encompass any practitioner with that nom de guerre.
+ Trinket burst out laughing.
+ 'Old Devil is what I used to call the old eunuch Hai-goong—among other things.
+ His real name was Hai Dafu.
+ He's the one who captured me and Mao Eighteen and brought us into the Palace . . .'
+ He suddenly realized that this flatly contradicted what he had said previously.
+ He had told the Triad members that he and Mao Eighteen had been captured and taken into the Palace by Oboi.
+ To a practised liar like Trinket, however, this presented little difficulty.
+ The old eunuch was acting on Oboi's orders.
+ I suppose Oboi, being so important, was too grand to do the dirty work himself.'
+ But the Helmsman appeared to be deep in thought.
+ 'Hai Dafu?
+ Hai Dafu?
+ Is there a eunuch with that name in the Tartar Palace?'
+ He turned to Trinket.
+ 'Show me a few of the things he taught you, little brother,' he said.
+ However immune to self-criticism Trinket might be, he knew that what he liked to call his Martial Arts training was really a joke.
+ 'The Old Devil only pretended to teach me,' he said.
+ 'He hated me because I made him blind, so he did everything in his power to harm me.
+ The sort of things he taught me were not the sort of things you'd want anyone else to see.'
+ The Helmsman nodded and made a little gesture with his left hand.
+ At once Big Beaver and the other three older men left the room, closing the door after them as they went.
+ 'Now,' said the Helmsman, 'what did you mean when you said you made the old eunuch go blind?'
+ In the presence of this heroic individual Trinket found it harder to tell his habitual lies than to tell the truth—a sensation he had never experienced before.
+ He now found himself telling the Helmsman how the massive dose of medicine he had put in the old eunuch's cup had caused him to go blind and how he had killed the little eunuch Laurie and taken his place.
+ The Helmsman, having heard this last piece of information with amusement and some surprise, felt with his left hand between Trinket's legs and satisfied himself that he was indeed equipped with those parts which eunuchs lack but ordinary little boys possess.
+ Then he gave what to Trinket sounded very much like a sigh of relief.
+ 'Good,' he said with a little smile.
+ 'If you haven't been mutilated and you aren't a eunuch, this suggests a way out of a difficulty that has been bothering me for some time.'
+ He tapped the table lightly with his left hand and continued speaking, apparently to himself.
+ 'Yes, of course.
+ This is obviously the solution.
+ It gives Brother Yin a successor and the Green Wood Lodge a Master.'
+ Trinket didn't understand what he was talking about, but he could tell from his pleased expression that some great weight had been lifted from his mind and couldn't help feeling pleased on his behalf.
+ The Helmsman walked to and fro in the room, his hands clasped behind him, muttering to himself.
+ 'Everything this Society has ever done has been unprecedented.
+ All innovation lies ultimately in the hands of the individual.
+ We must be bold enough to ignore the censures of the vulgar and the loud outcries of those to whom every novelty is shocking.'
+ To Trinket this book-language of the Helmsman's was even more incomprehensible than what he had said before.
+ 'Look,' said the Helmsman to Trinket, 'there are only two of us here now, so you've no need to feel embarrassed.
+ Never mind whether what Hai Dafu taught you was the real thing or not; just give me a demonstration of what it was.'
+ Trinket now realized that it was to spare him the embarrassment of making a fool of himself in front of the others that he had sent them out of the room.
+ There seemed to be nothing for it but to comply.
+ 'Well, it's what the Old Devil taught me,' he said, 'so it's not my fault how bad it is.
+ If it looks really ridiculous, you must put the blame on him.'
+ The Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Don't worry about that; just get on with it.'
+ So Trinket struck up an attitude and began to go through the motions of the Merciful Guanyin repertoire—the rather limited parts of it, that is, that the old eunuch had taught him.
+ He had already forgotten some bits of it, but could remember enough to put on some sort of performance.
+ The Helmsman watched him with fixed attention and nodded when he had finished.
+ 'From what you've just been doing,' he said, 'it looks as though you may have been taught a little bit of the Shaolin School of Catch-Can.
+ Am I right?'
+ The Greater Catch-Can is what Trinket had learned first, before he even started on the Merciful Guanyin method of self-defence.
+ He knew he must be even worse at Catch-Can than at the Merciful Guanyin stuff and had been hoping to conceal his inadequacy by keeping quiet about it; but there was no concealing anything from the Helmsman, who appeared to know everything: there was nothing for it but to go on making a fool of himself.
+ 'Yes, ' he said.
+ 'The Old Devil taught me a bit of Catch-Can to use in my wrestling-bouts with the Emperor.'
+ And he proceeded to demonstrate as much as he could remember of the Greater Catch-Can.
+ Once again the Helmsman gave his little smile.
+ 'Not bad!'
+ 'I knew all along it would only make you laugh,' said Trinket.
+ 'I wasn't laughing at you,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'I was smiling because I was pleased to see that your memory and comprehension are so good.
+ That White Pony Kick you couldn't quite bring off I think Hai Dafu must have deliberately taught you incorrectly; but instead of letting it fluster you, you used your own imagination and initiative to develop it into a Carp-Fin Flick.
+ I thought that was very good.'
+ Trinket guessed that the Helmsman was a far greater Master of the Martial Arts than the Old Devil had been and the thought suddenly struck him how wonderful it would be if the Helmsman were willing to take him on as a disciple, to be his teacher, his Shifu.
+ Then, surely, he could become a real hero, not the fake one he was at present.
+ He glanced shyly in the Helmsman's direction and found that cold, electric gaze directed at him.
+ Trinket was a shameless young blackguard and could look even the formidable Empress Dowager in the eye without blenching; but the Helmsman was somehow different.
+ In the Helmsman's presence he had become suddenly terrified of misbehaving and as soon as their eyes met had quickly to avert his own.
+ 'Do you know what the Triad Society is for?' the Helmsman asked him, speaking very slowly and deliberately.
+ 'The Triad Society wants to drive out the Qing and restore the Ming,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's for helping the Chinese and killing Tartars.'
+ The Helmsman nodded.
+ 'Exactly.
+ Would you like to join the Triad Society and become a Brother?'
+ That would be terrific,' said Trinket delightedly.
+ In his mind every member of the Triad Society was a hero.
+ It had not occurred to him that he might ever become one himself.
+ But then he reflected that Whiskers wasn't a member, and it was absurd to imagine that he could be better-qualified than Whiskers; so he said, 'I'm afraid . . . I'm afraid I'm not good enough.'
+ His eyes, which for a moment had been shining, were now full of disappointment.
+ It was too much to hope that the Helmsman's offer had been serious.
+ He must have been joking.
+ 'If you want to be a member you can,' said the Helmsman, 'only you must remember that this is a very important business we are engaged in.
+ We have to put our country first, even before our lives.
+ Then again, the rules are very strict and the penalties for breaking them very heavy.
+ You need to think carefully before you decide.'
+ 'I don't need to think,' said Trinket.
+ 'Whatever your rules are, I'll keep them.
+ If you'll let me join, Helmsman, I'll be the happiest boy in the world.'
+ The Helmsman's smile gave way to a more grave expression.
+ 'This is an extremely serious business, involving matters of life and death.
+ We're not talking about children's games.'
+ 'I know that,' said Trinket.
+ 'I've heard lots about the Triad Society.
+ It fights for Honour and Justice.
+ It does all sorts of amazing things.
+ Of course it isn't a children's game.'
+ The Helmsman smiled.
+ 'Well, as long as you know.
+ There are thirty-six rules that everyone joining the Society must swear to follow.
+ The rules include ten absolute prohibitions, each with a very severe punishment laid down for anyone who breaks it.'
+ His face became grave again.
+ 'Some of the rules don't apply in your case yet, because you're too young; but there's one of them against dishonesty.
+ It says, "Every Brother must be honest in all his dealings.
+ He must not lie or cheat."
+ Do you think you are capable of keeping that rule?'
+ Trinket was slightly taken aback.
+ 'I'd never tell you a lie, Helmsman,' he said, 'but with the other Brothers, would I have to tell them the truth—all the time?'
+ 'Perhaps not in minor matters,' said the Helmsman, 'but in important ones, yes.'
+ 'Well that's all right,' said Trinket.
+ 'What about gambling?
+ If I'm gambling with other members of the Society, am I allowed to cheat a bit?'
+ The Helmsman was unprepared for a question of this nature.
+ 'Gambling is not a good thing,' he said with the faintest of smiles, 'but there is nothing in the rules which forbids it.
+ Of course, if you cheated them and they found out, they would probably beat you up, and there's no rule against that either: so you'd probably be well advised not to try.'
+ They wouldn't find out,' said Trinket, grinning.
+ 'Actually, though, I don't need to cheat.
+ When I gamble, nine times out of ten I win anyway.'
+ Since most members of the Society came from a travelling background in which gambling and drunken brawling were accepted as normal behaviour, the Helmsman was inclined to turn a blind eye on these matters.
+ He looked at Trinket intently for some moments as if trying to make his mind up about something.
+ 'Would you like to be my apprentice?'
+ What happiness!
+ Trinket fell at once to his knees and began kowtowing.
+ 'Shifu!'
+ This time the Helmsman made no effort to raise him up, but let him knock his head a dozen or more times on the floor before he stopped him.
+ 'All right, that's enough.'
+ Trinket got up again, smiling delightedly.
+ 'Now that I have become your Shifu, you had better know my real name,' said the Helmsman, 'but you are not to tell anyone.
+ My surname is Chen.
+ I expect you know that already.
+ But Chen Jinnan is only the name I am known by on River and Lake.
+ It is not my real name.
+ My real name is Chen Yonghua.'
+ 'I'll remember that,' said Trinket.
+ 'And I promise not to tell anyone.'
+ The Helmsman contemplated his new disciple for some moments in silence.
+ 'Now that we are Shifu and apprentice, ' he said gravely 'we have to be completely open with each other.
+ I don't mind telling you that I find you both glib-tongued and sly.
+ Your nature is a very different one from my own, and I must admit that I am not at all happy about this.
+ In taking you on as my apprentice, it's more the interests of the Society than anything else that I have in mind.'
+ 'From now on I'll do my best to change,' said Trinket.
+ 'It's easier for the earth to leave its moorings than for a man to change his nature,' said the Helmsman.
+ 'You won't be able to change very much.
+ On the other hand you're still young and comparatively unformed; and so far you don't seem to have done anything particularly bad.
+ In future you'll just have to keep reminding yourself all the time to do as I tell you.
+ I believe in being very strict with my apprentices, so if I find that you have been breaking the Society's rules or plotting mischief or doing anything really bad, I shall kill you without mercy.
+ And remember: I can kill you any time, as easily as breaking an egg.'
+ As if to demonstrate, he tapped the table with his left hand and then seized the corner of it in his grasp.
+ There was a crunching sound as it broke off.
+ Then he took the broken-off piece between his palms and rubbed it until it fell in a shower of tiny slivers on the floor.
+ Trinket stuck his tongue out in amazement and it was some time before he could put it back in again.
+ Yet his overriding feeling was not of amazement but of happiness that he had got this heroic strong man for his teacher.
+ 'I promise you I won't ever do anything bad,' he said.
+ 'I wouldn't want my Shifu to crunch my head up!
+ And besides, if I did do a few bad things, and you did crunch me up, with me gone, who'd there be to pass on your secrets!'
+ 'Not "a few bad things"!' said the Helmsman.
+ 'One!
+ Just one bad thing, and I shall no longer consider you my apprentice.'
+ 'What about two bad things?' said Trinket.
+ The Helmsman's face looked stern.
+ 'You're being flippant.
+ When I say one bad thing I mean one.
+ Do you think this is something you can haggle about?'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket; but a rebellious little voice inside him was saying, 'What about half a bad thing?'
+ 'You are my fourth apprentice,' said the Helmsman, 'and probably you will be my last.
+ The Triad Society keeps me so busy that I don't have much time for apprentices.
+ Of your three Brother-apprentices, two died fighting against the Tartars and the third was killed in Marshal Zheng's campaign to retake Taiwan.
+ All three were brave young men who gave their lives for their country.
+ Apart from that I have my own reputation to keep up and I don't want you disgracing me.'
+ 'No, sir,' said Trinket.
+ 'But. . . but—'
+ 'But what?' said the Helmsman.
+ 'Sometimes things that might disgrace you seem to happen to me when I can't help it,' said Trinket.
+ 'Like being captured by someone bigger and stronger than me and shut up in a barrel of dates and pushed around like goods to market.
+ You mustn't blame me for things like that.'
+ The Helmsman found he didn't quite know whether to be angry or amused.
+ Finally he gave a sigh.
+ 'I'm beginning to think that taking you on as my apprentice may prove to be the biggest mistake of my life.
+ There's so much that hangs on this though, I just have to take the chance.
+ Now listen, Trinket.
+ There's going to be some important business presently.
+ Just keep quiet, do everything I tell you, and don't talk a lot of nonsense, and you'll be all right.
+ Is that understood?'
+ 'Yes, sir,' said Trinket.
+ Observing that Trinket appeared to be hesitating, the Helmsman asked him if there was something else he wanted to say.
+ 'It's only that what I say always does seem sensible to me, ' said Trinket.
+ 'I never mean to talk nonsense.
+ So when you tell me I'm talking nonsense, it seems unfair.'
+ 'In that case the best thing is not to talk at all,' said the Helmsman.
+ But what he thought was, 'How many men of valour and reputation have I seen behaving like submissive flunkeys and hardly daring to breathe in my presence, yet this two-faced, shifty little urchin can stand here and give me all this lip!'
+ He got up and strode towards the door.
+ 'Come on,' he said.
+ 'Follow me.'
+ Trinket rushed to open it for him and held up the door-curtain for him to go through.
+ Then he followed him to the hall.
+
+ 韦小宝随着关安基、李力世等群豪来到大门外，只见二三百人八字排开，脸上均现兴奋之色。
+ 过了一会，两名大汉抬着担架，抬了茅十八出来。
+ 李力世道：“茅兄，你是客人，不用这么客气。”
+ 茅十八道：“久仰陈总舵主大名，当真如雷贯耳，今日得能拜见，就算…… 就算即刻便死，那…… 那也是不枉了。”
+ 他说话仍是有气没力，但脸泛红光，极是高兴。
+ 耳听得马蹄声渐近，尘头起处，十骑马奔了过来。
+ 当先三骑马上乘客，没等奔近便翻身下马。
+ 李力世等迎将上去，与那三人拉手说话，十分亲热。
+ 韦小宝听得其中一人说道：“总舵主在前面相候，请李大哥、关夫子几位过去……”
+ 几个人站着商量了几句，李力世、关安基、祁彪清、玄贞道人等六人便即上马，和来人飞驰而去。
+ 茅十八好生失望，问道：“陈总舵主不来了吗？”
+ 对他这句问话，没一人回答得出，各人见不到总舵主，个个垂头丧气。
+ 韦小宝心道：“人家欠了你们一万两银子不还吗？
+ 还是赌钱输掉了老婆裤子？
+ 你奶奶的，脸色这等难看！”
+ 过了良久，有一人骑马驰来传令，点了十三个人的名字，要他们前去会见总舵主。
+ 那十三人大喜，飞身上马，向前疾奔。
+ 韦小宝问茅十八道：“茅大哥，陈总舵主年纪很老了罢？”
+ 茅十八道：“我…… 我便是没…… 没见过。
+ 江湖之上，人人都仰慕陈总舵主，但要见上他…… 他老人家一面，可当真艰难得很。”
+ 韦小宝嘿了一声，心中却道：“哼，他妈的，好大架子，有什么希罕？
+ 老子才不想见呢。”
+ 群豪见这情势，总舵主多半是不会来了，但还是抱着万一希望，站在大门外相候，有的站得久了，便坐了下来。
+ 有人劝茅十八道：“茅爷，你还是到屋里歇歇。
+ 我们总舵主倘若到了，尽快来请茅爷相见。”
+ 茅十八摇头道：“不！
+ 我还是在这里等着。
+ 陈总舵主大驾光临，在下不在门外相候，那…… 那可太也不恭敬了。
+ 唉，也不知我茅十八这一生一世，有没福份见他老人家一面。”
+ 韦小宝跟着茅十八从扬州来到北京，一路之上，听他言谈之中，对武林中人物都不大瞧在眼内，但对这个陈总舵主却一直十分敬重，不知不觉的受了感染，心中也不敢再骂人了。
+ 忽听得蹄声响动，又有人驰来，坐在地下的会众都跃起身来，大家伸长了脖子张望，均盼总舵主又召人前去相会，这次有自己的份儿。
+ 果然来的又是四名使者，为首一人下马抱拳，说道：“总舵主相请茅十八茅爷、韦小宝韦爷两位，劳驾前去相会。”
+ 茅十八一声欢呼，从担架中跳起身来，但“哎唷”一声，又跌在担架之中，叫道：“快去，快去！”
+ 韦小宝也是十分高兴，心想：“人家叫我‘公公’的叫得多了，倒没什么人叫我‘韦爷’，哈哈，老子是‘韦小宝韦爷’。”
+ 两名使者在马上接过担架，双骑相并，缓缓而行。
+ 另一名使者将坐骑让给了韦小宝，自己另乘一马，跟随在后。
+ 六个人沿着大路行不到三里，便转入右边的一条小路。
+ 一路之上都有三三两两的汉子，或坐或行，巡视把守。
+ 为首的使者伸出中指、无名指、小指三根手指往地下一指，把守二人点点头，也伸手做个暗号。
+ 韦小宝见这些人所发暗号各各不同，也不知是何用意。
+ 又行了十二三里，来到一座庄院之前。
+ 守在门口的一名汉子大声叫道：“客人到！”
+ 跟着大门打开，李力世、关安基，还有两名没见过面的汉子出来，抱拳说道：“茅爷、韦爷，大驾光临，敝会总舵主有请。”
+ 韦小宝大乐，心想：“我这个‘韦爷’毕竟走不了啦！”
+ 茅十八挣扎着想起来，说道：“我这么去见陈总舵主，实在，实在…… 哎唷……”
+ 终于支撑不住，又躺倒在担架上。
+ 李力世道：“茅爷身上有伤，不必多礼。”
+ 让着二人进了大厅。
+ 一名汉子向韦小宝道：“韦爷请到这里喝杯茶，总舵主想先和茅爷谈谈。”
+ 当下将茅十八抬了进去。
+ 韦小宝喝得一碗茶，仆役拿上四碟点心，韦小宝吃了一块，心想：“这点心比之皇宫里的，可差得太远了，还及不上丽春院的。”
+ 对这个总舵主的身份，不免有了一点瞧不起。
+ 但肚中正饿，还是将这些瞧不在眼里的点心吃了不少。
+ 过了一顿饭时分，李力世等四人又一起出来，其中一个花白胡子老者道：“总舵主有请韦爷。”
+ 韦小宝忙将口中正在咀嚼的点心用力吞落了肚，双手在衣襟上擦了擦，跟着四人入内，来到一间厢房之外。
+ 那老者掀起门帷，说道：“‘小白龙’韦小宝韦爷到！”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，心想：“他居然知道我这个杜撰的外号，定然是茅大哥说的了。”
+ 房中一个文士打扮的中年书生站起身来，笑容满脸，说道：“请进来！”
+ 韦小宝走进房去，两只眼睛骨碌碌的乱转。
+ 关安基道：“这位是敝会陈总舵主。”
+ 韦小宝微微仰头向他瞧去，见这人神色和蔼，但目光如电，直射过来，不由得吃了一惊，双膝一曲，便即拜倒。
+ 那书生俯身扶起，笑道：“不用多礼。”
+ 韦小宝双臂被他一托，突然间全身一热，打了个颤，便拜不下去。
+ 那书生笑道：“这位小兄弟擒杀满洲第一勇士鳌拜，为我无数死在鳌拜手里的汉人同胞报仇雪恨，数日之间，名震天下。
+ 成名如此之早，当真古今罕有。”
+ 韦小宝本来脸皮甚厚，倘若旁人如此称赞，便即跟着自吹自擂一番，但在这位不怒自威的总舵主面前，竟然讷讷的不能出口。
+ 总舵主指着一张椅子，微笑道：“请坐！”
+ 自己先坐了，韦小宝便也坐下。
+ 李力世等四人却垂手站立。
+ 总舵主微笑道：“听茅十八茅爷说道，小兄弟在扬州得胜山下，曾用计杀了一名清军军官黑龙鞭史松，初出茅庐第一功，便已不凡。
+ 但不知小兄弟如何擒拿鳌拜。”
+ 韦小宝抬起头来，和他目光一触，一颗心不由得突突乱跳，满腹大吹法螺的胡说八道霎时间忘得干干净净，一开口便是真话，将如何得到康熙宠幸、鳌拜如何无礼、自己如何和小皇帝合力擒他之事说了。
+ 只是顾全对康熙的义气，不提小皇帝在鳌拜背后出刀子之事。
+ 但这样一来，自己撒香炉灰迷眼、举铜香炉砸头，明知不是下三滥、便是下二滥的手段，却也无法再行隐瞒了。
+ 总舵主一言不发的听完，点头道：“原来如此。
+ 小兄弟的武功和茅爷不是一路，不知尊师是哪一位？”
+ 韦小宝道：“我学过一些功夫，可算不得有什么尊师。
+ 老乌龟不是真的教我武功，他教我的都是假功夫。”
+ 总舵主纵然博知广闻，“老乌龟”是谁，却也不知，问道：“老乌龟？”
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“老乌龟便是海老公，他名字叫作海大富。
+ 茅十八大哥和我，就是给他擒进宫里去的……”
+ 说到这里，突然惊觉不对，自己曾对天地会的人说，茅十八和自己是给鳌拜擒去的，这会儿却说给海老公擒进宫去，岂不是前言不对后语？
+ 好在他撒谎圆谎的本领着实不小，跟着道：“这老儿奉了鳌拜之命，将我二人擒去，想那鳌拜是个极大的大官，自然不能轻易出手。”
+ 总舵主沉吟道：“海大富？
+ 海大富？
+ 鞑子宫内的太监之中，有这样一号人物？
+ 小兄弟，他教你的武功，你演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝脸皮再厚，也知自己的武功实在太不高明，说道：“老乌龟教我的都是假功夫。
+ 他恨我毒瞎了他眼睛，因此想尽办法来害我。
+ 这些功夫是见不得人的。”
+ 总舵主点了点头，左手一挥，关安基等四人都退出房去，反手带上了门。
+ 总舵主问道：“你怎样毒瞎了他眼睛？”
+ 在这位英气逼人的总舵主面前，韦小宝只觉说谎十分辛苦，还是说真话舒服得多，这种情形那可是从所未有，当下便将如何毒瞎海老公、如何杀死小桂子、如何冒充他做小太监等情形说了。
+ 总舵主又是吃惊，又是好笑，左手在他胯下一拂，发觉他阳具和睾丸都在，并未净身，的的确确不是太监，不由得吁了口长气，微笑道：“好极，好极！
+ 我心中正有个难题，好久拿不定主意，原来小兄弟果然不是给净了身，做了太监！”
+ 左手在桌上轻轻一拍，道：“定当如此！
+ 尹兄弟后继有人，青木堂有主儿了。”
+ 韦小宝不明白他说些什么，只是见他神色欢愉，确是解开了心中一件极为难之事，也不禁代他高兴。
+ 总舵主负着双手，在室内走来走去，自言自语：“我天地会所作所为，无一不是前人从所未行之事。
+ 万事开创在我，骇人听闻，物议沸然，又何足论？”
+ 他文绉绉的说话，韦小宝更加不懂了。
+ 总舵主道：“这里只有你我二人，不用怕难为情。
+ 那海大富教你的武功，不论真也好，假也好，你试演给我瞧瞧。”
+ 韦小宝这才明白，他命关安基等四人出去，是为了免得自己怕丑，眼见无可推托，说道：“是老乌龟教的，可不关我事，如果太也可笑，你骂他好了。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“放手练好了，不用担心！”
+ 韦小宝于是拉开架式，将海老公所教的小半套“大慈大悲千叶手”使了一遍，其中有些忘了，有些也还记得。
+ 总舵主凝神观看，待韦小宝使完后，点了点头，道：“从你出手中看来，似乎你还学过少林寺的一些擒拿手，是不是？”
+ 韦小宝学“大擒拿手”在先，自然知道这门功夫更加不行，原想藏拙，但总舵主似乎什么都知道，只得道：“老乌龟还教过我一些擒拿法，是用来和小皇帝打架的。”
+ 于是将“大擒拿手”中的一些招式也演了一遍。
+ 总舵主微微而笑，说道：“不错！”
+ 韦小宝道：“我早知你见了要笑。”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“不是笑你！
+ 我见了心中喜欢，觉得你记性、悟性都不错，是个可造之材。
+ 那一招‘白马翻蹄’，海大富故意教错了，但你转到‘鲤鱼托鳃’之时，能自行略加变化，并不拘泥于死招。
+ 那好得很！”
+ 韦小宝灵机一动，寻思：“总舵主的武功似乎比老乌龟又高得多，如果他肯教我武功，我韦小宝定能成为一个真英雄，不再是冒牌货的假英雄。”
+ 斜头向他瞧去，便在这时，总舵主一双冷电似的目光也正射了过来。
+ 韦小宝向来惫懒，纵然皇太后如此威严，他也敢对之正视，但在这位总舵主跟前，却半点不敢放肆，目光和他一触，立即收了回来。
+ 总舵主缓缓的道：“你可知我们天地会是干什么的？”
+ 韦小宝道：“天地会反清复明，帮汉人，杀鞑子。”
+ 总舵主点头道：“正是！
+ 你愿不愿意入我天地会做兄弟？”
+ 韦小宝喜道：“那可好极了。”
+ 在他心目中，天地会会众个个是真正英雄好汉，想不到自己也能为会中兄弟，又想：“连茅大哥也不是天地会的兄弟，我难道比他还行？”
+ 说道：“就怕…… 就怕我够不上格。”
+ 霎时间眼中放光，满心尽是患得患失之情，只觉这笔天外飞来的横财，多半不是真的，不过总舵主跟自己开开玩笑而已。
+ 总舵主道：“你要入会，倒也可以。
+ 只是我们干的是反清复明的大事，以汉人的江山为重，自己的身家性命为轻。
+ 再者，会里规矩严得很，如果犯了，处罚很重，你须得好好想一想。”
+ 韦小宝道：“不用想，你有什么规矩，我守着便是。
+ 总舵主，你如许我入会，我可快活死啦。”
+ 总舵主收起了笑容，正色道：“这是极要紧的大事，生死攸关，可不是小孩子们的玩意。”
+ 韦小宝道：“我当然知道。
+ 我听人说，天地会行侠仗义，做得都是惊天动地的大事，怎么会是小孩子的玩意？”
+ 总舵主微笑道：“知道了就好，本会入会时有誓词三十六条，又有十禁十刑的严规。”
+ 说到这里，脸色沉了下来，道：“有些规矩，你眼前年纪还小，还用不上，不过其中有一条：‘ 凡我兄弟，须当信实为本，不得谎言诈骗。’
+ 这一条，你能办到么？”
+ 韦小宝微微一怔，道：“对你总舵主，我自然不敢说谎。
+ 可是对其余兄弟，难道什么事也都要说真话？”
+ 总舵主道：“小事不论，只论大事。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是了。
+ 好比和会中兄弟们赌钱，出手段骗人可不可以？”
+ 总舵主没想到他会问及此事，微微一笑，道：“赌钱虽不是好事，会规倒也不禁。
+ 可是你骗了他们。
+ 他们知道了要打你，会规也不禁止，你岂不挨打吃亏？”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“他们不会知道的，其实我不用欺骗，赢钱也是十拿九稳。”
+ 天地会的会众多是江湖豪杰，赌钱酗酒，乃是天性，向来不以为非，总舵主也就不再理会，向他凝视片刻，道：“你愿不愿拜我为师？”
+ 韦小宝大喜，立即扑翻在地，连连磕头，口称：“师父！”
+ 总舵主这次不再相扶，由他磕了十几个头，道：“够了！”
+ 韦小宝喜孜孜的站起身来。
+ 总舵主道：“我姓陈，名叫陈近南。
+ 这‘陈近南’三字，是江湖上所用。
+ 你今日既拜我为师，须得知道为师的真名。
+ 我真名叫作陈永华，永远的永，中华之华。”
+ 说到自己真名时压低了声音。
+ 韦小宝道：“是，徒弟牢牢记在心中，不敢泄漏。”
+ 陈近南又向他端相半晌，缓缓说道：“你我既成师徒，相互间什么都不隐瞒。
+ 我老实跟你说，你油腔滑调，狡猾多诈，跟为师的性格十分不合，我实在并不喜欢，所以收你为徒，其实是为了本会的大事着想。
+ “韦小宝道：“徒儿以后好好的改。”
+ 陈近南道：“江山易改，本性难移，改是改不了多少的。
+ 你年纪还小，性子浮动些，也没做了什么坏事。
+ 以后须当时时记住我的话。
+ 我对徒儿管教极严，你如犯了本会的规矩，心术不正，为非作歹，为师的要取你性命，易如反掌，也决不怜惜。”
+ 说着左手一探，擦的一声响，将桌子角儿抓了一块下来，双手搓了几搓，木屑纷纷而下。
+ 韦小宝伸出了舌头，半天缩不进去，随即喜欢得心痒难搔，笑道：“我一定不做坏事。
+ 一做坏事，师父你就在我头上这么一抓，这么一搓。
+ 再说，只消做得几件坏事，师父你这手功夫便不能传授徒儿了。”
+ 陈近南道：“不用几件，只是一件坏事，你我便无师徒之份。”
+ 韦小宝道：“两件成不成？”
+ 陈近南脸一板，道：“你给我正正经经的，少油嘴滑舌。
+ 一件便是一件，这种事也有讨价还价的？”
+ 韦小宝应道：“是！”
+ 心中却说：“我做半件坏事，却又如何？”
+ 陈近南道：“你是我的第四个徒儿，说不定便是我的关门弟子。
+ 天地会事务繁重，我没功夫再收弟子。
+ 你的三个师兄，两个在与鞑子交战时阵亡，一个死于国姓爷光复台湾之役，都是为国捐躯的大好男儿。
+ 为师的在武林中位份不低，名声不恶，你可别替我丢脸。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！
+ 不过…… 不过……”
+ 陈近南道：“不过什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“有时我并不想丢脸，不过真要丢脸，也没有法子。
+ 好比打不过人家，给人捉住了，关在枣子桶里，当货物一般给搬来搬去，师父你可别见怪。”
+ 陈近南皱起眉头，又好气，又好笑，叹了口长气，说道：“收你为徒，只怕是我生平所作的一件大错事。
+ 但以天下大事为重，只好冒一冒险。
+ 小宝，待会另有要务，你一切听我吩咐行事，少胡说八道，那就不错。”
+ 韦小宝道：“是！”
+ 陈近南见他欲言又止，问道：“你还想说什么？”
+ 韦小宝道：“徒儿说话，总是自以为有理才说。
+ 我并不想胡说八道，你却说我胡说八道，那岂不冤枉么？”
+ 陈近南不愿再跟他多所纠缠，说道：“那你少说几句好了。”
+ 心想：“天下不知多少成名的英雄好汉，在我面前都是恭恭敬敬，大气也不敢透一声，这个刁蛮古怪的顽童，偏有这许多废话。”
+ 站起身来，走向门口，道：“你跟我来。”
+ 韦小宝抢着开门，掀开门帷，让陈近南出去，跟着他来到大厅。
+
+ Returning to the Imperial kitchens from his duties with Kang Xi in the Upper Library, Trinket did not have long to wait for Butcher Qian's arrival.
+ This time the butcher had four assistants with him, carrying between them the neatly butchered, immaculately clean carcasses of two large, fat pigs, each, at a rough estimate, representing not less than three hundred catties of pork.
+ 'Laurie Goong-goong,' he told Trinket, 'to get the most value out of this China-root pork, you want to eat some each day, as soon as you get up in the morning.
+ It's best if you cut only as much as you need at one time and roast it straight away.
+ I'll have one of these pigs carried to your quarters now.
+ You'll be able to cut some off yourself and roast it first thing tomorrow.
+ What you can't eat yourself you can get the folk in the kitchen here to make salt pork of.'
+ Realizing that there must be some hidden purpose behind all this, Trinket thanked him for the advice and offered to show him the way, whereupon Butcher Qian, leaving one of the carcasses and its two bearers in the kitchen, accompanied him to his room, followed by the other two assistants carrying the second pig.
+ The Manager's quarters in the Imperial Catering Department were not very far from the Imperial kitchens.
+ As soon as they were inside, Trinket ordered a young eunuch to take the two assistants back to the kitchens, with instructions that they were to wait for their master there with the other two, and closed the door after them.
+ 'Master,' said Butcher Qian, speaking in a low voice, 'is there anyone else in this apartment?'
+ Seeing Trinket shake his head, he crouched down over the pig's carcass and gently turned it on its back again so that its legs were pointing upwards.
+ It was now possible to see that the slit-open underbelly of the animal had been drawn together and was being held in place by strips of pig-skin sewn across the slit.
+ It was obvious that something very out of the ordinary must be concealed inside.
+ Trinket could feel his heart thumping as he reflected that this might well be weapons which the Triads were smuggling in to be used in a killing spree inside the Palace.
+ He watched as Butcher Qian tore off the strips, opened out the carcass, and very gently lifted a large object out in his cradled arms.
+ 'Coo!' he gasped.
+ It was a human body.
+ Butcher Qian laid the body on the floor.
+ It was small and slight with an abundance of hair.
+ To his astonishment Trinket found himself looking down at a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl.
+ She was dressed in the flimsiest of summer garments, her eyes were tightly closed, and her body was completely motionless except for the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
+ 'Who is this girl?' he asked softly.
+ 'Why have you brought her here?'
+ 'She's the Little Countess,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mu Family's Little Countess.'
+ Trinket's eyes grew round with astonishment.
+ 'The Mu Family's Little Countess?'
+ 'Young Lord Mu's little sister,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The Mus have kidnapped our Brother Xu, so we've grabbed her as a hostage, just to make sure they don't do Brother Xu any harm.'
+ 'Brilliant!' said Trinket, his surprise now mixed with pleasure.
+ 'But how did you get hold of her?'
+ 'Yesterday, after we found that Brother Xu had disappeared,' said Butcher Qian, 'while you and the others went back to Willow Lane, I went off on my own to make a few enquiries.
+ First of all I wanted to find out whether the Mu Family had any other places in the city besides the Willow Lane one where they might be holding him; and secondly I wanted to know how many more of them there are, so that we have some idea what we are up against if it comes to a fight-out.
+ Well—huh!—I can tell you the answer to the second question straight away.
+ A lot.
+ The young Lord Mu himself has come to the Capital and he's brought some of their best fighting-men with him.'
+ Trinket frowned.
+ 'Tamardy!
+ How many Triads have we got altogether in the Green Wood Lodge?
+ Enough to fight them ten to one?'
+ 'No need for you to worry, Master,' said Butcher Qian.
+ The reason the Mu Family is here now is not because they want to fight us Triads.
+ It's because the traitor Wu Sangui's son, Wu Yingxiong, is in town.'
+ Trinket nodded.
+ 'They've come to assassinate the Little Traitor, you mean?'
+ 'Right first time, Master, ' said the butcher.
+ 'I always said you were a smart one.
+ As long as the Old Traitor and the Little Traitor are in Yunnan, they can't touch them; but as soon as one of them leaves Yunnan, it gives them an opportunity.
+ The only thing is, the Little Traitor is taking no chances with his security: he's brought a whole lot of first-rate fighting-men to protect him, so they won't find it an easy job to kill him.
+ I found out that those Mu folk do have another place in the city, but when I went to have a look there, the menfolk all seemed to have gone out, and there wasn't any sign of Brother Xu there either.
+ The only people I found there were this girl and a couple of maids looking after her.
+ It seemed too good a chance to miss, so—'
+ 'So you went to catch a sheep, but while you were about it you thought you might as well take a pig,' said Trinket, slightly reconstructing the proverb.
+ Butcher Qian laughed.
+ 'That's about it.
+ Although she's only a young girl, she means all the world to the Mu folk.
+ As long as their Little Countess is in our hands, Brother Xu will be safe as houses.
+ There's absolutely no fear of their not looking after him properly.'
+ 'Brother Qian,' said Trinket admiringly, 'this is a major achievement.'
+ 'Oh, I don't know about that,' said Butcher Qian coyly.
+ 'Anyway, thank you, Master.'
+ 'So now we've got this Little Countess,' said Trinket, 'what are we going to do with her?'
+ While they were talking, he had been stealing glances at the recumbent figure on the floor.
+ She was very beautiful—though he phrased it to himself mentally in the debased language of the brothel.
+ 'It's a tricky business, this,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'I was thinking it was one for the Master himself to decide.'
+ 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ Trinket asked presently, as if he had been mulling the matter over in his mind.
+ He hadn't been with the Triads very long, but long enough by now to know the drill.
+ It was all 'Master this' and 'Master that' and respectfully waiting to be told by the Master what they should do; but invariably they had already decided what they wanted to do and only wanted the Master's approval for doing it, so that if there was any question about it later, the Master would have sole responsibility for what they had done.
+ And so his invariable response to the invariable question was to turn it back on them: 'What do you think we ought to do?'
+ 'Well, for the present,' said Butcher Qian, 'we've got to hide her somewhere safe and somewhere where the Mu people can't find her.
+ There are a lot of them around in the Capital right now, and though it's to assassinate the Little Traitor that they're here, now that we've killed one of their people and they've kidnapped Brother Xu, you can be sure they're keeping a close watch on anywhere in the city where there are Triads.
+ From now on we shan't be able to take a piss or a shit without their knowing about it.'
+ Trinket laughed.
+ Here at last was someone who spoke his language.
+ 'Sit down, Brother Qian,' he said.
+ 'Let's take our time over this.'
+ 'Thank you, Master,' said Butcher Qian, seating himself in one of the chairs and continuing.
+ 'There were really two reasons why I hid the Little Countessinside this pig's carcass.
+ One was to get her past the Palace Guard: they always search everyone at the gate.
+ But it was also to get her past any of the Mu Family spies who might be out watching for us.
+ There are some really dangerous people among that Mu lot, you can't afford to take any chances.
+ If she's hidden anywhere other than in the Palace, there's no guaranteeing they wouldn't try to get her back.'
+ 'So you're proposing to hide her in the Palace?' said Trinket.
+ 'Well, that's not really for me to say,' said the butcher.
+ 'It's entirely up to you, Master.
+ Mind you, look anywhere you like, you'll never find a safer place than this.
+ However many of their ace fighters the Mu Family may have got in the city, they're not going to take on the Palace Guard.
+ Not that they'd ever guess she was in the Palace, anyway.
+ But even suppose—it's very unlikely, but just suppose—they did find out she was here, they'd never try getting in here to rescue her.
+ If they could get in to do that, they could just as well get in to carry off the Tartar Emperor, and they've never tried to do that yet because they know it's out of the question.
+ Of course, it was rather a nerve, taking it on myself to bring the Little Countess in here without consulting you.
+ It means a lot of danger for you, Master.
+ And trouble.
+ I deserve to be hung.'
+ 'You say yourself that you deserve to be hung,' thought Trinket, 'but you know damn well that you won't be.
+ Still, it does seem the best plan to hide her in here.
+ As he says, it's the one place they will never think of looking; and they'd never be able to get her out of here, even if they did.
+ Well, Mister Butcher Qian, if you had the nerve to kidnap her and smuggle her into the Palace, I suppose I ought to have the nerve to keep her here.'
+ He gave the man a smile.
+ 'It's a very good idea,' he said.
+ 'We'll hide her here then.'
+ 'If you think it's all right, I'm sure it will be,' said Butcher Qian.
+ 'There's this to be said too, for hiding her here.
+ When this business is over and the Little Countess is back with her own people again, it won't be any disgrace to her if they know that she's been kept all the time in the Palace; whereas if I were to keep her in the basement of my slaughterhouse—well, what with the stink of blood and offal round her all the time, it wouldn't be very nice for a person of her quality.'
+ 'Unless you fed her on China-root and gave her Shaoxing wine to drink,' said Trinket mischievously.
+ Butcher Qian laughed at the interruption before continuing: 'Besides, although the Little Countess is only a girl, being a member of the fair sex it wouldn't do much for her good name if she was kept with a lot of rough men; whereas being kept with you, Master, it won't matter.'
+ 'Why's that?' said Trinket in some surprise.
+ 'Well,' said Butcher Qian, 'you're young too, and besides . . . besides . . . you work in the Palace, so of course ...
+ I mean . . . it's all right.'
+ The butcher was clearly embarrassed, and Trinket had to think for some moments before he saw why.
+ 'Oh, I see.
+ You mean because I'm a eunuch.
+ If I'm the one guarding her, it won't do any harm to her reputation.
+ But I'm only a pretend eunuch, you know.'
+ It was because he wasn't a real eunuch that he hadn't grasped sooner what the embarrassed butcher was getting at.
+ 'Is your bedroom in there, Master?' asked the butcher.
+ Trinket nodded.
+ Butcher Qian took up the Little Countess in his arms, carried her into the bedroom, and laid her down on the bed.
+ There was just the one large bed there.
+ Previously there had been a smaller one as well in which Trinket used to sleep, but after the death of Old Hai, he had had it moved out.
+ He had too many secrets to want a young eunuch attendant living with him in his apartment.
+ 'Before I brought her in, I closed the Holy Hall and Yang Cord points on her back and the Pillar of Heaven one on her neck so that she couldn't move or speak,' said the butcher.
+ 'If you want her to eat anything, you'll have to open them up again; but before you do that, I'd advise you to first close the Ring Jump points on her legs so that she can't run away.
+ The Mu people are all very skilled in the Martial Arts, and though a young girl like this isn't likely to know much about that sort of thing, it isn't worth taking any chances.'
+ Trinket wanted to ask him where the Holy Hall and Ring Jump vital points were and how you closed and opened them; but then he remembered that, as Master of the Green Wood Lodge and a disciple of the great Helmsman, he was probably expected to know about these things and felt sure his subordinates would despise him if they found out that he was totally ignorant of these matters; so he just nodded and said that he would.
+ 'Anyway, ' he thought, 'I shouldn't have any difficulty in handling her.
+ She's only a girl.'
+ 'Could you lend me a knife, Master?' said Butcher Qian.
+ Trinket wondered nervously what he wanted it for, but stooped down nevertheless and extracted the dagger from inside his boot.
+ Butcher Qian took it from him and made an incision in the back of the pig's carcass.
+ Unaware of the blade's incomparable sharpness, he was somewhat surprised at the ease with which it sank in, at once burying itself up to the hilt and slicing through fat and flesh as if it were bean curd.
+ 'This is a good weapon you've got here,' he said admiringly.
+ In no time at all he had cut off the two forelegs and two large collops from the back.
+ ''You can keep these to roast and eat yourself, Master, ' he said.
+ The rest you can give to the little Goong-goongs to carry back to the kitchens.
+ I'll take my leave now.
+ If there's any business in the Society to report, I'll let you know straight away, '
+ 'Right, ' said Trinket.
+ He glanced towards the Little Countess lying on the bed: 'This girl—she's sleeping very soundly.'
+ He'd wanted to say, 'This girl better not stay here long.
+ It's terribly dangerous having her here.
+ If anyone were to find out, I'd really be in the shit, '
+ But then he reflected that all members of the Triad Society were heroes who laughed at danger and would despise him if they heard him uttering such craven words.
+ As soon as Butcher Qian had gone back to the kitchens, Trinket barred the door and checked the window to make sure there were no chinks or slits in the paper through which anyone could peep into the room, then, sitting on the edge of the bed, he inspected the Little Countess.
+ She was staring fixedly at the top of the bedstead, and when she saw Trinket approach, she closed her eyes fast.
+ He laughed.
+ 'You can't talk and you can't move!
+ All you can do is just lie there like a good little girl!'
+ Her dress was still clean, and Trinket reflected that Butcher Qian must have done a good job of cleaning out the inside of the carcass.
+ He threw a coverlet over her.
+ From the snowy pallor of her cheeks, drained of all their colour, and the fluttering of her long eyelashes, he could tell that she was very frightened.
+ 'Don't be afraid,' he said.
+ 'I'm not going to kill you.
+ Just wait a few days and I'll be setting you free again.'
+ The Little Countess opened her eyes wide, looked at him for a moment, and then quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket thought of the great awe in which the Mu Family were held by all the Brotherhood of River and Lake; of their stuck-up henchman the elder Bo—now dead, fortunately, struck down by one of his Triads—and his younger brother who had raged at him and nearly broken his wrist.
+ (The bruise was still there, he saw on inspecting it, and only slightly fainter.)
+ 'And now their Little Countess is in my hands,' he thought.
+ 'I can beat her and curse her as much as I want to, and she won't be able to move a muscle.'
+ The thought was so gratifying that it made him laugh out loud, causing the Little Countess to open her eyes to see what he was laughing at.
+ 'Call yourself a countess, do you?' said Trinket.
+ 'I suppose you think you're very superior.
+ Well, to me you're nobody.'
+ He grasped her right ear and gave it a few pulls, then he pinched her nose between finger and thumb and twisted it a couple of times, laughing as he did so.
+ The Little Countess had shut her eyes again, but two fat tears escaped from under their lids and coursed down her cheeks.
+ 'Don't cry!'
+ Trinket shouted at her.
+ 'I forbid you to cry.'
+ But the Little Countess's tears ran even faster.
+ 'Hot-piece momma!' said Trinket exasperatedly.
+ 'Being stubborn, are we?
+ Open your eyes and look at me, you smelly little tart!'
+ But the Little Countess closed her eyes even tighter.
+ 'Huh!
+ Think you're on your Mu Family estate still, do you?' said Trinket.
+ Think you've got your tamardy Paladins to look after you?
+ Grandmother's!
+ What's so tamardy wonderful about them?
+ I tell you this: if they ever come my way, I'll chop them into little bits, each one of them.'
+ No response.
+ 'Open your eyes!' he hollered at the top of his voice.
+ But all the Little Countess's strength seemed to go into closing them tighter.
+ 'All right,' he said.
+ 'If you won't open your lousy eyes, you won't be needing them any more.
+ I might as well cut them out.
+ They'll make a nice little snack for me next time I'm having a drink.'
+ He took out his dagger and slid the flat of the blade a couple of times over her eyelids.
+ A shudder ran through her whole body, but she still would not open her eyes.
+ Trinket was at his wit's end to know what to do with her.
+ 'You don't want to open your eyes but I want you to open them,' he said.
+ 'All right, we'll play a little game and see who comes out best, the high and mighty Little Countess or the nasty little beggar-boy.
+ For the time being I'm not going to cut your eyes out.
+ I'll cut a little turtle on your left cheek and a cow-pat on the right one.
+ Then, when the cuts have scarred over and you go out into the street, people will come crowding round in thousands to gaze at the sight.
+ "Oh, look!" they'll say.
+ "How beautiful!
+ The beautiful Mu Countess with a turtle on one cheek and a cow-pat on the other!"
+ Now will you open your eyes?'
+ The poor Little Countess, mistress of herself only in the ability to open or close her eyes, now closed them even tighter.
+ 'I see,' said Trinket, pretending to be talking to himself.
+ The little tart knows she's not good-looking.
+ She's decided she wants a bit of decoration on her face to improve her looks.
+ All right, then.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.'
+ He took the lid off an inkstone that was on the table, ground some ink in it, and dabbled the tip of a writing-brush in it until it was well soaked.
+ The brush, the inkstone, and the ink-stick had all been the property of Old Hai.
+ Trinket had never had a writing-brush in his hand before and held it like a chopstick.
+ Carrying it over to the bed, he proceeded to draw a small turtle with it on the Little Countess's left cheek.
+ Her tears continued to flow, turning the drawing into an inky streak.
+ 'I'm doing the pattern with the brush first,' he said.
+ 'I'll be going over it with a knife afterwards.
+ That's what they do when they make seals, isn't it?
+ Ah, yes, Little Countess, I know what.
+ When the carving's ready, I'll be able to take you out into Changan Street and set up there as a print-seller.
+ "Roll up, roll up!"
+ I'll say.
+ "Buy a nice turtle print, three cash a sheet!"
+ I'll have your face ready painted over with black ink, then as soon as a customer gives me his three cash: sheet of white paper, rub it over, peel it off, and there's a little turtle!
+ Won't take a moment.
+ I ought to be able to do a hundred in a day.
+ That's three hundred cash.
+ Quite a tidy little sum!'
+ All the time he was gabbling this nonsense, her eyelids never ceased to flutter.
+ He could tell that she was both very angry and very frightened.
+ This gave him great satisfaction and inspired him to further idiocy.
+ 'Hm, a cow-pat on the right cheek—no, I don't think anyone's going to pay good money for that.
+ A fat pig would be better—a great big, fat, stupid-looking pig.
+ That would sell.'
+ He moved round to the other side with his brush and executed a crude drawing on her right cheek: a creature with four legs and a tail which could perhaps have been a pig but might equally well have been a cat or a dog.
+ Then he laid the brush down and took up a pair of silver-shears, the point of which he applied lightly to her left cheek.
+ 'Now, if you don't open your eyes, I'll start cutting.
+ I'll carve the turtle first.
+ The pig can wait till later.'
+ The Little Countess's tears were now welling through the closed lids in streams, but still she wouldn't open her eyes.
+ And since Trinket was unwilling to admit defeat, there was nothing for it but to begin moving the point around on her cheek.
+ Although she had the most delicate complexion imaginable, the point was so blunt that it made not the slightest mark on her skin; but so great was her fear, that she imagined this horrible boy really was cutting patterns on her face and, from excess of emotion, she fainted clean away.
+ Trinket got a shock when he saw the change that had come over her and wondered for a moment if she really had died of fright; but when he held his hand against her nostrils, he was relieved to find that she was still breathing.
+ 'Little tart!' he said.
+ 'You're only shamming dead.'
+ It was by now obvious that she would die sooner than open her eyes for him, but he was damned if he was going to admit defeat.
+ 'As the man reading the songbook while he rode his mule said, "We'll work something out as we go along,"' he thought: 'Old Trink's not going to be beaten by a smelly little girl like you.'
+ He took a wet cloth and wiped the ink-marks from her cheeks.
+ They came off fairly easily, revealing once more the beauty of her delicate, rather aristocratic features.
+ She had fine eyebrows, long lashes, a small mouth and a slightly aquiline nose.
+ But Trinket was unimpressed.
+ 'Little Countess Lah-di-dah,' he said.
+ 'I expect you look down on a little eunuch like me.
+ Well, I don't think much of you either, so that makes us quits.'
+ After a while the Little Countess began to regain consciousness and presently opened her eyes.
+ Startled to see Trinket bending over her, staring, with far from friendly eyes, from barely a foot away, she quickly closed them again.
+ Trinket laughed gleefully.
+ 'Ha ha!
+ You've opened your eyes now and looked at me.
+ I've won, admit it!'
+ It was agreeable to have won, but it rather took the gloss off his victory that she couldn't speak.
+ He would have liked to open the vital points that would enable her to do so, but he didn't know how.
+ 'Now that your vital points are closed, you can't eat,' he said.
+ 'If they're not opened, you'll just starve to death.
+ I was thinking of opening them for you, but though I did once learn the method, it's such a long while ago that I can't remember it.
+ Do you know how it's done?
+ If you don't know, just lie there perfectly still.
+ If you do know, blink your eyes three times.'
+ He watched her intently as she lay there, inert and unblinking.
+ After a long pause, very slowly and deliberately, she blinked her eyes three times.
+ 'Thank heavens for that!' said Trinket delightedly.
+ 'I was beginning to think all of you Mu people were dead from the neck up.'
+ He lifted her up in his arms and sat her down in a chair.
+ 'Now look,' he said, 'I'm going to start pointing to places on your body.
+ If I point to the right place, blink three times; if it isn't right, just keep your eyes open and don't move.
+ When I've found the right vital point, I'll open it up for you.
+ Understand?'
+ The Little Countess blinked three times.
+
+ 韦小宝从上书房侍候了康熙下来，又到御膳房去。
+ 过不多时，钱老板带着四名伙计，抬了两口洗剥得干干净净的大肥猪到来，每一口净肉便有三百来斤，向韦小宝道：“桂公公，你老人家一早起身，吃这茯苓花雕猪最有补益，最好是现割现烤。
+ 小人将一口猪送到你老人家房中，明儿一早，你老人家就可割来烤了吃，吃不完的，再命厨房里做成咸肉。”
+ 韦小宝知他必有深意，便道：“你倒想得周到。
+ 那就跟我来。”
+ 钱老板将一口光猪留在厨房，另一口抬到韦小宝屋中。
+ 尚膳监管事太监的住处和御厨相近，那肥猪抬入房中之后，韦小宝命小太监带领抬猪的伙计到厨房中等候，待三人走后，便掩上了门。
+ 钱老板低声问道：“韦香主，屋中没旁人吗？”
+ 韦小宝摇了摇头。
+ 钱老板俯身轻轻将光猪翻了过来，只见猪肚上开膛之处，横贴着几条猪皮，封住了割缝。
+ 韦小宝心想：“这肥猪肚中定是藏着什么古怪物事，莫非是兵器之类，天地会想在皇宫中杀人大闹？”
+ 不由得心中怦怦而跳。
+ 果见钱老板撕下猪皮，双手拉开猪肚，轻轻抱了一团物事出来。
+ 韦小宝“咦”的一声惊呼，见他抱出来的竟是一个人。
+ 钱老板将那人横放在地下。
+ 只见这人身体瘦小，一头长发，却是个十四五岁的少女，身上穿了薄薄的单衫，双目紧闭，一动也不动，只是胸口微微起伏。
+ 韦小宝大奇，低声问道：“这小姑娘是谁？
+ 你带她来干什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“这是沐王府的郡主。”
+ 韦小宝更是惊奇，睁大了眼睛，道：“沐王府的郡主？”
+ 钱老板道：“正是。
+ 沐王府小公爷的嫡亲妹子。
+ 他们掳了徐三哥去，我们就捉了这位郡主娘娘来抵押，教他们不敢动徐三哥一根寒毛。”
+ 韦小宝又惊又喜，说道：“妙计，妙计！
+ 怎地捉她来的？”
+ 钱老板道：“昨天徐天川徐三哥给人绑了去，韦香主带同众位哥哥，二次去杨柳胡同评理，属下便出去打探消息，想知道沐王府那些人，除了杨柳胡同之外，是不是还有别的落脚所在，徐三哥是不是给他们囚禁在那里，想知道他们在京城里还有哪些人，当真要动手，咱们心里可也得先有个底子。
+ 这一打探，嘿，沐王府来得人可还当真不少，沐家小公爷带头，率领了王府的大批好手。”
+ 韦小宝皱起了眉头，说道：“他妈的！
+ 咱们青木堂在京里有多少兄弟？
+ 能不能十个打他们一个？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主不用担心。
+ 沐王府这次来到北京，不是为跟咱们天地会打架。
+ 原来大汉奸吴三桂的大儿子吴应熊，来到了京城。”
+ 韦小宝点头道：“沐王府要行刺这姓吴的小汉奸？”
+ 钱老板道：“是啊。
+ 韦香主料事如神。
+ 大汉奸、小汉奸在云南，动不了他们的手，一离云南，便有机可乘了。
+ 但这小汉奸自然防备周密，身边有不少武功高手保护，要杀他可也不是易事。
+ 沐王府那些人果然另有住处，属下过去查看，那些人都不在家，屋里却也没徐三哥的踪迹，只有这小丫头和两个服侍她的女人留在屋里，那可是难得的良机……”
+ 韦小宝道：“于是你就顺手牵羊，反手牵猪，将她捉了来？”
+ 钱老板微笑道：“正是。
+ 这小姑娘年纪虽小，沐王府却当她是凤凰一般，只要这小郡主在咱们手里，徐三哥便稳如泰山，不怕他们不好好服侍。”
+ 韦小宝道：“钱大哥这件功劳倒大得紧呢。”
+ 钱老板道：“多谢韦香主夸奖。”
+ 韦小宝道：“咱们拿到了小郡主，却又怎样？”
+ 说着向躺在地下的那少女瞧了几眼，心道：“这小娘皮长得可挺美啊。”
+ 钱老板道：“这件事说大不大，说小不小，要听韦香主的意思办理。”
+ 韦小宝沉吟道：“你说怎么办？”
+ 他跟天地会的人相处的时候虽暂，却已摸到了他们的脾气。
+ 这些人嘴里尊称自己是香主，满口什么静候香主吩咐云云，其实各人肚里早就有了主意，只盼得到自己赞同，于是一切便推在韦香主头上，日后他们就不会担当重大干系。
+ 他对付的法子是反问一句：“你说怎么办？”
+ 钱老板道：“眼下只有将这个郡主藏在一个稳妥所在，让沐王府的人找不到。
+ 这次沐家来到京城的着实不少，虽说是为了杀小汉奸吴应熊，但咱们杀了他们的人，徐大哥又给他们拿了去，这会儿咱们天地会每一处落脚之地，一定能给他们钉得紧紧的。
+ 我们便拉一泡尿，放一个屁，只怕沐王府的人也都知道了。”
+ 韦小宝嗤的一笑，觉得这钱老板谈吐可喜，很合自己脾胃，笑道：“钱大哥，咱们坐下来慢慢商量。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，多谢香主。”
+ 在一张椅上坐了，续道：“属下将小郡主藏在猪肚里带进宫来，一来是为瞒过宫门侍卫的重重搜检，二来是要瞒过沐王府众人的耳目。
+ 他奶奶的，沐公爷手下，只怕真有几个厉害人物，不可不防。
+ 小郡主若不是藏在宫里，难保不给他们抢了回去。”
+ 韦小宝道：“你说要将小郡主藏在宫里？”
+ 钱老板道：“属下可不敢这么说，一切全凭韦香主作主。
+ 藏在宫里，当然是普天下最稳妥的所在。
+ 沐王府的高手再多，总敌不过大内侍卫。
+ 小郡主竟会在皇宫之中，别说他们决计想不到，查不出，就算知道了，又怎有能耐冲进皇宫来救人？
+ 他们如能进宫来将小郡主救出去，那么连鞑子皇帝也能绑架去了。
+ 天下决没这个道理。
+ 不过属下胆大妄为，事先没向韦香主请示，擅自将小郡主带进宫来，给韦香主增添不少危险，不少麻烦，实在该死之极。”
+ 韦小宝心道：“你将人带都带进来了，自己说该死，却也没死。
+ 把小郡主藏在宫里，果然是好计，沐王府的人一来想不到，二来救不出。
+ 你胆大妄为，难道我胆子就小了？”
+ 笑道：“你这计策很好，我将小郡主藏在这里好了。”
+ 钱老板道：“是，是，韦香主说这件事行得，那定然行得。
+ 属下又想，将来事情了结之后，小郡主总是要放还给他们的。
+ 他们得知郡主娘娘这些日子是住在宫里，也不辱没了她身份，倘若老是关在小号屠宰房的地窖之中，闻那牛血猪血的腥气，未免太对不起人。”
+ 韦小宝笑道：“每天喂她吃些茯苓、党参、花雕、鸡蛋，也就是了。”
+ 钱老板嘿嘿一笑，说道：“再说，小郡主年纪虽然幼小，总是女子，跟我们这些臭男人住在一起，于名声未免有碍，跟韦香主在一起，就不要紧了。”
+ 韦小宝一怔，问道：“为什么？”
+ 钱老板道：“韦香主年纪也轻，何况又是…… 又是在宫里办事的，自然…… 自然没什么。”
+ 言语吞吞吐吐，有些不便出口。
+ 韦小宝见他神色忸怩，想了一想，这才明白：“原来你说我是太监，因此小郡主交我看管，于她声名无碍。
+ 你可不知我这太监是冒牌货。”
+ 只因他并不是真的太监，这才要想了一想之后方能明白，否则钱老板第一句话他就懂了。
+ 钱老板问道：“韦香主的卧室在里进罢？”
+ 韦小宝点点头。
+ 钱老板俯身抱起小郡主，走到后进，放在床上。
+ 房中本来有大床、小床各一，海大富死后，韦小宝已叫人将小床抬了出去。
+ 他隐秘之事甚多，没要小太监住在屋里服侍。
+ 钱老板道：“属下带小郡主进宫来时，已点了她背心上的神堂穴、阳纲穴，还点了她后颈的天柱穴，让她不能动弹，说不出话。
+ 韦香主要放她吃饭，就可解开她穴道，不过最好先点她腿上环跳穴，免得她逃跑。
+ 沐王府的人武功甚高，这小姑娘倒不会多少武功，却也不可不防。”
+ 韦小宝想问他什么叫神堂穴、环跳穴，如何点穴、解穴，但转念一想，自己是青木堂香主，又是总舵主的弟子，连点穴、解穴也不会，岂不是让下属们太也瞧不起？
+ 反正对付一个小姑娘总不是什么难事，点头道：“知道了。”
+ 钱老板道：“请韦香主借一把刀使。”
+ 韦小宝心想：“你要刀干什么？”
+ 从靴桶中取出匕首，递了给他。
+ 钱老板接了过来，在猪背上一划，没料到这匕首锋利无匹，割猪肉如切豆腐，一剑下去，直没至柄。
+ 钱老板吃了一惊，赞道：“好剑！”
+ 割下两片脊肉，两只前腿，道：“韦香主留着烧烤来吃，余下的吩咐小公公们抬回厨房去罢。
+ 属下这就告辞，会里的事情，属下随时来向韦香主禀告。”
+ 韦小宝接过匕首，说道：“好！”
+ 向卧在床上的小郡主瞧了一眼，道：“这小娘皮睡得倒挺安稳。”
+ 他本来想说：“这小姑娘在宫里耽得久了，太过危险，倘若给人发觉，那可糟糕之极。”
+ 但想天地会的英雄好汉岂有怕危险的？
+ 这等话说出口来，不免给人小觑了。
+ 待钱老板回去厨房，韦小宝忙闩上了门，又查看窗户，一无缝隙，这才坐到床边，去看那小郡主，只见她正睁着圆圆的眼睛，望着床顶，见韦小宝过来，忙闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你不会说话，不会动弹，安安静静的躺在这里，最乖不过。”
+ 见她身上衣衫也不污秽，想是钱老板将那口肥猪的肚里洗得十分干净，不留丝毫血渍，于是拉过被来，盖在她身上。
+ 只见她脸颊雪白，没半分血色，长长的睫毛不住颤动，想是心中十分害怕，笑道：“你不用怕，我不会杀了你的。
+ 过得几天，就放你出去。”
+ 小郡主睁开眼来，瞧了他一眼，忙又闭上眼睛。
+ 韦小宝寻思：“你沐王府在江湖上好大威风，那日苏北道上，你家那白寒松好大架子，丝毫没将老子瞧在眼里，这当儿还不是让我手下的人打死了。
+ 他奶奶的……”
+ 想到此处，伸起手来，见手腕上黑黑一圈乌青兀自未退，隐隐还感疼痛，心道：“那白寒枫死了哥哥，没处出气，捏得老子骨头也险些断了。
+ 想不到沐王府的郡主娘娘却落在我手里，老子要打便打，要骂便骂，你半分动弹不得，哈哈，哈哈！”
+ 想到得意处，不禁笑出声来。
+ 小郡主听到笑声，睁开眼来，要看他为什么发笑。
+ 韦小宝笑道：“你是郡主娘娘，很了不起，是不是？
+ 你奶奶的，老子才不将你放在眼里呢！”
+ 走上前去，抓住她右耳，提了三下，又捏住她鼻子，扭了两下，哈哈大笑。
+ 小郡主闭着的双眼中流出眼泪，两行珠泪从腮边滚了下来。
+ 韦小宝喝道：“不许哭！
+ 老子叫你不许哭，就不许哭！”
+ 小郡主的眼泪却流得更加多了。
+ 韦小宝骂道：“辣块妈妈，臭小娘皮，你还倔强！
+ 睁开眼睛来，瞧着我！”
+ 小郡主双眼闭得更紧。
+ 韦小宝道：“哈，你还道这里是你沐王府，你奶奶的，你家里刘白方苏四大家将，有他妈的什么了不起，终有一日撞在老子手里，一个个都斩成了肉酱。”
+ 大声吆喝：“你睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主又用力闭了闭眼睛。
+ 韦小宝道：“好，你不肯睁眼，要这一对臭眼珠子有什么用？
+ 不如挖了出来，让老子下酒。”
+ 提起匕首，平放刃锋，在她眼皮上拖了几拖。
+ 小郡主全身打个冷战，仍不睁开眼睛。
+ 韦小宝倒拿她没有法子，说道：“你不睁眼，我偏偏要你睁眼，咱哥儿俩耗上了，倒要瞧瞧是你郡主娘娘厉害，还是我这小流氓、小叫化子厉害。
+ 我暂且不来挖你的眼珠，挖了眼珠，倒算是你赢了，永远不能瞧我。
+ 我要在你脸蛋上用尖刀子雕些花样，左边脸上刻只小乌龟，右边脸上刻一堆牛粪。
+ 等到将来结了疤，你到街上去之时，成千成万的人围拢来瞧西洋镜，大家都说：‘美啊，美啊，来看沐王府的小美人儿，左边脸上一只王八，右边脸上一堆牛粪。
+ ’你到底睁不睁眼？”
+ 小郡主全身难动，只有睁眼闭眼能自拿主意，听得韦小宝这么说，眼睛越闭越紧。
+ 韦小宝自言自语：“原来这臭花娘嫌自己脸蛋儿不美，想要我在她脸上装扮装扮，好，我先刻一只乌龟！”
+ 打开桌上砚台，磨了墨，用笔蘸了墨。
+ 这些笔墨砚台都是海老公之物，韦小宝一生从未抓过笔杆，这时拿笔便如拿筷子，提笔在小郡主左脸画了一只乌龟。
+ 小郡主的泪水直流下来，在乌龟的笔划上流出了一道墨痕。
+ 韦小宝道：“我先用笔打个样子，然后用刀子来刻，就好像人家刻图章。
+ 对，对，郡主娘娘，咱们刻好之后，我牵了你去长安门大街，大叫：‘哪一位客官要印乌龟？
+ 三文钱印一张！’
+ 我用黑墨涂了你脸，有人给三文钱，就用张白纸在你脸上一印，便是一只乌龟，快得很！
+ 一天准能印上一百张。
+ 三百文铜钱，够花的了。”
+ 他一面胡扯，一面偷看小郡主的脸色，见她睫毛不住颤动，显然又是愤怒，又是害怕。
+ 他甚是得意，说道：“嗯，右脸刻一堆牛粪，可没人出钱来买牛粪的，不如刻只猪，又肥又蠢，生意一定好。”
+ 提起笔来，在她右边脸颊上干划一通，画的东西有四只脚，一条尾巴就是了，也不知像猫还是像狗。
+ 他放下毛笔，取过一把剪银子的剪刀，将剪刀轻轻放在小郡主左颊，喝道：“你再不睁眼，我要刻花了！
+ 我先刻乌龟，肥猪可不忙刻。”
+ 小郡主泪如泉涌，偏偏就是不肯睁眼。
+ 韦小宝无可奈何，不肯认输，便将剪尖在她脸上轻轻划来划去。
+ 这剪尖其实甚钝，小郡主肌肤虽嫩，却也没伤到她丝毫，可是她惊惶之下，只道这小恶人真的用刀子在自己脸上雕花，一阵气急，便晕了过去。
+ 韦小宝见她神色有异，生怕是给自己吓死了，倒吃了一惊，忙伸手去探她鼻息，幸好尚有呼吸，便道：“臭小娘装死！”
+ 寻思：“你死也不肯睁眼，难道我便输了给你？
+ 咱们骑驴看唱本，走着瞧，韦小宝总不会折在你臭小娘手里。”
+ 拿了块湿布来，抹去她两颊上黑墨，直抹了三把，才抹得干净。
+ 但见她眉淡睫长，嘴小鼻挺，容颜着实秀丽，自言自语：“你是郡主娘娘，心中一定瞧不起我这小太监，我也瞧不起你，大家还不是扯直？”
+ 过了一会，小郡主慢慢醒转，一睁开眼，只见韦小宝一双眼睛和她双目相距不过一尺，正狠狠的瞪着她，不由得吃了一惊，急忙闭眼。
+ 韦小宝哈哈大笑，道：“你终于睁开眼来，瞧见我了，是老子赢了，是不是？”
+ 他自觉得胜，心下高兴，只是小郡主不会说话，未免有些扫兴，要想去解她穴道，却又不知其法，说道：“你给人点了穴道，倘若解不开，不能吃饭，岂不饿死了？
+ 我本想给你解开，不过解穴的法门，从前学过，现下可忘了。
+ 你会不会？
+ 你如不会，那就躺着做僵尸，一动也别动，要是会的，眼睛眨三下。”
+ 他目不转睛的望着小郡主，只见她眼睛一动不动，过了好一会，突然双眼缓缓的连眨三下。
+ 韦小宝大喜，道：“我只道沐王府中的人既然姓沐，一定个个是木头，呆头呆脑，什么都不会，原来你这小木头还会解穴。”
+ 将她抱起，坐在椅上，说道：“你瞧着，我在你身上各个部位指点，倘若指得对的，你就眨三下眼睛，指得不对，眼睛睁得大大的，一动也不能动。
+ 我找到解穴的部位，就给你解开穴道，懂不懂？
+ 懂的就眨眼。”
+ 小郡主眨了三下眼睛。
+
+ GENTLE READER, What, you may ask, was the origin of this book?
+ Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye.
+ Long ago, when the goddess Nǚ-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square.
+ She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned mountains.
+ Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers.
+ It could move about at will and could grow or shrink to any size it wanted.
+ Observing that all the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and lamentation.
+ One day, in the midst of its lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist approaching from a great distance, each of them remarkable for certain eccentricities of manner and appearance.
+ When they arrived at the foot of Greensickness Peak, they sat down on the ground and began to talk.
+ The monk, catching sight of a lustrous, translucent stone—it was in fact the rejected building block which had now shrunk itself to the size of a fan-pendant and looked very attractive in its new shape—took it up on the palm of his hand and addressed it with a smile: 'Ha, I see you have magical properties!
+ But nothing to recommend you.
+ I shall have to cut a few words on you so that anyone seeing you will know at once that you are something special.
+ After that I shall take you to a certain brilliant successful poetical cultivated aristocratic elegant delectable luxurious opulent locality on a little trip.'
+ The stone was delighted.
+ 'What words will you cut?
+ Where is this place you will take me to?
+ I beg to be enlightened.'
+ 'Do not ask,' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'You will know soon enough when the time comes.'
+ And with that he slipped the stone into his sleeve and set off at a great pace with the Taoist.
+ But where they both went to I have no idea.
+ Countless aeons went by and a certain Taoist called Vanitas in quest of the secret of immortality chanced to be passing below that same Greensickness Peak in the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains when he caught sight of a large stone standing there, on which the characters of a long inscription were clearly discernible.
+ Vanitas read the inscription through from beginning to end and learned that this was a once lifeless stone block which had been found unworthy to repair the sky, but which had magically transformed its shape and been taken down by the Buddhist mahasattva Impervioso and the Taoist illuminate Mysterioso into the world of mortals, where it had lived out the life of a man before finally attaining nirvana and returning to the other shore.
+ The inscription named the country where it had been born, and went into considerable detail about its domestic life, youthful amours, and even the verses, mottoes and riddles it had written.
+ All it lacked was the authentication of a dynasty and date.
+ On the back of the stone was inscribed the following quatrain:
+ Found unfit to repair the azure sky Long years a foolish mortal man was I.
+ My life in both worlds on this stone is writ: Pray who will copy out and publish it?
+ From his reading of the inscription Vanitas realized that this was a stone of some consequence.
+ Accordingly he addressed himself to it in the following manner: 'Brother Stone, according to what you yourself seem to imply in these verses, this story of yours contains matter of sufficient interest to merit publication and has been carved here with that end in view.
+ But as far as I can see (a) it has no discoverable dynastic period, and (b) it contains no examples of moral grandeur among its characters—no statesmanship, no social message of any kind.
+ All I can find in it, in fact, are a number of females, conspicuous, if at all, only for their passion or folly or for some trifling talent or insignificant virtue.
+ Even if I were to copy all this out, I cannot see that it would make a very remarkable book.'
+ 'Come, your reverence,' said the stone (for Vanitas had been correct in assuming that it could speak) 'must you be so obtuse?
+ All the romances ever written have an artificial period setting—Han or Tang for the most part.
+ In refusing to make use of that stale old convention and telling my Story of the Stone exactly as it occurred, it seems to me that, far from depriving it of anything, I have given it a freshness these other books do not have.
+ 'Your so-called "historical romances", consisting, as they do, of scandalous anecdotes about statesmen and emperors of bygone days and scabrous attacks on the reputations of long-dead gentlewomen, contain more wickedness and immorality than I care to mention.
+ Still worse is the "erotic novel", by whose filthy obscenities our young folk are all too easily corrupted.
+ And the "boudoir romances", those dreary stereotypes with their volume after volume all pitched on the same note and their different characters undistinguishable except by name (all those ideally beautiful young ladies and ideally eligible young bachelors)— even they seem unable to avoid descending sooner or later into indecency.
+ "The trouble with this last kind of romance is that it only gets written in the first place because the author requires a framework in which to show off his love-poems.
+ He goes about constructing this framework quite mechanically, beginning with the names of his pair of young lovers and invariably adding a third character, a servant or the like, to make mischief between them, like the chou in a comedy.
+ 'What makes these romances even more detestable is the stilted, bombastic language— inanities dressed in pompous rhetoric, remote alike from nature and common sense and teeming with the grossest absurdities.
+ 'Surely my "number of females", whom I spent half a lifetime studying with my own eyes and ears, are preferable to this kind of stuff?
+ I do not claim that they are better people than the ones who appear in books written before my time; I am only saying that the contemplation of their actions and motives may prove a more effective antidote to boredom and melancholy.
+ And even the inelegant verses with which my story is interlarded could serve to entertain and amuse on those convivial occasions when rhymes and riddles are in demand.
+ 'All that my story narrates, the meetings and partings, the joys and sorrows, the ups and downs of fortune, are recorded exactly as they happened.
+ I have not dared to add the tiniest bit of touching-up, for fear of losing the true picture.
+ 'My only wish is that men in the world below may sometimes pick up this tale when they are recovering from sleep or drunkenness, or when they wish to escape from business worries or a fit of the dumps, and in doing so find not only mental refreshment but even perhaps, if they will heed its lesson and abandon their vain and frivolous pursuits, some small arrest in the deterioration of their vital forces.
+ What does your reverence say to that?'
+ For a long time Vanitas stood lost in thought, pondering this speech.
+ He then subjected the Story of the stone to a careful second reading.
+ He could see that its main theme was love; that it consisted quite simply of a true record of real events; and that it was entirely free from any tendency to deprave and corrupt.
+ He therefore copied it all out from beginning to end and took it back with him to look for a publisher.
+ As a consequence of all this, Vanitas, starting off in the Void (which is Truth) came to the contemplation of Form (which is Illusion); and from Form engendered Passion; and by communicating Passion, entered again into Form; and from Form awoke to the Void (which is Truth).
+ He therefore changed his name from Vanitas to Brother Amor, or the Passionate Monk, (because he had approached Truth by way of Passion), and changed the title of the book from The Story of the S tone to The Tale of Brother Amor.
+ Old Kong Mei-xi from the homeland of Confucius called the book A Mirror for the Romantic.
+ Wu Yu-feng called it A Dream of Golden Days.
+ Cao Xueqin in his Nostalgia Studio worked on it for ten years, in the course of which he rewrote it no less than five times, dividing it into chapters, composing chapter headings, renaming it The Twelve Beauties of Jinling, and adding an introductory quatrain.
+ Red Inkstone restored the original title when he recopied the book and added his second set of annotations to it.
+ This, then, is a true account of how The Story of the Stone came to be written.
+ Pages full of idle words Penned with hot and bitter tears:
+ All men call the author fool; None his secret message hears.
+ The origin of The Story of the Stone has now been made clear.
+ The same cannot, however, be said of the characters and events which it recorded.
+ Gentle reader, have patience!
+ This is how the inscription began: Long, long ago the world was tilted downwards towards the south-east; and in that lower-lying south-easterly part of the earth there is a city called Soochow; and in Soochow the district around the Chang-men Gate is reckoned one of the two or three wealthiest and most fashionable quarters in the world of men.
+ Outside the Chang-men Gate is a wide thorough-fare called Worldly Way; and somewhere off Worldly Way is an area called Carnal Lane.
+ There is an old temple in the Carnal Lane area which, because of the way it is bottled up inside a narrow cul-de-sac, is referred to locally as Bottle-gourd Temple.
+ Next door to Bottle-gourd Temple lived a gentleman of private means called Zhen Shi-yin and his wife Feng-shi, a kind, good woman with a profound sense of decency and decorum.
+ The household was not a particularly wealthy one, but they were nevertheless looked up to by all and sundry as the leading family in the neighbourhood.
+ Zhen Shi-yin himself was by nature a quiet and totality unambitious person.
+ He devoted his time to his garden and to the pleasures of wine and poetry.
+ Except for a single flaw, his existence could, indeed, have been described as an idyllic one.
+ The flaw was that, although already past fifty, he had no son, only a little girl, just two years old, whose name was Ying-lian.
+ Once, during the tedium of a burning summer's day, Shi-yin was sitting idly in his study.
+ The book had slipped from his nerveless grasp and his head had nodded down onto the desk in a doze.
+ While in this drowsy state he seemed to drift off to some place he could not identify, where he became aware of a monk and a Taoist walking along and talking as they went.
+ 'Where do you intend to take that thing you are carrying?' the Taoist was asking.
+ 'Don't you worry about him!' replied the monk with a laugh.
+ 'There is a batch of lovesick souls awaiting incarnation in the world below whose fate is due to be decided this very day.
+ I intend to take advantage of this opportunity to slip our little friend in amongst them and let him have a taste of human life along with the rest.'
+ 'Well, well, so another lot of these amorous wretches is about to enter the vale of tears,' said the Taoist.
+ 'How did all this begin?
+ And where are the souls to be reborn?'
+ 'You will laugh when I tell you,' said the monk.
+ 'When this stone was left unused by the goddess, he found himself at a loose end and took to wandering about all over the place for want of better to do, until one day his wanderings took him to the place where the fairy Disenchantment lives.
+ 'Now Disenchantment could tell that there was something unusual about this stone, so she kept him there in her Sunset Glow Palace and gave him the honorary title of Divine Luminescent Stone-in-Waiting in the Court of Sunset Glow.
+ 'But most of his time he spent west of Sunset Glow exploring the banks of the Magic River.
+ There, by the Rock of Rebirth, he found the beautiful Crimson Pearl Flower, for which he conceived such a fancy that he took to watering her every day with sweet dew, thereby conferring on her the gift of life.
+ 'Crimson Pearl's substance was composed of the purest cosmic essences, so she was already half-divine; and now, thanks to the vitalizing effect of the sweet dew, she was able to shed her vegetable shape and assume the form of a girl.
+ 'This fairy girl wandered about outside the Realm of Separation, eating the Secret Passion Fruit when she was hungry and drinking from the Pool of Sadness when she was thirsty.
+ The consciousness that she owed the stone something for his kindness in watering her began to prey on her mind and ended by becoming an obsession.
+ '"I have no sweet dew here that I can repay him with," she would say to herself.
+ "The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of a mortal lifetime if he and I were ever to be reborn as humans in the world below."
+ 'Because of this strange affair, Disenchantment has got together a group of amorous young souls, of which Crimson Pearl is one, and intends to send them down into the world to take part in the great illusion of human life.
+ And as today happens to be the day on which this stone is fated to go into the world too, I am taking him with me to Disenchantment's tribunal for the purpose of getting him registered and sent down to earth with the rest of these romantic creatures.'
+ 'How very amusing!' said the Taoist.
+ 'I have certainly never heard of a debt of tears before.
+ Why shouldn't the two of us take advantage of this opportunity to go down into the world ourselves and save a few souls?
+ It would be a work of merit.'
+ 'That is exactly what I was thinking,' said the monk.
+ 'Come with me to Disenchantment's palace to get this absurd creature cleared.
+ Then, when this last batch of romantic idiots goes down, you and I can go down with them.
+ At present about half have already been born.
+ They await this last batch to make up the number.'
+ 'Very good, I will go with you then,' said the Taoist.
+ Shi-yin heard all this conversation quite clearly, and curiosity impelled him to go forward and greet the two reverend gentlemen.
+ They returned his greeting and asked him what he wanted.
+ 'It is not often that one has the opportunity of listening to a discussion of the operations of karma such as the one I have just been privileged to overhear,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'Unfortunately I am a man of very limited understanding and have not been able to derive the full benefit from your conversation.
+ If you would have the very great kindness to enlighten my benighted understanding with a somewhat fuller account of what you were discussing, I can promise you the most devout attention.
+ I feel sure that your teaching would have a salutary effect on me and—who knows—might save me from the pains of hell.'
+ The reverend gentlemen laughed.
+ 'These are heavenly mysteries and may not be divulged.
+ But if you wish to escape from the fiery pit, you have only to remember us when the time comes, and all will be well.'
+ Shi-yin saw that it would be useless to press them.
+ 'Heavenly mysteries must not, of course, be revealed.
+ But might one perhaps inquire what the "absurd creature" is that you were talking about?
+ Is it possible that I might be allowed to see it?'
+ 'Oh, as for that,' said the monk: 'I think it is on the cards for you to have a look at him,' and he took the object from his sleeve and handed it to Shi-yin.
+ Shi-yin took the object from him and saw that it was a clear, beautiful jade on one side of which were carved the words 'Magic Jade'.
+ There were several columns of smaller characters on the back, which Shi-yin was just going to examine more closely when the monk, with a cry of 'Here we are, at the frontier of Illusion', snatched the stone from him and disappeared, with the Taoist, through a big stone archway above which THE LAND OF ILLUSION was written in large characters.
+ A couplet in smaller characters was inscribed vertically on either side of the arch:
+ Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true; Real becomes not-teal where the unreal's real.
+ Shi-yin was on the point of following them through the archway when suddenly a great clap of thunder seemed to shake the earth to its very foundations, making him cry out in alarm.
+ And there he was sitting in his study, the contents of his dream already half forgotten, with the sun still blazing on the ever-rustling plantains outside, and the wet-nurse at the door with his little daughter Ying-lian in her arms.
+ Her delicate little pink-and-white face seemed dearer to him than ever at that moment, and he stretched out his arms to take her and hugged her to him.
+ After playing with her for a while at his desk, he carried her out to the front of the house to watch the bustle in the street.
+ He was about to go in again when he saw a monk and a Taoist approaching, the monk scabby-headed and barefoot, the Taoist tousle-haired and limping.
+ They were behaving like madmen, shouting with laughter and gesticulating wildly as they walked along.
+ When this strange pair reached Shi-yin's door and saw him standing there holding Ying-lian, the monk burst into loud sobs.
+ 'Patron,' he said, addressing Shi-yin, 'what are you doing, holding in your arms that ill-fated creature who is destined to involve both her parents in her own misfortune?'
+ Shi-yin realized that he was listening to the words of a madman and took no notice.
+ But the monk persisted: 'Give her to me!
+ Give her to me!'
+ Shi-yin was beginning to lose patience and clasping his little girl tightly to him, turned on his heel and was about to re-enter the house when the monk pointed his finger at him, roared with laughter, and then proceeded to intone the following verses:
+ 'Fond man, your pampered child to cherish so— That caltrop-glass which shines on melting snow!
+ Beware the high feast of the fifteenth day, When all in smoke and fire shall pass away!'
+ Shi-yin heard all this quite plainly and was a little worried by it.
+ He was thinking or asking the monk what lay behind these puzzling words when he heard the Taoist say, 'We don't need to stay tether.
+ Why don't we part company here and each go about his own business?
+ Three kalpas from now I shall wait far you on Bei-mang Hill.
+ Having joined forces again there, we can go together to the Land of Illusion to sign off.'
+ 'Excellent!' said the other.
+ And the two if them went off and soon were both lost to sight.
+ 'There must have been something behind all this,' thought Shi-yin to himself. 'I really ought to have asked him what he meant, but now it is too late.'
+ He was still standing outside his door brooding when Jia Yu-cun, the poor student who lodged at the Bottle-gourd Temple next door, came up to him.
+ Yu-cun was a native of Hu-zhou and came from a family of scholars and bureaucrats which had, however, fallen on bad times when Yu-cun was born.
+ The family fortunes on both his father's and mother's side had all been spent, and the members of the family had themselves gradually died off until only Yu-cun was left.
+ There were no prospects for him in his home town, so he had set off for the capital, in search of fame and fortune.
+ Unfortunately he had got no further than Soochow when his funds ran out, and he had now been living there in poverty for a year, lodging in this temple and keeping himself alive by working as a copyist.
+ For this reason Shi-yin saw a great deal of his company.
+ As soon as he caught sight of Shi-yin, Yu-cun clasped his hands in greeting and smiled ingratiatingly.
+ 'I could see you standing there gazing, sir.
+ Has anything been happening in the street?'
+ 'No, no,' said Shi-yin.
+ 'It just happened that my little girl was crying, so I brought her out here to amuse her.
+ Your coming is most opportune, dear boy.
+ I was beginning to feel most dreadfully bored.
+ Won't you come into my little den, and we can help each other to while away this tedious hot day?'
+ So saying, he called for a servant to take the child indoors, while he himself took Yu-cun by the hand and led him into his study, where his boy served them both with tea.
+ But they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words before one of the servants rushed in to say that 'Mr Yan had come to pay a call.'
+ Shi-yin hurriedly rose up and excused himself: 'I seem to have brought you here under false pretences.
+ I do hope you will forgive me.
+ If you don't mind sitting on your own here for a moment, I shall be with you directly.'
+ Yu-cun rose to his feet too.
+ 'Please do not distress yourself on my account, sir.
+ I am a regular visitor here and can easily wait a bit.'
+ But by the time he had finished saying this, Shi-yin was already out of the study and on his way to the guest-room.
+ Left to himself, Yu-cun was flicking through some of Shi-yin's books of poetry in order to pass the time, when he heard a woman's cough outside the window.
+ Immediately he jumped up and peered out to see who it was.
+ The cough appeared to have come from a maid who was picking flowers in the garden.
+ She was an unusually good-looking girl with a rather refined face: not a great beauty, by any means, but with something striking about her.
+ Yu-cun gazed at her spellbound.
+ Having now finished picking her flowers, this anonymous member of the Zhen household was about to go in again when, on some sudden impulse, she raised her head and caught sight of a man standing in the window.
+ His hat was frayed and his clothing threadbare; yet, though obviously poor, he had a fine, manly physique and handsome, well-proportioned features.
+ The maid hastened to remove herself from this male presence; but as she went she thought to herself, 'What a fine-looking man!
+ But so shabby!
+ The family hasn't got any friends or relations as poor as that.
+ It must be that Jia Yu-cun the master is always on about.
+ No wonder he says that he won't stay poor long.
+ I remember hearing him say that he's often wanted to help him but hasn't yet found an opportunity.'
+ And thinking these thoughts she could not forbear to turn back for another peep or two.
+ Yu-cun saw her turn back and, at once assuming that she had taken a fancy to him, was beside himself with delight.
+ What a perceptive young woman she must be, he thought, to have seen the genius underneath the rags!
+ A real friend in trouble!
+ After a while the boy came in again and Yu-cun elicited from him that the visitor in the front room was now staying to dinner.
+ It was obviously out of the question to wait much longer, so he slipped down the passage-way at the side of the house and let himself out by the back gate.
+ Nor did Shi-yin invite him round again when, having at last seen off his visitor, he learned that Yu-cun had already left.
+ But then the Mid Autumn festival arrived and, after the family convivialities were over, Shi-yin had a little dinner for two laid out in his study and went in person to invite Yu-cun, walking to his temple lodgings in the moonlight.
+ Ever since the day the Zhens' maid had, by looking back twice over her shoulder, convinced him that she was a friend, Yu-cun had had the girl very much on his mind, and now that it was festival time, the full moon of Mid Autumn lent an inspiration to his romantic impulses which finally resulted in the following octet:
+ 'Ere on ambition's path my feet are set, Sorrow comes often this poor heart to fret.
+ Yet, as my brow contracted with new care, Was there not one who, parting, turned to stare?
+ Dare I, that grasp at windows in the wind, Hope, underneath the moon, a friend to find?
+ Bright orb, if with my plight you sympathize, Shine first upon the chamber where she lies.'
+ Having delivered himself of this masterpiece, Yu-cun's thoughts began to run on his unrealized ambitions and, after much head-scratching and many heavenward glances accompanied by heavy sighs, he produced the following couplet, reciting it in a loud, ringing voice which caught the ear of Shi-yin, who chanced at that moment to be arriving:
+ 'The jewel in the casket bides till one shall come to buy.
+ The jade pin in the drawer hides, waiting its time to fly.'
+ Shi-yin smiled.
+ 'You are a man of no mean ambition, Yu-cun.'
+ 'Oh no!'Yu-cun smiled back deprecatingly.
+ 'You are too flattering.
+ I was merely reciting at random from the lines of some old poet.
+ But what brings you here, sir?'
+ 'Tonight is Mid Autumn night,'said Shi-yin.
+ 'People call it the Festival of Reunion.
+ It occurred to me that you might be feeling rather lonely here in your monkery, so I have arranged for the two of us to take a little wine together in my study.
+ I hope you will not refuse to join me.'
+ Yu-cun made no polite pretence of declining.
+ 'Your kindness is more than I deserve,' he said.
+ 'I accept gratefully.'
+ And he accompanied Shi-yin back to the study next door.
+ Soon they had finished their tea.
+ Wine and various choice dishes were brought in and placed on the table, already laid out with cups, plates, and so forth, and the two men took their places and began to drink.
+ At first they were rather slow and ceremonious; but gradually, as the conversation grew more animated, their potations too became more reckless and uninhibited.
+ The sounds of music and singing which could now be heard from every house in the neighbourhood and the full moon which shone with cold brilliance overhead seemed to increase their elation, so that the cups were emptied almost as soon as they touched their lips, and Yu-cun, who was already a sheet or so in the wind, was seized with an irrepressible excitement to which he presently gave expression in the form of a quatrain, ostensibly on the subject of the moon, but really about the ambition he had hitherto been at some pains to conceal:
+ 'In thrice five nights her perfect O is made, Whose cold light bathes each marble balustrade.
+ As her bright wheel starts on its starry ways, On earth ten thousand heads look up and gaze.'
+ 'Bravo!' said Shi-yin loudly.
+ 'I have always insisted that you were a young fellow who would go up in the world, and now, in these verses you have just recited, I see an augury of your ascent.
+ In no time at all we shall see you up among the clouds!
+ This calls for a drink!'
+ And, saying this, he poured Yu-cun a large cup of wine.
+ Yu-cun drained the cup, then, surprisingly, sighed: 'Don't imagine the drink is making me boastful, but I really do believe that if it were just a question of having the sort of qualifications now in demand, I should stand as good a chance as any of getting myself on to the list of candidates.
+ The trouble is that I simply have no means of laying my hands on the money that would be needed for lodgings and travel expenses.
+ The journey to the capital is a long one, and the sort of money I can earn from my copying is not enough—'
+ 'Why ever didn't you say this before?' said Shi-yin interrupting him.
+ 'I have long wanted to do something about this, but on all the occasions I have met you previously, the conversation has never got round to this subject, and I haven't liked to broach it for fear of offending you.
+ Well, now we know where we are.
+ I am not a very clever man, but at least I know the right thing to do when I see it.
+ Luckily, the next Triennial is only a few months ahead.
+ You must go to the capital without delay.
+ A spring examination triumph will make you feel that all your studying has been worth while.
+ I shall take care of all your expenses.
+ It is the least return I can make for your friendship.'
+ And there and then he instructed his boy to go with all speed and make up a parcel of fifty tales of the best refined silver and two suits of winter clothes.
+ 'The almanac gives the nineteenth as a good day for travelling,' he went on, addressing Yu-cun again.
+ 'You can set about hiring a boat for the journey straight away.
+ How delightful it will be to meet again next winter when you have distinguished yourself by soaring to the top over all the other candidates!'
+ Yu-cun accepted the silver and the clothes with only the most perfunctory word of thanks and without, apparently, giving them a further moment's thought, for he continued to drink and laugh and talk as if nothing had happened.
+ It was well after midnight before they broke up.
+ After seeing Yu-cun off, Shi-yin went to bed and slept without a break until the sun was high in the sky next morning.
+ When he awoke, his mind was still running on the conversation of the previous night.
+ He thought he would write a couple of introductory letters for Yu-cun to take with him to the capital, and arrange for him to call on the family of an official he was acquainted with who might be able to put him up; but when he sent a servant to invite him over, the servant brought back word from the temple as follows:
+ 'The monk says that Mr Jia set out for the capital at five o'clock this morning, sir.
+ He says he left a message to pass on to you.
+ He said to tell you, "A scholar should not concern himself with almanacs, but should act as the situation demands," and he said there wasn't time to say good-bye.'
+ So Shi-yin was obliged to let the matter drop.
+ It is a true saying that 'time in idleness is quickly spent'.
+ In no time at all it was Fifteenth Night, and Shi-yin sent little Ying-lian out, in the charge of one of the servants called Calamity, to see the mummers and the coloured lanterns.
+ It was near midnight when Calamity, feeling an urgent need to relieve his bladder, put Ying-lian down on someone's doorstep while he went about his business, only to find, on his return, that the child was nowhere to be seen.
+ Frantically he searched for her throughout the rest of the night; but when day dawned and he had still not found her, he took to his heels, not daring to face his master and mistress, and made off for another part of the country.
+ Shi-yin and his wife knew that something must be wrong when their little girl failed to return home all night.
+ Then a search was made; but all those sent out were obliged in the end to report that no trace of her could be found.
+ The shock of so sudden a loss to a middle-aged couple who had only ever had the one daughter can be imagined.
+ In tears every day and most of the night, they almost lost the will to go on living, and after about a month like this first Shi-yin and then his wife fell ill, so that doctors and diviners were in daily attendance on them.
+ Then, on the fifteenth of the third month, while frying cakes for an offering, the monk of Bottle-gourd Temple carelessly allowed the oil to catch alight, which set fire to the paper window.
+ And, since the houses in this area all had wooden walls and bamboo fences—though also, doubtless, because they were doomed to destruction anyway-the fire leaped from house to house until the whole street was blazing away like a regular Fiery Mountain; and though the firemen came to put it out, by the time they arrived the fire was well under way and long past controlling, and roared away all night long until it had burnt itself out, rendering heaven knows how many families homeless in the process.
+ Poor Zhens!
+ Though they and their handful of domestics escaped unhurt, their house, which was only next door to the temple, was soon reduced to a heap of rubble, while Shi-yin stood by helpless, groaning and stamping in despair.
+ After some discussion with his wife, Shi-yin decided that they should move to their farm in the country; but a series of crop failures due to flooding and drought had led to widespread brigandage in those parts, and government troops were out everywhere hunting down the mutinous peasants and making arrests.
+ In such conditions it was impossible to settle on the farm, so Shi-yin sold the land and, taking only two of the maids with them, went with his wife to seek refuge with his father-in-law, Feng Su.
+
+ 看官：你道此书从何而起?
+ ——说来虽近荒唐，细玩颇有趣味。
+ 却说那女娲氏炼石补天之时，于大荒山无稽崖炼成高十二丈、见方二十四丈大的顽石三万六千五百零一块， 那娲皇只用了三万六千五百块，单单剩下一块未用，弃在青埂峰下。
+ 谁知此石自经锻炼之后，灵性已通，自去自来，可大可小。
+ 因见众石俱得补天，独自己无才不得入选，遂自怨自愧，日夜悲哀。
+ 一日正当嗟悼之际，俄见一僧一道远远而来，生得骨格不凡，丰神迥异，来到这青埂峰下，席地坐谈。
+ 见着这块鲜莹明洁的石头，且又缩成扇坠一般，甚属可爱； 那僧托于掌上，笑道：“形体倒也是个灵物了！
+ 只是没有实在的好处， 须得再镌上几个字，使人人见了便知你是件奇物，然后携你到那昌明隆盛之邦、诗礼簪缨之族、花柳繁华地、温柔富贵乡那里去走一遭。”
+ 石头听了大喜，因问：“不知可镌何字?
+ 携到何方?
+ 望乞明示。”
+ 那僧笑道：“你且莫问，日后自然明白。”
+ 说毕，便袖了，同那道人飘然而去，竟不知投向何方。
+ 又不知过了几世几劫，因有个空空道人访道求仙，从这大荒山无稽崖青埂峰下经过， 忽见一块大石，上面字迹分明，编述历历。
+ 空空道人乃从头一看，原来是无才补天、幻形入世，被那茫茫大士、渺渺真人携入红尘、引登彼岸的一块顽石；上面叙着堕落之乡、投胎之处，以及家庭琐事、闺阁闲情、诗词谜语，倒还全备。
+ 只是朝代年纪，失落无考。
+ 后面又有一偈云：
+ 无才可去补苍天，枉入红尘若许年；
+ 此系身前身后事，倩谁记去作奇传?
+ 空空道人看了一回，晓得这石头有些来历，遂向石头说道：“石兄，你这一段故事，据你自己说来，有些趣味，故镌写在此，意欲闻世传奇。
+ 据我看来：第一件，无朝代年纪可考， 第二件，并无大贤大忠、理朝廷、治风俗的善政，其中只不过几个异样女子，或情或痴，或小才微善，我纵然抄去，也算不得一种奇书。”
+ 石头果然答道：“我师何必太痴!
+ 我想历来野史的朝代，无非假借汉、唐的名色；莫如我这石头所记，不借此套，只按自己的事体情理，反倒新鲜别致。
+ 况且那野史中，或讪谤君相，或贬人妻女，奸淫凶恶，不可胜数；
+ 更有一种风月笔墨，其淫秽污臭最易坏人子弟。
+ 至于才子佳人等书，则又开口‘文君’，满篇‘子建’，千部一腔，千人一面，且终不能不涉淫滥。
+ ——在作者不过要写出自己的两首情诗艳赋来，故假捏出男女二人名姓， 又必旁添一小人拨乱其间，如戏中的小丑一般。
+ 更可厌者，‘之乎者也’，非理即文，大不近情，自相矛盾。
+ 竟不如我这半世亲见亲闻的几个女子，虽不敢说强似前代书中所有之人，但观其事迹原委，亦可消愁破闷；至于几首歪诗，也可以喷饭供酒。
+ 其间离合悲欢，兴衰际遇，俱是按迹循踪，不敢稍加穿凿，至失其真。
+ 只愿世人当那醉余睡醒之时，或避事消愁之际，把此一玩，不但是洗旧翻新，却也省了些寿命筋力，不更去谋虚逐妄了。
+ 我师意为如何？”
+ 空空道人听如此说，思忖半晌，将这《石头记》再检阅一遍。
+ 因见上面大旨不过谈情，亦只是实录其事，绝无伤时诲淫之病，方从头至尾抄写回来，闻世传奇。
+ 从此空空道人因空见色，由色生情，传情入色，自色悟空，遂改名情僧，改《石头记》为《情僧录》。
+ 东鲁孔梅溪题曰《风月宝鉴》。
+ 至吴玉峰题曰《红楼梦》。
+ 后因曹雪芹于悼红轩中，披阅十载，增删五次，纂成目录，分出章回，又题曰《金陵十二钗》，并题一绝。
+ 至脂砚斋抄阅再评，仍用《石头记》。
+ 即此便是《石头记》的缘起。
+ 诗云：满纸荒唐言，一把辛酸泪。
+ 都云作者痴，谁解其中味!
+ 《石头记》缘起既明，正不知那石头上面记着何人何事， 看官请听——
+ 按那石上书云：当日地陷东南，这东南有个姑苏城，城中阊门，最是红尘中一二等富贵风流之地。
+ 这阊门外有个十里街，街内有个仁清巷，巷内有个古庙，因地方狭窄，人皆呼作“葫芦庙”。
+ 庙旁住着一家乡宦，姓甄名费，字士隐；嫡妻封氏，性情贤淑，深明礼义。
+ 家中虽不甚富贵，然本地也推他为望族了。
+ 因这甄士隐禀性恬淡，不以功名为念，每日只以观花种竹、酌酒吟诗为乐，倒是神仙一流人物。
+ 只是一件不足：年过半百，膝下无儿，只有一女乳名英莲，年方三岁。
+ 一日炎夏永昼，士隐于书房闲坐，手倦抛书，伏几盹睡，不觉朦胧中走至一处，不辨是何地方。
+ 忽见那厢来了一僧一道，且行且谈。
+ 只听道人问道：“你携了此物，意欲何往？”
+ 那僧笑道：“你放心！
+ 如今现有一段风流公案，正该了结，这一干风流冤家尚未投胎入世， 趁此机会，就将此物夹带于中，使他去经历经历。”
+ 那道人道：“原来近日风流冤家又将造劫历世，但不知起于何处？
+ 落于何方？”
+ 那僧道：“此事说来好笑。
+ 只因当年这个石头，娲皇未用，自己却也落得逍遥自在，各处去游玩， 一日来到警幻仙子处，那仙子知他有些来历，因留他在赤霞宫中，名他为赤霞宫神瑛侍者。
+ 他却常在西方灵河岸上行走，看见那灵河岸上三生石畔有棵‘绛珠仙草’，十分娇娜可爱，遂日以甘露灌溉，这‘绛珠草’始得久延岁月。
+ 后来既受天地精华，复得甘露滋养，遂脱了草木之胎，幻化人形，仅仅修成女体，终日游于‘离恨天’外，饥餐‘秘情果’，渴饮‘灌愁水’。
+ 只因尚未酬报灌溉之德，故甚至五内郁结着一段缠绵不尽之意， 常说：‘自己受了他雨露之惠，我并无此水可还。
+ 他若下世为人，我也同去走一遭，但把我一生所有的眼泪还他，也还得过了。’
+ 因此一事，就勾出多少风流冤家都要下凡，造历幻缘，那绛珠仙草也在其中。
+ 今日这石正该下世，我来特地将他仍带到警幻仙子案前，给他挂了号，同这些情鬼下凡，一了此案。”
+ 那道人道：“果是好笑，从来不闻有‘还泪’之说！
+ 趁此你我何不也下世度脱几个，岂不是一场功德？”
+ 那僧道：“正合吾意。
+ 你且同我到警幻仙子宫中将这‘蠢物’交割清楚，待这一干风流孽鬼下世，你我再去。
+ ——如今有一半落尘，然犹未全集。”
+ 道人道：“既如此，便随你去来。”
+ 却说甄士隐俱听得明白，遂不禁上前施礼，笑问道：“二位仙师请了。”
+ 那僧道也忙答礼相问。
+ 士隐因说道：“适闻仙师所谈因果，实人世罕闻者；但弟子愚拙，不能洞悉明白。
+ 若蒙大开痴顽，备细一闻，弟子洗耳谛听，稍能警省，亦可免沉沦之苦了。”
+ 二仙笑道：“此乃玄机，不可预泄。
+ 到那时只不要忘了我二人，便可跳出火坑矣。”
+ 士隐听了，不便再问，因笑道：“玄机固不可泄露，但适云‘蠢物’，不知为何？
+ 或可得见否？”
+ 那僧说：“若问此物，倒有一面之缘。”
+ 说着取出递与士隐。
+ 士隐接了看时，原来是块鲜明美玉，上面字迹分明，镌着“通灵宝玉”四字。
+ 后面还有几行小字， 正欲细看时，那僧便说“已到幻境”，就强从手中夺了去，和那道人竟过了一座大石牌坊，——上面大书四字，乃是“太虚幻境”。
+ 两边又有一副对联道：
+ 假作真时真亦假，无为有处有还无。
+ 士隐意欲也跟着过去，方举步时，忽听一声霹雳若山崩地陷，士隐大叫一声，定睛看时，只见烈日炎炎，芭蕉冉冉，梦中之事，便忘了一半。
+ 又见奶母抱了英莲走来。
+ 士隐见女儿越发生得粉装玉琢，乖觉可喜，便伸手接来抱在怀中斗他玩耍一回， 又带至街前，看那过会的热闹。
+ 方欲进来时，只见从那边来了一僧一道： 那僧癞头跣足，那道跛足蓬头，疯疯癫癫，挥霍谈笑而至。
+ 及到了他门前，看见士隐抱着英莲，那僧便大哭起来，又向士隐道：“施主，你把这有命无运、累及爹娘之物抱在怀内作甚？”
+ 士隐听了，知是疯话，也不睬他。
+ 那僧还说：“舍我罢!
+ 舍我罢！”
+ 士隐不耐烦，便抱着女儿转身， 才要进去，那僧乃指着他大笑，口内念了四句言词，道是：
+ 惯养娇生笑你痴，菱花空对雪澌澌。
+ 好防佳节元宵后，便是烟消火灭时。
+ 士隐听得明白，心下犹豫，意欲问他来历。
+ 只听道人说道：“你我不必同行，就此分手，各干营生去罢。
+ 三劫后我在北邙山等你，会齐了，同往太虚幻境销号。”
+ 那僧道：“最妙，最妙！”
+ 说毕，二人一去，再不见个踪影了。
+ 士隐心中此时自忖：这两个人必有来历，很该问他一问，如今后悔却已晚了。
+ 这士隐正在痴想，忽见隔壁葫芦庙内寄居的一个穷儒，姓贾名化、表字时飞、别号雨村的走来。
+ 这贾雨村原系湖州人氏，也是诗书仕宦之族， 因他生于末世，父母祖宗根基已尽，人口衰丧，只剩得他一身一口， 在家乡无益，因进京求取功名，再整基业。
+ 自前岁来此，又淹蹇住了，暂寄庙中安身，每日卖文作字为生，故士隐常与他交接。
+ 当下雨村见了士隐，忙施礼陪笑道：“老先生倚门伫望，敢街市上有甚新闻么？”
+ 士隐笑道：“非也。
+ 适因小女啼哭，引他出来作耍。
+ ——正是无聊的很， 贾兄来得正好，请入小斋，彼此俱可消此永昼。”
+ 说着便令人送女儿进去，自携了雨村来至书房中，小童献茶。
+ 方谈得三五句话，忽家人飞报：“严老爷来拜。”
+ 士隐慌忙起身谢道：“恕诓驾之罪，且请略坐，弟即来奉陪。”
+ 雨村起身也让道：“老先生请便。
+ 晚生乃常造之客，稍候何妨。”
+ 说着士隐已出前厅去了。
+ 这里雨村且翻弄诗籍解闷，忽听得窗外有女子嗽声。
+ 雨村遂起身往外一看，原来是一个丫鬟在那里掐花儿：生的仪容不俗，眉目清秀，虽无十分姿色，却也有动人之处。
+ 雨村不觉看得呆了。
+ 那甄家丫鬟掐了花儿方欲走时，猛抬头见窗内有人：敝巾旧服，虽是贫窘，然生得腰圆背厚，面阔口方，更兼剑眉星眼，直鼻方腮。
+ 这丫鬟忙转身回避，心下自想：“这人生的这样雄壮，却又这样褴褛，我家并无这样贫窘亲友。
+ 想他定是主人常说的什么贾雨村了，怪道又说他必非久困之人，每每有意帮助周济他，只是没什么机会。”
+ 如此一想，不免又回头一两次。
+ 雨村见他回头，便以为这女子心中有意于他，遂狂喜不禁，自谓此女子必是个巨眼英豪、风尘中之知己。
+ 一时小童进来，雨村打听得前面留饭，不可久待，遂从夹道中自便门出去了。
+ 士隐待客既散，知雨村已去，便也不去再邀。
+ 一日到了中秋佳节，士隐家宴已毕，又另具一席于书房，自己步月至庙中来邀雨村。
+ 原来雨村自那日见了甄家丫鬟曾回顾他两次，自谓是个知己，便时刻放在心上。
+ 今又正值中秋，不免对月有怀，因而口占五言一律云：
+ 未卜三生愿，频添一段愁；
+ 闷来时敛额，行去几回眸。
+ 自顾风前影，谁堪月下俦?
+ 蟾光如有意，先上玉人头。
+ 雨村吟罢，因又思及平生抱负，苦未逢时，乃又搔首对天长叹，复高吟一联云：
+ 玉在椟中求善价，钗于奁内待时飞。
+ 恰值士隐走来听见，笑道：“雨村兄真抱负不凡也！”
+ 雨村忙笑道：“不敢，不过偶吟前人之句，何期过誉如此。”
+ 因问：“老先生何兴至此？”
+ 士隐笑道：“今夜中秋，俗谓团圆之节，想尊兄旅寄僧房，不无寂寥之感， 故特具小酌邀兄到敝斋一饮，不知可纳芹意否？”
+ 雨村听了，并不推辞，便笑道：“既蒙谬爱，何敢拂此盛情。”
+ 说着便同士隐复过这边书院中来了。
+ 须臾茶毕，早已设下杯盘，那美酒佳肴，自不必说。
+ 二人归坐，先是款酌慢饮，渐次谈至兴浓，不觉飞觥献斝起来。
+ 当时街坊上家家箫管，户户笙歌，当头一轮明月，飞彩凝辉， 二人愈添豪兴，酒到杯干。
+ 雨村此时已有七八分酒意，狂兴不禁，乃对月寓怀，口占一绝云：
+ 时逢三五便团圆，满把清光护玉栏。
+ 天上一轮才捧出，人间万姓仰头看。
+ 士隐听了大叫：“妙极!
+ 弟每谓兄必非久居人下者，今所吟之句，飞腾之兆已见，不日可接履于云霄之上了。
+ 可贺，可贺！”
+ 乃亲斟一斗为贺。
+ 雨村饮干，忽叹道：“非晚生酒后狂言，若论时尚之学，晚生也或可去充数挂名。
+ 只是如今行李路费一概无措，神京路远，非赖卖字撰文即能到得——”
+ 士隐不待说完，便道：“兄何不早言!
+ 弟已久有此意，但每遇兄时，并未谈及，故未敢唐突。
+ 今既如此，弟虽不才：‘义利’二字却还识得；且喜明岁正当大比，兄宜作速入都，春闱一捷，方不负兄之所学。
+ 其盘费余事，弟自代为处置，亦不枉兄之谬识矣。”
+ 当下即命小童进去速封五十两白银并两套冬衣，又云：“十九日乃黄道之期，兄可即买舟西上。
+ 待雄飞高举，明冬再晤，岂非大快之事！”
+ 雨村收了银衣，不过略谢一语，并不介意，仍是吃酒谈笑。
+ 那天已交三鼓，二人方散。
+ 士隐送雨村去后，回房一觉，直至红日三竿方醒。
+ 因思昨夜之事，意欲写荐书两封与雨村带至都中去，使雨村投谒个仕宦之家为寄身之地，因使人过去请时，那家人回来说：
+ “和尚说，贾爷今日五鼓已进京去了，也曾留下话与和尚转达老爷，说：‘读书人不在黄道黑道，总以事理为要，不及面辞了。’”
+ 士隐听了，也只得罢了。
+ 真是闲处光阴易过，倏忽又是元宵佳节。
+ 士隐令家人霍启抱了英莲，去看社火花灯。
+ 半夜中霍启因要小解，便将英莲放在一家门槛上坐着， 待他小解完了来抱时，那有英莲的踪影?
+ 急的霍启直寻了半夜， 至天明不见，那霍启也不敢回来见主人，便逃往他乡去了。
+ 那士隐夫妇见女儿一夜不归，便知有些不好；再使几人去找寻，回来皆云影响全无。
+ 夫妻二人半世只生此女，一旦失去，何等烦恼，因此昼夜啼哭，几乎不顾性命。
+ 看看一月，士隐已先得病，夫人封氏也因思女构疾，日日请医问卦。
+ 不想这日三月十五，葫芦庙中炸供，那和尚不小心，油锅火逸，便烧着窗纸。
+ 此方人家俱用竹篱木壁，也是劫数应当如此，于是接二连三牵五挂四，将一条街烧得如火焰山一般；彼时虽有军民来救，那火已成了势了，如何救得下?
+ 直烧了一夜方息，也不知烧了多少人家。
+ 只可怜甄家在隔壁，早成了一堆瓦砾场了，只有他夫妇并几个家人的性命不曾伤了，急的士隐惟跌足长叹而已。
+ 与妻子商议，且到田庄上去住，偏值近年水旱不收，贼盗蜂起，官兵剿捕，田庄上又难以安身，只得将田地都折变了，携了妻子与两个丫鬟投他岳丈家去。
+
+ Jia Rui's arrival was announced while Xi-feng and Patience were still talking about him.
+ 'Ask him in,' said Xi-feng.
+ Hearing that he was to be received, Jia Rui rejoiced inwardly.
+ He came into the room wreathed in smiles and overwhelmed Xi-feng with civilities.
+ With feigned solicitude she pressed him to be seated and to take tea.
+ He became quite ecstatic at the sight of her informal dress.
+ 'Why isn't Cousin Lian back yet?' he asked, staring with fascinated eyes.
+ 'I don't know what the reason can be,' said Xi-feng.
+ 'Could it be,' Jia Rui inquired archly, 'that Someone has detained him on his way home and that he can't tear himself away?'
+ 'Men are all the same!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'They have only to set eyes on a woman to begin another affair.'
+ 'Ah, there you are wrong!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'I am not that sort of man.'
+ 'But how many men are there like you?' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I doubt you could find one in ten.'
+ At this last remark Jia Rui positively scratched his ears with pleasure.
+ 'You must find it very dull here on your own every day,' he said.
+ 'Yes, indeed!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'If only there were someone who could come and talk to me and help me to pass the time!'
+ 'Well,' said Jia Rui, 'I am always free.
+ How would it be if I were to come every day to help you pass the time?'
+ 'You must be joking!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'What would you want to come here for?'
+ 'I mean every word I say,' said Jia Rui.
+ 'May I be struck by lightning if I don't!
+ True, there was a time when I should have been scared to come, because people always told me what a holy terror you were and how dangerous it was to cross you; but now I know that in reality you are all gentleness and fun, there is nothing that could stop me coming.
+ I would come now if it cost me my life.'
+ 'It's true then,' said Xi-feng, smiling delightedly.
+ 'You really are an understanding sort of person --- so much more so than Rong or Qiang!
+ I used to think that since they were such handsome and cultured-looking young men they must be understanding as well, but they turned out to be stupid brutes without the least consideration for other people's feelings.'
+ This little speech went straight to Jia Rui's heart, and unconsciously he began edging his seat nearer to Xi-feng's.
+ He peered closely at an embroidered purse that she was wearing and expressed a strong interest in one of her rings.
+ 'Take care!' said Xi-feng in a low tone.
+ 'The servants might see you!'
+ Obedient to his goddess's command, Jia Rui quickly drew back again.
+ Xi-feng laughed.
+ 'You had better go!'
+ 'Ah no, cruel cousin!
+ Let me stay a little longer!'
+ 'Even if you stay, it's not very convenient here in broad daylight, with people coming and going all the time.
+ Go away now and come hack later when it's dark, at the beginning of the first watch.
+ You can slip into the gallery west of this apartment and wait for me there.'
+ Jia Rui received these words like someone being presented with a rare and costly jewel.
+ 'Are you sure you're not joking?' he asked hurriedly.
+ 'A lot of people must go through that way.
+ How should we avoid being seen?'
+ 'Don't worry!' said Xi-feng.
+ 'I'll give the watchmen a night off.
+ When the side gates are closed, no one else can get through.'
+ Jia Rui was beside himself with delight and hurriedly took his leave, confident that the fulfilment of all he wished for was now in sight.
+ Having waited impatiently for nightfall, he groped his way into the Rong-guo mansion just before they closed the gates and slipped into the gallery, now totally deserted—as Xi-feng had promised it would be—and black as pitch.
+ The gate at the end of the alley-way opening on to Grandmother Jia's quarters had already been barred on the outer side; only the gate at the east end remained open.
+ For a long time Jia Rui listened intently, but no one came.
+ Suddenly there was a loud slam and the gate at the east end, too, banged shut.
+ Alarmed, but not daring to make a sound, Jia Rui stealthily crept out and tried it.
+ It was locked—as tight as a bucket.
+ Now even if he wanted to get out he could not, for the walls on either side of the alley-way were too high to scale.
+ Moreover the gallery was bare and draughty and this was the midwinter season when the nights are long and the bitter north wind seems to pierce into the very marrow of the bones.
+ By the end of the night he was almost dead with cold.
+ When at last morning came, Jia Rui saw the gate at the east end open and an old woman pass through to the gate opposite and call for someone to open up.
+ Still hugging himself against the cold, he sprinted out of the other gate while her back was towards him.
+ Fortunately no one was about at that early hour, and he was able to slip out of the rear entrance of the mansion and run back home unseen.
+ Jia Rui had lost both of his parents in infancy and had been brought up under the sole guardianship of his grandfather Jia Dai-ru.
+ Obsessed by the fear that once outside the house his grandson might indulge in drinking and gambling to the detriment of his studies, Dai-ru had subjected him since early youth to an iron discipline from which not the slightest deviation was tolerated.
+ Seeing him now suddenly absent himself a whole night from home, and being incapable, in his wildest imaginings, of guessing what had really happened, he took it as a foregone conclusion that he had been either drinking or gaming and had probably passed the night in some house of prostitution --- a supposition which caused the old gentleman to spend the whole night in a state of extreme choler.
+ The prospect of facing his grandfather on arrival made Jia Rui sweat.
+ A lie of some sort was indispensable.
+ 'I went to see Uncle yesterday,' he managed to say, 'and as it was getting dark, he asked me to stay the night.'
+ 'I have always told you that you are not to go out of that gate without first informing me,' said his grandfather.
+ 'Why then did you presume to go off on your own yesterday without saying a word to anybody?
+ That in itself would constitute sufficient grounds for chastisement.
+ But in addition to that you are lying!'
+ Thereupon he, forced him to the ground, and, with the utmost savagery, dealt him thirty or forty whacks with the bamboo, after which he forbade him to eat and made him kneel in the open courtyard with a book in his hand until he had prepared the equivalent of ten days' homework.
+ The exquisite torments suffered by Jia Rui, as he knelt with an empty stomach in the draughty courtyard reciting his homework after having already been frozen all night long and then beaten, can be imagined.
+ Yet even now his infatuation remained unaltered.
+ It never entered his mind that he had been made a fool of.
+ And so two days later, as soon as he had some free time, he was back once more looking for Xi-feng.
+ She deliberately reproached him for having failed her, thereby so exasperating him that he swore by the most terrible oaths that he had been faithful.
+ Seeing him hurl himself so willingly into the net, Xi-feng decided that a further lesson would be needed to cure him of his folly and proposed another assignation.
+ 'Only tonight,' she said, 'don't wait for me in that place again.
+ Wait in the empty room in the little passage-way behind this apartment.
+ But mind you don't run into anybody.'
+ 'Do you really mean this?' said Jia Rui.
+ 'If you don't believe me, don't come!'
+ 'I'll come!
+ I'll come!' said Jia Rui.
+ 'Whatever happens, I shall be there.'
+ 'Now I think you had better go.'
+ Confident of seeing her again in the evening, Jia Rui went off uncomplainingly, leaving Xi-feng time to muster her forces, brief her officers, and prepare the trap in which the luckless man was to be caught.
+ Jia Rui waited for the evening with great impatience.
+ By a stroke of bad luck some relations came on a visit and stayed to supper.
+ It was already lamplight when they left, and Jia Rui then had to wait for his grandfather to settle down for the night before he could scuttle off to the Rong mansion and make his way to the room in the little passage-way where Xi-feng had told him to go.
+ He waited there for her arrival with the frenzied agitation of an ant on a hot saucepan.
+ Yet, though he waited and waited, not a human shape appeared nor a human sound was heard, and he began to be frightened and a little suspicious: 'Surely she won't fail me?
+ Surely I shan't be made to spend another night in the cold...?'
+ As he was in the midst of these gloomy imaginings, a dark figure glided into the room.
+ Certain that it must be Xi-feng, Jia Rui cast all caution to the winds and, when the figure approached him, threw himself upon it like a hungry tiger seizing its prey or a cat pouncing on a harmless mouse.
+ 'My darling, how I have waited for you!" he exclaimed, enfolding his beloved in his arms; and carrying her to the kang, he laid her down and began kissing her and tugging at her trousers, murmuring 'my sweetest darling' and 'my honey love' and other such endearments in between kisses.
+ Throughout all of this not a single sound was uttered by his partner.
+ Jia Rui now tore down his own trousers and prepared to thrust home his hard and throbbing member.
+ Suddenly a light flashed --- and there was Jia Qiang holding aloft a candle in a candlestick which he shone around: 'Who is in this room?'
+ At this the person on the kang gave a giggle: 'Uncle Rui is trying to bugger me!'
+ Horrors!
+ The sight he saw when he looked down made Jia Rui want to sink into the ground.
+ It was Jia Rong!
+ He turned to bolt, but Jia Qiang held him fast.
+ 'Oh no you don't!
+ Auntie Lian has already told Lady Wang that you have been pestering her.
+ She asked us to keep you here while she went to tell.
+ When Lady Wang first heard, she was so angry that she fainted, but now she's come round again and is asking for you to be brought to her.
+ Come along, then!
+ Off we go!'
+ At these words Jia Rui's soul almost left its seat in his body.
+ 'My dear nephew, just tell her that you didn't find me here!' he said.
+ 'Tomorrow I will reward you handsomely.'
+ 'I suppose I could let you go easily enough,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'The question is, how big would this reward be?
+ In any case, just saying that you will give me a reward is no good.
+ I should want a written guarantee.'
+ 'But I can't put a thing like this down in writing!'
+ 'No problem there,' said Jia Qiang.
+ 'Just say that you've lost money gambling and have borrowed such and such an amount to cover your losses.
+ That's all you need do.'
+ 'I could do that, certainly,' said Jia Rui.
+ Jia Qiang at once disappeared and reappeared only a moment later with paper and a writing-brush which had evidently been made ready in advance.
+ Writing at his dictation Jia Rui was compelled, in spite of protests, to put down fifty taels of silver as the amount on the IOU.
+ The document, having been duly signed, was at once pocketed by Jia Qiang, who then pretended to seek the connivance of Jia Rong.
+ But Jia Rong feigned the most obdurate incorruptibility and insisted that he would lay the matter next day before a council of the whole clan and see that justice was done.
+ Jia Rui became quite frantic and kotowed to him.
+ Finally, under pressure from Jia Qiang and in return for another IOU for fifty taels of silver made out in his favour, he allowed his scruples to be overcome.
+ 'You realize, don't you,' said Jia Qiang, 'that I'm going to get into trouble for this?
+ Now let's see.
+ The gate leading to Lady Jia's courtyard was bolted some time ago, and Sir Zheng is at the moment in the main reception room looking at some stuff that has just arrived from Nanking, so you can't go through that way.
+ The only way left would be through the back gate.
+ The trouble is, though, that if you leave now, you might run into someone on the way, and then I should get into even worse trouble.
+ You'd better let me scout around a bit first and come for you when the coast is clear.
+ In the meantime you can t hide here, though, because they will shortly be coming in to store the stuff from Nanking here.
+ I'll find somewhere else for you.'
+ He took Jia Rui by the arm, and having first blown the candle out, led him into the courtyard and groped his way round to the underside of the steps which led up to the terrace of the central building.
+ 'This hollow under the steps will do.
+ Crouch down there, and don't make a sound!
+ You can go when I come for you.'
+ Jia Qiang and Jia Rong then went off leaving him to himself.
+ Jia Rui, by now a mere automaton in the hands of his captors, obediently crouched down beneath the steps and was just beginning a series of calculations respecting his present financial predicament when a sudden slosh! signalled the discharge of a slop-pail's stinking contents immediately above his head, drenching him from top to toe with liquid filth and causing him to cry out in dismay --- but only momentarily, for the excrement covered his face and head and caused him to close his mouth again in a hurry and crouch silent and shivering in the icy cold.
+ Just then Jia Qiang came running up: 'Hurry! hurry!
+ You can go now.'
+ At the word of command Jia Rui bounded out of his hole and sprinted for dear life through the rear gate and back to his own home.
+ It was now past midnight, and he had to shout for someone to let him in.
+ When the servant who answered the gate saw the state he was in and asked him how it had happened, he had to pretend that he had been out in the darkness to ease himself and had fallen into the jakes.
+ Then rushing into his own room he stripped off his clothes and washed, his mind running all the time on how Xi-feng had tricked him.
+ The thought of her trickery provoked a surge of hatred in his soul; yet even as he hated her, the vision of her loveliness made him long to clasp her to his breast.
+ Torn by these violent and conflicting emotions, he passed the whole night without a single wink of sleep.
+ From that time on, though he longed for Xi-feng with unabated passion, he never dared to visit the Rong-guo mansion again.
+ Jia Rong and Jia Qiang, on the other hand, came frequently to his house to ask for their money, so that he was in constant dread of his grandfather finding out about the IOUs.
+ Unable, even now, to overcome his longing for Xi-feng, saddled with a heavy burden of debt, harassed during the day time by the schoolwork set him by his exacting grandfather, worn-out during the nights by the excessive hand-pumping inevitable in an unmarried man of twenty whose mistress was both unattainable and constantly in his thoughts, twice frozen, tormented and forced to flee --- what constitution could withstand so many shocks and strains without succumbing in the end to illness?
+ The symptoms of Jia Rui's illness—a palpitation in the heart, a loss of taste in the mouth, a weakness in the hams, a smarting in the eyes, feverishness by night and lassitude by day, albumen in the urine and blood-flecks in the phlegm—had all manifested themselves within less than a year.
+ By that time they had produced a complete breakdown and driven him to his bed, where he lay, with eyes tight shut, babbling deliriously and inspiring terror in all who saw him.
+ Physicians were called in to treat him and some bushels of cinnamon bark, autumn root, turtle-shell, black leek and Solomon's seal must at one time and another have been infused and taken without the least observable effect.
+ Winter went and spring came and Jia Rui's sickness grew even worse.
+ His grandfather Dai-ru was in despair.
+ Medical advice from every quarter had been taken and none of it had proved effective.
+ The most recent advice was that the patient should be given a pure decoction of ginseng without admixture of other ingredients.
+ So costly a remedy was far beyond Dai-ru's resources and he was obliged to go to the Rong-guo mansion to beg.
+ Lady Wang ordered Wang Xi-feng to weigh out two ounces for him from their own supplies.
+ 'The other day when we were making up a new lot of pills for Grandmother,' said Xi-feng, 'you told me to keep any of the remaining whole roots for a medicine you were sending to General Yang's wife.
+ I sent her the medicine yesterday, so I am afraid we haven't any left.'
+ 'Well, even if we haven't got any,' said Lady Wang, 'you can send to your mother-in-law's for some; and probably they will have some at your Cousin Zhen's.
+ Between you you ought somehow or other to be able to raise enough to give him.
+ If you can save a man's life by doing so, you will have performed a work of merit.'
+ But though Xi-feng pretended to do as Lady Wang suggested, in fact she made no such inquiries.
+ She merely scraped a few drams of broken bits together and sent them to Dai-ru with a message that 'Lady Wang had instructed her to send this, and it was all they had.'
+ To Lady Wang, however, she reported that she had asked the others and altogether obtained more than two ounces of ginseng which she had sent to Dai-ru.
+ Jia Rui now wanted desperately to live and eagerly swallowed every medicine that they offered him; but all was a waste of money, for nothing seemed to do him any good.
+ One day a lame Taoist appeared at the door asking for alms and claiming to be able to cure retributory illnesses.
+ Jia Rui, who chanced to overhear him, called out from his bed: 'Quick, tell the holy man to come in and save me!' and as he called, he kotowed with his head on the pillow.
+ The servants were obliged to bring the Taoist into the bedroom.
+ Jia Rui clung to him tenaciously.
+ 'Holy one, save me!' he cried out again and again.
+ The Taoist sighed.
+ 'No medicine will cure your sickness.
+ However, I have a precious thing here that I can lend you which, if you will look at it every day, can be guaranteed to save your life.'
+ So saying, he took from his satchel a mirror which had reflecting surfaces on both its sides.
+ The words A MIRROR FOR THE ROMANTIC were inscribed on the back.
+ He handed it to Jia Rui.
+ 'This object comes from the Hall of Emptiness in the Land of Illusion.
+ It was fashioned by the fairy Disenchantment as an antidote to the ill effects of impure mental activity.
+ It has life-giving and restorative properties and has been brought into the world for the contemplation of those intelligent and handsome young gentlemen whose hearts are too susceptible to the charms of beauty.
+ I lend it to you on one important condition: you must only look into the back of the mirror.
+ Never, never under any circumstances look into the front.
+ Three days hence I shall come again to reclaim it, by which time I guarantee that your illness will have gone.'
+ With that he left, at a surprising speed, ignoring the earnest entreaties of those present that he should stay longer.
+ 'This is intriguing!'
+ Jia Rui thought to himself when the Taoist gave him the mirror.
+ 'Let me try looking into it as he says,' and holding it up to his face he looked into the back as instructed and saw a grinning skull, which he covered up hastily with a curse:
+ 'Silly old fool, to scare me like that! ---
+ But let me see what happens when I look into the other side!'
+ He turned the mirror round and looked, and there inside was Xi-feng beckoning to him to enter, and his ravished soul floated into the mirror after her.
+ There they performed the act of love together, after which she saw him out again.
+ But when he found himself once more back in his bed he stared and cried out in horror: for the mirror, of its own accord, had turned itself round in his hand and the same grinning skull faced him that he had seen before.
+ He could feel the sweat trickling all over his body and lower down in the bed a little pool of semen that he had just ejaculated.
+ Yet still he was not satisfied, and turned the face of the mirror once more towards him.
+ Xi-feng was there beckoning to him again and calling, and again he went in after her.
+ He did this three or four times.
+ But the last time, just as he was going to return from the mirror, two figures approached him holding iron chains which they fastened round him and by which they proceeded to drag him away.
+ He cried out as they dragged him: 'Wait!
+ Let me take the mirror with me . . .!'
+ Those were the last words he ever uttered.
+ To those who stood around the bed and watched him while this was happening he appeared first to be holding up the mirror and looking into it, then to let it drop; then to open his eyes in a ghastly stare and pick it up again; then, as it once more fell from his grasp, he finally ceased to move.
+ When they examined him more closely they found that his breathing had already stopped and that underneath his body there was a large, wet, icy patch of recently ejaculated semen.
+ At once they lifted him from the bed and busied themselves with the laying-out, while old Dai-ru and his wife abandoned themselves to a paroxysm of grief.
+ They cursed the Taoist for a necromancer and ordered the servants to heap up a fire and cast the mirror upon the flames.
+ But just at that moment a voice was heard in the air saying, 'Who told him to look in the front?
+ It is you who are to blame, for confusing the unreal with the real!
+ Why then should you burn my mirror?'
+ Suddenly the mirror was seen to rise up and fly out of the room, and when Dai-ru went outside to look, there was the lame Taoist asking for it back.
+ He snatched it as it flew towards him and disappeared before Dai-ru's very eyes.
+ Seeing that there was to be no redress, Dai-yu was obliged to set about preparing for the funeral and began by announcing his grandson's death to everybody concerned.
+ Reading of the sutras began on the third day and on the seventh the coffin was drawn in procession to temporary lodging in the Temple of the Iron Threshold to await future reburial.
+ The various members of the Jia family all came in due course to offer their condolences.
+ From the Rong-guo side Jia She and Jia Zheng each gave twenty taels of silver and from the Ning-guo side Cousin Zhen also gave twenty taels.
+ The other members of the clan gave amounts varying from one to four taels according to their means.
+ A collection made among the parents of the dead man's fellow-students raised an additional twenty or thirty taels.
+ Although Dai-ru's means were slender, with so much monetary help coming in he was able to perform the whole business in considerable style.
+ Towards the end of the year in which Jia Rui's troubles started Lin Ru-hai fell seriously ill and wrote a letter asking to see Dai-yu again.
+ Though Grandmother Jia was plunged into deepest gloom by the letter, she was obliged to prepare with all possible expedition for her granddaughter's departure.
+ And Bao-yu, though he too was distressed at the prospect of Dai-yu's leaving him, could scarcely seek to interfere in a matter affecting the natural feelings of a father and his child.
+ Grandmother Jia insisted that Jia Lian should accompany Dai-yu and see her safely there and back.
+ The various gifts to be taken and the journey-money were, it goes without saying, duly prepared.
+ A suitable day on which to commence the journey was quickly determined and Jia Lian and Dai-yu took leave of all the rest and, embarking with their attendants, set sail for Yangchow.
+ If you wish for further details, you may learn them in the following chapter.
+
+ 话说凤姐正与平儿说话，只见有人回说：“瑞大爷来了。”
+ 凤姐命：“请进来罢。”
+ 贾瑞见请，心中暗喜。
+ 见了凤姐，满面陪笑，连连问好。
+ 凤姐儿也假意殷勤让坐让茶。
+ 贾瑞见凤姐如此打扮，越发酥倒，因饧了眼问道：“二哥哥怎么还不回来？”
+ 凤姐道：“不知什么缘故。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“别是路上有人绊住了脚，舍不得回来了罢？”
+ 凤姐道：“可知男人家见一个爱一个也是有的。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“嫂子这话错了，我就不是这样人。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“像你这样的人能有几个呢，十个里也挑不出一个来！”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜的抓耳挠腮。
+ 又道：“嫂子天天也闷的很。”
+ 凤姐道：“正是呢。
+ 只盼个人来说话解解闷儿。”
+ 贾瑞笑道：“我倒天天闲着。
+ 若天天过来替嫂子解解闷儿，可好么？”
+ 凤姐笑道：“你哄我呢!
+ 你那里肯往我这里来？”
+ 贾瑞道：“我在嫂子面前，若有一句谎话，天打雷劈!
+ 只因素日闻得人说，嫂子是个利害人，在你跟前一点也错不得，所以唬住我了。
+ 我如今见嫂子是个有说有笑极疼人的，我怎么不来?
+ ——死了也情愿。”
+ 凤姐笑道：“果然你是个明白人，比蓉儿兄弟两个强远了。
+ 我看他那样清秀，只当他们心里明白，谁知竟是两个糊涂虫，一点不知人心。”
+ 贾瑞听这话，越发撞在心坎上，由不得又往前凑一凑，觑着眼看凤姐的荷包，又问：“戴着什么戒指？”
+ 凤姐悄悄的道：“放尊重些，别叫丫头们看见了。”
+ 贾瑞如听纶音佛语一般，忙往后退。
+ 凤姐笑道：“你该去了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“我再坐一坐儿，好狠心的嫂子！”
+ 凤姐儿又悄悄的道：“大天白日人来人往，你就在这里也不方便。
+ 你且去，等到晚上起了更你来，悄悄的在西边穿堂儿等我。”
+ 贾瑞听了，如得珍宝，忙问道：“你别哄我。
+ 但是那里人过的多，怎么好躲呢？”
+ 凤姐道：“你只放心，我把上夜的小厮们都放了假，两边门一关，再没别人了。”
+ 贾瑞听了，喜之不尽，忙忙的告辞而去，心内以为得手。
+ 盼到晚上，果然黑地里摸入荣府，趁掩门时，钻入穿堂。
+ 果见漆黑无一人来往，贾母那边去的门已倒锁了，只有向东的门未关。
+ 贾瑞侧耳听着，半日不见人来。
+ 忽听‘咯噔’一声，东边的门也关上了。
+ 贾瑞急的也不敢则声，只得悄悄出来，将门撼了撼，关得铁桶一般。
+ 此时要出去亦不能了，南北俱是大墙，要跳也无攀援。
+ 这屋内又是过堂风，空落落的，现是腊月天气，夜又长，朔风凛凛，侵肌裂骨，一夜几乎不曾冻死！
+ 好容易盼到早晨，只见一个老婆子先将东门开了进来，去叫西门，贾瑞瞅他背着脸，一溜烟抱了肩跑出来。
+ 幸而天气尚早，人都未起，从后门一径跑回家去。
+ 原来贾瑞父母早亡，只有他祖父代儒教养。
+ 那代儒素日教训最严，不许贾瑞多走一步，生怕他在外吃酒赌钱，有误学业。
+ 今忽见他一夜不归，只料定他在外非饮即赌，嫖娼宿妓，那里想到这段公案?
+ 因此也气了一夜。
+ 贾瑞也捻着一把汗，少不得回来撒谎，只说：“往舅舅家去了，天黑了，留我住了一夜。”
+ 代儒道：“自来出门非禀我不敢擅出，如何昨日私自去了?
+ 据此也该打，何况是撒谎！”
+ 因此发狠，按倒打了三四十板，还不许他吃饭，叫他跪在院内读文章，定要补出十天工课来方罢。
+ 贾瑞先冻了一夜，又挨了打，又饿着肚子，跪在风地里念文章，其苦万状。
+ 此时贾瑞邪心未改，再不想到凤姐捉弄他。
+ 过了两日，得了空儿，仍找寻凤姐。
+ 凤姐故意抱怨他失信，贾瑞急的起誓。
+ 凤姐因他自投罗网，少不的再寻别计令他知改，故又约他道：“今日晚上，你别在那里了，你在我这房后小过道儿里头那间空屋子里等我。
+ ——可别冒撞了！”
+ 贾瑞道：“果真么？”
+ 凤姐道：“你不信就别来！”
+ 贾瑞道：“必来，必来!
+ 死也要来的。”
+ 凤姐道：“这会子你先去罢。”
+ 贾瑞料定晚间必妥，此时先去了。
+ 凤姐在这里便点兵派将，设下圈套。
+ 那贾瑞只盼不到晚，偏偏家里亲戚又来了，吃了晚饭才去，那天已有掌灯时候；又等他祖父安歇，方溜进荣府，往那夹道中屋子里来等着，热锅上蚂蚁一般。
+ 只是左等不见人影，右听也没声响，心中害怕，不住猜疑道：“别是不来了，又冻我一夜不成？”
+ 正自胡猜，只见黑魆魆的进来一个人。
+ 贾瑞便打定是凤姐，不管青红皂白，那人刚到面前，便如饿虎扑食、猫儿捕鼠的一般抱住，叫道：“亲嫂子，等死我了！”
+ 说着，抱到屋里炕上就亲嘴扯裤子，满口里“亲爹”“亲娘”的乱叫起来。
+ 那人只不做声，贾瑞便扯下自己的裤子来，硬帮帮就想顶入。
+ 忽然灯光一闪，只见贾蔷举着个蜡台，照道：“谁在这屋里呢？”
+ 只见炕上那人笑道：“瑞大叔要肏我呢！”
+ 贾瑞不看则已，看了时真臊的无地可入。
+ 你道是谁?
+ 却是贾蓉。
+ 贾瑞回身要跑，被贾蔷一把揪住道：“别走!
+ 如今琏二婶子已经告到太太跟前，说你调戏他，他暂时稳住你在这里。
+ 太太听见气死过去了，这会子叫我来拿你。
+ 快跟我走罢！”
+ 贾瑞听了，魂不附体，只说：“好侄儿!
+ 你只说没有我，我明日重重的谢你！”
+ 贾蔷道：“放你不值什么，只不知你谢我多少?
+ 况且口说无凭，写一张文契才算。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这怎么落纸呢？”
+ 贾蔷道：“这也不妨，写个赌钱输了，借银若干两，就完了。”
+ 贾瑞道：“这也容易。”
+ 贾蔷翻身出来，纸笔现成，拿来叫贾瑞写。
+ 他两个做好做歹，只写了五十两银子，画了押，贾蔷收起来。
+ 然后撕掳贾蓉。
+ 贾蓉先咬定牙不依，只说：“明日告诉族中的人评评理。”
+ 贾瑞急的至于磕头。
+ 贾蔷做好做歹的，也写了一张五十两欠契才罢。
+ 贾蔷又道：“如今要放你，我就担着不是。
+ 老太太那边的门早已关了。
+ 老爷正在厅上看南京来的东西，那一条路定难过去。
+ 如今只好走后门。
+ 要这一走，倘或遇见了人，连我也不好。
+ 等我先去探探，再来领你。
+ 这屋里你还藏不住，少时就来堆东西，等我寻个地方。”
+ 说毕，拉着贾瑞，仍息了灯，出至院外，摸着大台阶底下，说道：“这窝儿里好。
+ 只蹲着，别哼一声。
+ 等我来再走。”
+ 说毕，二人去了。
+ 贾瑞此时身不由己，只得蹲在那台阶下。
+ 正要盘算，只听头顶上一声响，哗喇喇一净桶尿粪从上面直泼下来，可巧浇了他一身一头。
+ 贾瑞掌不住“嗳哟”一声，忙又掩住口，不敢声张，满头满脸皆是尿屎，浑身冰冷打战。
+ 只见贾蔷跑来叫：“快走，快走！”
+ 贾瑞方得了命，三步两步从后门跑到家中，天已三更，只得叫开了门。
+ 家人见他这般光景，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 少不得撒谎说：“天黑了，失脚掉在茅厕里了。”
+ 一面即到自己房中更衣洗濯。
+ 心下方想到凤姐玩他，因此发一回狠；再想想凤姐的模样儿标致，又恨不得一时搂在怀里。
+ 胡思乱想，一夜也不曾合眼。
+ 自此虽想凤姐，只不敢往荣府去了。
+ 贾蓉等两个常常来要银子，他又怕祖父知道。
+ 正是相思尚且难禁，况又添了债务，日间工课又紧；他二十来岁的人，尚未娶亲，想着凤姐不得到手，自不免有些“指头儿告了消乏”；更兼两回冻恼奔波：因此三五下里夹攻，不觉就得了一病：
+ 心内发膨胀，口内无滋味，脚下如绵，眼中似醋，黑夜作烧，白日常倦，下溺遗精，嗽痰带血，诸如此症，不上一年都添全了。
+ 于是不能支持，一头躺倒，合上眼还只梦魂颠倒，满口胡话，惊怖异常。
+ 百般请医疗治，诸如肉桂、附子、鳖甲、麦冬、玉竹等药吃了有几十斤下去，也不见个动静。
+ 倏又腊尽春回，这病更加沉重。
+ 代儒也着了忙，各处请医疗治，皆不见效。
+ 因后来吃“独参汤”，代儒如何有这力量，只得往荣府里来寻。
+ 王夫人命凤姐秤二两给他。
+ 凤姐回说：“前儿新近替老太太配了药，那整的太太又说留着送杨提督的太太配药，偏偏昨儿我已经叫人送了去了。”
+ 王夫人道：“就是咱们这边没了，你叫个人往你婆婆那里问问，或是你珍大哥哥那里有，寻些来，凑着给人家， 吃好了，救人一命，也是你们的好处。”
+ 凤姐应了，也不遣人去寻。
+ 只将些渣末凑了几钱，命人送去，只说：“太太叫送来的，再也没了。”
+ 然后向王夫人说：“都寻了来了，共凑了二两多，送去了。”
+ 那贾瑞此时要命心急，无药不吃，只是白花钱，不见效。
+ 忽然这日有个跛足道人来化斋，口称专治冤孽之症。
+ 贾瑞偏偏在内听见了，直着声叫喊，说：“快去请进那位菩萨来救命！”
+ 一面在枕头上磕头。
+ 众人只得带进那道士来。
+ 贾瑞一把拉住，连叫“菩萨救我！”
+ 那道士叹道：“你这病非药可医。
+ 我有个宝贝与你，你天天看时，此命可保矣。”
+ 说毕，从搭裢中取出个正面反面皆可照人的镜子来，——背上錾着“风月宝鉴”四字，——递与贾瑞道：
+ “这物出自太虚幻境空灵殿上，警幻仙子所制，专治邪思妄动之症，有济世保生之功。
+ 所以带他到世上来，单与那些聪明俊秀、风雅王孙等照看。
+ 千万不可照正面，只照背面，要紧，要紧!
+ 三日后我来收取，管叫你病好。”
+ 说毕，徉长而去。
+ 众人苦留不住。
+ 贾瑞接了镜子，想道：“这道士倒有意思，我何不照一照试试？”
+ 想毕，拿起那“宝鉴”来，向反面一照， 只见一个骷髅儿，立在里面。
+ 贾瑞忙掩了，骂那道士：
+ “混帐!
+ 如何吓我!
+ 我倒再照照正面是什么？”
+ 想着，便将正面一照，只见凤姐站在里面点手儿叫他。
+ 贾瑞心中一喜，荡悠悠觉得进了镜子，与凤姐云雨一番，凤姐仍送他出来。
+ 到了床上，“嗳哟”了一声，一睁眼，镜子从新又掉过来，仍是反面立着一个骷髅。
+ 贾瑞自觉汗津津的，底下已遗了一滩精。
+ 心中到底不足，又翻过正面来，只见凤姐还招手叫他，他又进去：如此三四次。
+ 到了这次，刚要出镜子来，只见两个人走来，拿铁锁把他套住，拉了就走。
+ 贾瑞叫道：“让我拿了镜子再走——”
+ 只说这句就再不能说话了。
+ 旁边伏侍的人只见他先还拿着镜子照，落下来，仍睁开眼拾在手内，末后镜子掉下来，便不动了。
+ 众人上来看时，已经咽了气了，身子底下冰凉精湿遗下了一大滩精。
+ 这才忙着穿衣抬床， 代儒夫妇哭的死去活来，大骂道士：“是何妖道！”
+ 遂命人架起火来烧那镜子。
+ 只听空中叫道：“谁叫他自己照了正面呢!
+ 你们自己以假为真，为何烧我此镜？”
+ 忽见那镜从房中飞出。
+ 代儒出门看时，却还是那个跛足道人，喊道：“还我的‘风月宝鉴’来！”
+ 说着，抢了镜子，眼看着他飘然去了。
+ 当下代儒没法，只得料理丧事，各处去报。
+ 三日起经，七日发引，寄灵铁槛寺后。
+ 一时贾家众人齐来吊问。
+ 荣府贾赦赠银二十两，贾政也是二十两，宁府贾珍亦有二十两，其馀族中人贫富不一，或一二两、三四两不等。
+ 外又有各同窗家中分资，也凑了二三十两。
+ 代儒家道虽然淡薄，得此帮助，倒也丰丰富富完了此事。
+ 谁知这年冬底，林如海因为身染重疾，写书来特接黛玉回去。
+ 贾母听了，未免又加忧闷，只得忙忙的打点黛玉起身。
+ 宝玉大不自在，争奈父女之情，也不好拦阻。
+ 于是贾母定要贾琏送他去，仍叫带回来。
+ 一应土仪盘费，不消絮说，自然要妥贴的。
+ 作速择了日期，贾琏同着黛玉辞别了众人，带领仆从，登舟往扬州去了。
+ 要知端的，且听下回分解。
+
+ We have shown how Bao-yu was in Dai-yu's room telling her the story of the magic mice; how Bao-chai burst in on them and twitted Bao-yu with his failure to remember the 'green wax' allusion on the night of the Lantern Festival; and how the three of them sat teasing each other with good-humoured banter.
+ Bao-yu had been afraid that by sleeping after her meal Dai-yu would give herself indigestion or suffer from insomnia through being insufficiently tired when she went to bed at night, but Bao-chai's arrival and the lively conversation that followed it banished all Dai-yu's desire to sleep and enabled him to lay aside his anxiety on her behalf.
+ Just then a sudden commotion arose from the direction of Bao-yu's room, and the three of them stopped talking and turned their heads to listen.
+ Dai-yu was the first to speak: 'That's your Nannie quarrelling with Aroma,' she said.
+ 'To think how that poor girl goes out of her way to be nice to the old woman, yet still she manages to find fault with her!
+ She really must be getting senile.'
+ Bao-yu was for rushing over straight away, but Bao-chai restrained him: 'Don't go quarrelling with your Nannie, whatever you do!
+ She's only a silly old woman.
+ You have to indulge her a bit.'
+ 'Of course,' said Bao-yu and ran off.
+ He found Nannie Li leaning on her stick in the middle of the room abusing Aroma: 'Ungrateful little baggage!
+ After all I've done for you – and now when I come to call on you, you lie back there on the kang like a young madam and haven't even the grace to look up and take notice of me!
+ You and your airs and graces!
+ All you ever think about is how to win Bao-yu over to you.
+ Thanks to you he won't listen to me any more.
+ He only does what you say.
+ To think that a cheap bit of goods like you that they only paid a few taels of silver for should come along here and turn the whole place upside down!
+ The best thing they could do with you would be to marry you off to one of the boys and send you packing.
+ Then we'd see how you managed to play the siren and lead young gentlemen astray!'
+ Aroma at first thought that Nannie Li's anger arose solely on account of her failure to get up and welcome her, and had started to excuse herself on that supposition: 'I'm ill, Mrs Li.
+ I've just been sweating.
+ I didn't see you because I had my head under the clothes.'
+ But when the old woman proceeded to go on about leading young men astray and marrying her off to a servant and what not, she felt wronged and humiliated, and in spite of her efforts to restrain them, burst into tears of sheer helplessness.
+ Bao-yu had heard all this, and though too embarrassed to argue, could scarcely refrain from saying a word or two in Aroma's defence:
+ 'She's ill.
+ She's having to take medicine,' he said.
+ 'If you don't believe me, ask any of the maids.'
+ This made the old woman even angrier.
+ 'Oh yes!
+ You stick up for the little hussies!
+ You don't care about me any more!
+ And which of them am I supposed to ask, pray?
+ They will all take your side against me.
+ You are all under Aroma's thumb, every one of you.
+ I know what goes on here, don't think I don't!
+ Well, you can come along with me to see Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship about this.
+ Let them hear how you have cast me off – me that reared you at my own breast – now that you don't need my milk any more, and how you encourage a pack of snotty-nosed little maidservants to amuse themselves at my expense!'
+ She was in tears herself by now, and wept as she cursed.
+ By this time Dai-yu and Bao-chai had also arrived on the scene and did their best to calm her: 'Come, Nannie!
+ Be a bit more forbearing with them!
+ Try to forget about it!'
+ Nannie Li turned towards this new audience and proceeded to pour out her troubles in an interminable gabble in which tea and Snowpink and drinking koumiss mingled incoherently.
+ Xi-feng happened to be in Grandmother Jia's room totting up the day's scores for the final settlement when she heard this hubbub in the rear apartment.
+ She identified it immediately as Nannie Li on the rampage once more, taking out on Bao-yu's unfortunate maids some of the spleen occasioned by her recent gambling losses.
+ At once she hurried over, seized Nannie Li by the hand, and admonished her with smiling briskness: 'Now, Nannie, we mustn't lose our tempers!
+ This is the New Year holiday and Her Old Ladyship has been enjoying herself all day.
+ A person of your years ought to be stopping other people from quarrelling, not upsetting Her Old Ladyship by quarrelling yourself.
+ Surely you know better than that?
+ If anyone has been misbehaving, you have only to tell me and I'll have them beaten for you.
+ Now I've got a nice hot pheasant stew in my room.
+ You just come along with me and you shall have some of that and a drink to go with it!'
+ She proceeded to haul her off the premises, addressing a few words over her shoulder to her maid Felicity as she went: 'Felicity, bring Nannie's stick for her, there's a good girl!
+ And for goodness' sake give her a handkerchief to wipe her eyes with!'
+ Unable to hold her ground, the old Nannie was borne off in Xi-feng's wake, muttering plaintively as she went:
+ 'I wish I was dead, I really do!
+ But I'd sooner forget meself and make a scene like I have today and be shamed in front of you all than put up with the insolence of those shameless little baggages!'
+ Watching this sudden exit, Bao-chai and Dai-yu laughed and clapped their hands: 'How splendid!
+ Just the sort of wind we needed to blow the old woman away!'
+ But Bao-yu shook his head and sighed: 'I wonder what had really upset her.
+ Obviously she only picked on Aroma because she is weak and can't defend herself.
+ I wonder which of the girls had offended her to make her so...'
+ He was interrupted by Skybright: 'Why should any of us want to upset her?
+ Do you think we're mad ?
+ And even if we had offended her, we should be perfectly capable of owning up to it and not letting someone else take the blame!'
+ Aroma grasped Bao-yu's hand and wept: 'Because I offended one old nurse, you have to go offending a whole roomful of people.
+ Don't you think there's been enough trouble already without dragging other people into it?'
+ Seeing how ill she looked and realizing that distress of mind could only aggravate her condition, Bao-yu stifled his indignation and did his best to comfort her so that she might be able to settle down once more and continue sweating out the fever.
+ Her skin was burning to the touch.
+ He decided to stay with her for a while, and lying down beside her, spoke to her soothingly: 'Just try to get better, now!
+ Never mind all that other nonsense!
+ It's of no importance.'
+ Aroma smiled bitterly.
+ 'If I had allowed myself to get upset about things like that, I shouldn't have lasted in this room for five minutes!
+ Still, if we're always going to have this sort of trouble, I think in the long run I just shan't be able to stand any more.
+ You don't seem to realize.
+ You offend people on my account and the next moment you've forgotten all about it.
+ But they haven't.
+ It's all scored up against me; and as soon as something goes a bit wrong, they come out with all these horrible things about me.
+ It makes it so unpleasant for all of us.'
+ She cried weakly as she said this, but presently checked herself for fear of upsetting Bao-yu.
+ Soon the odd-job woman came in with the second infusion of Aroma's medicine.
+ Bao-yu could see that she had started sweating again and told her not to get up, holding the medicine for her himself and supporting her while she drank it.
+ Then he told one of the junior maids to make up a bed for her on the kang.
+ 'Whether you're going to eat there or not,' Aroma said to him, 'you'd better go and sit with Her Old Ladyship and Her Ladyship for a bit and play a while with the young ladies before you come back here again.
+ I shall be all right if I lie here quietly on my own.'
+ Bao-yu thought he had better do as she said, and after waiting until she had taken off her ornaments and was lying tucked up in bed, he went to the front apartment and took his dinner with Grandmother Jia.
+ After dinner Grandmother Jia wanted to go on playing cards with some of the old stewardesses.
+ Bao-yu, still worrying about Aroma, returned to his own room, where he found her sleeping fitfully.
+ He thought of going to bed himself, but it was still too early.
+ Skybright, Mackerel, Ripple and Emerald had gone off in quest of livelier entertainment, hoping to persuade Grandmother Jia's maids, Faithful and Amber, to join them in a game.
+ Only Musk was left in the outer room, playing Patience under the lamp with a set of dominoes.
+ Bao-yu smiled at her.
+ 'Why don't you go off to join the others?'
+ 'I haven't got any money.'
+ 'There's a great pile of money under the bed.
+ Isn't that enough for you to lose?'
+ 'If we all went off to play,' said Musk, 'who would look after this room?
+ There's her sick inside.
+ And lamps and stoves burning everywhere.
+ The old women were practically dead on their feet after waiting on you all day; I had to let them go and rest.
+ And the girls have been on duty all day, too.
+ You could scarcely grudge them some time off now for amusement.
+ -Which leaves only me to look after the place.'
+ 'Another Aroma,' thought Bao-yu to himself and gave her another smile.
+ 'I'll sit here while you're away.
+ There's nothing to worry about here if you'd like to go.'
+ 'There's even less excuse for going if you are here,' said Musk.
+ 'Why can't we both sit here and talk?'
+ 'What can we do?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Just sitting here talking is going to be rather dull.
+ I know!
+ You were saying this morning that your head was itchy.
+ As you haven't got anything else to do now, I'll comb it for you.'
+ 'All right,' said Musk, and fetching her toilet-box with the mirror on top she proceeded to take off her ornaments and shake her hair out.
+ Bao-yu took a comb and began to comb it for her.
+ But he had not drawn it more than four or five times through her hair, when Skybright came bursting in to get some more money.
+ Seeing the two of them together, she smiled sarcastically: 'Fancy!
+ Doing her hair already – before you've even drunk the marriage-cup!'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'Come here!
+ I'll do yours for you too, if you like!'
+ 'I wouldn't presume, thanks all the same!'
+ She took the money, and with a swish of the door-blind was gone.
+ Bao-yu was standing behind Musk as she sat looking at herself in the mirror.
+ Their eyes met in the glass and they both laughed.
+ 'Of all the girls in this room she has the sharpest tongue,' said Bao-yu.
+ Musk signalled to him agitatedly in the glass with her hand.
+ Bao-yu took her meaning; but it was too late.
+ With another swish of the door-blind, Skybright had already darted in again.
+ 'Oh!
+ Sharp-tongued, am I?
+ Perhaps you'd like to say a bit more on that subject?'
+ 'Get along with you!' laughed Musk.
+ 'Don't go starting any more arguments!'
+ 'And don't you go sticking up for him!' said Skybright gaily.
+ 'I know what you're up to, you two.
+ You don't deceive me with your goings-on.
+ I'll have something to say to you about this when I get back later.
+ Just wait until I've won some of my money back!'
+ With that she darted off once more.
+ When Bao-yu had finished combing her hair, he asked Musk to help him get to bed – very quietly, so as not to disturb Aroma.
+ And that ends our account of that day.
+ First thing next morning Aroma awoke to find that she had sweated heavily during the night and that her body felt very much lighter; but she would take only a little congee for breakfast in order not to tax her system too soon.
+ Bao-yu saw that there was no further cause for concern, and after his meal drifted off to Aunt Xue's apartment in search of amusement.
+ Now this was the prime of the year, when the schoolroom is closed for the New Year holiday and the use of the needle is forbidden to maidenly fingers throughout the whole of the Lucky Month, so that boys and girls alike are all agreeably unemployed, and Bao-yu's half-brother Jia Huan, on holiday like all the rest, had also drifted over to Aunt Xue's place in search of amusement.
+ He found Bao-chai, Caltrop and Oriole there playing a game of Racing Go, and after watching them for a bit, wanted to play too.
+ Bao-chai had always behaved towards Jia Huan in exactly the same way as she did towards Bao-yu and made no distinctions between them.
+ Consequently, when he asked to play, she at once made a place for him and invited him to join them on the kang.
+ They played for stakes of ten cash each a game.
+ Jia Huan won the first game and felt very pleased.
+ But then, as luck would have it, he lost several times in a row and began to get somewhat rattled.
+ It was now his turn to throw the dice.
+ He needed seven to win, and if he threw anything less than seven, the dice would go next to Oriole, who needed only three.
+ He hurled them from the pot with all his might.
+ One of them rested at two.
+ The other continued rather erratically to roll about.
+ 'Ace!
+ Ace!
+ Ace!' cried Oriole, clapping her hands.
+ 'Six!
+ Seven!
+ Eight!' shouted Jia Huan glaring at Oriole and commanding the die to perform the impossible.
+ But the perverse wanderer finally came to rest with the ace uppermost, making a grand total of three.
+ With the speed of desperation Jia Huan reached out and snatched it up, claiming, as he did so, that it was a six.
+ 'It was an ace,' said Oriole, 'as plain as anything!'
+ Bao-chai could see that Jia Huan was rattled, and darting a sharp look at Oriole, commanded her to yield.
+ 'You grow more unmannerly every day,' she told her.
+ 'Surely you don't think one of the masters would cheat you?
+ Come on!
+ Put your money down!'
+ Oriole smarted with the injustice of this, but her mistress had ordered it, so she had to pay up without arguing.
+ She could not, however, forbear a few rebellious mutterings: 'Huh!
+ One of the masters!
+ Cheating a maid out of a few coppers!
+ Even I should be ashamed!
+ Look how much money Bao-yu lost when he was playing with us the other day, yet he didn't mind.
+ Even when some of the maids took all he had left, he only laughed...'
+ She would have gone on, but Bao-chai checked her angrily.
+ 'How can I hope to compete with Bao-yu?' said Jia Huan, beginning to blubber.
+ 'You're all afraid of him.
+ You all take his part against me because I'm only a concubine's son.'
+ Bao-chai was shocked: 'Please don't say things like that, Cousin!
+ You'll make yourself ridiculous.'
+ Once more she rebuked Oriole.
+ Just at that moment Bao-yu walked in, and seeing the state that Jia Huan was in, asked him what was the matter.
+ But Jia Huan dared not say anything.
+ Bao-chai, familiar with the state of affairs, normal in other families, which places the younger brother in fearful subjection to the elder, assumed that Jia Huan was afraid of Bao-yu.
+ She was unaware that Bao-yu positively disliked anyone being afraid of him.
+ 'We are both equally subject to our parents' control,' he would say of himself and Jia Huan.
+ 'Why should I create a greater distance between us by trying to control him myself – especially when I am the wife's son and he is the concubine's?
+ People already talk behind our backs, even when I do nothing.
+ It would be ten times worse if I were to start bossing him about.'
+ But there was another, zanier, notion which contributed to this attitude.
+ Let us try to explain it.
+ Bao-yu had from early youth grown up among girls.
+ There were his sisters Yuan-chun and Tan-chun, his cousins of the same surname Ying-chun and Xi-chun, and his distaff-cousins Shi Xiang-yun, Lin Dai-yu and Xue Bao-chai.
+ As a result of this upbringing, he had come to the conclusion that the pure essence of humanity was all concentrated in the female of the species and that males were its mere dregs and off-scourings.
+ To him, therefore, all members of his own sex without distinction were brutes who might just as well not have existed.
+ Only in the case of his father, uncles and brother, where rudeness and disobedience were expressly forbidden by the teachings of Confucius, did he make an exception – and even then the allowances he made in respect of the fraternal bond were extremely perfunctory.
+ It certainly never occurred to him that his own maleness placed him under any obligation to set an example to the younger males in his clan.
+ The latter – Jia Huan included – reciprocated with a healthy disrespect only slightly tempered by their fear of his doting grandmother.
+ But Bao-chai was ignorant of all this; and fearing that Bao-yu might embarrass them all by delivering a big brother's telling-off, she hastened to Jia Huan's defence.
+ 'What are you crying about in the middle of the New Year holidays?' said Bao-yu to Jia Huan, ignoring Bao-chai's excuses.
+ 'If you don't like it here, why don't you go somewhere else?
+ I think your brains must have been addled by too much study.
+ Can't you see that if there is something you don't like, there must be something else you do like, and that all you've got to do is leave the one and go after the other?
+ Not hang on to it and cry.
+ Crying won't make it any better.
+ You came here to enjoy yourself, didn't you?
+ And now you're here you're miserable, right?
+ Then the thing to do is to go somewhere else, isn't it?'
+ In the face of such an argument Jia Huan could not very well remain.
+ When he got back to his own apartment, his real mother, 'Aunt' Zhao (Lady Wang was his mother only in name) observed the dejected state he was in.
+ 'Who's been making a doormat of you this time?' she asked him, and, obtaining no immediate reply, asked again.
+ 'I've just been playing at Bao-chai's.
+ Oriole cheated me and Bao-yu turned me out.'
+ Aunt Zhao spat contemptuously: 'Nasty little brat!
+ That's what comes of getting above yourself.
+ Who asked you to go playing with that lot?
+ You could have gone anywhere else to play.
+ Asking for trouble!'
+ Just at that moment Xi-feng happened to be passing by outside, and hearing what she said, shouted back at her through the window: 'What sort of language is that to be using in the middle of the New Year holiday?
+ He's only a child.
+ He hasn't done anything terrible.
+ What do you want to go carrying on at him like that for?
+ No matter where he's been, Sir Zheng and Lady Wang are quite capable of looking after him themselves.
+ There's no cause for you to go biting his head off!
+ After all, he is one of the masters.
+ If he's misbehaved himself, you should leave the telling-off to those whose job it is.
+ It's no business of yours.
+ Huan!
+ Come out here!
+ Come and play with me!'
+ Jia Huan had always been afraid of Xi-feng – more even than he was of Lady Wang – and hearing her call him, came running out immediately.
+ Aunt Zhao dared not say a word.
+ 'You're a poor-spirited creature!'
+ Xi-feng said to him.
+ 'How many times have I told you that you can eat and drink and play with any of the boys and girls you like?
+ But instead of doing as I say, you hang about with these other people and let them warp your mind for you and fill it up with mischief.
+ You've no self-respect, that's your trouble.
+ Can't keep away from the gutter.
+ You insist on making yourself disagreeable and then you complain that people are prejudiced against you!
+ Fancy making a fuss like that about losing a few coppers!
+ How much did you lose?'
+ 'One or two hundred,' Jia Huan muttered abjectly.
+ 'All this fuss about one or two hundred cash!
+ And you one of the masters!'
+ She turned to Felicity.
+ 'Go and get a string of cash for him, Felicity, and take him round to the back where Miss Ying and the girls are playing!
+ And if I have any more of this nonsense from you in future, young man,' she went on to Jia Huan, 'I'll first give you a good hiding myself and then send someone to tell the school about you and see if they can knock a bit of sense into you!
+ It sets your Cousin Lian's teeth on edge to see you so wanting in self-respect.
+ He'd have disembowelled you by now I shouldn't wonder, if I hadn't kept his hands off you!
+ Now be off with you!'
+ 'Yes,' said Jia Huan meekly and went off with Felicity.
+ When he had got his money, he took himself off to play with Ying-chun and the girls.
+ And there we must leave him.
+ While Bao-yu was enjoying himself with Bao-chai, a servant announced that Miss Shi had arrived, and he hurriedly got up to go.
+ 'Wait!' said Bao-chai.
+ 'Let's go and see her together!'
+ She got down from the kang as she said this, and accompanied him round to Grandmother Jia's apartment.
+ Shi Xiang-yun was already there, laughing and chattering away nineteen to the dozen, but rose to greet them as they entered.
+ Dai-yu was there too.
+ 'Where have you been?' she asked Bao-yu.
+ 'Bao-chai's.'
+ 'I see' (very frostily).
+ 'I thought something must have been detaining you.
+ Otherwise you would have come flying here long since.'
+ 'Is one only allowed to play with you,' said Bao-yu, 'and keep you amused?
+ I just happened to be visiting her.
+ Why should you start making remarks like that?'
+ 'How thoroughly disagreeable you are!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'What do I care whether you go to see her or not?
+ And I'm sure I never asked to be kept amused.
+ From now on you can ignore me completely, as far as I'm concerned.'
+ With that she went back to her own room in a temper.
+ Bao-yu came running after.
+ 'What on earth are you upset about this time?
+ Even if I've said anything wrong, you ought, out of simple courtesy, to sit and talk with the others for a bit!'
+ 'Are you telling me how to behave?'
+ 'Of course not.
+ It's just that you destroy your health by carrying on in this way.'
+ 'That's my affair.
+ If I choose to die, I don't see that it's any concern of yours.'
+ 'Oh, really, really!
+ Here we are in the middle of the New Year holiday, and you have to start talking about death!'
+ 'I don't care.
+ I'll talk about death if I like, Death!
+ Death!
+ Death!
+ I'm going to die this minute.
+ If you're so afraid of death, I wish you long life.
+ A hundred years, will that satisfy you?'
+ 'Do you think I'm afraid of dying when all you will do is quarrel?
+ I wish I were dead.
+ It would be a relief.'
+ 'Exactly!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If I were to die, it would be a relief from all this quarrelling!'
+ 'I said if I were to die,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Don't twist my words.
+ It isn't fair.'
+ Just then Bao-chai came hurrying in.
+ 'Cousin Shi's waiting for you!'
+ She took hold of Bao-yu's hand and pulled him after her, to the great mortification of Dai-yu, who sat with her face to the window and shed tears of pure rage.
+ After about as long as it would take to drink two cups of tea, Bao-yu came back again.
+ During his absence Dai-yu's sobs seemed to have redoubled in intensity.
+ Seeing the state she was in he realized that it would need careful handling and began turning over in his mind all kinds of soft and soothing things to coax her with.
+ But before he could get his mouth open, she had anticipated him:
+ 'What have you come for this time?
+ Why can't you just leave me here to die in peace?
+ After all, you've got a new playmate now – one who can read and write and compose and laugh and talk to you much better than I can.
+ Oh yes, and drag you off to be amused if there's any danger of your getting upset!
+ I really can't imagine what you have come back here for!'
+ '"Old friends are best friends and close kin are kindest,"'said Bao-yu, coming over to where she sat and speaking very quietly.
+ 'You're too intelligent not to know that.
+ Even a simpleton like me knows that much!
+ Take kinship first: you are my cousin on Father's side; Cousin Bao is only a mother-cousin.
+ That makes you much the closer kin.
+ And as for length of acquaintance: it was you who came here first.
+ You and I have practically grown up together – eaten at the same table, even slept in the same bed.
+ Compared with you she's practially a new arrival.
+ Why should I ever be any less close to you because of her?'
+ 'Whatever do you take me for?
+ Do you think I want you to be any less close to her because of me?
+ It's the way I feel that makes me the way I am.'
+ 'And it's the way I feel,' said Bao-yu, 'that makes me the way I am!
+ Do you mean to tell me that you know your own feelings about me but still don't know what my feelings are about you?'
+ Dai-yu lowered her head and made no reply.
+ After a pause she said:
+ 'You complain that whatever you do people are always getting angry with you.
+ You don't seem to realize how much you provoke them by what you do.
+ Take today, for instance.
+ It's obviously colder today than it was yesterday.
+ Then why of all days should you choose today to leave your blue cape off?'
+ Bao-yu laughed.
+ 'I didn't.
+ I was wearing it this morning the same as usual; but when you started quarrelling just now, I got into such a sweat that I had to take it off.'
+ 'Next thing you'll be catching a cold,' said Dai-yu with a sigh, 'and then Heaven knows what grumblings and scoldings there will be!'
+ Just then Xiang-yun burst in on them and reproved them smilingly for abandoning her: 'Couthin Bao, Couthin Lin: you can thee each other every day.
+ It'th not often I get a chanthe to come here; yet now I have come, you both ignore me!'
+ Dai-yu burst out laughing: 'Lisping doesn't seem to make you any less talkative!
+ Listen to you: "Couthin!"
+ "Couthin!"
+ Presently, when you're playing Racing Go, you'll be all "thicktheth" and "theventh" !'
+ 'You'd better not imitate her,' said Bao-yu.
+ 'It'll get to be a habit.
+ You'll be lisping yourself before you know where you are.'
+ 'How you do pick on one!' said Xiang-yun.
+ 'Always finding fault.
+ Even if you are tho perfect yourthelf, I don't thee why you have to go making fun of everyone elthe.
+ But I can show you thomeone you won't dare to find fault with.
+ I shall certainly think you a wonder if you do.'
+ 'Who's that?' said Dai-yu.
+ 'If you can find any shortcomings in Cousin Bao-chai', said Xiang-yun, 'you must be very good indeed.'
+ 'Oh her,' said Dai-yu coldly.
+ 'I wondered whom you could mean.
+ I should never dare to find fault with her.'
+ But before she could say any more, Bao-yu cut in and hurriedly changed the subject.
+ 'I shall never be a match for you as long as I live,' Xiang-yun said to Dai-yu with a disarming smile.
+ 'All I can thay ith that I hope you marry a lithping huthband, tho that you have "ithee-withee" "ithee-withee" in your earth every minute of the day.
+ Ah, Holy Name!
+ I think I can thee that blethed day already before my eyeth!'
+ Bao-yu could not help laughing; but Xiang-yun had already turned and fled.
+ If you wish to know the conclusion of this scene, you must read the following chapter.
+
+ 话说宝玉在黛玉房中说“耗子精”，宝钗撞来，讽刺宝玉元宵不知“绿蜡”之典，三人正在房中互相取笑。
+ 那宝玉恐黛玉饭后贪眠，一时存了食，或夜间走了困，身体不好；幸而宝钗走来，大家谈笑，那黛玉方不欲睡，自己才放了心。
+ 忽听他房中嚷起来，大家侧耳听了一听，黛玉先笑道：“这是你妈妈和袭人叫唤呢。
+ 那袭人待他也罢了，你妈妈再要认真排揎他，可见老背晦了。”
+ 宝玉忙欲赶过去，宝钗一把拉住道：“你别和你妈妈吵才是呢!
+ 他是老糊涂了，倒要让他一步儿的是。”
+ 宝玉道：“我知道了。”
+ 说毕走来。
+ 只见李嬷嬷拄着拐杖，在当地骂袭人：“忘了本的小娼妇儿!
+ 我抬举起你来，这会子我来了，你大模厮样儿的躺在炕上，见了我也不理一理儿。
+ 一心只想妆狐媚子哄宝玉，哄的宝玉不理我，只听你的话。
+ 你不过是几两银子买了来的小丫头子罢咧，这屋里你就作起耗来了!
+ 好不好的，拉出去配一个小子，看你还妖精似的哄人不哄！”
+ 袭人先只道李嬷嬷不过因他躺着生气，少不得分辩说：“病了，才出汗，蒙着头，原没看见你老人家。”
+ 后来听见他说“哄宝玉”，又说“配小子”，由不得又羞又委屈，禁不住哭起来了。
+ 宝玉虽听了这些话，也不好怎样，少不得替他分辩，说“病了，吃药”，又说：“你不信，只问别的丫头。”
+ 李嬷嬷听了这话，越发气起来了，说道：“你只护着那起狐狸，那里还认得我了呢?
+ 叫我问谁去?
+ 谁不帮着你呢?
+ 谁不是袭人拿下马来的?
+ 我都知道那些事!
+ 我只和你到老太太、太太跟前去讲讲：把你奶了这么大，到如今吃不着奶了，把我扔在一边儿，逞着丫头们要我的强！”
+ 一面说，一面哭。
+ 彼时黛玉宝钗等也过来劝道：“妈妈，你老人家担待他们些就完了。”
+ 李嬷嬷见他二人来了，便诉委屈，将当日吃茶，茜雪出去，和昨日酥酪等事，唠唠叨叨说个不了。
+ 可巧凤姐正在上房算了输赢帐，听见后面一片声嚷，便知是李嬷嬷老病发了，又值他今儿输了钱，迁怒于人，排揎宝玉的丫头。
+ 便连忙赶过来拉了李嬷嬷，笑道：“妈妈别生气。
+ 大节下，老太太刚喜欢了一日。
+ 你是个老人家，别人吵，你还要管他们才是；难道你倒不知规矩，在这里嚷起来，叫老太太生气不成?
+ 你说谁不好，我替你打他。
+ 我屋里烧的滚热的野鸡，快跟了我喝酒去罢。”
+ 一面说，一面拉着走，又叫：“丰儿，替你李奶奶拿着拐棍子、擦眼泪的绢子。”
+ 那李嬷嬷脚不沾地，跟了凤姐儿走了，一面还说：“我也不要这老命了，索性今儿没了规矩，闹一场子，讨了没脸，强似受那些娼妇的气！”
+ 后面宝钗黛玉见凤姐儿这般，都拍手笑道：“亏他这一阵风来，把个老婆子撮了去了。”
+ 宝玉点头叹道：“这又不知是那里的帐，只拣软的欺负!
+ 又不知是那个姑娘得罪了，上在他帐上了。”
+ 一句未完，晴雯在旁说道：“谁又没疯了，得罪他做什么?
+ 既得罪了他，就有本事承任，犯不着带累别人！”
+ 袭人一面哭，一面拉着宝玉道：“为我得罪了一个老奶奶，你这会子又为我得罪这些人，这还不够我受的，还只是拉扯人！”
+ 宝玉见他这般病势，又添了这些烦恼，连忙忍气吞声，安慰他仍旧睡下出汗。
+ 又见他汤烧火热，自己守着他，歪在旁边劝他：“只养病，别想那些没要紧的事。”
+ 袭人冷笑道：“要为这些事生气，这屋里一刻还住得了?
+ 但只是天长日久，尽着这么闹，可叫人怎么过呢!
+ 你只顾一时为我得罪了人，他们都记在心里，遇着坎儿，说的好说不好听的，大家什么意思呢？”
+ 一面说，一面禁不住流泪，又怕宝玉烦恼，只得又勉强忍着。
+ 一时杂使的老婆子端了二和药来。
+ 宝玉见他才有点汗儿，便不叫他起来，自己端着给他就枕上吃了，即令小丫鬟们铺炕。
+ 袭人道：“你吃饭不吃饭，到底老太太、太太跟前坐一会子，和姑娘们玩一会子，再回来。
+ 我就静静的躺一躺也好啊。”
+ 宝玉听说，只得依他，看着他去了簪环躺下，才去上屋里跟着贾母吃饭。
+ 饭毕，贾母犹欲和那几个老管家的嬷嬷斗牌。
+ 宝玉惦记袭人，便回至房中，见袭人朦胧睡去。
+ 自己要睡，天气尚早。
+ 彼时晴雯、绮霞、秋纹、碧痕都寻热闹，找鸳鸯、琥珀等耍戏去了。
+ 见麝月一人在外间屋里灯下抹骨牌。
+ 宝玉笑道：“你怎么不和他们去？”
+ 麝月道：“没有钱。”
+ 宝玉道：“床底下堆着钱，还不够你输的？”
+ 麝月道：“都乐去了，这屋子交给谁呢?
+ 那一个又病了，满屋里上头是灯，下头是火，那些老婆子们都‘老天拔地’，伏侍了一天，也该叫他们歇歇儿了。
+ 小丫头们也伏侍了一天，这会子还不叫玩玩儿去吗?
+ 所以我在这里看着。”
+ 宝玉听了这话，公然又是一个袭人了。
+ 因笑道：“我在这里坐着，你放心去罢。”
+ 麝月道：“你既在这里，越发不用去了。
+ 咱们两个说话儿不好？”
+ 宝玉道：“咱们两个做什么呢?
+ 怪没意思的。
+ 也罢了，早起你说头上痒痒，这会子没什么事，我替你篦头罢。”
+ 麝月听了道：“使得。”
+ 说着，将文具镜匣搬来，卸去钗镮，打开头发，宝玉拿了篦子替他篦。
+ 只篦了三五下儿，见晴雯忙忙走进来取钱，一见他两个，便冷笑道：“哦!
+ 交杯盏儿还没吃，就上了头了！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你来，我也替你篦篦。”
+ 晴雯道：“我没这么大造化。”
+ 说着，拿了钱，摔了帘子，就出去了。
+ 宝玉在麝月身后，麝月对镜，二人在镜内相视而笑。
+ 宝玉笑着道：“满屋里就只是他磨牙。”
+ 麝月听说，忙向镜中摆手儿。
+ 宝玉会意，忽听“唿”一声帘子响，晴雯又跑进来问道：“我怎么磨牙了?
+ 咱们倒得说说！”
+ 麝月笑道：“你去你的罢，又来拌嘴儿了。”
+ 晴雯也笑道：“你又护着他了!
+ 你们瞒神弄鬼的，打量我都不知道呢!
+ 等我捞回本儿来再说。”
+ 说着，一径去了。
+ 这里宝玉通了头，命麝月悄悄的伏侍他睡下，不肯惊动袭人。
+ 一宿无话。
+ 次日清晨，袭人已是夜间出了汗，觉得轻松了些，只吃些米汤静养。
+ 宝玉才放了心，因饭后走到薛姨妈这边来闲逛。
+ 彼时正月内，学房中放年学，闺阁中忌针黹，都是闲时，因贾环也过来玩。
+ 正遇见宝钗、香菱、莺儿三个赶围棋作耍，贾环见了也要玩。
+ 宝钗素日看他也如宝玉，并没他意，今儿听他要玩，让他上来，坐在一处玩。
+ 一注十个钱。
+ 头一回，自己赢了，心中十分喜欢。
+ 谁知后来接连输了几盘，就有些着急。
+ 赶着这盘正该自己掷骰子，若掷个七点便赢了，若掷个六点，下该莺儿掷个三点就赢了。
+ 因拿起骰子来狠命一掷，一个坐定了二，那一个乱转。
+ 莺儿拍着手儿叫“么！”
+ 贾环便瞪着眼，“六！” “七！” “八！” 混叫。
+ 那骰子偏生转出么来。
+ 贾环急了，伸手便抓起骰子来，就要拿钱，说是个六点。
+ 莺儿便说：“明明是个么！”
+ 宝钗见贾环急了，便瞅了莺儿一眼，说道：“越大越没规矩!
+ 难道爷们还赖你?
+ 还不放下钱来呢。”
+ 莺儿满心委屈，见姑娘说，不敢出声，只得放下钱来，口内嘟囔说：“一个做爷的，还赖我们这几个钱，连我也瞧不起!
+ 前儿和宝二爷玩，他输了那些也没着急，下剩的钱还是几个小丫头子们一抢，他一笑就罢了。”
+ 宝钗不等说完，连忙喝住了。
+ 贾环道：“我拿什么比宝玉?
+ 你们怕他，都和他好，都欺负我不是太太养的！”
+ 说着便哭。
+ 宝钗忙劝他：“好兄弟，快别说这话，人家笑话。”
+ 又骂莺儿。
+ 正值宝玉走来，见了这般景况，问：“是怎么了？”
+ 贾环不敢则声。
+ 宝钗素知他家规矩，凡做兄弟的怕哥哥。
+ 却不知那宝玉是不要人怕他的。
+ 他想着：“兄弟们一并都有父母教训，何必我多事，反生疏了。
+ 况且我是正出，他是庶出，饶这样看待，还有人背后谈论，还禁得辖治了他？”
+ 更有个呆意思存在心里。
+ 你道是何呆意?
+ 因他自幼姐妹丛中长大，亲姊妹有元春探春，叔伯的有迎春惜春，亲戚中又有湘云、黛玉、宝钗等人，他便料定天地间灵淑之气，只钟于女子，男儿们不过是些渣滓浊沫而已。
+ 因此把一切男子都看成浊物，可有可无。
+ 只是父亲、伯叔、兄弟之伦，因是圣人遗训，不敢违忤，所以弟兄间亦不过尽其大概就罢了，并不想自己是男子，须要为子弟之表率。
+ 是以贾环等都不甚怕他，只因怕贾母不依，才只得让他三分。
+ 现今宝钗生怕宝玉教训他，倒没意思，便连忙替贾环掩饰。
+ 宝玉道：“大正月里，哭什么?
+ 这里不好，到别处玩去。
+ 你天天念书，倒念糊涂了。
+ 譬如这件东西不好，横竖那一件好，就舍了这件取那件。
+ 难道你守着这件东西哭会子就好了不成?
+ 你原是要取乐儿，倒招的自己烦恼。
+ 还不快去呢！”
+ 贾环听了，只得回来。
+ 赵姨娘见他这般，因问：“是那里垫了踹窝来了？”
+ 一问不答，再问时，贾环便说：“同宝姐姐玩来着。
+ 莺儿欺负我，赖我的钱； 宝玉哥哥撵了我来了。”
+ 赵姨娘啐道：“谁叫你上高台盘了?
+ 下流没脸的东西!
+ 那里玩不得?
+ 谁叫你跑了去讨这没意思？”
+ 正说着，可巧凤姐在窗外过，都听到耳内，便隔着窗户说道：“大正月里，怎么了?
+ 兄弟们小孩子家，一半点儿错了，你只教导他，说这样话做什么?
+ 凭他怎么着，还有老爷太太管他呢，就大口家啐他?
+ 他现是主子，不好，横竖有教导他的人，与你什么相干?
+ 环兄弟，出来!
+ 跟我玩去。”
+ 贾环素日怕凤姐比怕王夫人更甚，听见叫他，便赶忙出来。
+ 赵姨娘也不敢出声。
+ 凤姐向贾环道：“你也是个没性气的东西呦!
+ 时常说给你：要吃，要喝，要玩，你爱和那个姐姐妹妹哥哥嫂子玩，就和那个玩。
+ 你总不听我的话，倒叫这些人教的你歪心邪意、狐媚魇道的。
+ 自己又不尊重，要往下流里走，安着坏心，还只怨人家偏心呢。
+ 输了几个钱，就这么个样儿！”
+ 因问贾环：“你输了多少钱？”
+ 贾环见问，只得诺诺的说道：“输了一二百钱。”
+ 凤姐啐道：“亏了你还是个爷，输了一二百钱就这么着！”
+ 回头叫：“丰儿，去取一吊钱来； 姑娘们都在后头玩呢，把他送了去。
+ 你明儿再这么狐媚子，我先打了你，再叫人告诉学里，皮不揭了你的!
+ 为你这不尊贵，你哥哥恨得牙痒痒，不是我拦着，窝心脚把你的肠子还窝出来呢！”
+ 喝令：“去罢！”
+ 贾环诺诺的，跟了丰儿得了钱，自去和迎春等玩去，不在话下。
+ 且说宝玉正和宝钗玩笑，忽见人说：“史大姑娘来了。”
+ 宝玉听了，连忙就走。
+ 宝钗笑道：“等着，咱们两个一齐儿走，瞧瞧他去。”
+ 说着，下了炕，和宝玉来至贾母这边。
+ 只见史湘云大说大笑的，见了他两个，忙站起来问好。
+ 正值黛玉在旁，因问宝玉：“打那里来？”
+ 宝玉便说：“打宝姐姐那里来。”
+ 黛玉冷笑道：“我说呢!
+ 亏了绊住，不然，早就飞了来了。”
+ 宝玉道：“只许和你玩，替你解闷儿；不过偶然到他那里，就说这些闲话。”
+ 黛玉道：“好没意思的话!
+ 去不去，管我什么事?
+ 又没叫你替我解闷儿!
+ 还许你从此不理我呢！”
+ 说着，便赌气回房去了。
+ 宝玉忙跟了来，问道：“好好儿的又生气了!
+ 就是我说错了，你到底也还坐坐儿，合别人说笑一会子啊？”
+ 黛玉道：“你管我呢！”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我自然不敢管你，只是你自己遭塌坏了身子呢。”
+ 黛玉道：“我作践了我的身子，我死我的，与你何干？”
+ 宝玉道：“何苦来?
+ 大正月里，‘死’了‘活’了的。”
+ 黛玉道：“偏说‘死’!
+ 我这会子就死!
+ 你怕死，你长命百岁的活着，好不好？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“要像只管这么闹，我还怕死吗?
+ 倒不如死了干净。”
+ 黛玉忙道：“正是了，要是这样闹，不如死了干净！”
+ 宝玉道：“我说自家死了干净，别错听了话，又赖人。”
+ 正说着，宝钗走来，说：“史大妹妹等你呢。”
+ 说着，便拉宝玉走了。
+ 这黛玉越发气闷，只向窗前流泪。
+ 没两盏茶时，宝玉仍来了。
+ 黛玉见了，越发抽抽搭搭的哭个不住。
+ 宝玉见了这样，知难挽回，打叠起百样的款语温言来劝慰。
+ 不料自己没张口，只听黛玉先说道：“你又来作什么?
+ 死活凭我去罢了!
+ 横竖如今有人和你玩：比我又会念，又会作，又会写，又会说会笑，又怕你生气，拉了你去哄着你。
+ 你又来作什么呢？”
+ 宝玉听了，忙上前悄悄的说道：“你这么个明白人，难道连‘亲不隔疏，后不僭先’也不知道?
+ 我虽糊涂，却明白这两句话。
+ 头一件，咱们是姑舅姐妹，宝姐姐是两姨姐妹，论亲戚也比你远。
+ 第二件，你先来，咱们两个一桌吃，一床睡，从小儿一处长大的，他是才来的，岂有个为他远你的呢？”
+ 黛玉啐道：“我难道叫你远他?
+ 我成了什么人了呢?
+ 我为的是我的心！”
+ 宝玉道：“我也为的是我的心。
+ 你难道就知道你的心，不知道我的心不成？”
+ 黛玉听了，低头不语，半日说道：“你只怨人行动嗔怪你，你再不知道你怄的人难受。
+ 就拿今日天气比，分明冷些，怎么你倒脱了青肷披风呢？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“何尝没穿?
+ 见你一恼，我一暴燥，就脱了。”
+ 黛玉叹道：“回来伤了风，又该讹着吵吃的了。”
+ 二人正说着，只见湘云走来，笑道：“爱哥哥，林姐姐，你们天天一处玩，我好容易来了，也不理我理儿。”
+ 黛玉笑道：“偏是咬舌子爱说话，连个‘二’哥哥也叫不上来，只是‘爱’哥哥‘爱’哥哥的。
+ 回来赶围棋儿，又该你闹‘么爱三’了。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“你学惯了，明儿连你还咬起来呢。”
+ 湘云道：“他再不放人一点儿，专会挑人。
+ 就算你比世人好，也不犯见一个打趣一个。
+ 我指出个人来，你敢挑他，我就服你。”
+ 黛玉便问：“是谁？”
+ 湘云道：“你敢挑宝姐姐的短处，就算你是个好的。”
+ 黛玉听了冷笑道：“我当是谁，原来是他。
+ 我可那里敢挑他呢？”
+ 宝玉不等说完，忙用话分开。
+ 湘云笑道：“这一辈子我自然比不上你。
+ 我只保佑着明儿得一个咬舌儿林姐夫，时时刻刻你可听‘爱’呀‘厄’的去!
+ 阿弥陀佛，那时才现在我眼里呢！”
+ 说的宝玉一笑，湘云忙回身跑了。
+ 要知端详，且听下回分解。
+
+ By the time the thirty-three days' convalescence had ended, not only were Bao-yu's health and strength completely restored, but even the burn-marks on his face had vanished, and he was allowed to move back into the Garden.
+ It may be recalled that when Bao-yu's sickness was at its height, it had been found necessary to call in Jia Yun with a number of pages under his command to take turns in watching over him.
+ Crimson was there too at that time, having been brought in with the other maids from his apartment.
+ During those few days she and Jia Yun therefore had ample opportunity of seeing each other, and a certain familiarity began to grow up between them.
+ Crimson noticed that Jia Yun was often to be seen sporting a handkerchief very much like the one she had lost.
+ She nearly asked him about it, but in the end was too shy.
+ Then, after the monk's visit, the presence of the menfolk was no longer required and Jia Yun went back to his tree-planting.
+ Though Crimson could still not dismiss the matter entirely from her mind, she did not ask anyone about it for fear of arousing their suspicions.
+ A day or two after their return to Green Delights, Crimson was sitting in her room, still brooding over this handkerchief business, when a voice outside the window inquired whether she was in.
+ Peeping through an eyelet in the casement she recognized Melilot, a little maid who belonged to the same apartment as herself.
+ 'Yes, I'm in,' she said.
+ 'Come inside!'
+ Little Melilot came bounding in and sat down on the bed with a giggle.
+ 'I'm in luck!' she said.
+ 'I was washing some things in the yard when Bao-yu asked for some tea to be taken round to Miss Lin's for him and Miss Aroma gave me the job of taking it.
+ When I got there, Miss Lin had just been given some money by Her Old Ladyship and was sharing it out among her maids, so when she saw me she just said "Here you are!" and gave me two big handfuls of it.
+ I've no idea how much it is.
+ Will you look after it for me, please?'
+ She undid her handkerchief and poured out a shower of coins.
+ Crimson carefully counted them for her and put them away in a safe place.
+ 'What's been the matter with you lately?' said Melilot.
+ 'If you ask me, I think you ought to go home for a day or two and call in a doctor.
+ I expect you need some medicine.'
+ 'Silly!' said Crimson.
+ 'I'm perfectly all right.
+ What should I want to go home for?'
+ 'I know what, then,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Lin's very weakly.
+ She's always taking medicine.
+ Why don't you ask her to give you some of hers?
+ It would probably do just as well.'
+ 'Oh, nonsense!' said Crimson.
+ 'You can't take other people's medicines just like that!'
+ 'Well, you can't go on in this way,' said Melilot, 'never eating or drinking properly.
+ What will become of you?
+ 'Who cares?' said Crimson.
+ 'The sooner I'm dead the better!'
+ 'You shouldn't say such things,' said Melilot, 'It isn't right.'
+ 'Why not?' said Crimson.
+ 'How do you know what is on my mind?'
+ Melilot shook her head sympathetically.
+ 'I can't say I really blame you,' she said.
+ 'Things are very difficult here at times.
+ Take yesterday, for example.
+ Her Old Ladyship said that as Bao-yu was better now and there was to be a thanksgiving for his recovery, all those who had the trouble of nursing him during his illness were to be rewarded according to their grades.
+ Well now, I can understand the very young ones like me not being included, but why should they leave you out?
+ I felt really sorry for you when I heard that they'd left you out.
+ Aroma, of course, you'd expect to get more than anyone else.
+ I don't blame her at all.
+ In fact, I think it's owing to her.
+ Let's be honest: none of us can compare with Aroma.
+ I mean, even if she didn't always take so much trouble over everything, no one would want to quarrel about her having a bigger share.
+ What makes me so angry is that people like Skybright and Mackerel should count as top grade when everyone knows they're only put there to curry favour with Bao-yu.
+ Doesn't it make you angry?'
+ 'I don't see much point in getting angry,' said Crimson.
+ 'You know what they said about the mile-wide marquee: "Even the longest party must have an end"?
+ Well, none of us is here for ever, you know.
+ Another four or five years from now when we've each gone our different ways it won't matter any longer what all the rest of us are doing.'
+ Little Melilot found this talk of parting and impermanence vaguely affecting and a slight moisture was to be observed about her eyes.
+ She thought shame to cry without good cause, however, and masked her emotion with a smile: 'That's perfectly true.
+ Only yesterday Bao-yu was going on about all the things he's going to do to his rooms and the clothes he's going to have made and everything, just as if he had a hundred or two years ahead of him with nothing to do but kill time in.'
+ Crimson laughed scornfully, though whether at Melilot's simplicity or at Bao-yu's improvidence is unclear, since just as she was about to comment, a little maid came running in, so young that her hair was still done up in two little girl's horns.
+ She was carrying some patterns and sheets of paper.
+ 'You're to copy out these two patterns.'
+ She threw them in Crimson's direction and straightway darted out again.
+ Crimson shouted after her: 'Who are they for, then?
+ You might at least finish your message before rushing off.
+ What are you in such a tearing hurry about?
+ Is someone steaming wheatcakes for you and you're afraid they'll get cold?'
+ 'They're for Mackerel.'
+ The little maid paused long enough to bawl an answer through the window, then picking up her heels, went pounding off, plim-plam, plim-plam, plim-plam, as fast as she had come.
+ Crimson threw the patterns crossly to one side and went to hunt in her drawer for a brush to trace them with.
+ After rummaging for several minutes she had only succeeded in finding a few worn-out ones, too moulted for use.
+ 'Funny!' she said.
+ 'I could have sworn I put a new one in there the other day ...'
+ She thought a bit, then laughed at herself as she remembered: 'Of course.
+ Oriole took it, the evening before last.'
+ She turned to Melilot.
+ 'Would you go and get it for me, then?'
+ 'I'm afraid I can't,' said Melilot.
+ 'Miss Aroma's waiting for me to fetch some boxes for her.
+ You'll have to get it yourself.'
+ 'If Aroma's waiting for you, why have you been sitting here gossiping all this time?' said Crimson.
+ 'If I hadn't asked you to go and get it, she wouldn't have been waiting, would she?
+ Lazy little beast!'
+ She left the room and walked out of the gate of Green Delights and in the direction of Bao-chai's courtyard.
+ She was just passing by Drenched Blossoms Pavilion when she caught sight of Bao-yu's old wet-nurse, Nannie Li, coming from the opposite direction and stood respectfully aside to wait for her.
+ 'Where have you been, Mrs Li?' she asked her.
+ 'I didn't expect to see you here.'
+ Nannie Li made a flapping gesture with her hand: 'What do you think, my dear: His Nibs has taken a fancy to the young fellow who does the tree-planting — "Yin" or "Yun" or whatever his name is — so Nannie has to go and ask him in.
+ Let's hope Their Ladyships don't find out about it.
+ There'll be trouble if they do.'
+ 'Are you really going to ask him in?'
+ 'Yes.
+ Why?'
+ Crimson laughed: 'If your Mr Yun knows what's good for him, he won't agree to come.'
+ 'He's no fool,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'Why shouldn't he?'
+ 'Any way, if he does come in,' said Crimson, ignoring her question, 'you can't just bring him in and then leave him, Mrs Li.
+ You'll have to take him back again yourself afterwards.
+ You don't want him wandering off on his own.
+ There's no knowing who he might bump into.'
+ (Crimson herself, was the secret hope.)
+ 'Gracious me!
+ I haven't got that much spare time,' said Nannie Li.
+ 'All I've done is just to tell him that he's got to come.
+ I'll send someone else to fetch him in when I get back presently - one of the girls, or one of the older women, maybe.'
+ She hobbled off on her stick, leaving Crimson standing there in a muse, her mission to fetch the tracing-brush momentarily forgotten.
+ She was still standing there a minute or two later when a little maid came along, who, seeing that it was Crimson, asked her what she was doing there.
+ Crimson looked up.
+ It was Trinket, another of the maids from Green Delights.
+ 'Where are you going?'
+ Crimson asked her.
+ 'I've been sent to fetch Mr Yun,' said Trinket.
+ 'I have to bring him inside to meet Master Bao.'
+ She ran off on her way.
+ At the gate to Wasp Waist Bridge Crimson ran into Trinket again, this time with Jia Yun in tow.
+ His eyes sought Crimson's; and hers, as she made pretence of conversing with Trinket, sought his.
+ Their two pairs of eyes met and briefly skirmished; then Crimson felt herself blushing, and turning away abruptly, she made off for Allspice Court.
+ Our narrative now follows Jia Yun and Trinket along the winding pathway to the House of Green Delights.
+ Soon they were at the courtyard gate and Jia Yun waited outside while she went in to announce his arrival.
+ She returned presently to lead him inside.
+ There were a few scattered rocks in the courtyard and some clumps of jade-green plantain.
+ Two storks stood in the shadow of a pine-tree, preening themselves with their long bills.
+ The gallery surrounding the courtyard was hung with cages of unusual design in which perched or fluttered a wide variety of birds, some of them gay-plumaged exotic ones.
+ Above the steps was a little five-frame penthouse building with a glimpse of delicately-carved partitions visible through the open doorway, above which a horizontal board hung, inscribed with the words CRIMSON JOYS AND GREEN DELIGHTS
+ 'So that's why it's called "The House of Green Delights"' Jia Yun told himself.
+ 'The name is taken from the inscription.'
+ A laughing voice addressed him from behind one of the silk gauze casements: 'Come on in!
+ It must be two or three months since I first forgot our appointment!'
+ Jia Yun recognized the voice as Bao-yu's and hurried up the steps inside.
+ He looked about him, dazzled by the brilliance of gold and semi-precious inlay-work and the richness of the ornaments and furnishings, but unable to see Bao-yu in the midst of it all.
+ To the left of him was a full-length mirror from behind which two girls now emerged, both about fifteen or sixteen years old and of much the same build and height.
+ They addressed him by name and asked him to come inside.
+ Slightly overawed, he muttered something in reply and hurried after them, not daring to take more than a furtive glance at them from the corner of his eye.
+ They ushered him into a tent-like summer 'cabinet' of green net, whose principal furniture was a tiny lacquered bed with crimson hangings heavily patterned in gold.
+ On this Bao-yu, wearing everyday clothes and a pair of bedroom slippers, was reclining, book in hand.
+ He threw the book down as Jia Yun entered and rose to his feet with a welcoming smile.
+ Jia Yun swiftly dropped knee and hand to floor in greeting.
+ Bidden to sit, he modestly placed himself on a bedside chair.
+ 'After I invited you round to my study that day,' said Bao-yu, 'a whole lot of things seemed to happen one after the other, and I'm afraid I quite forgot about your visit.'
+ Jia Yun returned his smile: 'Let's just say that it wasn't my luck to see you then.
+ But you have been ill since then, Uncle Bao.
+ Are you quite better now?'
+ 'Quite better, thank you.
+ I hear you've been very busy these last few days.'
+ 'That's as it should be,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But I'm glad you are better, Uncle.
+ That's a piece of good fortune for all of us.'
+ As they chatted, a maid came in with some tea.
+ Jia Yun was talking to Bao-yu as she approached, but his eyes were on her.
+ She was tall and rather thin with a long oval face, and she was wearing a rose-pink dress over a closely pleated white satin skirt and a black satin sleeveless jacket over the dress.
+ In the course of his brief sojourn among them in the early days of Bao-yu's illness, Jia Yun had got by heart the names of most of the principal females of Bao-yu's establishment.
+ He knew at a glance that the maid now serving him tea was Aroma.
+ He was also aware that she was in some way more important than the other maids and that to be waited on by her in the seated presence of her master was an honour.
+ Jumping hastily to his feet he addressed her with a modest smile: 'You shouldn't pour tea for me, Miss!
+ I'm not like a visitor here.
+ You should let me pour for myself!'
+ 'Oh do sit down!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'You don't have to be like that in front of the maids!'
+ 'I know,' said Jia Yun.
+ 'But a body-servant!
+ I don't like to presume.'
+ He sat down, nevertheless, and sipped his tea while Bao-yu made conversation on a number of unimportant topics.
+ He told him which household kept the best troupe of players, which had the finest gardens, whose maids were the prettiest, who gave the best parties, and who had the best collection of curiosities or the strangest pets.
+ Jia Yun did his best to keep up with him.
+ After a while Bao-yu showed signs of flagging, and when Jia Yun, observing what appeared to be fatigue, rose to take his leave, he did not very strongly press him to stay.
+ 'You must come again when you can spare the time,' said Bao-yu, and ordered Trinket to see him out of the Garden.
+ Once outside the gateway of Green Delights, Jia Yun looked around him on all sides, and having ascertained that there was no one else about, slowed down to a more dawdling pace so that he could ask Trinket a few questions.
+ Indeed, the little maid was subjected to quite a catechism: How old was she?
+ What was her name?
+ What did her father and mother do?
+ How many years had she been working for his Uncle Bao?
+ How much pay did she get a month?
+ How many girls were there working for him altogether?
+ Trinket seemed to have no objection, however, and answered each question as it came.
+ 'That girl you were talking to on the way in,' he said, 'isn't her name "Crimson"?'
+ Trinket laughed: 'Yes.
+ Why do you ask?'
+ 'I heard her asking you about a handkerchief.
+ Only it just so happens that I picked one up.'
+ Trinket showed interest.
+ 'She's asked me about that handkerchief of hers a number of times.
+ I told her, I've got better things to do with my time than go looking for people's handkerchiefs.
+ But when she asked me about it again today, she said that if I could find it for her, she'd give me a reward.
+ Come to think of it, you were there when she said that, weren't you?
+ It was when we were outside the gate of Allspice Court.
+ So you can bear me out.
+ Oh Mr Jia, please let me have it if you've picked it up and I'll be able to see what she will give me for it!'
+ Jia Yun had picked up a silk handkerchief a month previously at the time when his tree-planting activities had just started.
+ He knew that it must have been dropped by one or another of the female inmates of the Garden, but not knowing which, had not so far ventured to do anything about his discovery.
+ When earlier on he had heard Crimson question Trinket about her loss, he had realized, with a thrill of pleasure, that the handkerchief he had picked up must have been hers.
+ Trinket's request now gave him just the opening he required.
+ He drew a handkerchief of his own from inside his sleeve and held it up in front of her with a smile: 'I'll give it to you on one condition.
+ If she lets you have this reward you were speaking of; you've got to let me know.
+ No cheating, mind!'
+ Trinket received the handkerchief with eager assurances that he would be informed of the outcome, and having seen him out of the Garden, went back again to look for Crimson.
+ Our narrative returns now to Bao-yu.
+ After disposing of Jia Yun, Bao-yu continued to feel extremely lethargic and lay back on the bed with every appearance of being about to doze off to sleep.
+ Aroma hurried over to him and, sitting on the edge of the bed, roused him with a shake: 'Come on!
+ Surely you are not going to sleep again?
+ You need some fresh air.
+ Why don't you go outside and walk around for a bit?'
+ Bao-yu took her by the hand and smiled at her.
+ 'I'd like to go,' he said, 'but I don't want to leave you.'
+ 'Silly!' said Aroma with a laugh.
+ 'Don't say what you don't mean!'
+ She hoicked him to his feet.
+ 'Well, where am I going to go then?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'I just feel so bored.'
+ 'Never mind where, just go out!' said Aroma.
+ 'If you stay moping indoors like this, you'll get even more bored.'
+ Bao-yu followed her advice, albeit half-heartedly, and went out into the courtyard.
+ After visiting the cages in the gallery and playing for a bit with the birds, he ambled out of the courtyard into the Garden and along the batik of Drenched Blossoms Stream, pausing for a while to look at the goldfish in the water.
+ As he did so, a pair of fawns came running like the wind from the hillside opposite.
+ Bao-yu was puzzled.
+ There seemed to be no reason for their mysterious terror.
+ But just then little Jia Lan came running down the same slope after them, a tiny bow clutched in his hand.
+ Seeing his uncle ahead of him, he stood politely to attention and greeted him cheerfully: 'Hello, Uncle.
+ I didn't know you were at home.
+ I thought you'd gone out.'
+ 'Mischievous little blighter, aren't you?' said Bao-yu.
+ 'What do you want to go shooting them for, poor little things?'
+ 'I've got no reading to do today,' said Jia Lan, 'and I don't like to hang about doing nothing, so I thought I'd practise my archery and equitation.'
+ 'Goodness!
+ You'd better not waste time jawing, then,' said Bao-yu, and left the young toxophilite to his pursuits.
+ Moving on, without much thinking where he was going, he came presently to the gate of a courtyard.
+ Denser than feathers on the phoenix' tail The stirred leaves murmured with a pent dragon's moan.
+ The multitudinous bamboos and the board above the gate confirmed that his feet had, without conscious direction, carried him to the Naiad's House.
+ Of their own accord they now carried him through the gateway and into the courtyard.
+ The House seemed silent and deserted, its bamboo door-blind hanging unrolled to the ground; but as he approached the window, he detected a faint sweetness in the air, traceable to a thin curl of incense smoke which drifted out through the green gauze of the casement.
+ He pressed his face to the gauze; but before his eyes could distinguish anything, his ear became aware of a long, languorous sigh and the sound of a voice speaking: 'Each day in a drowsy waking dream of love.'
+ Bao-yu felt a sudden yearning for the speaker.
+ He could see her now.
+ It was Dai-yu, of course, lying on her bed, stretching herself and yawning luxuriously.
+ He laughed: 'Why "each day in a drowsy waking dream of love"?' he asked through the window (the words were from his beloved Western Chamber); then going to the doorway he lifted up the door-blind and walked into the room.
+ Dai-yu realized that she had been caught off her guard.
+ She covered her burning face with her sleeve, and turning over towards the wall, pretended to be asleep.
+ Bao-yu went over intending to turn her back again, but just at that moment Dai-yu's old wet-nurse came hurrying in with two other old women at her heels: 'Miss Lin's asleep, sir.
+ Would you mind coming back again after she's woken up?'
+ Dai-yu at once turned over and sat up with a laugh: 'Who's asleep?'
+ The three old women laughed apologetically.
+ 'Sorry, miss.
+ We thought you were asleep.
+ Nightingale!
+ Come inside now!
+ Your mistress is awake.'
+ Having shouted for Nightingale, the three guardians of morality retired.
+ 'What do you mean by coming into people's rooms when they're asleep?' said Dai-yu, smiling up at Bao-yu as she sat on the bed's edge patting her hair into shape.
+ At the sight of those soft cheeks so adorably flushed and the starry eyes a little misted with sleep a wave of emotion passed over him.
+ He sank into a chair and smiled back at her: 'What was that you were saying just now before I came in?'
+ 'I didn't say anything,' said Dai-yu.
+ Bao-yu laughed and snapped his fingers at her: 'Put that on your tongue, girl!
+ I heard you say it.'
+ While they were talking to one another, Nightingale came in.
+ 'Nightingale,' said Bao-yu, 'what about a cup of that excellent tea of yours?'
+ 'Excellent tea?' said Nightingale.
+ 'There's nothing very special about the tea we drink here.
+ If nothing but the best will do, you'd better wait for Aroma to come.'
+ 'Never mind about him!' said Dai-yu.
+ 'First go and get me some water!'
+ 'He is our guest,' said Nightingale.
+ 'I can't fetch you any water until I've given him his tea.'
+ And she went to pour him a cup.
+ 'Good girl!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'If with your amorous mistress I should wed, 'Tis you, sweet maid, must make our bridal bed.'
+ The words, like Dai-yu's languorous line, were from Western Chamber, but in somewhat dubious taste.
+ Dai-yu was dreadfully offended by them.
+ In an instant the smile had vanished from her face.
+ 'What was that you said?'
+ He laughed: 'I didn't say anything.'
+ Dai-yu began to cry.
+ 'This is your latest amusement, I suppose.
+ Every time you hear some coarse expression outside or read some crude, disgusting book, you have to come back here and give me the benefit of it.
+ I am to become a source of entertainment for the menfolk now, it seems.'
+ She rose, weeping, from the bed and went outside.
+ Bao-yu followed her in alarm.
+ 'Dearest coz, it was very wrong of me to say that, but it just slipped out without thinking.
+ Please don't go and tell!
+ I promise never to say anything like that again.
+ May my mouth rot and my tongue decay if I do!'
+ Just at that moment Aroma came hurrying up: 'Quick!' she said.
+ 'You must come back and change.
+ The Master wants to see you.'
+ The descent of this thunderbolt drove all else from his mind and he rushed off in a panic.
+ As soon as he had changed, he hurried out of the Garden.
+ Tealeaf was waiting for him outside the inner gate.
+ 'I suppose you don't know what he wants to see me about?'
+ Bao-yu asked him.
+ 'I should hurry up, if I were you,' said Tealeaf.
+ 'All I know is that he wants to see you.
+ You'll find out why soon enough when you get there.'
+ He hustled him along as he spoke.
+ They had passed round the main hall, Bao-yu still in a state of fluttering apprehensiveness when there was a loud guffaw from a corner of the wall.
+ It was Xue Pan, clapping his hands and stamping his feet in mirth.
+ 'Ho! Ho! Ho! You'd never have come this quickly if you hadn't been told that Uncle wanted you!'
+ Tealeaf, also laughing, fell on his knees.
+ Bao-yu stood there looking puzzled.
+ It was some moments before it dawned on him that he had been hoaxed.
+ Xue Pan was by this time being apologetic — bowing repeatedly and pumping his hands to show how sorry he was: 'Don't blame the lad!' he said.
+ 'It wasn't his fault.
+ I talked him into it.'
+ Bao-yu saw that he could do nothing, and might as well accept with a good grace.
+ 'I don't mind being made a fool of,' he said, 'but I think it was going a bit far to bring my father into it.
+ I think perhaps I'd better tell Aunt Xue and see what she thinks about it all.'
+ 'Now look here, old chap,' said Xue Pan, getting agitated, 'it was only because I wanted to fetch you out a bit quicker.
+ I admit it was very wrong of me to make free with your Parent, but after all, you've only got to mention my father next time you want to fool me and we'll be quits!'
+ 'Aiyo!' said Bao-yu.
+ 'Worse and worse!'
+ He turned to Tealeaf: 'Treacherous little beast!
+ What are you still kneeling for?'
+ Tealeaf kotowed and rose to his feet.
+ 'Look,' said Xue Pan.
+ 'I wouldn't have troubled you otherwise, only it's my birthday on the third of next month and old Hu and old Cheng and a couple of the others, I don't know where they got them from but they've given me: a piece of fresh lotus root, ever so crisp and crunchy, as thick as that, look, and as long as that; a huge great melon, look, as big as that; a freshly-caught sturgeon as big as that; and a cypress-smoked Siamese sucking-pig as big as that that came in the tribute from Siam.
+ Don't you think it was clever of them to get me those things?
+ Maybe not so much the sturgeon and the sucking-pig.
+ They're just expensive.
+ But where would you go to get a piece of lotus root or a melon like that?
+ However did they get them to grow so big?
+ I've given some of the stuff to Mother, and while I was about it I sent some round to your grandmother and Auntie Wang, but I've still got a lot left over.
+ I can't eat it all myself: it would be unlucky.
+ But apart from me, the only person I can think of who is worthy to eat a present like this is you.
+ That's why I came over specially to invite you.
+ And we're lucky, because we've got a little chap who sings coming round as well.
+ So you and I will be able to sit down and make a day of it, eh?
+ Really enjoy ourselves.'
+
+ 话说宝玉养过了三十三天之后，不但身体强壮，亦且连脸上疮痕平复，仍回大观园去。
+ 这也不在话下。
+ 且说近日宝玉病的时节，贾芸带着家下小厮坐更看守，昼夜在这里；那小红同众丫鬟也在这里守着宝玉。
+ 彼此相见日多，渐渐的混熟了。
+ 小红见贾芸手里拿着块绢子，倒像是自己从前掉的，待要问他，又不好问。
+ 不料那和尚道士来过，用不着一切男人，贾芸仍种树去了。
+ 这件事待放下又放不下，待要问去又怕人猜疑。
+ 正是犹豫不决、神魂不定之际，忽听窗外问道：“姐姐在屋里没有？”
+ 小红闻听，在窗眼内望外一看，原来是本院的个小丫头佳蕙，因答说：“在家里呢，你进来罢。”
+ 佳蕙听了跑进来，就坐在床上，笑道：“我好造化!
+ 才在院子里洗东西，宝玉叫往林姑娘那里送茶叶，花大姐姐交给我送去。
+ 可巧老太太给林姑娘送钱来，正分给他们的丫头们呢，见我去了，林姑娘就抓了两把给我。
+ 也不知是多少，你替我收着。”
+ 便把手绢子打开，把钱倒出来交给小红。
+ 小红就替他一五一十的数了收起。
+ 佳蕙道：“你这两日心里到底觉着怎么样?
+ 依我说，你竟家去住两日，请一个大夫来瞧瞧，吃两剂药，就好了。”
+ 小红道：“那里的话?
+ 好好儿的，家去做什么？”
+ 佳蕙道：“我想起来了。
+ 林姑娘生的弱，时常他吃药，你就和他要些来吃，也是一样。”
+ 小红道：“胡说！
+ 药也是混吃的？”
+ 佳蕙道：“你这也不是个长法儿，又懒吃懒喝的，终久怎么样？”
+ 小红道：“怕什么?
+ 还不如早些死了倒干净。”
+ 佳蕙道：“好好儿的，怎么说这些话？”
+ 小红道：“你那里知道我心里的事！”
+ 佳蕙点头，想了一会道：“可也怨不得你。
+ 这个地方，本也难站。
+ 就像昨儿老太太因宝玉病了这些日子，说伏侍的人都辛苦了，如今身上好了，各处还香了愿，叫把跟着的人都按着等儿赏他们。
+ 我们算年纪小，上不去，我也不抱怨；像你怎么也不算在里头?
+ 我心里就不服。
+ 袭人那怕他得十分儿，也不恼他，原该的。
+ 说句良心话，谁还能比他呢?
+ 别说他素日殷勤小心，就是不殷勤小心，也拼不得。
+ 只可气晴雯绮霞他们这几个都算在上等里去，伏着宝玉疼他们，众人就都捧着他们。
+ 你说可气不可气？”
+ 小红道：“也犯不着气他们。
+ 俗语说的：‘千里搭长棚——没有个不散的筵席。’
+ 谁守一辈子呢?
+ 不过三年五载，各人干各人的去了，那时谁还管谁呢？”
+ 这两句话不觉感动了佳蕙心肠，由不得眼圈儿红了，又不好意思无端的哭，只得勉强笑道：“你这话说的是。
+ 昨儿宝玉还说：明儿怎么收拾房子，怎么做衣裳。
+ 倒像有几百年熬煎似的。”
+ 小红听了，冷笑两声，方要说话，只见一个未留头的小丫头走进来，手里拿着些花样子并两张纸，说道：“这两个花样子叫你描出来呢。”
+ 说着，向小红撂下，回转身就跑了。
+ 小红向外问道：“到底是谁的?
+ 也等不的说完就跑。
+ ‘谁蒸下馒头等着你——怕冷了不成？’”
+ 那小丫头在窗外只说得一声：“是绮大姐姐的。”
+ 抬起脚来，咕咚咕咚又跑了。
+ 小红便赌气把那样子撂在一边，向抽屉内找笔。
+ 找了半天，都是秃的，因说道：“前儿一枝新笔放在那里了?
+ 怎么想不起来？”
+ 一面说，一面出神，想了一回，方笑道：“是了，前儿晚上莺儿拿了去了。”
+ 因向佳蕙道：“你替我取了来。”
+ 佳蕙道：“花大姐姐还等着我替他拿箱子，你自己取去罢。”
+ 小红道：“他等着你，你还坐着闲磕牙儿?
+ 我不叫你取去，他也不‘等’你了。
+ 坏透了的小蹄子！”
+ 说着自己便出房来。
+ 出了怡红院，一径往宝钗院内来。
+ 刚至沁芳亭畔，只见宝玉的奶娘李嬷嬷从那边来。
+ 小红立住，笑问道：“李奶奶，你老人家那里去了?
+ 怎么打这里来？”
+ 李嬷嬷站住，将手一拍，道：“你说，好好儿的，又看上了那个什么‘云哥儿’‘雨哥儿’的，这会子逼着我叫了他来。
+ 明儿叫上屋里听见，可又是不好。”
+ 小红笑道：“你老人家当真的就信着他去叫么？”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“可怎么样呢？”
+ 小红笑道：“那一个要是知好歹，就不进来才是。”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“他又不傻，为什么不进来？”
+ 小红道：“既是进来，你老人家该别和他一块儿来；回来叫他一个人混碰，看他怎么样！”
+ 李嬷嬷道：“我有那样大工夫和他走!
+ 不过告诉了他，回来打发个小丫头子，或是老婆子，带进他来就完了。”
+ 说着拄着拐一径去了。
+ 小红听说，便站着出神，且不去取笔。
+ 不多时，只见一个小丫头跑来，见小红站在那里，便问道：“红姐姐，你在这里作什么呢？”
+ 小红抬头见是小丫头子坠儿。
+ 小红道：“那里去？”
+ 坠儿道：“叫我带进芸二爷来。”
+ 说着，一径跑了。
+ 这里小红刚走至蜂腰桥门前，只见那边坠儿引着贾芸来了。
+ 那贾芸一面走，一面拿眼把小红一溜；那小红只装着和坠儿说话，也把眼去一溜贾芸：四目恰好相对。
+ 小红不觉把脸一红，一扭身往蘅芜院去了。
+ 不在话下。
+ 这里贾芸随着坠儿逶迤来至怡红院中，坠儿先进去回明了，然后方领贾芸进去。
+ 贾芸看时，只见院内略略有几点山石，种着芭蕉，那边有两只仙鹤，在松树下剔翎。
+ 一溜回廊上吊着各色笼子，笼着仙禽异鸟。
+ 上面小小五间抱厦，一色雕镂新鲜花样槅扇，上面悬着一个匾，四个大字，题道是：“怡红快绿。”
+ 贾芸想道：“怪道叫‘怡红院’，原来匾上是这四个字。”
+ 正想着，只听里面隔着纱窗子笑说道：“快进来罢！
+ 我怎么就忘了你两三个月！”
+ 贾芸听见是宝玉的声音，连忙进入房内，抬头一看，只见金碧辉煌，文章熌烁，却看不见宝玉在那里。
+ 一回头，只见左边立着一架大穿衣镜，从镜后转出两个一对儿十五六岁的丫头来，说：“请二爷里头屋里坐。”
+ 贾芸连正眼也不敢看，连忙答应了。
+ 又进一道碧纱厨，只见小小一张填漆床上，悬着大红销金撒花帐子。
+ 宝玉穿着家常衣服，靸着鞋，倚在床上，拿着本书；看见他进来，将书掷下，早带笑立起身来。
+ 贾芸忙上前请了安，宝玉让坐，便在下面一张椅子上坐了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“只从那个月见了你，我叫你往书房里来，谁知接接连连许多事情，就把你忘了。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“总是我没造化，偏又遇着叔叔欠安。
+ 叔叔如今可大安了？”
+ 宝玉道：“大好了。
+ 我倒听见说你辛苦了好几天。”
+ 贾芸道：“辛苦也是该当的。
+ 叔叔大安了，也是我们一家子的造化。”
+ 说着，只见有个丫鬟端了茶来与他。
+ 那贾芸嘴里和宝玉说话，眼睛却瞅那丫鬟：
+ 细挑身子，容长脸儿，穿着银红袄儿，青缎子坎肩，白绫细褶儿裙子。
+ 那贾芸自从宝玉病了，他在里头混了两天，都把有名人口记了一半；他看见这丫鬟，知道是袭人。
+ 他在宝玉房中比别人不同，如今端了茶来，宝玉又在旁边坐着，便忙站起来，笑道：“姐姐怎么给我倒起茶来?
+ 我来到叔叔这里，又不是客，等我自己倒罢了。”
+ 宝玉道：“你只管坐着罢。
+ 丫头们跟前也是这么着。”
+ 贾芸笑道：“虽那么说，叔叔屋里的姐姐们，我怎么敢放肆呢。”
+ 一面说，一面坐下吃茶。
+ 那宝玉便和他说些没要紧的散话：
+ 又说道谁家的戏子好，谁家的花园好，又告诉他谁家的丫头标致，谁家的酒席丰盛，又是谁家有奇货，又是谁家有异物。
+ 那贾芸口里只得顺着他说。
+ 说了一回，见宝玉有些懒懒的了，便起身告辞。
+ 宝玉也不甚留，只说：“你明儿闲了只管来。”
+ 仍命小丫头子坠儿送出去了。
+ 贾芸出了怡红院，见四顾无人，便慢慢的停着些走，口里一长一短和坠儿说话。
+ 先问他：“几岁了?
+ 名字叫什么?
+ 你父母在那行上?
+ 在宝叔屋里几年了?
+ 一个月多少钱?
+ 共总宝叔屋内有几个女孩子？”
+ 那坠儿见问，便一桩桩的都告诉他了。
+ 贾芸又道：“刚才那个和你说话的，他可是叫小红？”
+ 坠儿笑道：“他就叫小红。
+ 你问他作什么？”
+ 贾芸道：“方才他问你什么绢子，我倒拣了一块。”
+ 坠儿听了笑道：“他问了我好几遍：可有看见他的绢子的。
+ 我那里那么大工夫管这些事?
+ 今儿他又问我，他说我替他找着了他还谢我呢。
+ 才在蘅芜院门口儿说的，二爷也听见了，不是我撒谎。
+ 好二爷，你既拣了，给我罢，我看他拿什么谢我。”
+ 原来上月贾芸进来种树之时，便拣了一块罗帕，知是这园内的人失落的，但不知是那一个人的，故不敢造次。
+ 今听见小红问坠儿，知是他的，心内不胜喜幸。
+ 又见坠儿追索，心中早得了主意，便向袖内将自己的一块取出来，向坠儿笑道：“我给是给你，你要得了他的谢礼，可不许瞒着我。”
+ 坠儿满口里答应了，接了绢子，送出贾芸，回来找小红，不在话下。
+ 如今且说宝玉打发贾芸去后，意思懒懒的，歪在床上，似有朦胧之态。
+ 袭人便走上来，坐在床沿上推他，说道：“怎么又要睡觉?
+ 你闷的很，出去逛逛不好？”
+ 宝玉见说，携着他的手笑道：“我要去，只是舍不得你。”
+ 袭人笑道：“你没别的说了！”
+ 一面说，一面拉起他来。
+ 宝玉道：“可往那里去呢?
+ 怪腻腻烦烦的。”
+ 袭人道：“你出去了就好了。
+ 只管这么委琐，越发心里腻烦了。”
+ 宝玉无精打彩，只得依他。
+ 晃出了房门，在回廊上调弄了一回雀儿，出至院外，顺着沁芳溪，看了一回金鱼。
+ 只见那边山坡上两只小鹿儿箭也似的跑来。
+ 宝玉不解何意，正自纳闷，只见贾兰在后面，拿着一张小弓儿赶来。
+ 一见宝玉在前，便站住了，笑道：“二叔叔在家里呢，我只当出门去了呢。”
+ 宝玉道：“你又淘气了。
+ 好好儿的，射他做什么？”
+ 贾兰笑道：“这会子不念书，闲着做什么?
+ 所以演习演习骑射。”
+ 宝玉道：“磕了牙，那时候儿才不演呢。”
+ 说着，便顺脚一径来至一个院门前，看那凤尾森森，龙吟细细：正是潇湘馆。
+ 宝玉信步走入，只见湘帘垂地，悄无人声。
+ 走至窗前，觉得一缕幽香从碧纱窗中暗暗透出。
+ 宝玉便将脸贴在纱窗上看时，耳内忽听得细细的长叹了一声，道：“‘每日家，情思睡昏昏！’”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉心内痒将起来。
+ 再看时，只见黛玉在床上伸懒腰。
+ 宝玉在窗外笑道：“为什么‘每日家情思睡昏昏’的？”
+ 一面说，一面掀帘子进来了。
+ 黛玉自觉忘情，不觉红了脸，拿袖子遮了脸，翻身向里装睡着了。
+ 宝玉才走上来，要扳他的身子，只见黛玉的奶娘并两个婆子却跟进来了，说：“妹妹睡觉呢，等醒来再请罢。”
+ 刚说着，黛玉便翻身坐起来，笑道：“谁睡觉呢？”
+ 那两三个婆子见黛玉起来，便笑道：“我们只当姑娘睡着了。”
+ 说着，便叫紫鹃说：“姑娘醒了，进来伺候。”
+ 一面说，一面都去了。
+ 黛玉坐在床上，一面抬手整理鬓发，一面笑向宝玉道：“人家睡觉，你进来做什么？”
+ 宝玉见他星眼微饧，香腮带赤，不觉神魂早荡，一歪身坐在椅子上，笑道：“你才说什么？”
+ 黛玉道：“我没说什么。”
+ 宝玉笑道：“给你个榧子吃呢!
+ 我都听见了。”
+ 二人正说话，只见紫鹃进来，宝玉笑道：“紫鹃，把你们的好茶沏碗我喝。”
+ 紫鹃道：“我们那里有好的?
+ 要好的只好等袭人来。”
+ 黛玉道：“别理他。
+ 你先给我舀水去罢。”
+ 紫鹃道：“他是客，自然先沏了茶来再舀水去。”
+ 说着，倒茶去了。
+ 宝玉笑道：“好丫头!
+ ‘若共你多情小姐同鸳帐，怎舍得叫你叠被铺床？’”
+ 黛玉登时急了，撂下脸来说道：“你说什么？”
+ 宝玉笑道：“我何尝说什么？”
+ 黛玉便哭道：“如今新兴的，外头听了村话来，也说给我听；看了混帐书，也拿我取笑儿。
+ 我成了替爷们解闷儿的了。”
+ 一面哭，一面下床来，往外就走。
+ 宝玉心下慌了，忙赶上来说：“好妹妹，我一时该死，你好歹别告诉去!
+ 我再敢说这些话，嘴上就长个疔，烂了舌头。”
+ 正说着，只见袭人走来，说道：“快回去穿衣裳去罢，老爷叫你呢。”
+ 宝玉听了，不觉打了个焦雷一般，也顾不得别的，疾忙回来穿衣服。
+ 出园来，只见焙茗在二门前等着。
+ 宝玉问道：“你可知道老爷叫我是为什么？”
+ 焙茗道：“爷快出来罢，横竖是见去的，到那里就知道了。”
+ 一面说，一面催着宝玉。
+ 转过大厅，宝玉心里还自狐疑，只听墙角边一阵呵呵大笑，回头见薛蟠拍着手跳出来，笑道：“要不说姨夫叫你，你那里肯出来的这么快！”
+ 焙茗也笑着跪下了。
+ 宝玉怔了半天，方想过来，是薛蟠哄出他来。
+ 薛蟠连忙打恭作揖赔不是，又求：“别难为了小子，都是我央及他去的。”
+ 宝玉也无法了，只好笑问道：“你哄我也罢了，怎么说是老爷呢?
+ 我告诉姨娘去，评评这个理，可使得么？”
+ 薛蟠忙道：“好兄弟，我原为求你快些出来，就忘了忌讳这句话，改日你要哄我，也说我父亲，就完了。”
+ 宝玉道：“嗳哟！
+ 越发的该死了。”
+ 又向焙茗道：“反叛杂种，还跪着做什么？”
+ 焙茗连忙叩头起来。
+ 薛蟠道：“要不是，我也不敢惊动：只因下月初三日，是我的生日，谁知老胡和老程他们，不知那里寻了来的：这么粗，这么长，粉脆的鲜藕；这么大的西瓜；这么长，这么大的暹罗国进贡的灵柏香熏的暹罗猪、鱼。
+ 你说这四样礼物，可难得不难得?
+ 那鱼、猪不过贵而难得，这藕和瓜亏他怎么种出来的!
+ 我先孝敬了母亲，赶着就给你们老太太、姨母送了些去。
+ 如今留了些，我要自己吃恐怕折福，左思右想除我之外惟你还配吃。
+ 所以特请你来。
+ 可巧唱曲儿的一个小子又来了，我和你乐一天何如？”
+
+ THE NINTH DAY of the eighth lunar month, 1939.
+ My father, a bandit's offspring who had passed his fifteenth birthday, was joining the forces of Commander Yu Zhan'ao, a man destined to become a legendary hero, to ambush a Japanese convoy on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Grandma, a padded jacket over her shoulders, saw them to the edge of the village.
+ 'Stop here,' Commander Yu ordered her.
+ She stopped.
+ 'Douguan, mind your foster-dad,' she told my father.
+ The sight of her large frame and the warm fragrance of her lined jacket chilled him.
+ He shivered.
+ His stomach growled.
+ Commander Yu patted him on the head and said, 'Let's go, foster-son.'
+ Heaven and earth were in turmoil, the view was blurred.
+ By then the soldiers' muffled footsteps had moved far down the road.
+ Father could still hear them, but a curtain of blue mist obscured the men themselves.
+ Gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat, he nearly flew down the path on churning legs.
+ Grandma receded like a distant shore as the approaching sea of mist grew more tempestuous; holding on to Commander Yu was like clinging to the railing of a boat.
+ That was how Father rushed towards the uncarved granite marker that would rise above his grave in the bright-red sorghum fields of his hometown.
+ A bare-assed little boy once led a white billy goat up to the weed-covered grave, and as it grazed in unhurried contentment, the boy pissed furiously on the grave and sang out: 'The sorghum is red – the Japanese are coming – compatriots, get ready – fire your rifles and cannons –'
+ Someone said that the little goatherd was me, but I don't know.
+ I had learned to love Northeast Gaomi Township with all my heart, and to hate it with unbridled fury.
+ I didn't realise until I'd grown up that Northeast Gaomi Township is easily the most beautiful and most repulsive, most unusual and most common, most sacred and most corrupt, most heroic and most bastardly, hardest-drinking and hardest-loving place in the world.
+ The people of my father's generation who lived there ate sorghum out of preference, planting as much of it as they could.
+ In late autumn, during the eighth lunar month, vast stretches of red sorghum shimmered like a sea of blood.
+ Tall and dense, it reeked of glory; cold and graceful, it promised enchantment; passionate and loving, it was tumultuous.
+ The autumn winds are cold and bleak, the sun's rays intense.
+ White clouds, full and round, float in the tile-blue sky, casting full round purple shadows onto the sorghum fields below.
+ Over decades that seem but a moment in time, lines of scarlet figures shuttled among the sorghum stalks to weave a vast human tapestry.
+ They killed, they looted, and they defended their country in a valiant, stirring ballet that makes us unfilial descendants who now occupy the land pale by comparison.
+ Surrounded by progress, I feel a nagging sense of our species' regression.
+ After leaving the village, the troops marched down a narrow dirt path, the tramping of their feet merging with the rustling of weeds.
+ The heavy mist was strangely animated, kaleidoscopic.
+ Tiny droplets of water pooled into large drops on Father's face, clumps of hair stuck to his forehead.
+ He was used to the delicate peppermint aroma and the slightly sweet yet pungent odour of ripe sorghum wafting over from the sides of the path – nothing new there.
+ But as they marched through the heavy mist, his nose detected a new, sickly-sweet odour, neither yellow nor red, blending with the smells of peppermint and sorghum to call up memories hidden deep in his soul.
+ Six days later, the fifteenth day of the eighth month, the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
+ A bright round moon climbed slowly in the sky above the solemn, silent sorghum fields, bathing the tassels in its light until they shimmered like mercury.
+ Among the chiselled flecks of moonlight Father caught a whiff of the same sickly odour, far stronger than anything you might smell today.
+ Commander Yu was leading him by the hand through the sorghum, where three hundred fellow villagers, heads pillowed on their arms, were strewn across the ground, their fresh blood turning the black earth into a sticky muck that made walking slow and difficult.
+ The smell took their breath away.
+ A pack of corpse-eating dogs sat in the field staring at Father and Commander Yu with glinting eyes.
+ Commander Yu drew his pistol and fired – a pair of eyes was extinguished.
+ Another shot, another pair of eyes gone.
+ The howling dogs scattered, then sat on their haunches once they were out of range, setting up a deafening chorus of angry barks as they gazed greedily, longingly at the corpses.
+ The odour grew stronger.
+ 'Jap dogs!'
+ Commander Yu screamed.
+ 'Jap sons of bitches!'
+ He emptied his pistol, scattering the dogs without a trace.
+ 'Let's go, son,' he said.
+ The two of them, one old and one young, threaded their way through the sorghum field, guided by the moon's rays.
+ The odour saturating the field drenched Father's soul and would be his constant companion during the cruel months and years ahead.
+ Sorghum stems and leaves sizzled fiercely in the mist.
+ The Black Water River, which flowed slowly through the swampy lowland, sang in the spreading mist, now loud, now soft, now far, now near.
+ As they caught up with the troops, Father heard the tramping of feet and some coarse breathing fore and aft.
+ The butt of a rifle noisily bumped someone else's.
+ A foot crushed what sounded like a human bone.
+ The man in front of Father coughed loudly.
+ It was a familiar cough, calling to mind large ears that turned red with excitement.
+ Large transparent ears covered with tiny blood vessels were the trademark of Wang Wenyi, a small man whose enlarged head was tucked down between his shoulders.
+ Father strained and squinted until his gaze bored through the mist: there was Wang Wenyi's head, jerking with each cough.
+ Father thought back to when Wang was whipped on the parade ground, and how pitiful he had looked.
+ He had just joined up with Commander Yu.
+ Adjutant Ren ordered the recruits: Right face!
+ Wang Wenyi stomped down joyfully, but where he intended to 'face' was anyone's guess.
+ Adjutant Ren smacked him across the backside with his whip, forcing a yelp from between his parted lips.
+ Ouch, mother of my children!
+ The expression on his face could have been a cry, or could have been a laugh.
+ Some kids sprawled atop the wall hooted gleefully.
+ Now Commander Yu kicked Wang Wenyi in the backside.
+ 'Who said you could cough?'
+ 'Commander Yu . . .'
+ Wang Wenyi stifled a cough.
+ 'My throat itches. . . .'
+ 'So what?
+ If you give away our position, it's your head!'
+ 'Yes, sir,' Wang replied, as another coughing spell erupted.
+ Father sensed Commander Yu lurching forward to grab Wang Wenyi around the neck with both hands.
+ Wang wheezed and gasped, but the coughing stopped.
+ Father also sensed Commander Yu's hands release Wang's neck; he even sensed the purple welts, like ripe grapes, left behind.
+ Aggrieved gratitude filled Wang's deep-blue, frightened eyes.
+ The troops turned quickly into the sorghum, and Father knew instinctively that they were heading southeast.
+ The dirt path was the only direct link between the Black Water River and the village.
+ During the day it had a pale cast; the original black earth, the colour of ebony, had been covered by the passage of countless animals: cloven hoofprints of oxen and goats, semicircular hoofprints of mules, horses, and donkeys; dried road apples left by horses, mules, and donkeys; wormy cow chips; and scattered goat pellets like little black beans.
+ Father had taken this path so often that later on, as he suffered in the Japanese cinder pit, its image often flashed before his eyes.
+ He never knew how many sexual comedies my grandma had performed on this dirt path, but I knew.
+ And he never knew that her naked body, pure as glossy white jade, had lain on the black soil beneath the shadows of sorghum stalks, but I knew.
+ The surrounding mist grew more sluggish once they were in the sorghum field.
+ The stalks screeched in secret resentment when the men and equipment bumped against them, sending large, mournful beads of water splashing to the ground.
+ The water was ice-cold, clear and sparkling, and deliciously refreshing.
+ Father looked up, and a large drop fell into his mouth.
+ As the heavy curtain of mist parted gently, he watched the heads of sorghum stalks bend slowly down.
+ The tough, pliable leaves, weighted down by the dew, sawed at his clothes and face.
+ A breeze set the stalks above him rustling briefly; the gurgling of the Black Water River grew louder.
+ Father had gone swimming so often in the Black Water River that he seemed born to it.
+ Grandma said that the sight of the river excited him more than the sight of his own mother.
+ At the age of five, he could dive like a duckling, his little pink asshole bobbing above the surface, his feet sticking straight up.
+ He knew that the muddy riverbed was black and shiny, and as spongy as soft tallow, and that the banks were covered with pale-green reeds and plantain the colour of goose-down; coiling vines and stiff bone grass hugged the muddy ground, which was crisscrossed with the tracks of skittering crabs.
+ Autumn winds brought cool air, and wild geese flew through the sky heading south, their formation changing from a straight line one minute to a V the next.
+ When the sorghum turned red, hordes of crabs the size of horse hooves scrambled onto the bank at night to search for food – fresh cow dung and the rotting carcasses of dead animals – among the clumps of river grass.
+ The sound of the river reminded Father of an autumn night during his childhood, when the foreman of our family business, Arhat Liu, named after Buddhist saints, took him crabbing on the riverbank.
+ On that grey-purple night a golden breeze followed the course of the river.
+ The sapphire-blue sky was deep and boundless, green-tinted stars shone brightly in the sky: the ladle of Ursa Major (signifying death), the basket of Sagittarius (representing life); Octans, the glass well, missing one of its tiles; the anxious Herd Boy (Altair), about to hang himself; the mournful Weaving Girl (Vega), about to drown herself in the river. . . .
+ Uncle Arhat had been overseeing the work of the family distillery for decades, and Father scrambled to keep up with him as he would his own grandfather.
+ The weak light of the kerosene lamp bored a five-yard hole in the darkness.
+ When water flowed into the halo of light, it was the cordial yellow of an overripe apricot.
+ But cordial for only a fleeting moment, before it flowed on.
+ In the surrounding darkness the water reflected a starry sky.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat, rain capes over their shoulders, sat around the shaded lamp listening to the low gurgling of the river.
+ Every so often they heard the excited screech of a fox calling to its mate in the sorghum fields beside the river.
+ Father and Uncle Arhat sat quietly, listening with rapt respect to the whispered secrets of the land, as the smell of stinking river mud drifted over on the wind.
+ Hordes of crabs attracted by the light skittered towards the lamp, where they formed a shifting, restless cloister.
+ Father was so eager he nearly sprang to his feet, but Uncle Arhat held him by the shoulders.
+ 'Take it easy!
+ Greedy eaters never get the hot gruel.'
+ Holding his excitement in check, Father sat still.
+ The crabs stopped as soon as they entered the ring of lamplight, and lined up head to tail, blotting out the ground.
+ A greenish glint issued from their shells, as countless pairs of button eyes popped from deep sockets on little stems.
+ Mouths hidden beneath sloping faces released frothy strings of brazenly colourful bubbles.
+ The long fibres on Father's straw rain cape stood up.
+ 'Now!'
+ Uncle Arhat shouted.
+ Father sprang into action before the shout died out, snatching two corners of the tightly woven net they'd spread on the ground beforehand; they raised it in the air, scooping up a layer of crabs and revealing a clear spot of riverbank beneath them.
+ Quickly tying the ends together and tossing the net to one side, they rushed back and lifted up another piece of netting with the same speed and skill.
+ The heavy bundles seemed to hold hundreds, even thousands of crabs.
+ As Father followed the troops into the sorghum field, he moved sideways, crablike, overshooting the spaces between the stalks and bumping them hard, which caused them to sway and bend violently.
+ Still gripping tightly to Commander Yu's coat-tail, he was pulled along, his feet barely touching the ground.
+ But he was getting sleepy.
+ His neck felt stiff, his eyes were growing dull and listless, and his only thought was that as long as he could tag along behind Uncle Arhat to the Black Water River he'd never come back empty-handed.
+ Father ate crab until he was sick of it, and so did Grandma.
+ But even though they lost their appetite for it, they couldn't bear to throw the uneaten ones away.
+ So Uncle Arhat minced the leftovers and ground them under the bean-curd millstone, then salted the crab paste, which they ate daily, until it finally went bad and became mulch for the poppies.
+ Apparently Grandma was an opium smoker, but wasn't addicted, which was why she had the complexion of a peach, a sunny disposition, and a clear mind.
+ The crab-nourished poppies grew huge and fleshy, a mixture of pinks, reds, and whites that assailed your nostrils with their fragrance.
+ The black soil of my hometown, always fertile, was especially productive, and the people who tilled it were especially decent, strong-willed, and ambitious.
+ The white eels of the Black Water River, like plump sausages with tapered ends, foolishly swallowed every hook in sight.
+ Uncle Arhat had died the year before on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ His corpse, after being hacked to pieces, had been scattered around the area.
+ As the skin was being stripped from his body, his flesh jumped and quivered, as if he were a huge skinned frog.
+ Images of that corpse sent shivers up Father's spine.
+ Then he thought back to a night some seven or eight years earlier, when Grandma, drunk at the time, had stood in the distillery yard beside a pile of sorghum leaves, her arms around Uncle Arhat's shoulders.
+ 'Uncle . . . don't leave,' she pleaded.
+ 'If not for the sake of the monk, stay for the Buddha.
+ If not for the sake of the fish, stay for the water.
+ If not for my sake, stay for little Douguan.
+ You can have me, if you want. . . .
+ You're like my own father. . . .'
+ Father watched him push her away and swagger into the shed to mix fodder for the two large black mules who, when we opened our distillery, made us the richest family in the village.
+ Uncle Arhat didn't leave after all.
+ Instead he became our foreman, right up to the day the Japanese confiscated our mules to work on the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ Now Father and the others could hear long-drawn-out brays from the mules they had left behind in the village.
+ Wide-eyed with excitement, he could see nothing but the congealed yet nearly transparent mist that surrounded him.
+ Erect stalks of sorghum formed dense barriers behind a wall of vapour.
+ Each barrier led to another, seemingly endless.
+ He had no idea how long they'd been in the field, for his mind was focused on the fertile river roaring in the distance, and on his memories.
+ He wondered why they were in such a hurry to squeeze through this packed, dreamy ocean of sorghum.
+ Suddenly he lost his bearings.
+ He listened carefully for a sign from the river, and quickly determined that they were heading east-southeast, towards the river.
+ Once he had a fix on their direction, he understood that they would be setting an ambush for the Japanese, that they would be killing people, just as they had killed the dogs.
+ By heading east-southeast, they would soon reach the Jiao-Ping highway, which cut through the swampy lowland from north to south and linked the two counties of Jiao and Pingdu.
+ Japanese and their running dogs, Chinese collaborators, had built the highway with the forced labour of local conscripts.
+ The sorghum was set in motion by the exhausted troops, whose heads and necks were soaked by the settling dew.
+ Wang Wenyi was still coughing, even though he'd been the target of Commander Yu's continuing angry outbursts.
+ Father sensed that the highway was just up ahead, its pale-yellow outline swaying in front of him.
+ Imperceptibly tiny openings began to appear in the thick curtain of mist, and one dew-soaked ear of sorghum after another stared sadly at Father, who returned their devout gaze.
+ It dawned on him that they were living spirits: their roots buried in the dark earth, they soaked up the energy of the sun and the essence of the moon; moistened by the rain and dew, they understood the ways of the heavens and the logic of the earth.
+ The colour of the sorghum suggested that the sun had already turned the obscured horizon a pathetic red.
+ Then something unexpected occurred.
+ Father heard a shrill whistle, followed by a loud burst from up ahead.
+ 'Who fired his weapon?'
+ Commander Yu bellowed.
+ 'Who's the prick who did it?'
+ Father heard the bullet pierce the thick mist and pass through sorghum leaves and stalks, lopping off one of the heads.
+ Everyone held his breath as the bullet screamed through the air and thudded to the ground.
+ The sweet smell of gunpowder dissipated in the mist.
+ Wang Wenyi screamed pitifully, 'Commander – my head's gone – Commander – my head's gone –'
+ Commander Yu froze momentarily, then kicked Wang Wenyi.
+ 'You dumb fuck!' he growled.
+ 'How could you talk without a head?'
+ Commander Yu left my father standing there and went up to the head of the column.
+ Wang Wenyi was still howling.
+ Father pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the strange look on Wang's face.
+ A dark-blue substance was flowing on his cheek.
+ Father reached out to touch it; hot and sticky, it smelled a lot like the mud of the Black Water River, but fresher.
+ It overwhelmed the smell of peppermint and the pungent sweetness of sorghum and awakened in Father's mind a memory that drew ever nearer: like beads, it strung together the mud of the Black Water River, the black earth beneath the sorghum, the eternally living past, and the unstoppable present.
+ There are times when everything on earth spits out the stench of human blood.
+ 'Uncle,' Father said, 'you're wounded.'
+ 'Douguan, is that you?
+ Tell your old uncle if his head's still on his neck.'
+ 'It's there, Uncle, right where it's supposed to be.
+ Except your ear's bleeding.'
+ Wang Wenyi reached up to touch his ear and pulled back a bloody hand, yelping in alarm.
+ Then he froze as if paralysed.
+ 'Commander, I'm wounded!
+ I'm wounded!'
+ Commander Yu came back to Wang, knelt down, and put his hands around Wang's neck.
+ 'Stop screaming or I'll throttle you!'
+ Wang Wenyi didn't dare make a sound.
+ 'Where were you hit?'
+ Commander Yu asked him.
+ 'My ear . . .'
+ Wang was weeping.
+ Commander Yu took a piece of white cloth from his waistband and tore it in two, then handed it to him.
+ 'Hold this over it, and no more noise.
+ Stay in rank.
+ You can bandage it when we reach the highway.'
+ Commander Yu turned to Father.
+ 'Douguan,' he barked.
+ Father answered, and Commander Yu walked off holding him by the hand, followed by the whimpering Wang Wenyi.
+ The offending discharge had been the result of carelessness by the big fellow they called Mute, who was up front carrying a rake on his shoulder.
+ The rifle slung over his back had gone off when he stumbled.
+ Mute was one of Commander Yu's old bandit friends, a greenwood hero who had eaten fistcakes in the sorghum fields.
+ One of his legs was shorter than the other – a prenatal injury – and he limped when he walked, but that didn't slow him down.
+ Father was a little afraid of him.
+ At about dawn, the massive curtain of mist finally lifted, just as Commander Yu and his troops emerged onto the Jiao-Ping highway.
+ In my hometown, August is the misty season, possibly because there's so much swampy lowland.
+ Once he stepped onto the highway, Father felt suddenly light and nimble; with extra spring in his step, he let go of Commander Yu's coat.
+ Wang Wenyi, on the other hand, wore a crestfallen look as he held the cloth to his injured ear.
+ Commander Yu crudely wrapped it for him, covering up half his head.
+ Wang gnashed his teeth in pain.
+ 'The heavens have smiled on you,' Commander Yu said.
+ 'My blood's all gone,' Wang whimpered, 'I can't go on!'
+ 'Bullshit!'
+ Commander Yu exclaimed.
+ 'It's no worse than a mosquito bite.
+ You haven't forgotten your three sons, have you?'
+ Wang hung his head and mumbled, 'No, I haven't forgotten.'
+ The butt of the long-barrelled fowling piece over his shoulder was the colour of blood.
+ A flat metal gunpowder pouch rested against his hip.
+ Remnants of the dissipating mist were scattered throughout the sorghum field.
+ There were neither animal nor human footprints in the gravel, and the dense walls of sorghum on the deserted highway made the men feel that something ominous was in the air.
+ Father knew all along that Commander Yu's troops numbered no more than forty – deaf, mute, and crippled included.
+ But when they were quartered in the village, they had stirred things up so much, with chickens squawking and dogs yelping, that you'd have thought it was a garrison command.
+ Out on the highway, the soldiers huddled so closely together they looked like an inert snake.
+ Their motley assortment of weapons included shotguns, fowling pieces, ageing Hanyang rifles, plus a cannon that fired scale weights and was carried by two brothers, Fang Six and Fang Seven.
+ Mute was toting a rake with twenty-six metal tines, as were three other soldiers.
+ Father still didn't know what an ambush was, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known why anyone would take four rakes to the event.
+
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九，我父亲这个土匪种十四岁多一点。
+ 他跟着后来名满天下的传奇英雄余占鳌司令的队伍去胶平公路伏击敌人的汽车队。
+ 奶奶披着夹袄，送他们到村头。
+ 余司令说：“立住吧。”
+ 奶奶就立住了。
+ 奶奶对我父亲说：“豆官，听你干爹的话。”
+ 父亲没吱声，他看着奶奶高大的身躯，嗅着从奶奶的夹袄里散出的热烘烘的香味，突然感到凉气逼人。
+ 他打了一个战，肚子咕噜噜响一阵。
+ 余司令拍了一下父亲的头，说：“走，干儿。”
+ 天地混沌，景物影影绰绰，队伍的杂沓脚步声已响出很远。
+ 父亲眼前挂着蓝白色的雾幔，挡住了他的视线，只闻队伍脚步声，不见队伍形和影。
+ 父亲紧紧扯住余司令的衣角，双腿快速挪动。
+ 奶奶像岸愈离愈远，雾像海水愈近愈汹涌，父亲抓住余司令，就像抓住一条船舷。
+ 父亲就这样奔向了耸立在故乡通红的高粱地里属于他的那块无字的青石墓碑。
+ 他的坟头上已经枯草瑟瑟，曾经有一个光屁股的男孩牵着一只雪白的山羊来到这里，山羊不紧不慢地啃着坟头上的草，男孩站在墓碑上，怒气冲冲地撒上一泡尿，然后放声高唱：高粱红了——日本来了——同胞们准备好——开枪开炮——
+ 有人说这个放羊的男孩就是我，我不知道是不是我。
+ 我曾对高密东北乡极端热爱，曾经对高密东北乡极端仇恨，长大后努力学习马克思主义，我终于悟到：高密东北乡无疑是地球上最美丽最丑陋、最超脱最世俗、最圣洁最龌龊、最英雄好汉最王八蛋、最能喝酒最能爱的地方。
+ 生存在这块土地上的我的父老乡亲们，喜食高粱，每年都大量种植。
+ 八月深秋，无边无际的高粱红成洸洋的血海，高粱高密辉煌，高粱凄婉可人，高粱爱情激荡。
+ 秋风苍凉，阳光很旺，瓦蓝的天上游荡着一朵朵丰满的白云，高粱上滑动着一朵朵丰满白云的紫红色影子。
+ 一队队暗红色的人在高粱棵子里穿梭拉网，几十年如一日。
+ 他们杀人越货，精忠报国，他们演出过一幕幕英勇悲壮的舞剧，使我们这些活着的不肖子孙相形见绌，在进步的同时，我真切地感到种的退化。
+ 出村之后，队伍在一条狭窄的土路上行进，人的脚步声中夹着路边碎草的窸窣声响。
+ 雾奇浓，活泼多变。
+ 我父亲的脸上，无数密集的小水点凝成大颗粒的水珠，他的一撮头发，粘在头皮上。
+ 从路两边高粱地里飘来的幽淡的薄荷气息和成熟高粱苦涩微甘的气味，我父亲早已闻惯，不新不奇。
+ 在这次雾中行军里，我父亲闻到了那种新奇的、黄红相间的腥甜气息。
+ 那味道从薄荷和高粱的味道中隐隐约约地透过来，唤起父亲心灵深处一种非常遥远的记忆。
+ 七天之后，八月十五日，中秋节。
+ 一轮明月冉冉升起，遍地高粱肃然默立，高粱穗子浸在月光里，像蘸过水银，汩汩生辉，我父亲在剪破的月影下闻到了比现在强烈无数倍的腥甜气息。
+ 那时候，余司令牵着他的手在高粱地里行走，三百多个乡亲叠股枕臂，陈尸狼藉，流出的鲜血灌溉了一大片高粱，把高粱下的黑土地浸泡成稀泥，使他们拔脚迟缓。
+ 腥甜的气味令人窒息，一群前来吃人肉的狗，坐在高粱地里，目光炯炯地盯着父亲和余司令。
+ 余司令掏出自来得手枪，甩手一响，两只狗眼灭了；又一甩手，灭了两只狗眼。
+ 群狗一哄而散，坐得远远的，呜呜地咆哮着，贪婪地望着死尸。
+ 腥甜味愈加强烈，余司令大喊一声：“日本狗！
+ 狗娘养的日本！”
+ 他对着那群狗打完了所有的子弹，狗跑得无影无踪。
+ 余司令对我父亲说：“走吧，儿子！”
+ 一老一小，便迎着月光，向高粱深处走去。
+ 那股弥漫着田野的腥甜味浸透了我父亲的灵魂，在以后更加激烈更加残忍的岁月里，这股腥甜昧一直伴随着他。
+ 高粱的茎叶在雾中滋滋乱叫，雾中缓慢地流淌着在这块低洼平原上穿行的墨河水明亮的喧哗，一阵强一阵弱，一阵远一阵近。
+ 赶上队伍了，父亲的身前身后响着踢踢踏踏的脚步声和粗重的呼吸。
+ 不知谁的枪托撞到另一个谁的枪托上了。
+ 不知谁的脚踩破了一个死人的骷髅什么的。
+ 父亲前边那个人吭吭地咳嗽起来，这个人的咳嗽声非常熟悉。
+ 父亲听到他咳嗽就想起他那两扇一激动就充血的大耳朵。
+ 透明单薄布满血管的大耳朵是王文义头上引人注目的器官。
+ 他个子很小，一颗大头缩在耸起的双肩中。
+ 父亲努力看去，目光刺破浓雾，看到了王文义那颗一边咳一边颠动的大头。
+ 父亲想起王文义在演练场上挨打时，那颗大头颠成那般可怜模样。
+ 那时他刚参加余司令的队伍，任副官在演练场上对他也对其他队员喊：向右转——，王文义欢欢喜喜地跺着脚，不知转到哪里去了。
+ 任副官在他腚上打了一鞭子，他嘴咧开叫一声：孩子他娘！
+ 脸上表情不知是哭还是笑。
+ 围在短墙外看光景的孩子们都哈哈大笑。
+ 余司令飞起一脚，踢到王文义的屁股上。
+ “咳什么？”
+ “司令……”
+ 王文义忍着咳嗽说，“嗓子眼儿发痒……”
+ “痒也别咳！
+ 暴露了目标我要你的脑袋！”
+ “是，司令。”
+ 王文义答应着，又有一阵咳嗽冲口而出。
+ 父亲觉出余司令前跨了一大步，只手捺住了王文义的后颈皮。
+ 王文义口里咝咝地响着，随即不咳了。
+ 父亲觉出余司令的手从王文义的后颈皮上松开了，父亲还觉得王文义的脖子上留下两个熟葡萄一样的紫手印，王文义幽蓝色的惊惧不安的眼睛里，飞迸出几点感激与委屈。
+ 很快，队伍钻进了高粱地。
+ 我父亲本能地感觉到队伍是向着东南方向开进的。
+ 适才走过的这段土路是由村庄直接通向墨水河边的唯一的道路。
+ 这条狭窄的土路在白天颜色青白。
+ 路原是由乌油油的黑土筑成，但久经践踏，黑色都沉淀到底层，路上叠印过多少牛羊的花瓣蹄印和骡马毛驴的半圆蹄印，马骡驴粪像干萎的苹果，牛粪像虫蛀过的薄饼，羊粪稀拉拉像震落的黑豆。
+ 父亲常走这条路，后来他在日本炭窑中苦熬岁月时，眼前常常闪过这条路。
+ 父亲不知道我的奶奶在这条土路上主演过多少风流悲喜剧，我知道。
+ 父亲也不知道在高粱阴影遮掩着的黑土上，曾经躺过奶奶洁白如玉的光滑肉体，我也知道。
+ 拐进高粱地后，雾更显凝滞，质量更大，流动感少，在人的身体与人负载的物体碰撞高粱秸秆后，随着高粱嚓嚓啦啦的幽怨鸣声，一大滴一大滴的沉重水珠扑簌簌落下。
+ 水珠冰凉清爽，味道鲜美，我父亲仰脸时，一滴大水珠准确地打进他的嘴里。
+ 父亲看到舒缓的雾团里，晃动着高粱沉甸甸的头颅。
+ 高粱沾满了露水的柔韧叶片，锯着父亲的衣衫和面颊。
+ 高粱晃动激起的小风在父亲头顶上短促出击，墨水河的流水声愈来愈响。
+ 父亲在墨水河里玩过水，他的水性好像是天生的，奶奶说他见了水比见了亲娘还急。
+ 父亲五岁时，就像小鸭子一样潜水，粉红的屁股眼儿朝着天，双脚高举。
+ 父亲知道，墨水河底的淤泥乌黑发亮，柔软得像油脂一样。
+ 河边潮湿的滩涂上，丛生着灰绿色的芦苇和鹅绿色车前草，还有贴地生的野葛蔓，支支直立的接骨草。
+ 滩涂的淤泥上，印满螃蟹纤细的爪迹。
+ 秋风起，天气凉，一群群大雁往南飞，一会儿排成个“一”字，一会儿排成个“人”字，等等。
+ 高粱红了，西风响，蟹脚痒，成群结队的、马蹄大小的螃蟹都在夜间爬上河滩，到草丛中觅食。
+ 螃蟹喜食新鲜牛屎和腐烂的动物的尸体。
+ 父亲听着河声，想着从前的秋天夜晚，跟着我家的老伙计刘罗汉大爷去河边捉螃蟹的情景。
+ 夜色灰葡萄，金风串河道，宝蓝色的天空深邃无边，绿色的星辰格外明亮。
+ 北斗勺子星——北斗主死，南斗簸箕星——南斗司生、八角玻璃井——缺了一块砖，焦灼的牛郎要上吊，忧愁的织女要跳河……
+ 都在头上悬着。
+ 刘罗汉大爷在我家工作了几十年，负责我家烧酒作坊的全面工作，父亲跟着罗汉大爷脚前脚后地跑，就像跟着自己的爷爷一样。
+ 父亲被迷雾扰乱的心头亮起了一盏四块玻璃插成的罩子灯，洋油烟子从罩子灯上盖的铁皮、钻眼的铁皮上钻出来。
+ 灯光微弱，只能照亮五六米方圆的黑暗。
+ 河里的水流到灯影里，黄得像熟透的杏子一样可爱，但可爱一霎霎，就流过去了，黑暗中的河水倒映着一天星斗。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷披着蓑衣，坐在罩子灯旁，听着河水的低沉呜咽——非常低沉的呜咽。
+ 河道两边无穷的高粱地不时响起寻偶狐狸的兴奋鸣叫。
+ 螃蟹趋光，正向灯影聚拢。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷静坐着，恭听着天下的窃窃秘语，河底下淤泥的腥味，一股股泛上来。
+ 成群结队的螃蟹团团围上来，形成一个躁动不安的圆圈。
+ 父亲心里惶惶，跃跃欲起，被罗汉大爷按住了肩头。
+ “别急！”
+ 大爷说，“心急喝不得热粘粥。”
+ 父亲强压住激动，不动。
+ 螃蟹爬到灯光里就停下来，首尾相衔，把地皮都盖住了。
+ 一片青色的蟹壳闪亮，一对对圆杆状的眼睛从凹陷的眼窝里打出来。
+ 隐在倾斜的脸面下的嘴里，吐出一串一串的五彩泡沫。
+ 螃蟹吐着彩沫向人挑战，父亲身上披着大蓑衣长毛奓起。
+ 罗汉大爷说：“抓！”
+ 父亲应声弹起，与罗汉大爷抢过去，每人抓住一面早就铺在地上的密眼罗网的两角，把一堆螃蟹抬起来，露出了螃蟹下的河滩地。
+ 父亲和罗汉大爷把两角系起扔在一边，又用同样的迅速和熟练抬起网片。
+ 每一网都是那么沉重，不知网住了几百几千只螃蟹。
+ 父亲跟着队伍进了高粱地后，由于心随螃蟹横行斜走，脚与腿不择空隙，撞得高粱棵子东倒西歪。
+ 他的手始终紧扯着余司令的衣角，一半是自己行走，一半是余司令牵着前进，他竟觉得有些瞌睡上来，脖子僵硬，眼珠子生涩呆板。
+ 父亲想，只要跟着罗汉大爷去墨水河，就没有空手回来的道理。
+ 父亲吃螃蟹吃腻了，奶奶也吃腻了。
+ 食之无味，弃之可惜，罗汉大爷就用快刀把螃蟹斩成碎块，放到豆腐磨里研碎，加盐，装缸，制成蟹酱，成年累月地吃，吃不完就臭，臭了就喂罂粟。
+ 我听说奶奶会吸大烟但不上瘾，所以始终面如桃花，神清气爽，用螃蟹喂过的罂粟花朵肥硕壮大，粉、红、白三色交杂，香气扑鼻。
+ 故乡的黑土本来就是出奇的肥沃，所以物产丰饶，人种优良。
+ 民心高拔健迈，本是我故乡心态。
+ 墨水河盛产的白鳝鱼肥得像肉棍一样，从头至尾一根刺。
+ 它们呆头呆脑，见钩就吞。
+ 父亲想着的罗汉大爷去年就死了，死在胶平公路上。
+ 他的尸体被割得零零碎碎，扔得东一块西一块。
+ 躯干上的皮被剥了，肉跳，肉蹦，像只褪皮后的大青蛙。
+ 父亲一想起罗汉大爷的尸体，脊梁沟就发凉。
+ 父亲又想起大约七八年前的一个晚上，我奶奶喝醉了酒，在我家烧酒作坊的院子里，有一个高粱叶子垛，奶奶倚在草垛上，搂住罗汉大爷的肩，呢呢喃喃地说：“大叔…… 你别走。
+ 不看僧面看佛面，不看鱼面看水面，不看我的面子也要看豆官的面子上，留下吧，你要我…… 我也给你…… 你就像我的爹一样……”
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷把奶奶推到一边，晃晃荡荡走进骡棚，给骡子拌料去了。
+ 我家养着两头大黑骡子，开着烧高粱酒的作坊，是村子里的首富。
+ 罗汉大爷没走，一直在我家担任业务领导，直到我家那两头大黑骡子被日本人拉到胶平公路修筑工地上去使役为止。
+ 这时，从被父亲他们甩在身后的村子里，传来悠长的毛驴叫声。
+ 父亲精神一振，眼睛睁开，然而看到的，依然是半凝固半透明的雾气。
+ 高粱挺拔的秆子，排成密集的栅栏，模模糊糊地隐藏在气体的背后，穿过一排又一排，排排无尽头。
+ 走进高粱地多久了，父亲已经忘记，他的神思长久地滞留在远处那条喧响着的丰饶河流里，长久地滞留在往事的回忆里，竟不知这样匆匆忙忙拥拥挤挤地在如梦如海的高粱地里躜进是为了什么。
+ 父亲迷失了方位。
+ 他在前年有一次迷途高粱地的经验，但最后还是走出来了，是河声给他指引了方向。
+ 现在，父亲又谛听着河的启示，很快明白，队伍是向正东偏南开进，对着河的方向开进。
+ 方向辨清，父亲也就明白，这是去打伏击，打日本人，要杀人，像杀狗一样。
+ 他知道队伍一直往东南走，很快就要走到那条南北贯通，把偌大个低洼平原分成两半，把胶县平度县两座县城连在一起的胶平公路。
+ 这条公路，是日本人和他们的走狗用皮鞭和刺刀催逼着老百姓修成的。
+ 高粱的骚动因为人们的疲惫困乏而频繁激烈起来，积露连续落下，淋湿了每个人的头皮和脖颈。
+ 王文义咳嗽不断，虽连遭余司令辱骂也不改正。
+ 父亲感到公路就要到了，他的眼前昏昏黄黄地晃动着路的影子。
+ 不知不觉，连成一体的雾海中竟有些空洞出现，一穗一穗被露水打得精湿的高粱在雾洞里忧悒地注视着我父亲，父亲也虔诚地望着它们。
+ 父亲恍然大悟，明白了它们都是活生生的灵物。
+ 它们扎根黑土，受日精月华，得雨露滋润，上知天文下知地理。
+ 父亲从高粱的颜色上，猜到了太阳已经被高粱遮挡着的地平线烧成一片可怜的艳红。
+ 忽然发生变故，父亲先是听到耳边一声尖利呼啸，接着听到前边发出什么东西被迸裂的声响。
+ 余司令大声吼叫：“谁开枪？
+ 小舅子，谁开的枪？”
+ 父亲听到子弹钻破浓雾，穿过高粱叶子高粱秆，一颗高粱头颅落地。
+ 一时间众人都屏气息声。
+ 那粒子弹一路尖叫着，不知落到哪里去了。
+ 芳香的硝烟迷散进雾。
+ 王文义惨叫一声：“司令——我没有头啦——司令——我没有头啦——”
+ 余司令一愣神，踢了王文义一脚，说：“你娘个蛋！
+ 没有头还会说话！”
+ 余司令撇下我父亲，到队伍前头去了。
+ 王文义还在哀嚎。
+ 父亲凑上前去，看清了王文义奇形怪状的脸。
+ 他的腮上，有一股深蓝色的东西在流动。
+ 父亲伸手摸去，触了一手粘腻发烫的液体。
+ 父亲闻到了跟墨水河淤泥差不多、但比墨水河淤泥要新鲜得多的腥气。
+ 它压倒了薄荷的幽香，压倒了高粱的甘苦，它唤醒了父亲那越来越迫近的记忆，一线穿珠般地把墨水河淤泥、把高粱下黑土、把永远死不了的过去和永远留不住的现在联系在一起，有时候，万物都会吐出人血的味道。
+ “大叔，”父亲说，“大叔，你挂彩了。”
+ “豆官，你是豆官吧，你看看大叔的头还在脖子上长着吗？”
+ “在，大叔，长得好好的，就是耳朵流血啦。”
+ 王文义伸手摸耳朵，摸到一手血，一阵尖叫后，他就瘫了：“司令，我挂彩啦！
+ 我挂彩啦，我挂彩啦。”
+ 余司令从前边回来，蹲下，捏着王文义的脖子，压低嗓门说：“别叫，再叫我就毙了你！”
+ 王文义不敢叫了。
+ “伤着哪儿啦？”
+ 余司令问。
+ “耳朵……”
+ 王文义哭着说。
+ 余司令从腰里抽出一块包袱皮样的白布，嚓一声撕成两半，递给王文义，说：“先捂着，别出声，跟着走，到了路上再包扎。”
+ 余司令又叫：“豆官。”
+ 父亲应了，余司令就牵着他的手走。
+ 王文义哼哼唧唧地跟在后边。
+ 适才那一枪，是扛着一盘耙在头前开路的大个子哑巴不慎摔倒，背上的长枪走了火。
+ 哑巴是余司令的老朋友，一同在高粱地里吃过“拤饼”的草莽英雄，他的一只脚因在母腹中受过伤，走起来一颠一颠，但非常快，父亲有些怕他。
+ 黎明前后这场大雾，终于在余司令的队伍跨上胶平公路时漶散下去。
+ 故乡八月，是多雾的季节，也许是地势低洼土壤潮湿所致吧。
+ 走上公路后，父亲顿时感到身体灵巧轻便，脚步利索有劲，他松开了抓住余司令衣角的手。
+ 王文义用白布捂着血耳朵，满脸哭相。
+ 余司令给他粗手粗脚包扎耳朵，连半个头也包住了。
+ 王文义痛得龇牙咧嘴。
+ 余司令说：“你好大的命！”
+ 王文义说：“我的血流光了，我不能去啦！”
+ 余司令说：“屁，蚊子咬了一口也不过这样，忘了你那三个儿子啦吧！”
+ 王文义垂下头，嘟嘟哝哝说：“没忘，没忘。”
+ 他背着一支长筒子鸟枪，枪托儿血红色。
+ 装火药的扁铁盒斜吊在他的屁股上。
+ 那些残存的雾都退到高粱地里去了。
+ 大路上铺着一层粗沙，没有牛马脚踪，更无人的脚印。
+ 相对着路两侧茂密的高粱，公路荒凉，荒唐，令人感到不祥。
+ 父亲早就知道余司令的队伍连聋带哑连瘸带拐不过四十人，但这些人住在村里时，搅得鸡飞狗跳，仿佛满村是兵。
+ 队伍摆在大路上，三十多人缩成一团，像一条冻僵了的蛇。
+ 枪支七长八短，土炮、鸟枪、老汉阳，方六方七兄弟俩抬着一门能把小秤砣打出去的大抬杆子。
+ 哑巴扛着一盘长方形的平整土地用的、周遭二十六根铁尖齿的耙，另有三个队员各扛着一盘。
+ 父亲当时还不知道打伏击是怎么一回事，更不知道打伏击为什么还要扛上四盘铁齿耙。
+
+ FATHER FINISHED HIS fistcake as he stood on the withered grass, turned blood-red by the setting sun.
+ Then he walked gingerly up to the edge of the water.
+ There on the stone bridge across the Black Water River the lead truck, its tyres flattened by the barrier of linked rakes, crouched in front of the other three.
+ Its railings and fenders were stained by splotches of gore.
+ The upper half of a Japanese soldier was draped over one of the railings, his steel helmet hanging upturned by a strap from his neck.
+ Dark blood dripped into it from the tip of his nose.
+ The water sobbed as it flowed down the riverbed.
+ The heavy, dull rays of sunlight were pulverised by tiny ripples on its surface.
+ Autumn insects hidden in the damp mud beneath the water plants set up a mournful chirping.
+ Sorghum in the fields sizzled as it matured.
+ The fires were nearly out in the third and fourth trucks; their blackened hulks crackled and split, adding to the discordant symphony.
+ Father's attention was riveted by the sight and sound of blood dripping from the Japanese soldier's nose into the steel helmet, each drop splashing crisply and sending out rings of concentric circles in the deepening pool.
+ Father had barely passed his fifteenth birthday.
+ The sun had nearly set on this ninth day of the eighth lunar month of the year 1939, and the dying embers of its rays cast a red pall over the world below.
+ Father's face, turned unusually gaunt by the fierce daylong battle, was covered by a layer of purplish mud.
+ He squatted down upriver from the corpse of Wang Wenyi's wife and scooped up some water in his hands; the sticky water oozed through the cracks between his fingers and dropped noiselessly to the ground.
+ Sharp pains racked his cracked, swollen lips, and the brackish taste of blood seeped between his teeth and slid down his throat, moistening the parched membranes.
+ He experienced a satisfying pain, and even though the taste of blood made his stomach churn, he scooped up handful after handful of water, drinking it down until it soaked up the dry, cracked fistcake in his stomach.
+ He stood up straight and took a deep breath of relief.
+ Night was definitely about to fall; the ridge of the sky's dome was tinged with the final sliver of red.
+ The scorched smell from the burned-out hulks of the trucks had faded.
+ A loud bang made Father jump.
+ He looked up, just in time to see exploded bits of truck tyres settling slowly into the river like black butterflies, and countless kernels of Japanese rice – some black, some white – soaring upward, then raining down on the still surface of the river.
+ As he spun around, his eyes settled on the tiny figure of Wang Wenyi's wife lying at the edge of the river, the blood from her wounds staining the water around her.
+ He scrambled to the top of the dike and yelled: 'Dad!'
+ Granddad was standing on the dike, the flesh on his face wasted away by the day's battle, the bones jutting out beneath his dark, weathered skin.
+ In the dying sunlight Father noticed that Granddad's short-cropped hair was turning white.
+ With fear in his aching heart, Father nudged him timidly.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'Dad!
+ What's wrong with you?'
+ Tears were running down Granddad's face.
+ He was sobbing.
+ The Japanese machine gun that Detachment Leader Leng had so magnanimously left behind sat at his feet like a crouching wolf, its muzzle gaping.
+ 'Say something, Dad.
+ Eat that fistcake, then drink some water.
+ You'll die if you don't eat or drink.'
+ Granddad's head drooped until it rested on his chest.
+ He seemed to lack the strength to support its weight.
+ He knelt at the top of the dike, holding his head in his hands and sobbing.
+ After a moment, or two, he looked up and cried out: 'Douguan, my son!
+ Is it all over for us?'
+ Father stared wide-eyed and fearfully at Granddad.
+ The glare in his diamondlike pupils embodied the heroic, unrestrained spirit of Grandma, a flicker of hope that shone and lit up Granddad's heart.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'don't give up.
+ I'll work hard on my shooting, like when you shot fish at the inlet to perfect your seven-plum-blossom skill.
+ Then we'll go settle accounts with that rotten son of a bitch Pocky Leng!'
+ Granddad sprang to his feet and bellowed three times – half wail, half crazed laughter.
+ A line of dark-purple blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.
+ 'That's it, son, that's the way to talk!'
+ He picked up one of Grandma's fistcakes from the dark earth, bit off a chunk, and swallowed it.
+ Cake crumbs and flecks of bubbly blood stuck to his stained teeth.
+ Father heard Granddad's painful cries as the dry cake stuck in his throat and saw the rough edges make their way down his neck.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'go drink some water to soak up the cake in your belly.'
+ Granddad stumbled along the dike to the river's edge, where he knelt among the water plants and lapped up the water like a draught animal.
+ When he'd had his fill, he drew his hands back and buried his head in the river, holding it under the water for about half the time it takes to smoke a pipeful of tobacco.
+ Father started getting nervous as he gazed at his dad, frozen like a bronze frog at the river's edge.
+ Finally, Granddad jerked his dripping head out of the water and gasped for breath.
+ Then he walked back up the dike to stand in front of Father, whose eyes were glued to the cascading drops of water.
+ Granddad shook his head, sending forty-nine drops, large and small, flying like so many pearls.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'come with Dad.
+ Let's go see the men.'
+ Granddad staggered down the road, weaving in and out of the sorghum field on the western edge, Father right on his heels.
+ They stepped on broken, twisted stalks of sorghum and spent cartridges that gave off a faint yellow glint.
+ Frequently they bent down to look at the bodies of their fallen comrades, who lay amid the sorghum, deathly grimaces frozen on their faces.
+ Granddad and Father shook them in hope of finding one who was alive; but they were dead, all of them.
+ Father's and Granddad's hands were covered with sticky blood.
+ Father looked down at two soldiers on the westernmost edge of the field: one lay with the muzzle of his shotgun in his mouth, the back of his neck a gory mess, like a rotten wasps' nest; the other lay across a bayonet buried in his chest.
+ When Granddad turned them over, Father saw that their legs had been broken and their bellies slit open.
+ Granddad sighed as he withdrew the shotgun from the one soldier's mouth and pulled the bayonet from the other's chest.
+ Father followed Granddad across the road, into the sorghum field to the east, which had also been swept by machine-gun fire.
+ They turned over the bodies of more soldiers lying strewn across the ground.
+ Bugler Liu was on his knees, bugle in hand, as though he were blowing it.
+ 'Bugler Liu!'
+ Granddad called out excitedly.
+ No response.
+ Father ran up and nudged him.
+ 'Uncle Liu!' he shouted, as the bugle dropped to the ground.
+ When Father looked more closely, he discovered that the bugler's face was already as hard as a rock.
+ In the lightly scarred section of field some few dozen paces from the dike, Granddad and Father came upon Fang Seven, whose guts had spilled out of his belly, and another soldier, named Consumptive Four, who, after taking a bullet in the leg, had fainted from blood loss.
+ Holding his bloodstained hand above the man's mouth, Granddad detected a faint sign of dry, hot breath from his nostrils.
+ Fang Seven had stuffed his own intestines back into his abdomen and covered the gaping wound with sorghum leaves.
+ He was still conscious.
+ When he spotted Granddad and Father, his lips twitched and he said haltingly, 'Commander . . . done for . . .
+ When you see my old lady . . . give some money. . . .
+ Don't let her remarry. . . .
+ My brother . . . no sons . . .
+ If she leaves . . .
+ Fang family line ended. . . .'
+ Father knew that Fang Seven had a year-old son, and that there was so much milk in his mother's gourdlike breasts that he was growing up fair and plump.
+ 'I'll carry you back, little brother,' Granddad said.
+ He bent over and pulled Fang Seven onto his back.
+ As Fang screeched in pain, Father saw the leaves fall away and his white, speckled intestines slither out of his belly, releasing a breath of foul hot air.
+ Granddad laid him back down on the ground.
+ 'Elder brother,' Fang pleaded, 'put me out of my misery. . . .
+ Don't torture me. . . .
+ Shoot me, please. . . .'
+ Granddad squatted down and held Fang Seven's hand.
+ 'Little brother, I can carry you over to see Zhang Xinyi, Dr Zhang.
+ He'll patch you up.'
+ 'Elder brother . . . do it now. . . .
+ Don't make me suffer. . . .
+ Past saving . . .'
+ Granddad squinted into the murky, late-afternoon August sky, in which a dozen or so stars shone brightly, and let out a long howl before turning to Father.
+ 'Are there bullets in your gun, Douguan?'
+ 'Yes.'
+ Father handed his pistol to Granddad, who released the safety catch, took another look into the darkening sky, and spun the cylinder.
+ 'Rest easy, brother.
+ As long as Yu Zhan'ao has food to eat, your wife and child will never go hungry.'
+ Fang Seven nodded and closed his eyes.
+ Granddad raised the revolver as though he were lifting a huge boulder.
+ The pressure of the moment made him quake.
+ Fang Seven's eyes snapped open.
+ 'Elder brother . . .'
+ Granddad spun his face away, and a burst of flame leaped out of the muzzle, lighting up Fang Seven's greenish scalp.
+ The kneeling man shot forward and fell on top of his own exposed guts.
+ Father found it hard to believe that a man's belly could hold such a pile of intestines.
+ 'Consumptive Four, you'd better be on your way, too.
+ Then you can get an early start on your next life and come back to seek revenge on those Jap bastards!'
+ He pumped the last cartridge into the heart of the dying Consumptive Four.
+ Though killing had become a way of life for Granddad, he dropped his arm to his side and let it hang there like a dead snake; the pistol fell to the ground.
+ Father bent over and picked it up, stuck it into his belt, and tugged on Granddad, who stood as though drunk or paralysed.
+ 'Let's go home, Dad, let's go home. . . .'
+ 'Home?
+ Go home?
+ Yes, go home!
+ Go home . . .'
+ Father pulled him up onto the dike and began walking awkwardly towards the west.
+ The cold rays of the half-moon on that August 9 evening filled the sky, falling lightly on the backs of Granddad and Father and illuminating the heavy Black Water River, which was like the great but clumsy Chinese race.
+ White eels, thrown into a frenzy by the bloody water, writhed and sparkled on the surface.
+ The blue chill of the water merged with the red warmth of the sorghum bordering the dikes to form an airy, transparent mist that reminded Father of the heavy, spongy fog that had accompanied them as they set out for battle that morning.
+ Only one day, but it seemed like ten years.
+ Yet it also seemed like the blink of an eye.
+ Father thought back to how his mother had walked him to the edge of the fog-enshrouded village.
+ The scene seemed so far away, though it was right there in front of his eyes.
+ He recalled how difficult the march through the sorghum field had been, how Wang Wenyi had been wounded in the ear by a stray bullet, how the fifty or so soldiers had approached the bridge looking like the droppings of a goat.
+ Then there was Mute's razor-sharp sabre knife, the sinister eyes, the Jap head sailing through the air, the shrivelled ass of the old Jap officer . . .
+ Mother soaring to the top of the dike as though on the wings of a phoenix . . . the fistcakes . . . fistcakes rolling on the ground . . . stalks of sorghum falling all around . . . red sorghum crumpling like fallen heroes. . . .
+ Granddad hoisted Father, who was asleep on his feet, onto his back and wrapped his arms – one healthy, the other injured – around Father's legs.
+ The pistol in Father's belt banged against Granddad's back, sending sharp pains straight to his heart.
+ It had belonged to the dark, skinny, handsome, and well-educated Adjutant Ren.
+ Granddad was thinking about how this pistol had ended the lives of Adjutant Ren, Fang Seven, and Consumptive Four.
+ He wanted nothing more than to heave the execrable thing into the Black Water River.
+ But it was only a thought.
+ Bending over, he shifted his sleeping son higher up on his back, partly to relieve the excruciating pain in his heart.
+ All that kept Granddad moving was a powerful drive to push on and continue the bitter struggle against wave after murky wave of obdurate air.
+ In his dazed state he heard a loud clamour rushing towards him like a tidal wave.
+ When he raised his head he spotted a long fiery dragon wriggling its way along the top of the dike.
+ His eyes froze, as the image slipped in and out of focus.
+ When it was blurred he could see the dragon's fangs and claws as it rode the clouds and sailed through the mist, the vigorous motions making its golden scales jangle; wind howled, clouds hissed, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, the sounds merging to form a masculine wind that swept across a huddled feminine world.
+ When it was clear he could see it was ninety-nine torches hoisted above the heads of hundreds of people hastening towards him.
+ The dancing flames lit up the sorghum on both banks of the river.
+ Granddad lifted Father down off his back and shook him hard.
+ 'Douguan,' he shouted in his ear, 'Douguan!
+ Wake up!
+ Wake up!
+ The villagers are coming for us, they're coming. . . .'
+ Father heard the hoarseness in Granddad's voice and saw two remarkable tears leap out of his eyes.
+ GRANDDAD WAS ONLY twenty-four when he murdered Shan Tingxiu and his son.
+ Even though by then he and Grandma had already done the phoenix dance in the sorghum field, and even though, in the solemn course of suffering and joy, she had conceived my father, whose life was a mixture of achievements and sin (in the final analysis, he gained distinction among his generation of citizens of Northeast Gaomi Township), she had nonetheless been legally married into the Shan family.
+ So she and Granddad were adulterers, their relationship marked by measures of spontaneity, chance, and uncertainty.
+ And since Father wasn't born while they were together, accuracy demands that I refer to Granddad as Yu Zhan'ao in writing about this period.
+ When, in agony and desperation, Grandma told Yu Zhan'ao that her legal husband, Shan Bianlang, was a leper, he decapitated two sorghum plants with his short sword.
+ Urging her not to worry, he told her to return three days hence.
+ She was too overwhelmed by the tide of passionate love to concern herself with the implications of his comment.
+ But murderous thoughts had already entered his mind.
+ He watched her thread her way out of the sorghum field and, through the spaces between stalks, saw her summon her shrewd little donkey and nudge Great-Granddad with her foot, waking the mud-caked heap from his drunken stupor.
+ He heard Great-Granddad, whose tongue had grown thick in his mouth, say: 'Daughter . . . you . . . what took you so long to take a piss? . . .
+ Your father-in-law . . . going to give me a big black mule . . .
+ Ignoring his mumbling, she swung her leg over the donkey's back and turned her face, brushed by the winds of spring, towards the sorghum field south of the road.
+ She knew that the young sedan bearer was watching her.
+ Struggling to wrench free of this unknown passion, she had a dim vision of a new and unfamiliar broad road stretching out ahead of her, covered with sorghum seeds as red as rubies, the ditches on either side filled with crystal-clear sorghum wine.
+ As she moved down the road, her imagination coloured the genuine article until she could not distinguish between reality and illusion.
+ Yu Zhan'ao followed her with his eyes until she rounded a bend.
+ Feeling suddenly weary, he pushed his way through the sorghum and returned to the sacred altar, where he collapsed like a toppled wall and fell into a sound sleep.
+ Later, as the red sun was disappearing in the west, his eyes snapped open, and the first things he saw were sorghum leaves, stems, and ears of grain that formed a thick blanket of purplish red above him.
+ He draped his rain cape over his shoulders and walked out of the field as a rapid breeze on the road caused the sorghum to rustle noisily.
+ He wrapped the cape tightly around him to ward off the chill, and as his hand brushed against his belly he realised how hungry he was.
+ He dimly recalled the three shacks at the head of the village where he had carried the woman in the sedan chair three days ago, and the tattered tavern flag snapping and fluttering in the raging winds of the rainstorm.
+ So hungry he could neither sit still nor stand straight, he strode towards the tavern.
+ Since he had been hiring out for the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company for less than two years, the people around here wouldn't recognise him.
+ He'd get something to eat and drink, find a way to do what he'd come to do, then slip into the sorghum fields, like a fish in the ocean, and swim far away.
+ At this point in his ruminations, he headed west, where bilious red clouds turned the setting sun into a blooming peony with a luminous, fearfully bright golden border.
+ After walking west for a while, he turned north, heading straight for the village where Grandma's nominal husband lived.
+ The fields were still and deserted.
+ During those years, any farmer who had food at home left his field before nightfall, turning the sorghum fields into a haven for bandits.
+ Village chimneys were smoking by the time he arrived, and a handsome young man was walking down the street with two crocks of fresh well water over his shoulder, the shifting water splashing over the sides.
+ Yu Zhan'ao darted into the doorway beneath the tattered tavern flag.
+ No inner walls separated the shacks, and a bar made of adobe bricks divided the room in two, the inner half of which was furnished with a brick kang, a stove, and a large vat.
+ Two rickety tables with scarred tops and a few scattered narrow benches constituted the furnishings in the outer half of the room.
+ A glazed wine crock rested on the bar, its ladle hanging from the rim.
+ A fat old man was sprawled on the kang.
+ Yu Zhan'ao recognised him as the Korean dog butcher they called Gook.
+ He had seen Gook once at the market in Ma Hamlet.
+ The man could slaughter a dog in less than a minute, and the hundreds of dogs that lived in Ma Hamlet growled viciously when they saw him, their fur standing straight up, though they kept their distance.
+
+ 我父亲吃完了一根拤饼，脚踏着被夕阳照得血淋淋的衰草，走下河堤，又踩着生满茵茵水草的松软的河滩，小心翼翼地走到河水边站定。
+ 墨水河大石桥上那四辆汽车，头辆被连环耙扎破了轮胎，呆呆地伏在那儿，车栏杆上、挡板上，涂着一摊摊蓝汪汪的血和嫩绿的脑浆。
+ 一个日本兵的上半身趴在车栏杆上，头上的钢盔脱落，挂在脖子上。
+ 从他的鼻尖上流下的黑血滴滴答答地落在钢盔里。
+ 河水在呜呜咽咽地悲泣。
+ 高粱在滋滋咝咝地成熟。
+ 沉重凝滞的阳光被河流上的细小波涌颠扑破碎。
+ 秋虫在水草根下的潮湿泥土中哀鸣。
+ 第三第四辆汽车燃烧将尽的乌黑框架在焦焦地嘶叫皱裂。
+ 父亲在这些杂乱的音响和纷繁的色彩中谛视着，看到了也听到了日本兵鼻尖上的血滴在钢盔里激起的层层涟漪和清脆如敲石磬的响声。
+ 父亲十四岁多一点了。
+ 一九三九年古历八月初九的太阳消耗殆尽，死灰余烬染红天下万物，父亲经过一天激战更显干瘦的小脸上凝着一层紫红的泥土。
+ 父亲在王文义妻子的尸体上游蹲下，双手掬起水来喝，粘稠的水滴从他的指缝里摇曳下落，落水无声。
+ 父亲焦裂的嘴唇接触到水时，泡酥了的嘴唇一阵刺痛，一股血腥味顺着牙缝直扑进喉咙，在一瞬间他的喉管痉得笔直坚硬，连连嗝呃几声后，喉管才缓解成正常状态。
+ 温暖的墨水河河水进入父亲的喉管，滋润着干燥，使父亲产生了一种痛苦的快感，尽管血腥味使他肠胃翻腾，但他还是连连掬水进喉，一直喝到河水泡透了腹中那张干渣裂纹的拤饼时，他才直起腰来舒了一口气。
+ 天确凿地要黑了，红日只剩下一刃嫣红在超旷的穹隆下缘画着，大石桥上，第三辆和第四辆车上发散的焦糊味儿也有些淡薄。
+ 咕咚一声巨响，使父亲大吃一惊，抬头看，见爆炸后破碎的汽车轮胎像黑蝴蝶一样在河道上飘飘下落，被震扬起的黑黑白白的东洋大米也唰唰啦啦地洒在板块般的河面上。
+ 父亲转身时看到了趴在河水边，用鲜血流红了一片河的王文义的小个女人。
+ 爬上河堤，父亲大声喊： “爹！”
+ 爷爷直立在河堤上，他脸上的肉在一天内消耗得干干净净，骨骼的轮廓从焦黑的皮肤下棱岸地凸现出来。
+ 父亲看到在苍翠的暮色中，爷爷半寸长的卓然上指的头发在一点点地清晰地变白，父亲心中惊惧痛苦，怯生生地靠了前，轻轻地推推爷爷，说：“爹！
+ 爹！
+ 你怎么啦？”
+ 两行泪水在爷爷脸上流，一串喀噜喀噜地响声在爷爷喉咙里滚。
+ 冷支队长开恩扔下的那挺日本机枪像一匹老狼，踞伏在爷爷脚前，喇叭状的枪口，像放大了的狗眼。
+ “爹，你说话呀，爹，你吃饼呀，吃了饼你去喝点水，你不吃不喝会渴死饿死的。”
+ 爷爷的脖子往前一折，脑袋耷拉到胸前。
+ 他的身体仿佛承受不住脑袋的重压，慢慢地、慢慢地矮。
+ 爷爷蹲在河堤上，双手抱头，唏嘘片刻，忽而扬头大叫：“豆官！
+ 我的儿，咱爷们，就这样完了吗？”
+ 父亲怔怔地看着爷爷。
+ 父亲的双眼大睁，从那两粒钻石一样的瞳孔里，散射出本来属于我奶奶的那种英勇无畏、狂放不羁的响马精神，那种黑暗王国里的希望之光，照亮了我爷爷的心头。
+ “爹，”父亲说，“你别愁，我好好练枪，像你当年绕着水湾子打鱼那样练，练出七点梅花枪，就去找冷麻子这个狗娘养的王八蛋算帐！”
+ 爷爷腾地跳起，咆哮三声，半像恸哭半像狂笑。
+ 从他的嘴唇正中，流出一线乌紫的血。
+ “说得是！
+ 儿子，说得好！”
+ 爷爷从黑土大地上捡起我奶奶亲手制造的拤饼，大口吞吃，焦黄的牙齿上，沾着饼屑和一个个血泡沫。
+ 父亲听到爷爷被饼噎得哦哦地叫，看到那些棱角分明的饼块从爷爷的喉咙里缓慢地往下蠕动。
+ 父亲说： “爹，你下河喝点水把肚子里的饼泡泡吧。”
+ 爷爷趔趔趄趄走下河堤，双膝跪在水草上，伸出长长的颈，像骡马一样饮着水。
+ 喝完水，父亲见爷爷双手撑开，把整个头颅和半截脖子扎进河水里，河水碰到障碍，激起一簇簇鲜艳的浪花。
+ 爷爷把头放在水里泡了足有半袋烟的工夫——
+ 父亲在堤上看着像一个铜铸蛤蟆一样的他的爹，心里一阵阵发紧——
+ 爷爷呼拉拉扬起了浸透了的头，呼哧呼哧地喘着粗气，站起来，上了河堤，站在父亲面前。
+ 父亲看到爷爷的头上往下滚动着水珠。
+ 爷爷甩甩头，把四十九颗大小不一的水珠甩出去，如扬撒了一片珍珠。
+ “豆官，”爷爷说，“跟爹一起，去看看弟兄们吧！”
+ 爷爷踉踉跄跄地在路西边的高粱地里穿行着，父亲紧跟着爷爷走。
+ 他们脚踩着残断曲折的高粱和发出微弱黄光的铜弹壳，不时弯腰俯头，看着那些横卧竖躺、龇牙咧嘴的队员们。
+ 他们都死了，爷爷和父亲扳动着他们，希望能碰上个活的，但他们都死了。
+ 父亲和爷爷手上，沾满了粘乎乎的血。
+ 父亲看到最西边两个队员，一个含着土枪口，后颈窝那儿，烂乎乎一大片，像一个捅烂的蜂窝；另一个则俯在地上，胸口上扎进了一把尖刀。
+ 爷爷翻看着他们，父亲看到他们被打断了的腿和打破了的小腹。
+ 爷爷叹了一口气，把土枪从那个队员口里拔出来，把尖刀从那个队员胸口里撕出来。
+ 父亲跟着爷爷走过因天空的灰暗而变得明亮起来的公路，在路东边那片同样被扫射得七零八落的高粱地里，翻看着那些东一个西一个的弟兄们。
+ 刘大号还跪在那里，双手端着大喇叭，保持着吹奏的姿式。
+ 爷爷兴奋地大叫：“刘大号！”
+ 大号一声不吭。
+ 父亲上去推了他一把，喊一声：“大叔！”
+ 那根大喇叭掉在地上，低头看时，吹号人的脸已经像石头般僵硬了。
+ 在离开河堤几十步远，伤损不太严重的高粱地里，爷爷和父亲找到了被打出了肠子的方七和另一个叫“痨痨四”的队员（他排行四，小时得过肺痨病），痨痨四大腿上中了一枪，因流血过多，已昏迷过去。
+ 爷爷把沾满人血的手放在他的唇边。
+ 还能感到从他的鼻孔里，喷出焦灼干燥的气息。
+ 方七的肠子已经塞进肚子，伤口处堵着一把高粱叶子。
+ 他还省人事，见到爷爷和父亲，抽搐着嘴唇说：“司令…… 我完了……
+ 你见了俺老婆…… 给她点钱……
+ 别让她改嫁……
+ 俺哥没有后……
+ 她要走了……
+ 方家就断了香火啦……”
+ 父亲知道方七有个一岁多的儿子，方七的老婆有一对葫芦那么大的奶子，奶汁旺盛，灌得个孩子又鲜又嫩。
+ 爷爷说：“兄弟，我背你回去。”
+ 爷爷蹲下，拉着方七的胳膊往背上一拖，方七惨叫一声，父亲看到那团堵住方七伤口的高粱叶子掉了，一嘟噜白花花的肠子，夹带着热乎乎的腥臭气，从伤口里蹿出来。
+ 爷爷把方七放下，方七连声哀鸣着：“大哥…… 行行好……
+ 别折腾我啦……
+ 补我一枪吧……”
+ 爷爷蹲下去，握着方七的手，说：“兄弟，我背你去找张辛一，张先生，他能治红伤。”
+ “大哥…… 快点吧……
+ 别让我受啦……
+ 我不中用啦……”
+ 爷爷眯着眼，仰望着缀着十几颗璀璨星辰的混沌渺茫的八月的黄昏的天空，长啸一声，对我父亲说：“豆官，你那枪里，还有火吗？”
+ 父亲说：“还有。”
+ 爷爷接过父亲递给他的左轮手枪，扳开机关，对着焦黄的天光，看了一眼，把枪轮子一转。
+ 爷爷说：“七弟，你放心走吧，有我余占鳌吃的，就饿不着弟媳和大侄子。”
+ 方七点点头，闭上眼睛。
+ 爷爷举着左轮手枪，像举着一块千斤巨石，整个儿人，都在重压下颤栗。
+ 方七睁开眼，说：“大哥……”
+ 爷爷猛一别脸，枪口迸出一团火光，照明了方七青溜溜的头皮。
+ 半跪着的方七迅速前栽，上身伏在自己流出来的肠子上。
+ 父亲无法相信，一个人的肚子里竟然能盛得下那么多肠子。
+ “‘痨痨四’，你也一路去了吧，早死早投生，回来再跟这帮东洋杂种们干！”
+ 爷爷把左轮手枪里仅存的一颗子弹，打进了命悬一线的“痨痨四”的心窝。
+ 杀人如麻的爷爷，打死“痨痨四”之后，左轮手枪掉在地上，他的胳膊像死蛇一样垂着，再也无力抬起来了。
+ 父亲从地上捡起手枪，插进腰里，扯扯如醉如痴的爷爷，说：“爹，回家去吧。
+ 爹，回家去吧……”
+ “回家，回家？
+ 回家！
+ 回家……” 爷爷说。
+ 父亲拉着爷爷，爬上河堤，笨拙地往西走去。
+ 八月初九的大半个新月亮已经挂上了天，冰凉的月光照着爷爷和父亲的背，照着沉重如伟大笨拙的汉文化的墨水河。
+ 被血水撩拨得精神亢奋的白鳝鱼在河里飞腾打旋，一道道银色的弧光在河面上跃来跃去。
+ 河里泛上来的蓝蓝的凉气和高粱地里弥散开来的红红的暖气在河堤上交锋汇合，化合成轻清透明的薄雾。
+ 父亲想起凌晨出征时那场像胶皮一样富有弹性的大雾，这一天过得像十年那么长，又像一眨么眼皮那么短。
+ 父亲想起在弥漫的大雾中他的娘站在村头上为他送行，那情景远在天边，近在眼前。
+ 他想起行军高粱地中的艰难，想起王文义被流弹击中耳朵，想起五十几个队员在公路上像羊拉屎一样往大桥开进，还有哑巴那锋利的腰刀，阴鸷的眼睛，在空中飞行的鬼子头颅，老鬼子干瘪的屁股……
+ 像凤凰展翅一样扑倒在河堤上的娘…… 拤饼…… 遍地打滚的拤饼…… 纷纷落地的红高粱…… 像英雄一样纷纷倒下的红高粱……
+ 爷爷把睡着走的我父亲背起来，用一只受伤的胳膊，一只没受伤的胳膊，揽住我父亲的两条腿弯子。
+ 父亲腰里的左轮手枪硌着爷爷的背，爷爷心里一阵巨痛。
+ 这是又黑又瘦又英俊又有大学问的任副官的左轮手枪。
+ 爷爷想到这支枪打死了任副官，又打死了方七、“痨痨四”，爷爷恨不得把它扔到黑水河里，这个不祥的家伙。
+ 他只是想着扔，身体却弓一弓，把睡在背上的儿子往上颠颠，也是为了减缓那种锥心的痛疼。
+ 爷爷走着，他已经感觉不到自己的腿在何处，只是凭着一种走的强烈意念，在僵硬的空气的浊浪中，困难地挣扎。
+ 爷爷在昏昏沉沉中，听到从前方传来了浪潮一样的喧嚷。
+ 抬头看时，见远处的河堤上，蜿蜒着一条火的长龙。
+ 爷爷凝眸片刻，眼前一阵迷蒙一阵清晰，迷蒙时见那长龙张牙舞爪，腾云驾雾，抖搂的满身金鳞索落落地响，并且风吼云嘶，电闪雷鸣，万声集合，似雄风横扫着雌伏的世界；
+ 清晰时则辨出那是九十九支火把，由数百的人簇拥着跑过来。
+ 火光起伏跳荡，照亮了河南河北的高粱。
+ 前边的火把照着后边的人，后边的火把照着前边的人。
+ 爷爷把父亲从背上放下，用力摇晃着，喊叫着： “豆官！ 豆官！
+ 醒醒！
+ 醒醒！
+ 乡亲们接应我们来了，乡亲们来了……”
+ 父亲听到爷爷嗓音沙哑；父亲看到两颗相当出色的眼泪，蹦出了爷爷的眼睛。
+ 爷爷刺杀单廷秀父子时，年方二十四岁。
+ 虽然我奶奶与他已经在高粱地里凤凰和谐，在那个半是痛苦半是幸福的庄严过程中，我奶奶虽然也怀上了我的功罪参半但毕竟是高密东北乡一代风流的父亲，但那时奶奶是单家的明媒正娶的媳妇，爷爷与她总归是桑间濮上之合，带着相当程度的随意性偶然性不稳定性，况且我父亲也没落土，所以，写到那时候的事，我还是称呼他余占鳌更为准确。
+ 当时，我奶奶痛苦欲绝对余占鳌说，她的法定的丈夫单扁郎是个麻风病人，余占鳌用那柄锋利的小剑斩断了两棵高粱，要我奶奶三天后只管放心回去，他的言外之意我奶奶不及细想，奶奶被爱的浪潮给灌迷糊了。
+ 他那时就起了杀人之心。
+ 他目送着我奶奶钻出高粱地，从高粱缝隙里看到我奶奶唤来聪明伶俐的小毛驴，踢醒了醉成一摊泥巴的曾外祖父。
+ 他听到我曾外祖父舌头僵硬地说：“闺女…… 你…… 一泡尿尿了这半天……
+ 你公公…… 要送咱家一头大黑骡子……”
+ 奶奶不管她的胡言乱语的爹，骗腿上了驴，把一张春风漫卷过的粉脸对着道路南侧的高粱地。
+ 她知道那年轻轿夫正在注视着自己。
+ 奶奶从撕肝裂胆的兴奋中挣扎出来，模模糊糊地看到了自己的眼前出现了一条崭新的、同时是陌生的、铺满了红高粱钻石般籽粒的宽广大道，道路两侧的沟渠里，蓄留着澄澈如气的高粱酒浆。
+ 路两边依旧是坦坦荡荡、大智若愚的红高粱集体，现实中的红高粱与奶奶幻觉中的红高粱融成一体，难辨真假。
+ 奶奶满载着空灵踏实、清晰模糊的感觉，一程程走远了。
+ 余占鳌手扶着高粱，目送我奶奶拐过弯去。
+ 一阵倦意上来，他推推搡搡地回到方才的圣坛，像一堵墙壁样囫囵个儿倒下，呼呼噜噜地睡过去。
+ 直睡到红日西沉，睁眼先见到高粱叶茎上、高粱穗子上，都涂了一层厚厚的紫红。
+ 他披上蓑衣，走出高粱地，路上小风疾驰，高粱嚓嚓作声。
+ 他感到有些凉意上来，用力把衰衣裹紧。
+ 手不慎碰到肚皮，又觉腹中饥饿难忍。
+ 他恍惚记起，三天前抬着那女子进村时，见村头三间草屋檐下，有一面破烂酒旗儿在狂风暴雨中招飐，腹中的饥饿使他坐不住，站不稳，一壮胆，出了高粱地，大踏步向那酒店走去。
+ 他想，自己来到东北乡“婚丧嫁娶服务公司”当雇工不到两年，附近的人不会认识。
+ 去那村头酒店吃饱喝足，瞅个机会，干完了那事，撒腿就走，进了高粱地，就如鱼儿入了海，逍遥游。
+ 想到此，迎着那阳光，徜徉西行，见落日上方彤云膨胀，如牡丹芍药开放，云团上俱镶着灼目金边，鲜明得可怕。
+ 西走一阵，又往北走，直奔我奶奶的名义丈夫单扁郎的村庄。
+ 田野里早已清静无人，在那个年头里，凡能吃上口饭的庄稼人都是早早地回家，不敢恋晚，一到夜间，高粱地就成了绿林响马的世界。
+ 余占鳌那些天运气还不错，没碰上草莽英雄找他的麻烦。
+ 村子里已经炊烟升腾，街上有一个轻俏的汉子挑着两瓦罐清水从井台上走来，水罐淅淅沥沥地滴着水。
+ 余占鳌闪进那挂着破酒旗的草屋，屋子里一贯通，没有隔墙，一道泥坯垒成的柜台把房子分成两半，里边一铺大炕，一个锅灶，一口大缸。
+ 外边有两张腿歪面裂的八仙桌子，桌旁胡乱搡着几条狭窄的木凳。
+ 泥巴柜台上放着一只青釉酒坛，酒提儿挂在坛沿上。
+ 大炕上半仰着一个胖大的老头。
+ 余占鳌看他一眼，立即认出，老头人称“高丽棒子”，以杀狗为业。
+ 余占鳌记得有一次在马店集上见他只用半分钟就要了一条狗命，马店集上成百条狗见了他都戗毛直立，咆哮不止，但绝对不敢近前。
+
+ WHEN THE JAPANESE troops withdrew, the full moon, thin as a paper cutout, rose in the sky above the tips of the sorghum stalks, which had undergone such suffering.
+ Grain fell sporadically like glistening tears.
+ A sweet odour grew heavy in the air; the dark soil of the southern edge of our village had been thoroughly soaked by human blood.
+ Lights from fires in the village curled like foxtails, as occasional pops, like the crackling of dry wood, momentarily filled the air with a charred odour that merged with the stifling stench of blood.
+ The wound on Granddad's arm had turned worse, the scabs cracking and releasing a rotting, oozing mixture of dark blood and white pus.
+ He told Father to squeeze the area around the wound.
+ Fearfully, Father placed his icy fingers on the discoloured skin around the suppurating wound and squeezed, forcing out a string of air bubbles that released the putrid smell of pickled vegetables.
+ Granddad picked up a piece of yellow spirit currency that had been weighted down by a clod of earth at the head of a nearby gravesite and told Father to smear some of the salty white powder from the sorghum stalks on it.
+ Then he removed the head of a cartridge with his teeth and poured the greenish gunpowder onto the paper, mixed it with the white sorghum powder, and took a pinch with his fingers to daub on the open wound.
+ 'Dad,' Father said, 'shall I mix some soil into it?'
+ Granddad thought for a moment.
+ 'Sure, why not?'
+ Father bent down and picked up a clod of dark earth near the roots of a sorghum stalk, crumbled it in his fingers, and spread it on the paper.
+ After Granddad mixed the three substances together and covered the wound with them, paper and all, Father wrapped a filthy strip of bandage cloth around it and tied it tight.
+ 'Does that make it feel better, Dad?'
+ Granddad moved his arm back and forth.
+ 'Much better, Douguan.
+ An elixir like this will work on any wound, no matter how serious.'
+ 'Dad, if we'd had something like that for Mother, she wouldn't have died, would she?'
+ 'No, she wouldn't have. . . .'
+ Granddad's face clouded.
+ 'Dad, wouldn't it've been great if you'd told me about this before?
+ Mother was bleeding so much I kept packing earth on the wounds, but that only stopped it for a while.
+ If I'd known to add some white sorghum powder and gunpowder, everything would have been fine. . . .'
+ All the while Father was rambling, Granddad was loading his pistol.
+ Japanese mortar fire raised puffs of hot yellow smoke all up and down the village wall.
+ Since Father's Browning pistol lay under the belly of the fallen horse, during the final battle of the afternoon he used a Japanese rifle nearly as tall as he was; Granddad used his German automatic, firing it so rapidly it spent its youth and was ready for the trash heap.
+ Although battle fires still lit up the sky above the village, an aura of peace and quiet had settled over the sorghum fields.
+ Father followed Granddad, dragging his rifle behind him as they circled the site of the massacre.
+ The blood-soaked earth had the consistency of liquid clay under the weight of their footsteps; bodies of the dead merged with the wreckage of sorghum stalks.
+ Moonlight danced on pools of blood, and hideous scenes of dismemberment swept away the final moments of Father's youth.
+ Tortured moans emerged from the field of sorghum, and here and there among the bodies some movement appeared.
+ Father was burning to ask Granddad to save those fellow villagers who were still alive, but when he saw the pale, expressionless look on his father's bronze face, the words stuck in his throat.
+ During the most critical moments, Father was always slightly more alert than Granddad, perhaps because he concentrated on surface phenomena; superficial thought seems ideally suited to guerrilla fighting.
+ At that moment, Granddad looked benumbed; his thoughts were riveted on a single point, which might have been a twisted face, or a shattered rifle, or a single spent bullet.
+ He was blind to all other sights, deaf to all other sounds.
+ This problem – or characteristic – of his would grow more pronounced over the coming decade.
+ He returned to China from the mountains of Hokkaido with an unfathomable depth in his eyes, gazing at things as though he could will them to combust spontaneously.
+ Father never achieved this degree of philosophical depth.
+ In 1957, after untold hardships, when he finally emerged from the burrow Mother had dug for him, his eyes had the same look as in his youth: lively, perplexed, capricious.
+ He never did figure out the relationship between men and politics or society or war, even though he had been spun so violently on the wheel of battle.
+ He was forever trying to squeeze the light of his nature through the chinks in his body armour.
+ Granddad and Father circled the site of the massacre a dozen times, until Father said tearfully, 'Dad . . . I can't walk any more. . . .'
+ Granddad's robot movements stopped; taking Father's hand, he backed up ten paces and sat down on a patch of solid, dry earth.
+ The cheerless and lonely sorghum field was highlighted by the crackle of fires in the village.
+ Weak golden flames danced fitfully beneath the silvery moonlight.
+ After sitting there for a moment, Granddad fell backward like a capsized wall, and Father laid his head on Granddad's belly, where he fell into a hazy sleep.
+ He could feel Granddad's feverish hand stroking his head, which sent his thoughts back nearly a dozen years, to when he was suckling at Grandma's breast.
+ He was four at the time, and growing tired of the yellowed nipple that was always thrust into his mouth.
+ Having begun to hate its sour hardness, he gazed up into the look of rapture in Grandma's face with a murderous glint in his eyes and bit down as hard as he could.
+ He felt the contraction in Grandma's breast as her body jerked backward.
+ Trickles of a sweet liquid warmed the corners of his mouth, until Grandma gave him a swat on the bottom and pushed him away.
+ He fell to the ground, his eyes on the drops of fresh red blood dripping from the tip of Grandma's pendulous breast.
+ He whimpered, but his eyes were dry.
+ Grandma, on the other hand, was crying bitterly, her shoulders heaving, her face bathed in tears.
+ She lashed out at him, calling him a wolf cub, as mean as his wolf of a father.
+ Later on he learned that that was the year Granddad, who loved Grandma dearly, had fallen in love with the hired girl, Passion, who had grown into a bright-eyed young woman.
+ At the moment when Father bit Grandma, Granddad, who had grown tired of her jealousy, was living with Passion in a house he'd bought in a neighbouring village.
+ Everyone said that this second grandma of mine was no economy lantern, and that Grandma was afraid of her, but this is something I'll clear up later.
+ Second Grandma eventually had a girl by Granddad.
+ In 1938, Japanese soldiers murdered this young aunt of mine with a bayonet, then gang-raped Second Grandma – this, too, I'll clear up later.
+ Granddad and Father were exhausted.
+ The wound throbbed in Granddad's arm, which seemed to be on fire.
+ Father's feet had swollen until his cloth shoes nearly split their seams, and he fantasised about the exquisite pleasure of airing the rotting skin of his feet in the moonlight.
+ But he didn't have the strength to sit up and take off his shoes.
+ Instead, he rolled over and rested his head on Granddad's hard stomach so he could look up into the starry night and let the moon's rays light up his face.
+ He could hear the murmuring flow of the Black Water River and see black clouds gather in the sky above him.
+ He remembered Uncle Arhat's saying once that, when the Milky Way lay horizontally across the sky, autumn rains would fall.
+ He had only really seen autumn water once in his life.
+ The sorghum was ready for harvest when the Black Water River rose and burst its banks, flooding both the fields and the village.
+ The stalks strained to keep their heads above water; rats and snakes scurried and slithered up them to escape drowning.
+ Father had gone with Uncle Arhat to the wall, which the villagers were reinforcing, and gazed uneasily at the yellow water rushing towards him.
+ The villagers made rafts from kindling and paddled out to the fields to hack off the ears of grain, which were already sprouting new green buds.
+ Bundles of soaked deep-red and emerald-green ears of sorghum weighted down the rafts so much it's a wonder they didn't sink.
+ The dark, gaunt men, barefoot and bare-chested, wearing conical straw hats, stood with their legs akimbo on the rafts, poling with all their strength as they rocked from side to side.
+ The water in the village was knee-high, covering the legs of livestock, whose waste floated on the surface.
+ In the dying rays of the autumn sun, the water shone like liquefied metal; tips of sorghum stalks too far away to be harvested formed a canopy of golden red just above the rippling surface, over which flocks of wild geese flew.
+ Father could see a bright, broad body of water flowing slowly through the densest patch of red sorghum, in sharp contrast to the muddy, stagnant water around him; it was, he knew, the Black Water River.
+ On one of the rafts lay a silver-bellied, green-backed grass carp, a long, thin sorghum stalk stuck through its gills.
+ The farmer proudly held it up to show the people on the wall; it was nearly half as tall as he was.
+ Blood oozed from its gills, and its mouth was open as it looked at my father with dull, sorrowful eyes.
+ Father was thinking about how Uncle Arhat had bought a fish from a farmer once, and how Grandma had scraped the scales from its belly, then made soup out of it; just thinking about that delicious soup gave him an appetite.
+ He sat up.
+ 'Dad,' he said, 'aren't you hungry?
+ I am.
+ Can you find me something to eat?
+ I'm starving. . . .'
+ Granddad sat up and fished around in his belt until he found a bullet, which he inserted into the cylinder; then he snapped it shut, sending the bullet into the chamber.
+ He pulled the trigger, and there was a loud crack.
+ 'Douguan,' he said, 'let's go find your mother. . . .'
+ 'No, Dad,' Father replied in a high-pitched, frightened voice, 'Mother's dead.
+ But we're still alive, and I'm hungry.
+ Let's get something to eat.'
+ Father pulled Granddad to his feet.
+ 'Where?'
+ Granddad mumbled.
+ 'Where can we go?'
+ So Father led him by the hand into the sorghum field, where they walked in a crooked line, as though their objective was the moon, hanging high and icy in the sky.
+ A growl emerged from the field of corpses.
+ Granddad and Father stopped in their tracks and turned to see a dozen pairs of green eyes, like will-o'-the-wisps, and several indigo shadows tumbling on the ground.
+ Granddad took out his pistol and fired at two of the green eyes; the howl of a dying dog accompanied the extinguishing of those eyes.
+ Granddad fired seven shots in all, and several wounded dogs writhed in agony among the corpses.
+ While he was emptying his pistol into the pack, the uninjured dogs fled into the sorghum field, out of range, where they howled furiously at the two humans.
+ The last couple of bullets from Granddad's pistol had travelled only thirty paces or so before thudding to the ground.
+ Father watched them tumble in the moonlight, so slowly he could have reached out and caught them.
+ And the once crisp crack of the pistol sounded more like the phlegmatic cough of a doddering old man.
+ A tortured, sympathetic expression spread across Granddad's face as he looked down at the weapon in his hand.
+ 'Out of bullets, Dad?'
+ The five hundred bullets they'd brought back from town in the goat's belly had been used up in a matter of hours.
+ The pistol had aged overnight, and Granddad came to the painful realisation that it was no longer capable of carrying out his wishes; time for them to part ways.
+ Holding the gun out in front of him, he carefully studied the muted reflection of the moonlight on the barrel, then loosened his grip and let the gun fall heavily to the ground.
+ The green-eyed dogs returned to the corpses, timidly at first.
+ But their eyes quickly disappeared, and the moonlight was reflected off rolling waves of bluish fur; Granddad and Father could hear the sounds of dogs tearing human bodies with their fangs.
+ 'Let's go into the village, Dad,' Father said.
+ Granddad wavered for a moment, so Father tugged on him, and they fell into step.
+ By then most of the fires in the village had gone out, leaving red-hot cinders that gave off an acrid heat amid the crumbling walls and shattered buildings.
+ Hot winds whirled above the village roads.
+ The murky air was stifling.
+ Roofs of houses, their supports burned out beneath them, had collapsed in mountains of smoke, dust, and cinders.
+ Bodies were strewn atop the village wall and on the roads.
+ A page in the history of our village had been turned.
+ At one time the site had been a wasteland covered with brambles, underbrush, and reeds, a paradise for foxes and wild rabbits.
+ Then a few huts appeared, and it became a haven for escaped murderers, drunks, gamblers, who built homes, cultivated the land, and turned it into a paradise for humans, forcing out the foxes and wild rabbits, who set up howls of protest on the eve of their departure.
+ Now the village lay in ruins; man had created it, and man had destroyed it.
+ It was now a sorrowful paradise, a monument to both grief and joy, built upon ruins.
+ In 1960, when the dark cloud of famine settled over the Shandong Peninsula, even though I was only four years old I could dimly sense that Northeast Gaomi Township had never been anything but a pile of ruins, and that its people had never been able to rid their hearts of the shattered buildings, nor would they ever be able to.
+ That night, after the smoke and sparks from the other houses had died out, our buildings were still burning, sending skyward green-tinged tongues of flame and the intoxicating aroma of strong wine, released in an instant after all those years.
+ Blue roof tiles, deformed by the intense heat, turned scarlet, then leaped into the air through a wall of flames that illuminated Granddad's hair, which had turned three-quarters grey in the space of a week.
+ A roof came crashing down, momentarily blotting out the flames, which then roared out of the rubble, stronger than ever.
+ The loud crash nearly crushed the breath out of Father and Granddad.
+ Our house, which had sheltered the father and son of the Shan family as they grew rich, then had sheltered Granddad after his murderous deed, then had sheltered Grandma, Granddad, Father, Uncle Arhat, and all the men who worked for them, a sanctuary for their kindnesses and their grievances, had now completed its historical mission.
+ I hated that sanctuary: though it had sheltered decent emotions, it had also sheltered heinous crimes.
+ Father, when you were hiding in the burrow we dug for you in the floor of my home back in 1957, you recalled those days of your past in the unrelenting darkness.
+ On no fewer than 365 occasions, in your mind you saw the roof of your house crash down amid the flames, and wondered what was going through the mind of your father, my granddad.
+ So my fantasies were chasing yours while yours were chasing Granddad's.
+ As he watched the roof collapse, Granddad became as angry as he'd been the day he abandoned Grandma and moved to another village to be with his new love, Passion.
+ He had learned then that Grandma had shamelessly taken up with Black Eye, the leader of an organisation called the Iron Society, and at the time he wasn't sure what filled his heart – loathing or love, pain or anger.
+ When he later returned to Grandma's arms, his feelings for her were so confused he couldn't sort them out.
+ In the beginning, his emotional warfare scarred only his own heart, and Grandma's scarred only her own.
+ Finally, they hurt each other.
+ Only when Grandma smiled up at him as she lay dead in the sorghum field did he realise the grievous punishment life had meted out to him.
+ He loved my father as a magpie loves the last remaining egg in its nest.
+ But by then it was too late, for fate, cold and calculating, had sentenced him to a cruel end that was waiting for him down the road.
+ 'Dad, our house is gone. . . .'
+ Father said.
+ Granddad rubbed Father's head as he stared at the ruins of his home, then took Father's hand and began stumbling aimlessly down the road under the waning light of the flames and the waxing light of the moon.
+ At the head of the village they heard an old man's voice: 'Is that you, Number Three?
+ Why didn't you bring the oxcart?'
+ The sound of that voice gave Granddad and Father such a warm feeling they forgot how tired they were and rushed over to see who it was.
+ A hunched-over elderly man rose to greet them, carefully sizing up Granddad with his ancient eyes, nearly touching his face.
+ Granddad didn't like his watchful look and was repulsed by the greedy stench that came from his mouth.
+ 'You're not my Number Three,' the old man said unhappily, his head wobbling as he sat down on a pile of loot.
+ There were trunks, cupboards, dining tables, farm tools, harnesses, ripped comforters, cooking pots, earthenware bowls.
+ He was sitting on a small mountain of stuff and guarding it as a wolf guards its kill.
+ Behind him, two calves, three goats, and a mule were tied to a willow tree.
+ 'You old dog!'
+ Granddad growled through clenched teeth.
+ 'Get the hell out of here!'
+ The old man rose up on his haunches and said amiably, 'Ah, my brother, let's not be envious.
+ I risked my life to drag this stuff out of the flames!'
+ 'I'll fuck your living mother!
+ Climb down from there!'
+ Granddad lashed out angrily.
+ 'You have no right to talk to me like that.
+ I didn't do anything to you.
+ You're the one who's asking for trouble.
+ What gives you the right to curse me like that?' he complained.
+ 'Curse you?
+ I'll goddamn kill you!
+ We're not in a desperate struggle with Japan just so you can go on a looting binge!
+ You bastard, you old bastard!
+ Douguan, where's your gun?'
+ 'It's under the horse's belly,' Father said.
+ Granddad jumped up onto the mountain of stuff and, with a single kick, sent the old man sprawling onto the ground.
+ He rose to his knees and begged, 'Spare me, Eighth Route Master, spare me!'
+ 'I'm not with the Eighth Route Army,' Granddad said, 'or the Ninth Route.
+ I'm Yu Zhan'ao the bandit!'
+ 'Spare me, Commander Yu, spare me!
+ What good would it do to let all this stuff burn?
+ I'm not the only "potato picker" from the village.
+ Those thieves got all the good stuff.
+ I'm too old and too slow, and all I could find was this junk.'
+ Granddad picked up a wooden table and threw it at the old man's bald head.
+ He screamed and held his bleeding scalp as he rolled in the dirt.
+ Granddad reached down and picked him up by his collar.
+ Looking straight into those tortured eyes, he said, 'Our hero, the "potato picker", then raised his fist and drove it with a loud crack into the old man's face, sending him crumpling to the ground, face up.
+ Granddad walked up and kicked him in the face, hard.
+
+ 日本人撤走了。
+ 硕大的、单薄的像一片剪纸一样的圆月，在升上高粱梢头的过程中，面积凝缩变小，并渐渐放射出光辉。
+ 多灾多难的高粱们在月光中肃立不语，间或有一些高粱米坠落在黑土上，好像高粱们晶莹的泪珠。
+ 空气中腥甜的气息浓烈稠密，人血把我们村南这一片黑土地都给泡透了。
+ 村子里的火光像狐狸尾巴一样耸动着，时不时响起木头烧焦的爆裂声，焦糊味道从村子里弥散出来，与高粱地里的血腥味掺合一起，形成一种令人窒息的怪味。
+ 爷爷胳膊上的老伤口累发了，疮面迸裂，流了那么多乌黑的花白的腥臭脓血。
+ 爷爷要父亲帮助他挤压伤口。
+ 父亲用冰凉的小手指，胆颤心惊地挤压着爷爷胳膊上的伤口附近青紫色的皮肤，挤一下，噗噗冒出一串虹膜般的气泡，伤口里有一股酱菜般的腐败气息。
+ 爷爷从远处的一丘坟墓上，揭来一张用土坷垃压在坟尖上的黄表纸，他要父亲从高粱秸上刮下一些碱卤般的白色粉末放在纸上。
+ 父亲用双手托着放了一小堆高粱粉的黄表纸，献到爷爷面前。
+ 爷爷用牙齿拧开一颗手枪子弹，倒出一些灰绿色的火药，与白色的高粱粉末掺合在一起，捏起一撮，要往伤口上撒，父亲小声问： “爹，不掺点黑土？”
+ 爷爷想了一会，说：“掺吧。”
+ 父亲从高粱根下挖起一块黑土，用手搓得精细，撒在黄表纸上。
+ 爷爷把三种物质拌匀，连同那张黄表纸，拍在伤口上，父亲帮着爷爷把那根肮脏不堪的绷带扎好。
+ 父亲问：“爹，疼得轻点了吗？”
+ 爷爷活动了几下胳膊，说：“好多了，豆官，这样的灵丹妙药，什么样的重伤也能治好。”
+ “爹，俺娘那会儿要是也敷上这种药就不会死了吧？” 父亲问。
+ “是，是不会死……”
+ 爷爷面色阴沉地说。
+ “爹，你早把这个药方告诉我就好啦，俺娘伤口里的血咕嘟咕嘟往外冒，我就用黑土堵啊堵啊，堵住一会儿，血又冲出来。
+ 要是那会儿加上高粱白粉和枪子药就好啦……”
+ 爷爷在父亲的细声碎语中，用那只伤手往手枪里压子弹；日本人的迫击炮弹，在村子的围子上炸起了一团团焦黄的烟雾。
+ 父亲的勃朗宁手枪压在日本洋马肚子下边了。
+ 在下午最后的搏斗中，父亲拖着一杆比他矮不了多少的日本马枪，爷爷还用着那支德国造“自来得”手枪。
+ 连续不断地射击，使本来就过了青春年华的这支“自来得”迅速奔向废铁堆。
+ 父亲觉得爷爷的手枪筒子都弯弯曲曲的抻长了一节。
+ 尽管村子里火光冲天，但高粱地里，还是呈现出一派安恬的宁静夜色。
+ 更加凄清的皎皎月光洒在魅力渐渐衰退的高粱萎缩的头颅上。
+ 父亲拖着枪，跟着爷爷，绕着屠杀场走着，滋足了血的黑土像胶泥一样，陷没了他们的脚面。
+ 人的尸体与高粱的残躯混杂在一起。
+ 一汪汪的血在月下闪烁着。
+ 模糊的狰狞嘴脸纵横捭阖，扫荡着父亲最后的少年岁月。
+ 高粱棵子里似乎有痛苦的呻吟声，尸体堆中好像有活物的蠕动，父亲想唤住爷爷，去看看这些尚未死利索的乡亲。
+ 他仰起脸来，看到爷爷那副绿锈斑斑、丧失了人的表情的青铜面孔，把话儿压进了喉咙。
+ 在特别关键的时刻，父亲总是比爷爷要清醒一些，他的思想可能总是浮在现象的表面，深入不够，所以便于游击吧！
+ 爷爷的思想当时麻木地凝滞在一个点上，这一点或许是一张扭歪的脸，或许是一管断裂的枪、一颗飞躜着的尖头子弹。
+ 其他的景物他视而不见，其他的声音他听而不闻。
+ 爷爷这种毛病或特点，在十几年后，发展得更加严重。
+ 他从日本北海道的荒山僻岭中归国之后，双目深不可测，盯住什么就像要把什么烧焦似的。
+ 父亲却永远没达到这种哲学的思维深度。
+ 一九五七年，他历尽千难万苦，从母亲挖的地洞里跑出来时，双眼还像他少年时期一样，活泼、迷惘、瞬息万变。
+ 他一辈子都没弄清人与政治、人与社会、人与战争的关系，虽然他在战争的巨轮上飞速旋转着，虽然他的人性的光芒总是力图冲破冰冷的铁甲放射出来。
+ 但事实上，他的人性即使能在某一瞬间放射出璀璨的光芒，这光芒也是寒冷的、弯曲的，掺杂着某种深刻的兽性因素。
+ 后来，爷爷和父亲绕着屠杀场转了十几个圈子的时候，父亲悲泣着说：“爹…… 我走不动啦……”
+ 爷爷从机械运动中醒过来，他牵着父亲后退几十步，坐在没浸过人血的比较坚硬干燥的黑土上。
+ 村子里的火声加剧了高粱地里的寂寞清冷；金黄色的微弱火光在银白色的月光中颤抖。
+ 爷爷坐了片刻，像半堵墙样往后倒去。
+ 父亲把头伏在爷爷的肚子上，朦胧入睡。
+ 他感觉到爷爷那只滚烫的大手轻轻抚摸着自己的头，父亲想起十几年前在奶奶怀里吃奶的情景。
+ 那时候他四岁，对奶奶硬塞到他嘴里的淡黄色乳房产生了反感。
+ 他含着酸溜溜硬梆梆的乳头，心里涌起一股仇恨。
+ 他用小兽一样凶狠的眼睛上望着奶奶迷幻的脸，狠狠地咬了一口。
+ 他感到奶奶的乳房猛一收缩，奶奶的身体往上一耸。
+ 一丝甜味的液体温暖着他的口腔。
+ 奶奶在他屁股上用力打了一巴掌，然后把他推出去。
+ 他跌倒了，坐起来，看着奶奶那个像香瓜一样垂着的乳房上一滴滴下落的艳红的血珍珠，眼中无泪，干嚎了几声。
+ 奶奶痛苦地抽搐着，眼泪乱纷纷溢出。
+ 他听到奶奶骂他是个恶狼崽子，跟那个恶狼爹是一样的畜牲。
+ 父亲后来才知道，就是他四岁那一年，爷爷在爱着奶奶的同时，又爱上了奶奶雇来的小姑娘——已经长成了漆黑发亮的大姑娘恋儿。
+ 父亲咬伤奶奶时，爷爷因厌烦奶奶的醋劲，在邻村买了一排房屋，把恋儿接去住了。
+ 据说我这个二奶奶也不是盏省油的灯，奶奶惧她五分——这都是以后一定要完全彻底说清楚的事情——二奶奶为我生过一个小姑姑。
+ 一九三八年，日本兵用刺刀把我小姑姑挑了，一群日本兵把二奶奶给轮奸了——这也是以后要完全彻底说清楚的事情。
+ 爷爷和父亲都困乏极了，爷爷感到他臂上的枪伤在蹦蹦跳跳，整条胳膊火烫。
+ 爷爷和父亲都感到他们的脚胀满了布鞋，他们想象着让溃烂的脚晾在月光下的幸福，但都没有力气起身把鞋扒掉了。
+ 他们躺着，昏昏沉沉似睡非睡。
+ 父亲翻了一个身，后脑勺子搁在爷爷坚硬的肚子上，面对星空，一缕月色照着他的眼。
+ 墨水河的喑哑低语一波波传来，天河中出现了一道道蛇状黑云，仿佛在蜿蜒游动，又仿佛僵化不动。
+ 父亲记得罗汉大爷说过，天河横缠，秋雨绵绵。
+ 父亲只见过一次真正的秋水，那时候高粱即将收割，墨水河水暴涨，堤坝决裂，洪水灌进了田地和村庄。
+ 在滉滉大水中，高粱努力抻着头，耗子和蛇在高粱穗子上缠绕盘踞着。
+ 父亲跟着罗汉大爷走在临时加高的土围子上，看着仿佛从天外涌来的黄色大水，心里惴惴不安。
+ 秋水经久不退，村里百姓捆扎起木筏子，划到高粱地里去，用镰刀割下生满绿色芽苗的高粱穗子。
+ 一捆捆湿漉漉的、暗红的、翠绿的高粱穗子，把木筏子压得随时都要沉底的样子。
+ 又黑又瘦赤脚光背戴着破烂斗笠的男人，十字劈叉站在筏子上，用长长的木杆子，一左一右地用力撑着，筏子缓慢地向土围子靠拢。
+ 村里街道上也水深及膝，骡马牛羊都泡在水里，水上漂着牲畜们稀薄的排泄物。
+ 如果秋阳夕照，水面上烁金熔铁，远处尚未割掉头颅的高粱们，凸出水面一层金红。
+ 大群的野鸭飞翔在高粱头上，众多的翅膀扇起阴凉的风，把高粱间的水面吹出一片细小的皱纹。
+ 父亲看到高粱板块之间，有一道明亮宽阔的大水在缓缓流动，与四周漶漫的黄水形成鲜明的界限，父亲知道那是墨水河。
+ 撑筏子的男人们大口喘着气，互相问讯着，慢慢地向土围子靠拢，慢慢地向爷爷靠拢。
+ 一个青年农夫的筏子上，躺着一条银腹青脊的大草鱼，一根柔韧的细高粱秸子穿住草鱼的腮。
+ 青年农夫把草鱼提起来向围子上的人炫耀。
+ 草鱼有半截人高，腮上流着血，圆张着嘴，用呆滞的眼睛悲哀地看着我父亲……
+ 父亲想到，那条大鱼怎样被罗汉大爷买回，奶奶怎样亲手把鱼剖肚刮鳞，烧成一大锅鱼汤，鱼汤的鲜美回忆勾起父亲的食欲。
+ 父亲坐起来，说：“爹，你不饿吗？
+ 爹，我饿了，你弄点东西给我吃吧，我要饿死啦……”
+ 爷爷坐起，在腰里摸索着，摸出三夹零六颗子弹。
+ 爷爷从身边找到那支手枪，拉开枪栓，压进一条子弹，一松栓子弹上膛，勾一下机，啪啦一声响，一粒子弹飞出膛。
+ 爷爷说：“豆官，咱们…… 找你娘去吧……”
+ 父亲一惊，尖利地说：“不，爹，俺娘死啦，咱还活着，我肚子饿，你带我去找点东西吃。”
+ 父亲把爷爷拖起来。
+ 爷爷自言自语地说着：“到哪里去？
+ 到哪里去？”
+ 父亲牵着爷爷的手，在高粱棵子里，一脚高一脚低，歪歪斜斜，仿佛是奔着挂得更高、更加寒如冰霜的月亮走。
+ 尸体堆里，响起一阵猛兽的咆哮。
+ 爷爷和父亲立即转身回头，看到十几对鬼火一样闪烁的绿眼睛和一团团遍地翻滚的钢蓝色的影子。
+ 爷爷掏出枪，对着两只绿眼一甩，一道火光飞去，那两只绿眼灭了，高粱棵子里传来垂死挣扎的狗叫。
+ 爷爷连射七枪，一群受伤的狗在高粱丛中、尸体堆里滚来滚去。
+ 爷爷对着狗群打完了所有的子弹，没受伤的狗逃窜出几箭远，对着爷爷和父亲发出愤怒的咆哮。
+ 爷爷的自来得手枪射出的最后几粒子弹飞行了三十几步远就掉在了地上。
+ 父亲看到弹头在月光中翻着筋斗飞行，缓慢得伸手就可抓住。
+ 枪声也失去了焦脆的青春喉咙，颇似一个耄耋之年的老头子在咳嗽吐痰。
+ 爷爷举起枪来看了一下子，脸上露出悲痛惋惜的表情。
+ “爹，没子弹啦？” 父亲问。
+ 爷爷和父亲从县城里用小山羊肚腹运载回来的五百发子弹，在十几个小时里已经发射完毕。
+ 好像人是在一天中突然衰老一样，枪也是在一天中突然衰老。
+ 爷爷痛感到这支枪越来越违背自己的意志，跟它告别的时候到了。
+ 爷爷把胳膊平伸出去，仔细地看着月光照在枪面上反射出的黯淡的光彩，然后一松手，匣子枪沉重落地。
+ 那些绿眼睛的狗又向尸体聚拢过来，起初还畏畏惧惧，绿眼睛里跳着惊惧的火花。
+ 很快，绿眼睛消失，月光照着一道道波浪般翻滚的蓝色狗毛，爷爷和父亲都听到了狗嘴的吧咂声和尸体的撕裂声。
+ “爹，咱到村里去吧。”父亲说。
+ 爷爷有点犹豫，父亲拉他一把，他就跟着父亲走了。
+ 村里的火堆多半熄灭，断壁残垣中，暗红的余烬发散着酷热，街上热风盘旋，浊气逼人，白烟和黑烟交织成团，在烧焦的、烘萎了的树梢间翻腾。
+ 木料在炭化过程中爆豆般响着，失去支撑的房屋顶盖塌下，砸起冲天的尘烟和灰烬。
+ 土围子上、街道上、尸体狼藉。
+ 我们村子的历史又翻开了新的一页。
+ 它原先是一片蛮荒地，荆榛苇茅丛生，狐狸野兔的乐园，后来有了几架牧人的草棚，后来逃来了杀人命犯、落魄酒徒、亡命赌棍……
+ 他们建造房屋，开垦荒地，拓扑出人的乐园，狐狸野兔迁徙他乡，临别时齐声发出控诉人类的鸣叫。
+ 现在它是一片废墟了，人创造的，又被人摧毁。
+ 真正的现在的它是在废墟上建立起来的悲喜参半的忧乐园。
+ 当一九六○年黑暗的饥馑笼罩山东大地时，我虽然年仅四岁，也隐隐约约地感觉到，高密东北乡从来就没有不是废墟过，高密东北乡人心灵里堆积着的断砖碎瓦从来就没有清理干净过，也不可能清理干净。
+ 那天晚上，所有的房屋都烟飞火灭之后，我家那几十间房屋还在燃烧。
+ 我家的房子燃烧时放出一些翠绿的火苗和一股醉人的酒味，潴留多年的酒气，都在火中升腾起来。
+ 蓝色的房瓦在大火中弯曲变形，呈现暗红色，疾速地、像弹片一样从火中飞出来。
+ 火光照着爷爷花白的头发，爷爷的满头黑发，在短短的七天里，白了四分之三。
+ 我家的房盖轰隆隆塌陷下去，火焰萎缩片刻，又疯蹿得更高。
+ 父亲和爷爷都被这一声巨响震荡得胸闷气噎。
+ 这几十间先庇护了单家父子发财致富后庇护了爷爷放火杀人又庇护着奶奶爷爷父亲罗汉大爷与众伙计们多少恩恩怨怨的房屋完成了它的所谓的“历史的使命”。
+ 我恨透了这个庇护所，因为它在庇护着善良、麻醉着真挚的情感的同时，也庇护着丑陋和罪恶。
+ 父亲，一九五七年，你躲在我家里间屋里那个地洞里时，你每日每夜，在永恒的黑暗中，追忆流水年月，你至少三百六十次想到了我们家那几十间房屋的屋盖在大火中塌落的情景。
+ 你想到你的父亲我的爷爷在那时刻想到了什么，我的幻想紧追着你的幻想，你的幻想紧追着爷爷的思维。
+ 爷爷看到这房屋的塌陷的感觉，就像当初爱上恋儿姑娘后，愤然抛弃我奶奶另村去住，但后来又听说奶奶在家放浪形骸与“铁板会”头子“黑眼”姘上一样，说不清是恨还是爱，说不清是痛苦还是愤怒。
+ 爷爷后来重返奶奶的怀抱，对奶奶的感情已经混浊得难辨颜色和味道。
+ 我们感情上的游击战首先把自己的心脏打得千疮百孔最后又把对方打得千疮百孔。
+ 只有当奶奶在高粱地里用死亡的面容对着爷爷微笑时，他才领会到生活对自己的惩罚是多么严酷。
+ 他像喜鹊珍爱覆巢中最后一个卵一样珍爱着我父亲，但是，已经晚一点了，命运为他安排的更残酷的结局，已在前面路口上，胸有成竹地对他冷笑着。
+ “爹，咱的家没了……” 父亲说。
+ 爷爷摸着父亲的头，看着残破的家园，牵着父亲的手，在火光渐弱月光渐强的街道上无目标地蹒跚着。
+ 村头上，一个苍老淳朴的声音问：“是小三吗？
+ 怎么没把牛车赶来？”
+ 爷爷和父亲听到人声，倍觉亲切，忘了疲乏，急匆匆赶过去。
+ 一个弓着腰的老头，迎着他们上来，把眼睛几乎贴到爷爷脸上打量着。
+ 爷爷对老头那两只警觉的眼睛不满意，老头嘴里喷出的铜臭气使爷爷反感。
+ “不是我家小三子。”
+ 老头子遗憾地晃晃脑袋，坐回去。
+ 他的屁股下边堆了一大堆杂物，有箱、柜、饭桌、农具、牲口套具、破棉絮、铁锅、瓦盆……
+ 老头坐在小山一样的货物上，像一只狼守护着自己的猎物。
+ 老头身后的柳树上，拴着两头牛犊子、三只山羊，一头小毛驴。
+ 爷爷咬牙切齿地骂道：“老狗！
+ 你给我滚下来！”
+ 老头子从货堆上蹲起，友善地说：“哎，兄弟，别眼红吆，俺这是不惧生死从火堆里抢出来的！”
+ “你给我下来，我操死你活妈！”
+ 爷爷怒骂。
+ “你这人好没道理，我一没招你，二没惹你，你凭什么骂人？”
+ 老头宽容地谴责着我爷爷。
+ “骂你？
+ 老子要宰了你！
+ 老子们抗日救国，与日本人拼死拼活，你们竟然趁火打劫！
+ 畜牲，老畜牲！
+ 豆官，你的枪呢？”
+ “扔到洋马肚子底下啦！”父亲说。
+ 爷爷纵身跳上货堆，飞起一脚，把那老头踢到货堆下。
+ 老头子跪在地上，哀求道：“八路老爷饶命，八路老爷饶命……”
+ 爷爷说：“老子不是八路，也不是九路。
+ 老子是土匪余占鳌！”
+ “余司令饶命，余司令，这些东西，放到火里也白白烧毁了……
+ 俺村来‘倒地瓜’的不光我一个，值钱的东西都被那些贼给抢光啦，俺老汉腿脚慢，拾掇了一点破烂……”
+ 爷爷搬起一张木桌子，对准老头那秃脑门砸下去。
+ 老头惨叫一声，抱住流血的头，在地上转着圈乱钻。
+ 爷爷抓着他的衣领，把他提起来，对着那张痛苦的老脸，说：“‘倒地瓜’的好汉子！”
+ 然后猛力捣了一拳，老头脸上腻腻地响了一声，仰面朝天摔在地上，爷爷又走上前去，对着老头的脸，狠命踹了一脚。
+
+ FULL PURPLE LIPS, like ripe grapes, gave Second Grandma – Passion – her extraordinary appeal.
+ The sands of time had long since interred her origins and background.
+ Her rich, youthful, resilient flesh, her plump bean-pod face, and her deep-blue, seemingly deathless eyes were buried in the wet yellow earth, extinguishing for all time her angry, defiant gaze, which challenged the world of filth, adored the world of beauty, and brimmed over with an intense consciousness.
+ Second Grandma had been buried in the black earth of her hometown.
+ Her body was enclosed in a coffin of thin willow covered with an uneven coat of reddish-brown varnish that failed to camouflage its wormy, beetle-holed surface.
+ The sight of her blackened, blood-shiny corpse being swallowed up by golden earth is etched forever on the screen of my mind.
+ In the warm red rays of the sun, I saw a mound in the shape of a human figure rising atop the heavy, deeply remorseful sandbar.
+ Second Grandma's shapely figure; Second Grandma's high-arching breasts; tiny grains of shifting sand on Second Grandma's furrowed brow; Second Grandma's sensual lips protruding through the golden-yellow sand . . .
+ I knew it was an illusion, that Second Grandma was buried beneath the black earth of her hometown, and that only red sorghum grew around her gravesite.
+ Standing at the head of her grave – as long as it isn't during the winter, when the plants are dead and frozen, or on a spring day, when cool southerly breezes blow – you can't even see the horizon for the nightmarishly dense screen of Northeast Gaomi sorghum.
+ Then you raise your gaunt face, like a sunflower, and through the gaps in the sorghum you can see the stunning brilliance of the sun hanging in the kingdom of heaven.
+ Amid the perennially mournful sobs of the Black Water River you listen for a lost soul drifting down from that kingdom.
+ THE SKY WAS a beautiful clear blue.
+ The sun hadn't yet made an appearance, but the chaotic horizon on that early-winter morning was infused with a blinding red light when Old Geng shot at a red fox with a fiery torch of a tail.
+ Old Geng had no peers among hunters in Saltwater Gap, where he bagged wild geese, hares, wild ducks, weasels, foxes, and, when there was nothing else around, sparrows.
+ In the late autumn and early winter, enormous flocks of sparrows flew over Northeast Gaomi Township, a shifting brown cloud that rolled and tumbled above the boundless land.
+ At dusk they returned to the village, where they settled on willows whose naked, yellowing limbs drooped earthward or arched skyward.
+ As the dying red rays of the evening sun burned through the clouds, the branches lit up with sparrows' black eyes shining like thousands of golden sparks.
+ Old Geng picked up his shotgun, squinted, and pulled the trigger.
+ Two sparrows crashed to the ground like hailstones as shotgun pellets tore noisily through the branches.
+ Uninjured sparrows saw their comrades hit the ground and flapped their wings, rising into the air like shrapnel sent flying high into a lethargic sky.
+ Father had eaten some of Old Geng's sparrows when he was young.
+ They were delicious.
+ Three decades later, my older brother and I went into the sorghum field and engaged some crafty sparrows in a heated battle.
+ Old Geng, who was already over seventy by then and lived alone as a pensioner, was one of our most revered villagers.
+ Asked to speak at meetings to air grievances against the old order, he invariably stripped to the waist onstage to show his scars.
+ 'The Japs bayoneted me eighteen times,' he'd say, 'until you couldn't see my skin for all the blood.
+ But I didn't die, and you know why?
+ Because I was protected by a fox fairy.
+ I don't know how long I lay there, but when I opened my eyes all I could see was a bright-red light.
+ The fox fairy was licking my wounds.'
+ In his home, Old Geng – Eighteen Stabs Geng – kept a fox-fairy memorial tablet, which some Red Guards decided to smash during the Cultural Revolution.
+ They changed their minds and got out of there fast when they saw him kneel in front of the tablet wielding a cleaver.
+ Old Geng drew a bead on the red fox, knowing exactly which way it would run; but he was reluctant to shoot.
+ He knew he could sell the beautiful, bushy pelt for a good price.
+ If he was going to shoot, it had to be now.
+ The fox had already enjoyed a full life, sneaking over nightly to steal a chicken.
+ No matter how strong the villagers made their chicken coops, the fox always found a way inside and no matter how many traps they set, it always got away.
+ That year the villagers' chicken coops seemed built solely to store its food.
+ Old Geng had walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time and gone straight to a low embankment alongside the swamp in front of the village, where he waited for the chicken thief to show up.
+ Dried-up marsh weeds stood waist-high in the swamp, where a thin sheet of nearly transparent ice, possibly thick enough to bear a man's weight, covered the stagnant water that had accumulated during the autumn rains.
+ Yellow tassels atop imprisoned reeds shivered in the freezing morning air, as powerful rays of light from far off in the eastern sky gradually illuminated the icy surface, which gave off a moist radiance, like the scales of a carp.
+ Then the eastern sky turned bright, staining the ice and reeds the colour of mottled blood.
+ Old Geng picked up the odour and saw a tight cluster of reeds part slowly like an undulating wave, then close up quickly.
+ He stuck his nearly frozen index finger into his mouth and breathed on it, then wrapped it around the frost-covered trigger.
+ The fox bounded out of the clump of reeds and stood on the ice, turning it a bright red, as though it had gone up in flames.
+ Congealed blood covered its pointy little snout; a chicken feather the colour of hemp was stuck in its whiskers.
+ It walked with stately grace across the ice.
+ Old Geng cried out, and it froze on the spot, squinting to get a good look at the embankment.
+ Old Geng shivered, closed his eyes, and fired.
+ Like a little fireball, the fox rolled into the reeds.
+ Old Geng, his shoulder numb from the recoil, stood up under a silvery sky, looking bigger and taller than usual.
+ He knew the fox was hiding amid the reeds and staring at him with loathing.
+ Something suspiciously like a guilty conscience began to stir in Old Geng.
+ He thought back over the past year and the trust the fox had shown in him: it always knew he was hiding behind the embankment, yet it sauntered across the ice as though putting his conscience to the test.
+ And Old Geng had always passed the test.
+ But now he had betrayed this friendship, and he hung his head, gazing into the clump of reeds that had swallowed the fox, not even turning back to look when he heard the clatter of footsteps behind him.
+ Suddenly he felt a stabbing pain, and stumbled forward, twisting his body, dropping his shotgun to the ice.
+ Something hot squirmed under his pants at the belt line.
+ Running towards him were a dozen uniformed figures armed with rifles and glinting bayonets.
+ Instinctively he yelled in fear, 'Japan!'
+ The Japanese soldiers pounced on him and bayoneted him in the chest and abdomen.
+ He screamed pitifully, like a fox howling for its mate.
+ The blood from his wounds pitted the ice beneath him with its heat.
+ He ripped off his tattered shirt with both hands.
+ In his semiconscious state he saw the furry red fox emerge from the clump of reeds and circle round him once, then crouch down and gaze sympathetically.
+ Its fur glowed brilliantly and its slightly slanted eyes shone like emeralds.
+ After a while, Old Geng felt warm fur rubbing against his body, and he lay there waiting for the razor-sharp teeth to begin ripping him apart.
+ If he were torn to shreds, he'd die with no complaints, for he knew that a man who betrays a trust is lower than an animal.
+ The fox began licking his wounds with its cold tongue.
+ Old Geng was adamant that the fox had repaid his betrayal by saving his life.
+ Where else could you find another man who had sustained eighteen bayonet wounds yet lived to tell the tale?
+ The fox's tongue must have been coated with a miraculous substance since Old Geng's wounds were instantly soothed, as though treated with peppermint oil – or so he said.
+ VILLAGERS WHO HAD gone to town to sell straw sandals announced upon their return: 'Gaomi has been occupied by the Japanese.
+ There's a Rising Sun at the entrance!'
+ The panic-stricken villagers could only wait for the calamity they knew was coming.
+ But not all of them suffered from racing hearts and crawling flesh: two among them went about their business totally unconcerned, never varying their routine.
+ Who were they?
+ One was Old Geng, the other a onetime musician who loved to sing Peking opera – Pocky Cheng.
+ 'What are you afraid of?'
+ Pocky Cheng asked everyone he met.
+ 'We're still common folk, no matter who's in charge.
+ We don't refuse to give the government its grain, and we always pay our taxes.
+ We lie down when we're told, and we kneel when they order us.
+ So who'd dare punish us?
+ Who, I ask you?'
+ His advice calmed many of the people, who began sleeping, eating, and working again.
+ But it didn't take long for the evil wind of Japanese savagery to blow their way: they fed human hearts to police dogs; they raped sixty-year-old women; they hung rows of human heads from electric poles in town.
+ Even with the unflappable examples of Pocky Cheng and Old Geng, rumours of brutality were hard for the people to put aside, especially in their dreams.
+ Pocky Cheng walked around happy all the time.
+ News that the Japanese were on their way to sack the village created a glut in dogshit in and around the village.
+ Apparently the farmers who normally fought over it had grown lazy, for now it lay there waiting for him to come and claim it.
+ He, too, walked out of the village as the roosters were crowing for the third time, running into Old Geng with his shotgun slung over his back.
+ They greeted each other and parted ways.
+ By the time the eastern sky had turned red, the pile of dogshit in Pocky Cheng's basket was like a little mountain peak.
+ He laid it down, stood on the southern edge of the village wall, and breathed in the cool, sweet morning air, until his throat itched.
+ He cleared it loudly, then raised his voice to the rosy morning clouds and began to sing: 'I am a thirsty grainstalk drinking up the morning dew –'
+ A shot rang out.
+ His battered, wingless felt hat sailed into the air.
+ Tucking in his neck, he jumped into the ditch beneath the wall like a shot, bumping his head with a resounding thud against the frozen ground.
+ Not sure if he was dead or alive, he tried moving his arms and legs.
+ They were working, but barely.
+ His crotch was all sticky.
+ Fear raced through his heart.
+ I've been hit, he thought.
+ He sat up and stuck his hand down his pants.
+ With his heart in his mouth, he pulled out his hand, expecting it to be all red.
+ But it was covered with something yellow, and his nostrils twitched from the odour of rotten seedlings.
+ He tried to rub the stuff off on the side of the ditch, but it stuck to his skin.
+ He heard a shout from beyond the ditch: 'Stand up!'
+ He looked up to see a man in his thirties with a flat, chiselled face, yellow skin, and a long, jutting chin.
+ He was wearing a chestnut-coloured wool cap and brandishing a black pistol!
+ A forest of yellow-clad legs was aligned behind him, the calves wrapped in wide, crisscrossed cloth leggings.
+ His eyes travelled slowly upward past protruding hips, stopping at dozens of alien faces, all adorned with the smug smile of a man taking a comfortable shit.
+ A Rising Sun flag drooped under the bright-red sunrise; onion-green rays glinted off a line of bayonets.
+ Pocky Cheng's stomach lurched, and his nervous guts relinquished their contents.
+ 'Get up here!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap barked out angrily.
+ Pocky Cheng climbed out of the ditch.
+ Not knowing what to say, he just bowed repeatedly.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap was twitching right under his nose.
+ 'Are there Nationalist troops in the village?' he asked.
+ Pocky Cheng looked at him blankly.
+ A Japanese soldier waved a bloodstained bayonet in front of Pocky Cheng's chest and face.
+ He heard his stomach growl and felt his intestines writhe and twist slowly; at any other moment, he would have welcomed the intensely pleasant sensation of a bowel movement.
+ The Japanese soldier shouted something and swung the bayonet, slicing Pocky Cheng's padded jacket down the middle and freeing the cotton wadding inside.
+ The sharp pain of parted skin and sliced muscles leaped from his rib cage.
+ He doubled over, all the foul liquids in his body seeming to pour out at once.
+ He looked imploringly into the enraged Japanese face and began to wail.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap drove the barrel of his pistol into his forehead.
+ 'Stop blubbering!
+ The commander asked you a question!
+ What village is this?
+ Is it Saltwater Gap?'
+ He nodded, trying hard to control his sobs.
+ 'Is there a man in the village who makes straw sandals?'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap softened his tone a little.
+ Ignoring his pain, he eagerly and ingratiatingly replied, 'Yes yes yes.'
+ 'Did he take his straw sandals to market day in Gaomi yesterday?'
+ 'Yes yes yes,' he jabbered.
+ Warm blood had slithered down from his chest to his belly.
+ 'How about pickles?'
+ 'I don't know . . . don't think so. . . .'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the mouth and shouted: 'Tell me!
+ I want to know about pickles!'
+ 'Yes yes yes, your honour,' he muttered obsequiously.
+ 'Commander, every family has pickles, you can find them in every pickle vat in the village.'
+ 'Stop acting like a fucking idiot.
+ I want to know if there's somebody called Pickles!'
+ Chestnut Wool Cap slapped him across the face, over and over.
+ 'Yes . . . no . . . yes . . . no . . .
+ Your honour . . . don't hit me . . .
+ Please don't hit me . . . your honour . . .' he mumbled, reeling from the slaps.
+ The Japanese said something.
+ Chestnut Wool Cap swept the hat off his head and bowed, then turned back, the smile on his face gone in an instant.
+ He shoved Pocky Cheng and said with a scowl, 'We want to see all the sandal makers in the village.
+ You lead the way.'
+ Concerned about the dung basket he'd left on the wall, Pocky Cheng instinctively cocked his head in that direction.
+ A bayonet that shone like snow flashed past his cheek.
+ Quickly concluding that his life was worth more than a dung basket and spade, he turned his head back and set out for the village on his bandy legs.
+ Dozens of Japs fell in behind him, their leather boots crunching across the frost-covered grass.
+ A few grey dogs barked tentatively.
+ I'm really in a fix this time, Pocky Cheng was thinking.
+ No one else went out to collect dogshit, no one but me, and I ran into some real dogshit luck.
+ The fact that the Japanese didn't appreciate his good-citizen attitude frustrated him.
+ He led them quickly to each of the sandal makers' cellars.
+ Whoever Pickle was, he was sure in one now.
+ Pocky Cheng looked off into the distance towards his house, where green smoke curled into the sky from the solitary kitchen chimney.
+ It was the most intense longing for home he'd ever known.
+ As soon as he was finished he'd go there, change into clean pants, and have his wife rub some lime into the bayonet wound on his chest.
+ The great woodwind player of Northeast Gaomi Township had never been in such a mess.
+ Oh, how he longed for his lovely wife, who had grumbled about his pocked face at first, but, resigned at last, had decided that if you marry a chicken you share the coop; marry a dog and you share the kennel.
+ EARLY-MORNING GUNFIRE beyond the village startled Second Grandma out of a dream in which she was fighting Grandma tooth and nail.
+ She sat up, her heart thumping wildly, and, try as she might, she couldn't decide if the noise had just been part of the dream.
+ The window was coated with pale morning sunlight; a grotesque pattern of frost had formed on the pane.
+ Shuddering from the cold, she tilted her head so she could see her daughter, my aunt, who was lying beside her, snoring peacefully.
+ The sweet, even breathing of the five-year-old girl soothed Second Grandma's fears.
+ Maybe it was only Old Geng shooting at wild game, a mountain lion or something, she consoled herself.
+ She had no way of knowing how accurate her prediction was, nor could she have known that while she was sliding back under the covers the tips of Japanese bayonets were jabbing Old Geng's ribs.
+ Little Auntie rolled over and nestled up against Second Grandma, who wrapped her arms around her until she could feel the little girl's warm breath against her chest.
+ Eight years had passed since Grandma had kicked her out of the house.
+ During that time, Granddad had been tricked into going to the Jinan police station, where he nearly lost his life.
+ But he managed to escape and make his way home, where Grandma had taken Father to live with Black Eye, the leader of the Iron Society.
+ When Granddad fought Black Eye to a standstill at the Salty Water River, he touched Grandma so deeply she followed him home, where they ran the distillery with renewed vitality.
+ Granddad put his rifle away, bringing his bandit days to an end, and began life as a wealthy peasant, at least for the next few years.
+ They were troubling years, thanks to the rivalry between Grandma and Second Grandma.
+ In the end, they reached a 'tripartite agreement' in which Granddad would spend ten days with Grandma, then ten days with Second Grandma – ten days was the absolute limit.
+ He stuck to his bargain, since neither woman was an economy lantern, someone to be taken lightly.
+ Second Grandma was enjoying the sweetness of her sorrows as she hugged Little Auntie.
+ She was three months pregnant.
+ A period of increased tenderness, pregnancy is a time of weakness during which women need attention and protection, and Second Grandma was no exception.
+ Counting the days on her fingers, she longed for Granddad.
+ He would be there tomorrow.
+ Another crisp gunshot sounded outside the village,
+
+ 黑皮肤女人特有的像紫红色葡萄一样的丰满嘴唇使二奶奶恋儿魅力无穷。
+ 她的出身、来历已被岁月的沙尘深深掩埋。
+ 黄色的潮湿沙土埋住了她的弹性丰富的年轻肉体，埋住了她的豆荚一样饱满的脸庞和死不瞑目的瓦蓝色的眼睛，遮断了她愤怒的、癫狂的、无法无天的、向肮脏的世界挑战的、也眷恋美好世界的、洋溢着强烈性意识的目光。
+ 二奶奶其实是被埋葬在故乡的黑土地里的。
+ 盛殓她的散发着血腥味尸体的是一具浅薄的柳木板棺材，棺材上涂着深一片浅一片的酱红颜色，颜色也遮没不了天牛幼虫在柳木板上钻出的洞眼。
+ 但二奶奶乌黑发亮的肉体被金黄色沙土掩没住的景象，却牢牢地刻印在我的大脑的屏幕上，永远也不漶散地成象在我的意识的眼里。
+ 我看到好象在温暖的红色阳光照耀着的厚重而沉痛的沙滩上，隆起了一道人形的丘陵。
+ 二奶奶的曲线流畅；二奶奶的双乳高耸；二奶奶的崎岖不平的额头上流动着细小的沙流；二奶奶性感的双唇从金沙中凸出来，好象在召唤着一种被华丽的衣裳遮住了的奔放的实事求是精神……
+ 我知道这一切都是幻象，我知道二奶奶是被故乡的黑土掩埋的。
+ 在她的坟墓周围只有壁立的红色高粱，站在她的坟墓前——如果不是万木肃杀的冬天或熏风解愠的阳春——你连地平线也看不到，高密东北乡梦魇般的高粱遮挡着你，使你鼠目寸光。
+ 那么，你仰起你的葵花般的青黄脸盘，从高粱的缝隙里，去窥视蓝得令人心惊的天国光辉吧！
+ 你在墨水河永不欢乐的呜咽声中，去聆听天国传来的警悟执迷灵魂的音乐吧！
+ 那天早晨，天空是澄彻美丽的蔚蓝色，太阳尚未出头，初冬的混沌地平线被一线耀眼的深红镶着边。
+ 老耿向一匹尾巴像火炬般的红毛狐狸开了一土枪。
+ 老耿是咸水口子村独一无二的玩枪的人，他打雁、打野兔、打野鸭子、打黄鼠狼、打狐狸，万般无奈也打麻雀。
+ 初冬深秋，高密东北乡的麻雀都结成庞大的密集团体，成千只麻雀汇集成一团褐色的破云，贴着苍莽的大地疾速地翻滚。
+ 傍晚，它们飞回村，落在挂着孤单枯叶的柳树上，柳条青黄、赤裸裸下垂或上指，枝条上结满麻雀。
+ 一抹夕阳烧红了天边云霞，树上涂满亮色，麻雀漆黑的眼睛像金色的火星一样满树闪烁。
+ 它们不停地跳动着，树冠上翅羽翻卷。
+ 老耿端起枪，眯缝起一只三角眼，一搂扳机响了枪，冰雹般的金麻雀劈哩啪啦往下落，铁砂子在柳枝间飞迸着，嚓嚓有声。
+ 没受伤的麻雀思索片刻，看着自己的同伴们垂直落地后，才振翅逃窜——像弹片一样，射到暮气深沈的高天里去。
+ 父亲幼年时吃过老耿的麻雀。
+ 麻雀肉味鲜美，营养丰富。
+ 三十多年后，我跟着哥哥在杂种高粱试验田里，与狡猾的麻雀展开过激烈坚韧的斗争。
+ 老耿那时已七十多岁，孤身一人，享受“五保”待遇，是村里德高望重的人物，每逢诉苦大会，都要他上台诉苦。
+ 每次诉苦，他都要剥掉上衣，露出一片疤痕。
+ 他总是说：“日本鬼子捅了我十八刀、我全身泡在血里，没有死，为什么没有死呢？
+ 全仗着狐仙搭救。
+ 我躺了不知道多久，一睁眼，满眼红光，那个大恩大德的狐仙，正伸着舌头，呱唧呱唧地舔着我的刀伤……”
+ 老耿头——耿十八刀家里供着一个狐仙牌位，“文化大革命”初起，红卫兵去他家砸牌位，他握着一把切菜刀蹲在牌位前，红卫兵灰溜溜地退了。
+ 老耿早就侦察好了那条红毛老狐的行动路线，但一直没舍得打它。
+ 他看着它长起了一身好皮毛，又厚又绒，非常漂亮，肯定能卖好价钱。
+ 他知道打它的时候倒了，它在生的世界上已经享受够了。
+ 它每天夜里都要偷一只鸡吃。
+ 村里人无论把鸡窝插得多牢，它都能捣古开；无论设置多少陷阱圈套，它都能避开。
+ 村里人的鸡窝在那一年里，仿佛成了这只狐狸的食品储藏库。
+ 老耿在鸡叫三遍时出了村，埋伏在村前洼地边沿一道低矮的土堰后，等待着它偷鸡归来。
+ 洼地里丛生着半人高的枯瘦芦苇，秋天潴留的死水结成一层勉可行人的白色薄冰，黄褐色的小芦苇缨子在凌晨时分寒冽的空气中颤栗着，遥远的东方天际上渐渐强烈的光明投在冰上，泛起鲤鱼鳞片般的润泽光彩。
+ 后来东天边辉煌起来，冰上、芦苇上都染上了寒冷的死血光辉。
+ 老耿闻到了它的气味，看到密集的芦苇棵子像舒缓的波浪一样慢慢漾动着，很快又合拢。
+ 他把冻僵了的右手食指放到嘴边哈哈，按到沾满白色霜花的扳机上。
+ 它从芦苇丛中跳出来，站在白色的冰上。
+ 冰上通红一片，像着了火一样。
+ 它的瘦削的嘴巴上冻结着深红的鸡血，一片麻色的鸡羽沾在它嘴边的胡须上。
+ 它雍容大度地在冰上走。
+ 老耿喝了一声，它立正站住，眯着眼睛看着土壤。
+ 老耿浑身打起颤来，狐狸眼里那种隐隐约约的愤怒神情使他心里发虚。
+ 它大摇大摆地往冰那边的芦苇丛中走，它的巢穴就在那片芦苇里。
+ 老耿闭着眼开了枪。
+ 枪托子猛力后座，震得他半个肩膀麻酥酥的。
+ 狐狸像一团火，滚进了芦苇丛。
+ 他站起来，提着枪，看着深绿的硝烟在清清的空气中扩散着。
+ 他知道它正在芦苇丛里仇恨地盯着自己。
+ 他的身体立在银子般的天光下，显得又长又大。
+ 一种类似愧疚的心情在他心里漾起，他后悔了。
+ 他想到一年来狐狸对他表示的信任，狐狸明知道他就伏在土堰后，却依旧缓慢地在冰上走，就好象对他的良心进行考验一样。
+ 他开了枪，无疑是对这异类朋友的背叛。
+ 他对着狐狸消遁的芦苇丛垂下了头，连身后响起杂沓的脚步声，他都没有回头。
+ 后来，有一线扎人的寒冷从他的腰带上方刺进来，他身体往前一蹿，回转了身，土枪掉在冰上。
+ 一股热流在棉裤腰间蠕动着。
+ 迎着他的面，逼过来十几个身穿土黄色服装的人。
+ 他们手里托着大枪，枪刺明亮。
+ 他不由自主地惊叫一声：“日本！”
+ 十几个日本士兵走上前去，在他的胸膛上、肚腹上，每人刺了一刀。
+ 他发出一声狐狸求偶般的凄惨叫声，一头栽倒在冰上。
+ 额头撞得白冰开裂。
+ 他身上流出的血把身下的冰烫得坑坑洼洼。
+ 在昏迷中，他感到上半身像被火苗子燎烤着一样灼热，双手用力撕扯着破烂的棉衣。
+ 他在恍惚中，看到那只红毛狐狸从芦苇里走出来，围着他的身体转了一圈，然后蹲在他的身前，同情地看着他。
+ 狐狸的皮毛灿烂极了，狐狸的略微有点斜视的眼睛像两颗绿色的宝石。
+ 后来他感到了狐狸的温暖的皮毛凑近了自己的身体，他等待着它的尖利牙齿的撕咬。
+ 他知道人一旦背叛信义连畜牲也不如，即使被它咬死他也死而无怨。
+ 狐狸伸出凉森森的舌头舔着他的伤口。
+ 老耿坚定地认为，是这条以德报怨的狐狸救了他的命，世界上恐怕难以找出第二个挨了十八刺刀还能活下来的人了。
+ 狐狸的舌头上一定有灵丹妙药，凡是它舔到的地方，立即像涂了薄荷油一样舒服，老耿说。
+ 村里有人进县城卖草鞋，回来说：日本人占了高密城，城头上插着太阳旗。
+ 听到这消息，全村人几乎都坐卧不宁，等待着大祸降临。
+ 在众人惴惴不安、心惊肉跳的时候，却有两个人无忧无虑， 照旧干自己的营生。
+ 这两个人，一个是前面提到的自由猎手老耿；另一个是当过吹鼓手、喜欢唱京戏的成麻子。
+ 成麻子逢人便说：“你们怕什么？
+ 愁什么？
+ 谁当官咱也是为民。
+ 咱一不抗皇粮，二不抗国税，让躺着就躺着，让跪着就跪着，谁好意思治咱的罪？
+ 你说，谁好意思治咱的罪？”
+ 成麻子的劝导使不少人镇静下来，大家又开始睡觉、吃饭、干活。
+ 不久，日本人的暴行阴风般传来：杀人修炮楼，扒人心喂狼狗，奸淫六十岁的老太太，县城里的电线杆上挂着成串的人头。
+ 虽有成麻子和老耿做着无忧无虑的表率、人们也想仿效他们，但教的曲儿唱不得，人们即使在睡梦中，也难以忘掉流言中描绘出的残酷画面。
+ 成麻子一直很高兴，日本人即将前来洗劫的消息使村里村外的狗屎大增，往常早起抢捡狗屎的庄稼汉仿佛都懒惰了，遍地的狗屎没人捡，好象单为成麻子准备的。
+ 他也是鸡叫三遍时出的村，在村前碰到了背着土枪的老耿，打了个招呼，就各走各的道。
+ 东边一抹红时，成麻子的狗屎筐子起了尖。
+ 他把粪筐放下，提着铁铲，站在村南土围子上，呼吸着又甜又凉的空气，嗓子眼里痒痒的。
+ 他清清嗓子，顿喉高唱，对着天边的红霞：“我好比久旱的禾苗逢了哪甘霖——”
+ 一声枪响。
+ 成麻子头上的破毡帽不翼而飞，他脖子一缩，子弹般迅速地扎到围子沟里。
+ 脑袋撞得坚硬的冻土砰砰响他不痛也不痒。
+ 后来，他看到自己的嘴边是一堆煤灰渣子，一条磨秃了的苕帚疙瘩旁边躺着一只浑身煤灰的死耗子。
+ 他不知自己是死是活，活动了一下胳膊腿，能动弹，但似乎都不灵便。
+ 裤裆里粘糊糊的。
+ 一阵恐怖涌上心头，毁了，挂彩了，他想。
+ 他试探着坐起来，把手伸进裤裆间一摸。
+ 他心惊胆战地等待着摸出一手红来，举到眼前一看，却是满手焦黄。
+ 他的鼻子里充满了揉烂禾苗的味道。
+ 他把手掌放到沟底上蹭着，蹭不掉，又拿起那个破苕帚疙瘩来擦，正擦得起劲，就听到沟外一声吼：“站起来！”
+ 他抬头看到，吼叫的人三十岁出头，面孔像刀削的一样，皮肤焦黄，下巴漫长，头戴一顶香色呢礼帽，手里持着一只乌黑的短枪。
+ 在他的身后，是几十条劈开站着的土黄色的腿，腿肚子上绑扎着十字盘花的宽布条子，沿着腿往上看，是奓出来的腰胯和几十张异国情调的脸，那些脸上都带着蹲坑大便般的幸福表情。
+ 一面方方正正的太阳旗在通红的朝霞下耷拉着，一柄柄刺刀上汪着葱绿色的光彩。
+ 成麻子肚腹里一阵骚动，战战兢兢的排泄愉悦在他的腔肠里呼噜噜滚动。
+ “上来！”
+ 香色礼帽怒气冲冲地喊。
+ 成麻子扎好布腰带，哈着腰爬上沟堐，四肢拘谨得没处安放，大眼珠子灰白，不知说什么好，就直着劲点头哈腰。
+ 香色呢礼帽搐动着鼻子问：“村子里有国民党的队伍吗？”
+ 成麻子愣愣怔怔地望着他。
+ 一个日本兵端着滴血的刺刀，对着他的胸膛和他的脸晃动，刀尖上的寒气刺激着他的眼睛和肚腹，他听到自己的肚子里呼噜噜响着，肠子频频抽动，更加强烈的排泄快感使他手舞足蹈起来。
+ 日本兵叫了一声，把刺刀往下一摆，他的棉衣哗然一声裂开，破烂棉絮绽出，沿着棉衣的破缝，他的胸肋间爆发了一阵肌肉破裂的痛苦。
+ 他把身体紧缩成一团，眼泪、鼻涕、大便、小便几乎是一齐冒出来。
+ 日本兵又呜噜了一句话，很长，吐噜吐噜的，像葡萄一样。
+ 他痛苦地祈望着日本人怒冲冲的脸，大声哭起来。
+ 香色呢礼帽用手枪筒子戳了一下他的额头，说：“别哭！
+ 太君问你话呢！
+ 这是什么村？
+ 是咸水口子吗？”
+ 他强忍住抽泣，点了点头。
+ “这村里有编草鞋的吗？”
+ 香色呢礼帽用稍微和善一点的口气问。
+ 他顾不上伤痛，急忙地、讨好似的回答：“有，有，有。”
+ “昨天高密大集，有去赶集卖草鞋的没有？”香色呢礼帽又问。
+ “有有有”。他说。
+ 胸脯上流出的血已经热乎乎地淌到肚子上。
+ “有个叫咸菜疙瘩的吗？”
+ “不知道…… 没有……”
+ 香色呢礼帽熟练地搧了他一个耳光，叫道：“说！
+ 有没有咸菜疙瘩！”
+ “有有有，长官。”
+ 他又委屈地呜咽起来，“长官，家家都有咸菜疙瘩，家家户户的咸菜瓮里都有咸菜疙瘩。”
+ “他娘的，你装什么憨，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人！”
+ 呢礼帽劈劈啪啪地抽打着他的脸，骂着，“刁民，问你有没有叫咸菜疙瘩的人。”
+ “有…… 没有…… 有…… 没有……
+ 长官…… 别打我……
+ 别打我，长官……”
+ 他被大耳刮子搧昏了，颠三倒四地说。
+ 日本人说了一句什么，呢礼帽摘下礼帽，对鬼子鞠了一躬，转过身，他脸上的笑容急邃消失，搡了成麻子一把，横眉立目地说：“带路，进村，把编草鞋的都给我找出来。”
+ 他记挂着扔在围子上的粪筐和粪铲，不由自主地往后歪头，一柄雪亮的刺刀从他的腮帮子旁边欻啦顺过来。
+ 他想明白了，命比粪筐和粪铲值钱多了，便再也不回头，罗圈着腿往村里走。
+ 几十个鬼子在他身后走着，大皮靴踩得沾霜枯草咯崩咯崩响。
+ 几只灰溜溜的狗躺在墙犄角里小心翼翼地叫着。
+ 天空愈加晴朗，大半个太阳压着灰褐色的土地。
+ 村里的婴孩哭声衬出一个潜藏着巨大恐怖的宁静村庄。
+ 日本士兵整齐的踏步声像节奏分明的鼓声，震荡着他的耳膜，撞击着他的胸膛。
+ 他感到胸膛上的伤口像着火一样烫，裤子里的粪便又粘又冷。
+ 他想到自己倒霉透了，别人都不拣狗屎了，他偏要拣狗屎，于是撞上了狗屎运气。
+ 他为日本人不理解他的顺民态度感到委屈。
+ 赶快把他们带到那几个草鞋窨子里去，谁是咸菜疙瘩谁倒霉。
+ 远远地望见家门口了，被夏季的暴雨抽打得坑坑洼洼的房顶上生着几蓬白色的草，孤零零的烟筒里冒着青蓝色的炊烟，他从来没有感到对家有如此强烈的眷恋，他想完了事快回家，换条干净裤子，让老婆往胸膛的刀口上洒点石灰，血大概快流光了，眼前迸发着一簇簇的绿星星，双腿已经发软，一阵阵的恶心从肚里往喉咙里爬。
+ 他从来没这样狼狈过，高密东北乡吹唢吶的好手从来没这样狼狈过。
+ 他脚踩浮云，两汪冰冷的泪水盈满了眼泡。
+ 他思念着漂亮的、因为自己满脸麻子而抱屈、但也只好嫁鸡随鸡嫁狗随狗的妻子。
+ 凌晨时村外一声枪响，把正在梦中与我奶奶厮打的二奶奶惊醒了。
+ 她坐起来，心窝里噗噗通通乱跳一阵，想了好久，也没弄清楚是村外发生了什么事情了呢，还是梦中的幻觉。
+ 窗户上已布满淡薄的晨曦，那块巴掌大的窗玻璃上结着奇形怪状的霜花。
+ 二奶奶感到双肩冰凉，她斜了一下脸，看到躺在身侧的她的女儿、我的小姑姑正在鼾睡。
+ 五岁女孩甜蜜均匀的呼吸声把二奶奶心中的恐惧平息了。
+ 二奶奶想，也许是老耿又在打什么山猫野兽吧，她不知道这个推测十分正确，更不知道当她又痴坐片刻，拉开被子重新钻进被窝时，日本人锋利的刺刀正在穿插着老耿坚韧的肉体。
+ 小姑姑一翻身，滚进了二奶奶的怀里，二奶奶抱着她，感觉到女孩温暖的呼吸一缕缕地吹到自己的胸膛上。
+ 二奶奶被奶奶赶出家门已有八年，这期间爷爷曾被骗到济南府，险些送了性命。
+ 后来爷爷死里逃生，跑回家乡，奶奶那时带着父亲与铁板会头子黑眼住在一处。
+ 爷爷与黑眼在盐水河边决斗，虽然被打翻在地，但却唤起了奶奶心中难以泯灭的深情。
+ 奶奶追上爷爷，重返家乡，振兴烧酒买卖。
+ 爷爷洗手插枪，不干土匪生涯，当了几年富贵农民。
+ 在这几年里，使爷爷长久烦恼的，是奶奶与二奶奶的争风吃醋。
+ 争风吃醋的结果，是订了“三家条约”：爷爷在奶奶家住十天，就转移到二奶奶家住十天，不得逾约。
+ 爷爷向来是严守法则，因为这两个女人，哪个也不是省油的灯。
+ 二奶奶搂抱着小姑姑，心里泛滥着甜蜜忧愁。
+ 她又有了三个月的身孕。
+ 怀孕后的女人一般都变得善良温和，但也软弱，需要照顾和保护。
+ 二奶奶也不例外，她掐着指头数算日子，她盼望着爷爷，爷爷明天到来……
+ 村外又是一声尖锐的枪响。
+
+ Longtang
+ LOOKED DOWN UPON from the highest point in the city, Shanghai's longtang—her vast neighborhoods inside enclosed alleys—are a magnificent sight.
+ The longtang are the backdrop of this city.
+ Streets and buildings emerge around them in a series of dots and lines, like the subtle brushstrokes that bring life to the empty expanses of white paper in a traditional Chinese landscape painting.
+ As day turns into night and the city lights up, these dots and lines begin to glimmer.
+ However, underneath the glitter lies an immense blanket of darkness—these are the longtang of Shanghai.
+ The darkness looks almost to be a series of furious waves that threaten to wash away the glowing dots and lines.
+ It has volume, whereas all those lines and dots float on the surface—they are there only to differentiate the areas of this dark mass, like punctuation marks whose job it is to break up an essay into sentences and paragraphs.
+ The darkness is like an abyss—even a mountain falling in would be swallowed whole and sink silently to the bottom.
+ Countless reefs lurk beneath this swelling ocean of darkness, where one false move could capsize a ship.
+ The darkness buoys up Shanghai's handful of illuminated lines and dots, supporting them decade after decade.
+ Against this decades-old backdrop of darkness, the Paris of the Orient unfolds her splendor.
+ Today, everything looks worn out, exposing bit by bit what lies underneath.
+ One strand at a time, the first rays of the morning sun shine through just as, one by one, the city lights go out.
+ Everything begins from a cover of light fog, through which a horizontal ray of light crafts an outline as if drawing it out with a fine brush.
+ First to appear are the dormer windows protruding from the rooftop tingzijian of those traditional longtang buildings, showing themselves off with a certain self-conscious delicacy; the wooden shutters are carefully delineated, the handmade rooftop tiles are arranged with precision, even the potted roses on the windowsills have been cared for painstakingly.
+ Next to emerge are the balconies; here articles of clothing hung out to dry the night before cling motionless like a scene out of a painting.
+ The cement on the balustrade peels away to reveal the rusty red bricks beneath—this too looks as if painted in a picture, each brushstroke appearing clear and distinct.
+ After that come the cracked gable walls, lined with traces of green moss that look cold and clammy to the touch.
+ The first rays of light shining on the gable walls create a stunning picture, a gorgeous portrait, bearing just a hint of desolation, fresh and new yet not without a past.
+ At this moment the cement pavement of the longtang is still enveloped in fog, which lingers thick in the back alleys.
+ But on the iron-railed balconies of the newer longtang apartments the sunlight is already striking the glass panes on the French doors, which refract the light.
+ This stroke is a relatively sharp one, and seems to pull back the curtain that separates day from night.
+ The sunlight finally drives away the fog, washing everything in its path with a palette of strong color.
+ The moss turns out to be not green but a dark raven hue, the wooden window frames start to blacken, and the iron railing on the balcony becomes a rusted yellow.
+ One can see blades of green grass growing from between the cracks in the gables, and the white pigeons turn gray as they soar up into the sky.
+ Shanghai's longtang come in many different forms, each with colors and sounds of its own.
+ Unable to decide on any one appearance, they remain fickle, sometimes looking like this, sometimes looking like that.
+ Actually, despite their constant fluctuations, they always remain the same—the shape may shift but the spirit is unchanged.
+ Back and forth they go, but in the end it's the same old story, like an army of a thousand united by a single goal.
+ Those longtang that have entryways with stone gates emanate an aura of power.
+ They have inherited the style of Shanghai's glorious old mansions.
+ Sporting the facade of an official residence, they make it a point to have a grandiose entrance and high surrounding walls.
+ But, upon entering, one discovers that the courtyard is modest and the reception area narrow—two or three steps and you are already at the wooden staircase across the room.
+ The staircase is not curved, but leads straight up into the bedroom, where a window overlooking the street hints at romantic ardor.
+ The trendy longtang neighborhoods in the eastern district of Shanghai have done away with such haughty airs.
+ They greet you with low wrought-iron gates of floral design.
+ For them a small window overlooking a side street is not enough; they all have to have walk-out balconies, the better to enjoy the street scenery.
+ Fragrant oleanders reach out over the courtyard walls, as if no longer able to contain their springtime passion.
+ Deep down, however, those inside still have their guard up: the back doors are bolted shut with spring locks of German manufacture, the windows on the ground floor all have steel bars, the low front gates of wrought iron are crowned with ornamented spikes, and walls protect the courtyard on all sides.
+ One may enter at will, but escape seems virtually impossible.
+ On the western side of the city, the apartment-style longtang take an even stricter approach to security.
+ These structures are built in clusters, with doors that look as if not even an army of ten thousand could force their way inside.
+ The walls are soundproof so that people living even in close quarters cannot hear one another, and the buildings are widely spaced so that neighbors can avoid one another.
+ This is security of a democratic sort—trans-Atlantic style—to ensure and protect individual freedom.
+ Here people can do whatever their hearts desire, and there is no one to stop them.
+ The longtang in the slums are open-air.
+ The makeshift roofs leak in the rain, the thin plywood walls fail to keep out the wind, and the doors and windows never seem to close properly.
+ Apartment structures are built virtually on top of one another, cheek by jowl, breathing down upon each other's necks.
+ Their lights are like tiny glowing peas, not very bright, but dense as a pot of pea porridge.
+ Like a great river, these longtang have innumerable tributaries, and their countless branches resemble those of a tall tree.
+ Crisscrossing, they form a giant web.
+ On the surface they appear entirely exposed, but in reality they conceal a complex inner soul that remains mysterious, unfathomable.
+ As dusk approaches, flocks of pigeons hover about the Shanghai skyline in search of their nests.
+ The rooftop ridges rise and fall, extending into the distance; viewed from the side, they form an endless mountain range, and from the front, a series of vertical summits.
+ Viewed from the highest peak, they merge into one boundless vista that looks the same from all directions.
+ Like water flowing aimlessly, they seem to creep into every crevice and crack, but upon closer inspection they fall into an orderly pattern.
+ At once dense and wide-ranging, they resemble rye fields where the farmers, having scattered their seeds, are now harvesting a rich crop.
+ Then again, they are a little like a pristine forest, living and dying according to its own cycle.
+ Altogether they make for a scene of the utmost beauty and splendor.
+ The longtang of Shanghai exude a sensuality like the intimacy of flesh on flesh—cool and warm, tangible and knowable, a little self-centered.
+ The grease-stained rear kitchen window is where the amah gossips.
+ Beside the window is the back door; from this the eldest daughter goes out to school and holds her secret rendezvous with her boyfriend.
+ The front door, reserved for distinguished guests, opens only on important occasions.
+ On each side of the door hang couplets announcing marriages, funerals, and other family events.
+ The door seems always to be in a state of uncontrollable, even garrulous, excitement.
+ Echoes of secret whispers linger around the flat roof, the balcony, and the windows.
+ At night, the sounds of rapping on the doors rise and fall in the darkness.
+ To return to the highest point in the city and look down on it from another angle: clothes hanging out to dry on the cluttered bamboo poles hint at the private lives and loves that lie hidden beneath.
+ In the garden, potted balsams, ghost flowers, scallions, and garlic also breathe the faint air of a secret affair.
+ The empty pigeon cage up on the roof is an empty heart.
+ Broken roof tiles lying in disarray are symbols of the body and soul.
+ Some of the gullylike alleys are lined with cement, others with cobblestone.
+ The cement alleys make you feel cut off, while the cobblestone alleys give the sensation of a fleshy hand.
+ Footsteps sound different in these two types of longtang.
+ In the former the sound is crisp and bright, but in the latter it is something that you absorb and keep inside.
+ The former is a collection of polite pleasantries, the latter of words spoken from the bottom of one's heart.
+ Neither is like an official document; both belong to the necessary language of the everyday.
+ The back alleys of Shanghai try even harder to work their way into people's hearts.
+ The pavement is covered with a layer of cracks.
+ Gutters overflow; floating in the discolored water are fish scales and rotten vegetable leaves, as well as the greasy lampblack from the stovetop.
+ It is dirty and grimy, impure, here.
+ Here the most private secrets are exposed, and not always in the most conventional fashion.
+ Because of this a pall hangs over these back alleys.
+ The sunlight does not shine through until three o'clock in the afternoon and before long the sun begins to set in the west.
+ But this little bit of sunlight envelops the back alleys in a blanket of warm color.
+ The walls turn a brilliant yellow, highlighting the unevenness of the rough whetstone and giving it the texture of coarse sand.
+ The windows also turn a golden yellow, but they are scratched and stained.
+ By now the sun has been shining down for a long time and is beginning to show signs of fatigue.
+ Summoning up the last vestiges of radiance from the depths, the lingering rays of sunlight flicker with a sticky thickness of built-up residue, rather dirty.
+ As twilight encroaches, flocks of pigeons soar overhead, dust motes drift, and stray cats wander in and out of sight.
+ This is a feeling that, having penetrated the flesh, goes beyond closeness.
+ One begins to weary of it.
+ It breeds a secret fear, but hidden within that fear is an excitement that gnaws down to the bone.
+ What moves you about the longtang of Shanghai stems from the most mundane scenes: not the surging rush of clouds and rain, but something steadily accumulated over time.
+ It is the excitement of cooking smoke and human vitality.
+ Something is flowing through the longtang that is unpredictable yet entirely rational, small, not large, and trivial—but then even a castle can be made out of sand.
+ It has nothing to do with things like "history," not even "unofficial history": we can only call it gossip.
+ Gossip is yet another landscape in the Shanghai longtang—you can almost see it as it sneaks out through the rear windows and the back doors.
+ What emerges from the front doors and balconies is a bit more proper—but it is still gossip.
+ These rumors may not necessarily qualify as history, but they carry with them the shadows of time.
+ There is order in their progression, which follows the law of preordained consequences.
+ These rumors cling to the skin and stick to the flesh; they are not cold or stiff, like a pile of musty old books.
+ Though marred by untruths, these are falsehoods that have feeling.
+ When the city's streetlights are ablaze, its longtang remain in darkness, save the lonely street lamps hanging on the alley corners.
+ The lamps, enclosed in crude frames of rusty iron covered with dust, emit a murky yellow glow.
+ On the ground, a shroud of thick mist forms and begins to spread out—this is the time when rumors and gossip start to brew.
+ It is a gloomy hour, when nothing is clear, yet it is enough to break the heart.
+ Pigeons coo in their cages, talking their language of secret whispers.
+ The streetlights shine with a prim and proper light, but as soon as that light streams into the longtang alleys, it is overwhelmed by darkness.
+ The kind of gossip exchanged in the front rooms and adjoining wings belongs to the old school and smacks faintly of potpourri.
+ The gossip in the rooftop tingzijian and staircases is new school and smells of mothballs.
+ But, old school or new, gossip is always told in earnest—you could even say it is told in the spirit of truth.
+ This is like scooping water with one's hands: even though you might lose half the water along the way, with enough persistence you can still fill up a pond.
+ Or like the swallow that, though she may drop half the earth and twigs she is carrying in her beak, can still build a nest—there is no need for laziness or trickery.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are an unbearable sight.
+ The patches of green moss growing in the shade are, in truth, like scars growing over a wound; it takes time for the wound to heal.
+ It is because the moss lacks a proper place that it grows in the shade and shadows—years go by and it never sees the sun.
+ Now ivy grows out in the open, but it serves as Time's curtain and always has something to hide.
+ The pigeons gaze down at the outstretching billows of roof tiles as they take to the air, and their hearts are stabbed with pain.
+ Coming up over the longtang rooftops, the sun shoots out its belabored rays—a majestic sight pieced together from countless minute fragments, an immense power born of immeasurable patience.
+ Gossip
+ Gossip always carries with it an exhalation of gloom.
+ This murky air sometimes smells like lavender in a bedroom, sometimes like mothballs, and at other times like a kitchen chopping block.
+ It does not remind you of the smell of tobacco plugs or cigars, nor is it even faintly reminiscent of the smell of insecticides like Lindane or Dichlorvos.
+ It is not a strong masculine scent, but a soft feminine one—the scent of a woman.
+ It combines the smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, the smell of cosmetics and cooking oil, mixed in with a bit of sweat.
+ Gossip is always trailed by clouds and a screen of mist.
+ Shadowy and indistinct, it is a fogged-up window—a windowpane covered with a layer of dust.
+ Shanghai has as many rumors as longtang: too many to be counted, too many to be told.
+ There is something infectious about gossip; it can transform an official biography into a collection of dubious tales, so that truth becomes indistinguishable from gossip.
+ In the world of rumor, fact cannot be separated from fiction; there is truth within lies, and lies within the truth.
+ That gossip should put on an absurd face is unavoidable; this absurdity is the incredulity born of girlish inexperience, and is at least in part an illusion.
+ In places like the longtang, it travels from back door to back door, and in the blink of an eye the whole world knows all.
+ Gossip is like the silent electrical waves crisscrossing in the air above the city, like formless clouds that enshroud the whole city, slowly brewing into a shower, intermixing right and wrong.
+ The rain comes down not in a torrent but as a hazy springtime drizzle.
+ Although not violent, it drenches the air with an inescapable humidity.
+ Never underestimate these rumors: soft and fine as these raindrops may be, you will never struggle free of them.
+ Every longtang in Shanghai is steeped in an atmosphere of gossip, where right and wrong get twisted and confused.
+ In the elegant apartment-style longtang on the west side of town, this atmosphere is free of clouds, refreshing and transparent as a bright autumn day.
+ Moving down among the modern-style longtang neighborhoods, the atmosphere becomes a bit more turgid and turbulent, blowing to and fro like the wind.
+ Lower down still is the fractious atmosphere of the old-style longtang neighborhoods with the stone gates.
+ Here the wind has died, replaced by the vapor of a humid day.
+ By the time one gets to where the slum-dwellers live, all is enveloped in mist—not the roseate mists of dawn, but the thick fog that comes before a torrential downpour, when you cannot see your hand in front of your face.
+ But regardless of the type of longtang, this atmosphere penetrates everywhere.
+ You could say that it is the genius loci of Shanghai's alleys.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could speak, they would undoubtedly speak in rumors.
+ They are the thoughts of Shanghai's longtang, disseminating themselves through day and night.
+ If the longtang of Shanghai could dream, that dream would be gossip.
+ Gossip is base.
+ With this vulgar heart, it cannot help wallowing in self-degradation.
+ It is like sewer water, used, contaminated.
+ There is nothing aboveboard about it, nothing straight and narrow; it can only whisper secrets behind people's backs.
+ It feels no sense of responsibility, never takes the blame for the outcome—whatever that outcome may be.
+ Because of this, gossip has learned to do as it pleases, running wild like a flood out of control.
+ It never bothers to think things over—and no one ever bothers to think it over.
+ It is a bit like verbal garbage, but then again one can occasionally find small treasures in the garbage.
+ Gossip is made up of fragments discarded from serious conversations, like the shriveled outer leaves of vegetables, or grains of sand in a bag of rice.
+ These bits and pieces have faces that are not quite decent; always up to something, they are spoiled merchandise.
+ They are actually made from the crudest materials.
+ However, even the girls in Shanghai's west-end apartments feel compelled to stockpile some of this lowly stuff, because buried deep inside this shamefully base material is where one can find a few genuine articles.
+ These articles lie outside the parameters of what is dignified; their nature is such that no one dares speak of them aloud—and so they are taken and molded into gossip.
+ If gossip has a positive side, it is the part of it that is genuine.
+ The genuine, however, has a false appearance; this is what is known as "making truth out of falsehood, fact from fiction"—it is always dishing itself up in a new form, making a feint to the east while attacking from the west.
+ This truth is what gives you the courage to go out into the world and not fear losing face, or the courage to become a ghost—to go against prevailing opinions.
+ But there is a kind of sorrow that comes with this courage—the sorrow that comes from being thwarted, from being kept from doing what one wishes.
+ However, there is a certain vital energy in this sorrow, because even in the midst of it one's heart surges with high-flying ambition; in fact, it is because of these surging ambitions that one feels such bafflement and loss.
+ This sorrow is not refined like Tang dynasty poetry and Song dynasty lyrics, but belongs to the world of vulgar grievances aired out in the streets.
+ One can feel the weight of this sorrow as it sinks to the bottom.
+ It has nothing of the airy-fairy—the wind, flowers, snow, and the moon dancing on the water—it is the sediment that accumulates at the bottom.
+ Gossip always sinks to the lowest place.
+ There is no need to go looking for it, it is already there—and it will always be there.
+ It cannot be purified by fire or washed clean with water.
+ It has the tenacity for holding onto life that keeps the muscles intact when the bones are shattered, that enables one to swallow the teeth broken in one's mouth—a brazen-faced tenacity.
+ Gossip cannot help but be swashbuckling and sensational.
+ It travels in the company of monsters and goblins; rising with the wind, its elusive tail can never be caught.
+ Only in gossip can the true heart of this city be found.
+ No matter how gorgeous and splendid the city may look on the outside, its heart is vulgar.
+ That heart is born of gossip, and gossip is born of the Shanghai longtang.
+ Magnificent tales of the Far East can be heard all over this Paris of the Orient; but peel away the outer shell and you will discover that gossip lies at its core.
+ Like the center of a pearl—which is actually a rough grain of sand—coarse sand is the material of which gossip is made.
+ Gossip always muddles the senses.
+ Starting with inconsequential things, it winds up trying to rewrite history.
+ Like woodworm, it slowly chews up the books and records, eating away magnificent buildings like an army of termites.
+ Its methods are chaotic, without rhyme, reason, or logic.
+ It goes wherever it wants, swaggering like a hooligan, and wastes no time on long-winded theories, nor does it go into too much detail.
+ It simply spreads across the city, launching surprise attacks; by the time you turn around to see what sneaked up on you from behind, it has already gone without a trace.
+ It leaves in its wake a chain of injustices with no one to take the blame and a string of scores with no one to settle with.
+ It makes no big, sudden movements but quietly works away without stopping.
+ In the end, "many a little makes a lot," and trickling water flows into a great river.
+ This is what is meant by the saying, "Rumors rise in swarms"; they indeed drone and buzz like a nest of hornets.
+ A bit contemptible, maybe, but they are also conscientious.
+ They pick up discarded matchsticks to make a fire.
+ If they see a lone piece of thread on the floor, they will take it up and begin to sew.
+ Though always making trouble, they are nevertheless earnest and sincere.
+ Gossip is never cynical; even if the thing in question is nothing but empty rumors, the utmost care is still put into their creation.
+ Baseless and unreliable as these rumors may be, they are not without a certain warmth of feeling.
+ They mind their own business: whatever others may say, they will stick to their version—to them even settled opinions are taken under advisement.
+ It is not that gossip takes a different political view, but that it does not take any political view; in fact, it lacks the most basic knowledge about politics.
+ Always going by back roads and entering through side doors, it does not stand in opposition to society—it forms its own society.
+ As far as society is concerned, these are small and inconsequential things, like twigs and knots on a tree.
+ And precisely because society never takes these things seriously, they are able to maneuver unseen through the darkness and have their way.
+ Combined together, they constitute a power that should not be underestimated, in the way that a butterfly beating its wings here can cause a hurricane in a faraway place.
+ Rumors deviate from traditional moral codes but never claim to be antifeudal.
+ Like a true bum, they chip away at the foundations of public decency.
+ They wouldn't hesitate to pull the emperor down off his horse—not in order to install a new republic, but merely as an act of defiance.
+ Despising revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries alike, they themselves are consistently slighted and deserted by both sides.
+ Indeed, there is not a presentable one in the whole lot—if there were, they could be promoted to the level of "public opinion," where they could advance into the open.
+ Instead, they have to be content with making secret maneuvers under the cover of darkness.
+ They care not that they are mere whispers in people's ears; they'll make their home wherever their wanderings take them, having no conception of what it means to build an enterprise.
+ These are creatures without ambition, holding out no hopes; in fact, they do not even have the ability to think.
+ All they have is the natural capacity to cause trouble and make mischief; they grow and reproduce in complete ignorance.
+ They reproduce at quite startling rates, hatching all at once like spawn.
+ Their methods of reproduction are also varied; sometimes linear, like a chain of interlocking rings, at other times concentric, like a suite of riddles.
+ They spread through the city air like a pack of down-at-the-heel vagrants.
+ But the truth is, gossip is one of the things that make this city so romantic.
+ What makes gossip romantic is its unbridled imagination.
+ With the imagination completely free from all fetters, gossip can leap through the dragon's gate and squeeze through the dog's den.
+ No one is better at making up stories, telling lies, and wagging its tongue than gossip.
+ It also has boundless energy—nothing can kill it dead.
+ Wildfires burn but, come spring, the grass will grow again.
+ Like the lowliest of seeds, gossip is carried by the wind to sprout and bloom in between rocks.
+ It works its way into every crack, even getting behind the heavy curtains of ladies' boudoirs, where it floats amid the embroidery needles in the young mistress's pincushions; and lingers among the tear-stained pages of those heartwrenching novels the schoolgirl reads in her spare time.
+ As the clock on the table ticks, gossip stretches itself out, even filling the basin where milady washes her rouge away.
+ It thrives in the most secret of places: a clandestine atmosphere is particularly beneficial to its development.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are very good at protecting their privacy, allowing gossip to prosper and proliferate.
+ Deep in the night, after everyone has turned out their lights, there is a narrow patch of light peeking out through the crack under someone's door—that is gossip.
+ The pair of embroidered shoes in the moonlight beside the bed—that too is gossip.
+ When the old amah, carrying her box of toiletries, says she is going out to comb her hair, she is actually off to spread gossip.
+ The clatter of young wives shuffling mahjong tiles—that is the sound of gossip.
+ Sparrows hopping around deserted courtyards on winter afternoons chirp about gossip.
+ The word "self" is embedded into gossip; and within this word "self" there is an unmentionable pain.
+ This bottled-up pain is different from what the Tang emperor felt at the death of Yang Guifei or the King of Chu for his beloved concubine.
+ It is not the kind of grand and heroic suffering that moves heaven and earth, but base and lowly, like pebbles and dirt, or the tentacles of ivy creeping stealthily out of bounds.
+ The longtang of Shanghai are incapable of harboring the kind of suffering that inspires legends.
+ The pain is broken up and evenly allocated throughout the city, so that each person ends up with a small share.
+ Even when they suffer deep sorrow, its inhabitants keep it down inside their bellies; they do not put it on stage for people to admire, nor do they make it into lyrics to be sung by others.
+ Only they themselves know where it comes from and whither it goes.
+ They alone carry its burden.
+ This is also where the word "self" comes into play, and herein, incidentally, lies the true meaning of sorrow.
+ Therefore we can say that gossip is painful; even if the pain does not arise from proper causes, it is still excruciating.
+ The pain is suffered individually, eliciting no sympathy—a lonely pain.
+ This is also what is moving about gossip.
+ The moment that gossip is born is actually the moment that people are trying their hardest to conduct themselves properly.
+ The people in Shanghai's longtang neighborhoods conduct themselves with the utmost attention and care; all their energy is directed to the way they carry themselves.
+ Their eyes are focused exclusively on themselves, and they are never distracted by their surroundings.
+ They don't want to create a place for themselves in history: they want to create themselves.
+ Without being ambitious, they expend every ounce of what strength they have.
+ This strength, too, is evenly allocated.
+ Everyone has his fair share.
+
+ 1．弄堂
+ 站一个至高点看上海，上海的弄堂是壮观的景象。
+ 它是这城市背景一样的东西。
+ 街道和楼房凸现在它之上，是一些点和线，而它则是中国画中称为皴法的那类笔触，是将空白填满的。
+ 当天黑下来，灯亮起来的时分，这些点和线都是有光的，在那光后面，大片大片的暗，便是上海的弄堂了。
+ 那暗看上去几乎是波涛汹涌，几乎要将那几点几线的光推着走似的。
+ 它是有体积的，而点和线却是浮在面上的，是为划分这个体积而存在的，是文章里标点一类的东西，断行断句的。
+ 那暗是像深渊一样，扔一座山下去，也悄无声息地沉了底。
+ 那暗里还像是藏着许多礁石，一不小心就会翻了船的。
+ 上海的几点几线的光，全是叫那暗托住的，一托便是几十年。
+ 这东方巴黎的璀璨，是以那暗作底铺陈开，一铺便是几十年。
+ 如今，什么都好像旧了似的，一点一点露出了真迹。
+ 晨曦一点一点亮起，灯光一点一点熄灭。
+ 先是有薄薄的雾，光是平直的光，勾出轮廓，细工笔似的。
+ 最先跳出来的是老式弄堂房顶的老虎天窗，它们在晨雾里有一种精致乖巧的模样，那木框窗扇是细雕细作的；那屋披上的瓦是细工细排的；窗台上花盆里的月季花也是细心细养的。
+ 然后晒台也出来了，有隔夜的衣衫，滞着不动的，像画上的衣衫；晒台矮墙上的水泥脱落了，露出锈红色的砖，也像是画上的，一笔一划都清晰的。
+ 再接着，山墙上的裂纹也现出了，还有点点绿苔，有触手的凉意似的。
+ 第一缕阳光是在山墙上的，这是很美的图画，几乎是绚烂的，又有些荒凉；是新鲜的，又是有年头的。
+ 这时候，弄底的水泥地还在晨雾里头，后弄要比前弄的雾更重一些。
+ 新式里弄的铁栏杆的阳台上也有了阳光，在落地的长窗上折出了反光。
+ 这是比较锐利的一笔，带有揭开帷幕，划开夜与昼的意思。
+ 雾终被阳光驱散了，什么都加重了颜色，绿苔原来是黑的，窗框的木头也是发黑的，阳台的黑铁栏杆却是生了黄锈，山墙的裂缝里倒长出绿色的草，飞在天空里的白鸽成片灰鸽。
+ 上海的弄堂是形形种种，声色各异的。
+ 它们有时候是那样，有时候是这样，莫衷一是的模样。
+ 其实它们是万变不离其宗，形变神不变的，它们是倒过来倒过去最终说的还是那一桩事，千人手面，又万众一心的。
+ 那种石窟门弄堂是上海弄堂里最有权势之气的一种，它们带有一些深宅大院的遗传，有一副官邸的脸面．它们将森严壁垒全做在一扇门和一堵墙上。
+ 一已开进门去，院子是浅的，客堂也是浅的，三步两步便走穿过去，一道木楼梯挡在了头顶。
+ 木楼梯是不打弯的，直抵楼上的闺阁，那二楼的临了街的窗户便流露出了风情。
+ 上海东区的新式里弄是放下架子的，门是楼空雕花的矮铁门，楼上有探身的窗还不够，还要做出站脚的阳台，为的是好看街市的风景。
+ 院里的夹竹桃伸出墙外来，锁不住的春色的样子。
+ 但骨子里头却还是防范的，后门的锁是德国造的弹簧锁，底楼的窗是有铁栅栏的，矮铁门上有着尖锐的角，天井是围在房中央，一副进得来出不去的样子。
+ 西区的公寓弄堂是严加防范的，房间都是成套，一扇门关死，一夫当关万夫莫开的架势，墙是隔音的墙，鸡犬声不相闻的。
+ 房子和房子是隔着宽阔地，老死不相见的。
+ 但这防范也是民主的防范，欧美风的，保护的是做人的自由，其实是想做什么就做什么，谁也拦不住的。
+ 那种棚户的杂弄倒是全面敞开的样子，油毛毡的屋顶是漏雨的，板壁墙是不遮风的，门窗是关不严的。
+ 这种弄堂的房屋看上去是鳞次栉比，挤挤挨挨，灯光是如豆的一点一点，虽然微弱，却是稠密，一锅粥似的。
+ 它们还像是大河一般有着无数的支流，又像是大树一样，枝枝杈杈数也数不清。
+ 它们阡陌纵横，是一张大网。
+ 它们表面上是袒露的，实际上却神秘莫测，有着曲折的内心。
+ 黄昏时分，鸽群盘桓在上海的空中，寻找着各自的巢。
+ 屋脊连绵起伏，横看成岭竖成峰的样子。
+ 站在至高点上，它们全都连成一片，无边无际的，东南西北有些分不清。
+ 它们还是如水漫流，见缝就钻，看上去有些乱，实际上却是错落有致的。
+ 它们又辽阔又密实．有些像农人撒播然后丰收的麦田，还有些像原始森林，自生自灭的。
+ 它们实在是极其美丽的景象。
+ 上海的弄堂是性感的，有一股肌肤之亲似的。
+ 它有着触手的凉和暖，是可感可知，有一些私心的。
+ 积着油垢的厨房后窗．是专供老妈子一里一外扯闲篇的；窗边的后门，是供大小姐提著书包上学堂读书，和男先生幽会的；前边大门虽是不常开，开了就是有大事情，是专为贵客走动，贴了婚丧嫁娶的告示的。
+ 它总是有一点按捺不住的兴奋，跃跃然的，有点絮叨的。
+ 晒台和阳台，还有窗畔，都留着些窃窃私语，夜间的敲门声也是此起彼落。
+ 还是要站一个至高点，再找一个好角度：弄堂里横七竖八晾衣竹竿上的衣物，带有点私情的味道；花盆里栽的凤仙花、宝石花和青葱青蒜，也是私情的性质；屋顶上空着的鸽笼，是一颗空着的心；碎了和乱了的瓦片，也是心和身子的象征。
+ 那沟壑般的弄底，有的是水泥铺的，有的是石卵拼的。
+ 水泥铺的到底有些隔心隔肺，石卵路则手心手背都是肉的感觉。
+ 两种弄底的脚步声也是两种，前种是清脆响亮的，后种却是吃进去，闷在肚里的；前种说的是客套，后种是肺腑之言，两种都不是官面文章，都是每日里免不了要说的家常话。
+ 上海的后弄更是要钻进人心里去的样子，那里的路面是饰着裂纹的，阴沟是溢水的，水上浮着鱼鳞片和老菜叶的，还有灶间的油烟气的。
+ 这里是有些脏兮兮，不整洁的，最深最深的那种隐私也裸露出来的，有点不那么规矩的。
+ 因此，它便显得有些阴沉。
+ 太阳是在午后三点的时候才照进来，不一会儿就夕阳西下了。
+ 这一点阳光反给它罩上一层暧昧的色彩，墙是黄黄的，面上的粗砺都凸现起来，沙沙的一层。
+ 窗玻璃也是黄的，有着污迹，看上去有一些花的。
+ 这时候的阳光是照久了，有些压不住的疲累的，将最后一些沉底的光都迸出来照耀，那光里便有了许多沉积物似的，是粘稠滞重，也是有些不干净的。
+ 鸽群是在前边飞的，后弄里飞着的是夕照里的一些尘埃，野猫也是在这里出没的。
+ 这是深入肌肤，已经谈不上是亲是近，反有些起腻，暗底里生畏的，却是有一股噬骨的感动。
+ 上海弄堂的感动来自于最为日常的情景，这感动不是云水激荡的，而是一点一点累积起来。
+ 这是有烟火人气的感动。
+ 那一条条一排排的里巷，流动着一些意料之外又清理之中的东西，东西不是什么大东西，但琐琐细细，聚沙也能成塔的。
+ 那是和历史这类概念无关，连野史都难称上，只能叫做流言的那种。
+ 流言是上海弄堂的又一景观，它几乎是可视可见的，也是从后窗和后门里流露出来。
+ 前门和前阳台所流露的则要稍微严正一些，但也是流言。
+ 这些流言虽然算不上是历史，却也有着时间的形态，是循序渐进有因有果的。
+ 这些流言是贴肤贴肉的，不是故纸堆那样冷淡刻板的，虽然谬误百出，但谬误也是可感可知的谬误。
+ 在这城市的街道灯光辉煌的时候，弄堂里通常只在拐角上有一盏灯，带着最寻常的铁罩，罩上生着锈，蒙着灰尘，灯光是昏昏黄黄，下面有一些烟雾般的东西滋生和蔓延，这就是酝酿流言的时候。
+ 这是一个晦涩的时刻，有些不清不白的，却是伤人肺腑。
+ 鸽群在笼中叽叽哝哝的，好像也在说着私语。
+ 街上的光是名正言顺的，可惜刚要流进弄口，便被那暗吃掉了。
+ 那种有前客堂和左右厢房里的流言是要老派一些的，带薰衣草的气味的；而带亭子间和拐角楼梯的弄堂房子的流言则是新派的，气味是樟脑丸的气味。
+ 无论老派和新派，却都是有一颗诚心的，也称得上是真情的。
+ 那全都是用手掬水，掬一捧漏一半地掬满一池，燕子衔泥衔一口掉半口地筑起一巢的，没有半点偷懒和取巧。
+ 上海的弄堂真是见不得的情景，它那背阴处的绿苔，其实全是伤口上结的疤一类的，是靠时间抚平的痛处。
+ 因它不是名正言顺，便都长在了阴处，长年见不到阳光。
+ 爬墙虎倒是正面的，却是时间的帷幕，遮着盖着什么。
+ 鸽群飞翔时，望着波涛连天的弄堂的屋瓦，心是一刺刺的疼痛。
+ 太阳是从屋顶上喷薄而出，坎坎坷坷的，光是打折的光，这是由无数细碎集合而成的壮观，是由无数耐心集合而成的巨大的力。
+ 2．流言
+ 流言总是带着阴沉之气。
+ 这阴沉气有时是东西厢房的薰衣草气味，有时是樟脑丸气味，还有时是肉砧板上的气味。
+ 它不是那种板烟和雪茄的气味，也不是六六粉和敌敌畏的气味。
+ 它不是那种阳刚凛冽的气味，而是带有些阴柔委婉的，是女人家的气味。
+ 是闺阁和厨房的混淆的气味，有点脂粉香，有点油烟味，还有点汗气的。
+ 流言还都有些云遮雾罩，影影绰绰，是哈了气的窗玻璃，也是蒙了灰尘的窗玻璃。
+ 这城市的弄堂有多少，流言就有多少，是数也数不清，说也说不完的。
+ 这些流言有一种蔓延的洇染的作用，它们会把一些正传也变成流言一般暧昧的东西，于是，什么是正传，什么是流言，便有些分不清。
+ 流言是真假难辨的，它们假中有真，真中有假，也是一个分不清。
+ 它们难免有着荒诞不经的面目，这荒诞也是女人家短见识的荒诞，带着些少见多怪，还有些幻觉的。
+ 它们在弄堂这种地方，从一扇后门传进另一扇后门，转眼间便全世界皆知了。
+ 它们就好像一种无声的电波，在城市的上空交叉穿行；它们还好像是无形的浮云，笼罩着城市，渐渐酿成一场是非的雨。
+ 这雨也不是什么倾盆的雨，而是那黄梅天里的雨，虽然不暴烈，却是连空气都湿透的。
+ 因此，这流言是不能小视的，它有着细密绵软的形态，很是纠缠的。
+ 上海每一条弄堂里，都有着这样是非的空气。
+ 西区高尚的公寓弄堂里，这空气也是高朗的，比较爽身，比较明澈，就像秋日的天，天高云淡的；再下来些的新式弄堂里，这空气便要混浊一些，也要波动一些，就像风一样，吹来吹去；更低一筹的石窟门老式弄堂里的是非空气，就又不是风了，而是回潮天里的水汽，四处可见污迹的；到了棚户的老弄，就是大雾天里的雾，不是雾开日出的雾，而浓雾作雨的雾，弥弥漫漫，五步开外就不见人的。
+ 但无论哪一种弄堂，这空气都是渗透的，无处不在。
+ 它们可说是上海弄堂的精神性质的东西。
+ 上海的弄堂如果能够说话，说出来的就一定是流言。
+ 它们是上海弄堂的思想，昼里夜里都在传播。
+ 上海弄堂如果有梦的话，那梦，也就是流言。
+ 流言总是鄙陋的。
+ 它有着粗俗的内心，它难免是自甘下贱的。
+ 它是阴沟里的水，被人使用过，污染过的。
+ 它是理不直气不壮，只能背地里窃窃喳喳的那种。
+ 它是没有责任感，不承担后果的，所以它便有些随心所欲，如水漫流。
+ 它均是经不起推敲，也没人有心去推敲的。
+ 它有些像言语的垃圾，不过，垃圾里有时也可淘出真货色的。
+ 它们是那些正经话的作了废的边角料，老黄叶片，米里边的稗子。
+ 它们往往有着不怎么正经的面目，坏事多，好事少，不干净，是个腌臜货。
+ 它们其实是用最下等的材料制造出来的，这种下等材料，连上海西区公寓里的小姐都免不了堆积了一些的。
+ 但也唯独这些下等的见不得人的材料里，会有一些真东西。
+ 这些真东西是体面后头的东西，它们是说给自己也不敢听的，于是就拿来，制作流言了。
+ 要说流言的好，便也就在这真里面了。
+ 这真却有着假的面目，是在假里做真的，虚里做实，总有些改头换面，声东击西似的。
+ 这真里是有点做人的胆子的，是不怕丢脸的胆子，放着人不做却去做鬼的胆子，唱反调的胆子。
+ 这胆子里头则有着一些哀意了。
+ 这哀意是不遂心不称愿的哀，有些气在里面的，哀是哀，心却是好高骛远的，唯因这好高骛远，才带来了失落的哀意。
+ 因此，这哀意也是粗鄙的哀意，不是唐诗宋词式的，而是街头切口的一种。
+ 这哀意便可见出了重量，它是沉痛的，是哀意的积淀物，不是水面上的风花雪月。
+ 流言其实都是沉底的东西，不是手淘万洗，百炼千锤的，而是本来就有，后来也有，洗不净，炼不精的，是做人的一点韧，打断骨头连着筋，打碎牙齿咽下肚，死皮赖脸的那点韧。
+ 流言难免是虚张声势，危言耸听，魑魅魍魉一起来，它们闻风而动，随风而去，摸不到头，抓不到尾。
+ 然而，这城市里的真心，却唯有到流言里去找的。
+ 无论这城市的外表有多华美，心却是一颗粗鄙的心，那心是寄在流言里的，流言是寄在上海的弄堂里的。
+ 这东方巴黎遍布远东的神奇传说，剥开壳看，其实就是流言的芯子。
+ 就好像珍珠的芯子，其实是粗糙的沙粒，流言就是这颗沙粒一样的东西。
+ 流言是混淆视听的，它好像要改写历史似的，并且是从小处着手。
+ 它蚕食般地一点一点咬噬着书本上的记载，还像白蚁侵蚀华厦大屋。
+ 它是没有章法，乱了套的，也不按规矩来，到哪算哪的，有点流氓地痞气的。
+ 它不讲什么长篇大论，也不讲什么小道细节，它只是横看来。
+ 它是那种偷袭的方法，从背后擦上一把，转过身却没了影，结果是冤无头，债无主。
+ 它也没有大的动作，小动作却是细细碎碎的没个停，然后敛少成多，细流汇大江。
+ 所谓“谣言蜂起”，指的就是这个，确是如蜂般嗡嗡营营的。
+ 它是有些卑鄙的，却也是勤恳的。
+ 它是连根火柴梗都要抬起来作引火柴的，见根线也拾起来穿针用的。
+ 它虽是捣乱也是认真恳切，而不是玩世不恭，就算是谣言也是悉心编造。
+ 虽是无根无凭，却是有情有意。
+ 它们是自行其事，你说你的，它说它的，什么样的有公论的事情，在它都是另一番是非。
+ 它且又不是持不同政见，它是一无政见，对政治一窍不通，它走的是旁门别道，同社会不是对立也不是同意，而是自行一个社会。
+ 它是这社会的旁枝错节般的东西，它引不起社会的警惕心，因此，它的暗中作祟往往能够得逞。
+ 它们其实是一股不可小视的力量，有点“大风始于青萍之末”的意味。
+ 它们是背离传统道德的，却不以反封建的面目，而是一味的伤风败俗，是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们又敢把皇帝拉下马，也不以共和民主的面目，而是痞子的作为，也是典型的下三烂。
+ 它们是革命和反革命都不齿的，它们被两边的力量都抛弃和忽略。
+ 它们实在是没个正经样，否则便可上升到公众舆论这一档里去明修栈道，如今却只能暗渡陈仓，走的是风过耳。
+ 风过耳就风过耳，它也不在乎，它本是四海为家的，没有创业的观念。
+ 它最是没有野心，没有抱负，连头脑也没有的。
+ 它只有着作乱生事的本能，很茫然地生长和繁殖。
+ 它繁殖的速度也是惊人的，鱼撒籽似的。
+ 繁殖的方式也很多样，有时环扣环，有时套连套，有时谜中谜，有时案中案。
+ 它们弥漫在城市的空中，像一群没有家的不拘形骸的浪人，其实，流言正是这城市的浪漫之一。
+ 流言的浪漫在于它无拘无束能上能下的想象力。
+ 这想象力是龙门能跳狗洞能钻的，一无清规戒律。
+ 没有比流言更能胡编乱造，信口雌黄的了。
+ 它还有无穷的活力，怎么也扼它不死，是野火烧不尽，春风吹又生的。
+ 它是那种最卑贱的草籽，风吹到石头缝里也照样生根开花。
+ 它又是见缝就钻，连闺房那样帷幕森严的地方都能出入的。
+ 它在大小姐花绷上的绣花外流连，还在女学生的课余读物，那些哀情小说的书页流连，书页上总是有些泪痕的。
+ 台钟滴滴答答走时声中，流言一点一点在滋生；洗胭脂的水盆里，流言一点一点在滋生。
+ 隐秘的地方往往是流言丛生的地方，隐私的空气特别利于流言的生长。
+ 上海的弄堂是很藏得住隐私的，于是流言便漫生漫长。
+ 夜里边，万家万户灭了灯，有一扇门缝里露出的一线光，那就是流言；床前月亮地里的一双绣花拖鞋，也是流言；老妈子托着梳头匣子，说是梳头去，其实是传播流言去；少奶奶们洗牌的哗哗声，是流言在作响；连冬天没有人的午后，天井里一跳一跳的麻雀，都在说着鸟语的流言。
+ 这流言里有一个“私”字，这“私”字里头是有一点难言的苦衷。
+ 这苦衷不是唐明皇对杨贵妃的那种，也不是楚霸王对虞姬的那种，它不是那种大起大落、可歌可泣、悲天恸地的苦衷，而是狗皮倒灶，牵丝攀藤，粒粒屑屑的。
+ 上海的弄堂是藏不住大苦衷的。
+ 它的苦衷都是割碎了平均分配的，分到各人名下也就没有多少的。
+ 它即便是悲，即便是恸，也是悲在肚子里，恸在肚子里，说不上戏台子去供人观赏，也编不成词曲供人唱的，那是怎么来怎么去都只有自己知道，苦来苦去只苦自己，这也就是那个“私”字的意思，其实也是真正的苦衷的意思。
+ 因此，这流言说到底是有一些痛的，尽管痛的不是地方，倒也是钻心钻肺的。
+ 这痛都是各人痛各人，没有什么共鸣，也引不起同情，是很孤单的痛。
+ 这也是流言的感动之处。
+ 流言产生的时刻，其实都是悉心做人的时刻。
+ 上海弄堂里的做人，是悉心悉意，全神贯注的做人，眼睛只盯着自己，没有旁骛的。
+ 不想创造历史，只想创造自己的，没有大志气，却用尽了实力的那种。
+ 这实力也是平均分配的实力，各人名下都有一份。
+
+ Peace Lane
+ SHANGHAI MUST HAVE at least a hundred Peace Lanes, some occupying a large area connecting two major streets, others connected to other longtang, forming a vast network of twisted, dirty lanes where one can easily get lost.
+ As confusing as they may be to outsiders, each has developed a distinct identity simply through having survived for so many years.
+ Under moonlight, these blocks of crumbling wood and brick look positively serene, like something out of a painting executed with minute brushstrokes; they too hold memories and aspirations.
+ The ringing bells make their evening rounds, reminding residents to watch their cooking fires, evincing a trace of warmth and goodwill from those who live there.
+ Mornings, however, begin with night-soil carts, clattering in to collect waste for fertilizer, and the raspy noises of brushes scrubbing out commodes.
+ Amid the smoke of coal burners, laundry soaked overnight is taken out to be hung, banner-like, on bamboo poles.
+ Every action, every gesture comes across to the onlooker as a boastful swagger or perhaps an exaggerated fit of pique; why, the collective provocation would be enough to darken the rising sun.
+ Each Peace Lane has a few residents who are as old as the neighborhood.
+ Being history's witnesses, they observe newcomers with knowing eyes.
+ Some are not averse to mingling with newcomers, and this creates an impression of continuity.
+ But on the whole they like to keep to themselves, adding an air of mystery to the neighborhood.
+ Wang Qiyao moved into the third floor of 39 Peace Lane.
+ Different batches of tenants had left their plants on the balcony.
+ Most had withered, but a few nameless ones had sprouted new leaves.
+ Insects swam in the stagnant liquid of moldy jars in the kitchen, yet among them was a bottle of perfectly good peanut oil.
+ On the wall behind the door somebody had written, "Buy birthday present on January 10," and a child had scrawled "Wang Gensheng eats shit."
+ One could only speculate about the birthday celebrant and the object of the child's resentment.
+ Rubbish lay, piled up at haphazard—one could make nothing coherent out of all this.
+ Having put her things down among other people's debris, Wang Qiyao decided to make the place her own by hanging up her curtains.
+ The room did seem different with the curtains.
+ However, with no shade over the light bulb, the objects in the room simply looked naked rather than illuminated.
+ Outside it was a typical evening in May.
+ The warm breeze carried with it whiffs of grease and swill, which was the basic odor of Shanghai, although the typical Shanghainese was so steeped in it he scarcely noticed.
+ Later in the night would come the scent of rice gruel flavored with osmanthus blossoms.
+ The smells were familiar, the curtains were familiar, and the evening outside was familiar, but Wang Qiyao felt strange.
+ She needed to reattach herself to life here; fortunately for her, the lines where attachments could be made were clearly marked on the fabric.
+ Wang Qiyao was grateful to the large flowers on the curtains, which, no matter where they were placed, remained in full bloom, faithfully retaining the glory of bygone days.
+ The floor and the window frames emitted the odiferous warmth of decaying wood.
+ Scurrying mice conveyed their greetings.
+ Soon, bells reminding people to watch their cooking fires began ringing.
+ Wang Qiyao underwent three months of training as a nurse in order to be certified to give injections.
+ She hung out a sign advertising injections outside the entrance to her apartment on Peace Lane.
+ Similar signs could be seen along the entrances of other longtang—following those signs inside, one could find Wang Qiyaos of all different shapes and sizes eking out a living.
+ They all woke up early, put on clean clothes, and straightened up their rooms.
+ Then they ignited the alcohol burner to disinfect a box of needles.
+ The sun, reflected from the rooftops across the alley, left rectangles of light on the wooden floor.
+ After switching off the burner, they reached for a book to read while they waited for patients.
+ The patients tended to come in batches, morning and afternoon, but there might be one or two in the evening.
+ Once in a while, when someone requested a house call, they hurried off in white cap and surgical mask.
+ Lugging a straw bag containing the needles and medicinal cotton, they looked very much like professional nurses as they scurried down the street.
+ Wang Qiyao always wore a simple cheongsam.
+ In the 1950s these were becoming rare on the streets of Shanghai, a symbol of nostalgia as well as style, at once old-fashioned and modern.
+ When she crossed the streets on house calls, she was often struck by a sense of déjà vu—the places were familiar, only the roles were changed.
+ One day she called on a patient in a dark apartment where the waxed floor reflected her shoes and stockings, and was led into the bedroom.
+ There, under a green silk blanket, a young woman lay.
+ Wang Qiyao had the curious sensation that the woman was herself.
+ Having administered the shot, she put her things away and left, but her heart seemed to tarry in that apartment.
+ She could almost hear the woman complaining to the maid that the shrimps from the market were too small and not fresh enough—didn't she know the master would be home for dinner that night?
+ At times she stared into the blue flames of the alcohol burner and saw a resplendent world in which people sang and danced for all eternity.
+ Once in a while she caught a late movie, one of the ones that started at eight, when street lamps were reflected on the face of the silent streets.
+ Only the theater lobby would be bustling, as though time had stood still.
+ She only went to old movies: Zhou Xuan in Street Angel, Bai Yang in Crossroads, and others.
+ Although they had no connection to her present situation, they were familiar and they spoke to her.
+ She subscribed to an evening newspaper to fill the hours of dusk.
+ She read every word in the newspaper, making sense perhaps of half the reports.
+ By the time she finished it, the water would be boiling and it would be dinner time.
+ There was an exciting element of unpredictability to her work.
+ Hearing footsteps on the staircase at night, she would speculate, Who could it be?
+ She was unusually vivacious on these occasions and often talked a bit too much, asking this or that as she reignited the alcohol burner to sterilize the needle.
+ If the patient was a child, she would put out all her charm.
+ She would feel sad after the patient left.
+ Pondering over the recent commotion, she would forget to put things away, and then discover that the pot had boiled dry.
+ Such interruptions in her tranquil routine gave rise to a vague feeling of anticipation.
+ Something was fomenting, she felt, from which something might just develop.
+ Once, awakened in the middle of the night by urgent and frightened calls for help at the door, she threw a jacket over her nightgown and rushed downstairs, her heart pounding, to find two men from the provinces carrying someone on a stretcher.
+ The person was critically ill.
+ They had mistaken her for a doctor.
+ After giving them directions to the nearest hospital, she went back upstairs but could not sleep a wink.
+ All kinds of odd things happened in the night in this city.
+ Under the lamp at the entrance to the longtang, the shingle advertising "Injection Nurse Wang Qiyao" looked as if it was waiting patiently to be noticed.
+ The passing cars and the windswept fallen leaves hinted at concealed activities in the dark night.
+ People came to Wang Qiyao in an unending parade.
+ Those who stopped coming were quickly replaced by others.
+ She would speculate about her patients' professions and backgrounds and was pleased to find most of her guesses correct as, with a few casual remarks, she pried the facts out of them.
+ Her best sources were nannies accompanying little charges—these eagerly volunteered all kinds of unflattering information about their employers.
+ A number of patients had nothing wrong with them, but came for routine health-enhancing shots, such as placenta fluid.
+ They became so comfortable with her that they would drop by to gossip.
+ Thus, without going out of her house, Wang Qiyao learned a great deal about the neighborhood.
+ This hodgepodge of activity was enough to fill up half her day.
+ Sometimes she was so busy she could hardly keep up with all the goings-on.
+ The hustle-bustle on Peace Lane was both invasive and highly contagious.
+ Wang Qiyao's tranquility gradually gave way to frequent footfalls on the stairs, doors opening and shutting; her name was regularly hollered by people on the ground with upturned heads, their fervent voices carrying far and wide on quiet afternoons.
+ Before long, the oleanders, planted haphazardly in makeshift planters formed from broken bricks on balconies, put forth their dazzling flowers.
+ Nothing marvelous had happened to Wang Qiyao, but through careful cultivation her life had also sprouted countless little sprigs that held the promise of developing into something.
+ People at Peace Lane knew Wang Qiyao as a young widow.
+ Several attempts were made to match her up with men, including a teacher who, though only thirty, was already bald.
+ Arrangements were made for them to meet at a theater to watch a movie about victorious peasants—the kind of thing she detested—but she forced herself to sit through it.
+ Whenever there was a lull in the show, she heard a faint whistling sound coming from the man as he breathed.
+ Seeing this was the best she could do, she declined all further matchmaking efforts on her behalf.
+ As she watched the smoky sky above Peace Lane, she often wondered if anything exciting would ever happen to her again.
+ To charges of arrogance as well as to praise for being loyal to her late husband, she turned a deaf ear.
+ She ignored all gossip and advice, remaining at once genial and distant.
+ This was normal on Peace Lane, where friendships were circumscribed, there being untold numbers of large fish swimming around in the murky waters.
+ Underneath all that conviviality, people were lonely, though often they did not know it themselves, merely muddling through from one day to the next.
+ Wang Qiyao was rather muddleheaded about some things, while she couldn't have been more clear-sighted about others; the former concerned issues of daily living, while the latter were reserved for her private thoughts.
+ She was occupied with people and things during the day.
+ At night, after she turned off the lights and the moonlight lit up the big flowers on the curtains, she could not help but slip into deep thought.
+ There was a great deal of thinking going on around Peace Lane, but much of it, like sediment, had sunk to the bottom of people's hearts, all the juice squeezed out of them, so that they had solidified and could no longer be stirred up.
+ Wang Qiyao had not reached this stage.
+ Her thoughts still had stems, leaves, and flowers, which glimmered in the dark night of Peace Lane.
+ A Frequent Guest
+ Among Wang Qiyao's frequent visitors was one Madame Yan, who came quite regularly.
+ She lived in a townhouse with a private entrance at the end of Peace Lane.
+ She must have been thirty-six or thirty-seven years old, as her eldest son, an architecture student at Tongji University, was already nineteen.
+ Her husband had owned a light bulb factory that, since 1949, was jointly operated with the state.
+ He was now the deputy manager—a mere figurehead, according to Madame Yan.
+ Madame Yan painted her eyebrows and wore lipstick even on days when she didn't leave the house.
+ She favored a short green Chinese jacket over a pair of Western-style pants made of cheviot wool.
+ When they saw her coming, people stopped talking and turned to stare, but she acted as if they did not exist.
+ Her children did not play with the other kids, and, since her husband was driven everywhere by a chauffeur, few people really knew what he looked like.
+ There was a high turnover among their servants; in any case, they were not permitted to loiter when they went out for errands, so they, too, appeared aloof.
+ Every Monday and Thursday Madame Yan would come for a shot of imported vitamins to help her ward off colds.
+ The first time she saw Wang Qiyao, she was taken aback.
+ Her clothes, the way she ate, her every move and gesture, hinted of a splendid past.
+ Madame Yan decided they could be friends.
+ She had always felt Peace Lane was beneath her.
+ Her husband, a frugal person, had bought the property at a good price.
+ In response to her complaints, he had, in bed, promised many times to move them to a house with a garden.
+ Now that their assets were controlled by the government, they felt lucky simply to be allowed to keep their house.
+ Still, as long as she lived in Peace Lane, Madame Yan felt like a crane among chickens.
+ No one there was her equal and, in her eyes, even the neighbors were no better than her servants.
+ She was therefore delighted to see another woman similarly out of place moving into no. 39.
+ Without seeking Wang Qiyao's permission, she made herself a regular visitor.
+ Madame Yan usually showed up in the afternoon sometime after two o'clock, heralded by the fragrance of scented powder and her sandalwood fan.
+ Most of Wang Qiyao's patients came between three and four o'clock, so they had an hour to kill.
+ Sitting across from each other in the lazy summer afternoon, they would stifle their yawns and chatter on without fully realizing what they were talking about, as cicadas droned in the parasol tree at the entrance to the longtang.
+ Wang Qiyao would ladle out some of her chilled plum soup, which they sipped absentmindedly while exchanging gossip.
+ Then, having thrown off their afternoon sluggishness and cooled off, they would perk up.
+ Madame Yan did most of the talking while Wang Qiyao listened, but both were equally absorbed in the conversation.
+ Madame Yan would go on and on, passing from stories about her parents to gossip about her in-laws; actually, all she wanted was to hear herself talk.
+ As for Wang Qiyao, she listened with her heart and eventually made all business concerning the Yan family her own.
+ When, once in a while, Madame Yan inquired about Wang Qiyao's family, she always answered in the vaguest terms.
+ She suspected Madame Yan didn't believe most of what she said, but that was fine—she was free to speculate.
+ Wang Qiyao would much rather that Madame Yan guessed the truth but left things discreetly unsaid; but Madame Yan, who had to some extent figured out the situation, insisted on asking questions pointblank.
+ It was her way of testing Wang Qiyao's sincerity.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, wanted to be sincere, but there were some things that simply could not be spoken aloud.
+ So they went around in circles, one chasing and the other evading, and before they knew it, a grudge had grown up between them.
+ Fortunately, grudges are no impediment to friendships between women.
+ The friendships of women are made of grudges: the deeper the grudge, the deeper the friendship.
+ Sometimes they parted acrimoniously, but would resume their friendship the very next day with a deeper understanding of each other.
+ One day Madame Yan announced that she wanted to set Wang Qiyao up with someone, but Wang Qiyao declined with a good-humored laugh.
+ When Madame Yan inquired into the reason, Wang Qiyao simply recounted the scene at the movie theater with the schoolteacher.
+ Madame Yan laughed out loud but then continued with a straight face, "I'll promise you three things about the guy I want to introduce you to.
+ One, I'll make sure he's not a teacher; two, that he's still got a head of hair; and three, that he doesn't have asthma."
+ They both collapsed in laughter, but that was the last time Madame Yan brought up the topic of matchmaking.
+ They came to a tacit understanding that the subject would not be broached and they would simply let nature take its course.
+ Both being still young and bright, their sensitivity had not yet been ground down by time, and they quickly understood how each other felt.
+ Although there was a ten-year difference between them, Madame Yan acted a bit young for her age and Wang Qiyao was more mature, so they were well-suited.
+ People like them, who become friends at mid-life, tend to keep part of themselves hidden away.
+ Even Madame Yan, who usually wore her heart on her sleeve, retained certain secrets that she herself might not have understood.
+ It was not necessary for them to know everything there was to know about each other—a little sympathy went a long way.
+ And even though Madame Yan was not satisfied, she could bear it and still treat Wang Qiyao as a true friend.
+ What Madame Yan had was time on her hands.
+ Her husband left early every morning and did not get home until late at night.
+ Two of her children were grown, while the third was cared for by a nanny.
+ She socialized with the wives of other industrialists and businessmen, but this hardly took up all her time.
+ Dropping by to see Wang Qiyao became part of her daily routine; she sometimes even stayed for dinner, insisting that they simply eat what was already on hand rather than doing anything fancy.
+ Consequently, they often had leftover rice, heated up again with just a dish of mud snails to go with it.
+ Wang Qiyao's near-ascetic lifestyle reminded Madame Yan of her own simple, quiet life before marriage, which seemed so long ago.
+ If a patient came while they were talking, Madame Yan would help by bringing over a chair, getting the medicine out, and collecting the money.
+ More than once the patient thought the well-dressed woman was Wang Qiyao's younger sister, which caused her to blush with pleasure, as if she were a child being patted on the head by an adult.
+ Afterward she would in a self-deprecating tone urge Wang Qiyao to get some new clothes and have her hair permed.
+ She spoke eloquently about how a woman must treasure her youth and beauty, which would disappear before she knew it.
+ This never failed to touch Wang Qiyao, who, at twenty-five, was indeed watching her youth slip by.
+ Madame Yan's outfits were always new and fashionable, but that was all she could do to hold on to the tail end of her youth.
+ At times her appearance startled and touched Wang Qiyao.
+ There was an innocence about her heavy makeup and also a certain world-weariness, blended together to create a desolate kind of beauty.
+ Eventually, unable to withstand Madame Yan's blandishments, Wang Qiyao went out and got herself a perm.
+ The smell of shampoo, lotion, and burning hair was intimately familiar to Wang Qiyao, as was the image of a woman sitting under the hair dryer, one hand holding a magazine, the other extended to be pampered by a manicurist.
+ The routines of washing, cutting, rolling, perming, drying, and setting had long been imprinted on her mind.
+ She felt like she had been there just the day before, surrounded by faces she knew.
+ When the process was completed, the old Wang Qiyao emerged in the mirror—the intervening three years seemed to have been snipped off along with her split ends.
+ Looking into the mirror, she noted Madame Yan's face, on which was a mixture of astonishment and envy.
+ As the stylist gave her hair a last-minute adjustment with a hand blower, the expression on Wang Qiyao's face, turning slightly to avoid the hot air with just a soupçon of the spoiled child, belonged to yesteryear.
+
+ 6．平安里
+ 上海这城市最少也有一百条平安里。
+ 一说起平安里，眼前就会出现那种曲折深长、藏污纳垢的弄堂。
+ 它们有时是可走穿，来到另一条马路上；还有时它们会和邻弄相通，连成一片。
+ 真是有些像网的，外地人一旦走进这种弄堂，必定迷失方向，不知会把你带到哪里。
+ 这样的平安里，别人看，是一片迷乱，而它们自己却是清醒的，各自守着各自的心，过着有些挣扎的日月。
+ 当夜幕降临，有时连月亮也升起的时候，平安里呈现出清洁宁静的面目，是工笔画一类的，将那粗疏的生计描画得细腻了。
+ 那平安里其实是有点内秀的，只是看不出来。
+ 在那开始朽烂的砖木格子里，也会盛着一些谈不上如锦如绣，却还是月影花影的回忆和向往。
+ “小心火烛”的摇铃声声，是平安里的一点小心呵护，有些温爱的。
+ 平安里的一日生计，是在喧嚣之中拉开帷幕；粪车的轱辘声，涮马桶声，几十个煤球炉子在弄堂里升烟，隔夜洗的衣衫也晾出来了，竹竿交错，好像在烟幕中升旗。
+ 这些声色难免有些夸张，带着点负气和炫耀，气势很大的，将东升的日头都遮暗了。
+ 这里有一些老住户，与平安里同龄，他们是平安里的见证人一样，用富于历史感的眼睛，审视着那些后来的住户。
+ 其中有一部分是你来我往，呈现出川流不息的景象。
+ 他们的行迹藏头露尾，有些神秘，在平安里的上空散布着疑云。
+ 王琦瑶住进平安里三十九号三楼。
+ 前边几任房客都在晒台上留下各种花草，大多枯败，也有一两盆无名的，却还长出了新叶。
+ 前几任的房客还在灶间里留下各自的瓶瓶罐罐，里面生了霉，积水里游着小虫，却又有半瓶新鲜的花生油。
+ 房门后的墙上留着一些手迹，有大人的，记着事：正月初十备寿礼。
+ 也不知是谁的寿礼。
+ 也有小孩的，是发泄私愤，写着“王根生吃屎”。
+ 都是些零星的岁月，不成篇章，却这里那里的，俯拾皆是。
+ 还是一层摞一层，糊鞋靠一样，扎扎实实，针锥都吃不进去。
+ 王琦瑶安置下自己的几件东西，别的都乱摊着，先把几幅窗帘装上，拉起，开亮了电灯。
+ 那房间就变了面目，虽是接在人家的茬上，到底也是换新的。
+ 那电灯没有章子，光便满房间的，不是明亮，而是样样东西都扒了皮，裸着了。
+ 窗外是五月的天，风是和暖的，夹了油烟和泔水的气味，这其实才是上海芯子里的气味，嗅久了便浑然不觉，身心都浸透了。
+ 再晚些，桂花糖粥的香味也飘上来了，都是旧相识。
+ 窗帘也是旧窗帘，遮着熟知的夜晚。
+ 这熟知里却是有点隔，要悉心去连上，续上，有些拼接的痕迹。
+ 王琦瑶很感激窗帘上的大花朵，易时易地都是盛开，忠心陪伴的样子。
+ 它还有留影留照的意思，是好时光的遗痕，再是流逝，依然绚烂。
+ 地板和木窗框散发出木头的霉烂的暖意，有老鼠小心翼翼的脚步，从心上踩过似的，也是关照。
+ 然后，“小心火烛”的铃声便响起了。
+ 王琦瑶到护士教习所学了三个月，得了一张注射执照，便在平安里弄口挂了牌子。
+ 这种牌子，几乎每三个弄口就有一块，是形形色色的王琦瑶的营生。
+ 她们早晨起来收拾干净房间，穿一身干净衣服，然后便点起酒精灯，煮一盒注射针头。
+ 阳光从前边人家的屋顶上照进窗口，在地板上划下一方一方的。
+ 她们熄了酒精灯，打开一本闲书，等着有人上门来打针。
+ 来人一般是上午一拨，下午一拨，也有晚上的一个两个。
+ 还有来请上门去打针的，那样的话，她们便提一个草包，装着针盒、药棉，白布帽和口罩，俨然一个护士的样子，去了。
+ 王琦瑶总是穿一件素色的旗袍，在五十年代的上海街头，这样的旗袍正日渐少去，所剩无多的几件，难免带有缅怀的表情，是上个时代的遗迹，陈旧和摩登集一身的。
+ 王琦瑶穿着旗袍，走过一两条马路，去给病家打针。
+ 她会有旧境重现的心情，不过人都是换了角色的。
+ 有一日，她去集雅公寓，走进暗沉沉的客厅，打蜡地板映着她的鞋袜。
+ 她被这家的佣人引进卧房，床上一个年轻女人，盖一条绿绸薄被，她觉得这女人就是自己的化身。
+ 打完针，装好东西，走出那公寓，心却好像留在了那里。
+ 她几乎能听见那女人对佣人发嗔的声音，是怪她买来的虾又小又不新鲜，明知道先生要来家吃晚饭的。
+ 她有时望着酒精灯蓝色的火苗，会望见斑斓的景象，里面有一个小世界，小世界里的歌舞永恒不止，是天上的歌舞。
+ 她偶尔去看一场电影，晚上八点的那一场。
+ 马路上静静的，路面有灯的反光，电影院前厅那静里的沸腾，有着时光倒流的意思。
+ 她看的多是老电影，周璇的《马路天使》，白杨的《十字街头》，这也是旧相识，最不相关的故事也是肺腑之言。
+ 她订了一份晚报，黄昏时间是看报度过的，报上的每一个字她都读到，懂一半，不懂一半，半懂不懂之间，晚饭的时间便到了，炉子上的水也开了。
+ 晚上来打针的，总有点不速之客的味道，听见楼梯响，她便猜：是谁来了。
+ 她有些活跃，话也多几句。
+ 倘若打针的是孩子，她便格外地要哄他高兴。
+ 她重新点上酒精灯消毒针头，问东问西，打完针，病家要走时，她就有些不舍。
+ 那一阵骚动与声响还会留下余音，她忘了收拾，锅里的水干了底才醒来。
+ 这种夜晚，打破了千篇一律的生活，虽然是个没结果，可毕竟制造了一点起伏不定，使人生出期待。
+ 那期待是茫茫然的，方向都不明，有什么未知在酝酿和发展，终于会有果实似的。
+ 她有一次夜半被叫醒。
+ 人们早已入睡，那叫声便显得格外惊动，带着些危急和恐怖。
+ 王琦瑶的心擂鼓似的怦怦响着，她睡衣外面披上件夹袄便下楼去开门，见是两个乡下人，抬了一个担架，躺着垂危的病人，说是请王医师救命。
+ 王琦瑶知道他们弄错了，将护士当作医师了。
+ 她指点他们去最近处的医院，再回楼上，却怎么也睡不着了。
+ 这城市的夜晚总有着出其不意，每一点动静都不寻常。
+ 弄口路灯下，写着注射护士王琦瑶的牌子，带着点翘首以待。
+ 静夜里有汽车驶过，风扫落叶的声音，夜晚便流动起来，有了一股暗中的活跃。
+ 上门打针的人川流不息，今天去了明天来，常有新人出现。
+ 这时，王琦瑶便暗自打量，猜那人的家庭和职业，再用些闲话去套，套出的几句实情，竟也能八九不离十。
+ 要逢到那些做奶妈的带孩子来，不问也要告诉你东家的底细。
+ 哪个奶妈不是碎嘴？
+ 又不是对东家有仇有恨，要把一肚子苦水倒给你的样子？
+ 还有一些是固定出现的病人，这些其实都算不上病人，打的是胎盘液之类的营养针，一周一次或一周两次。
+ 日子长了，有几个不打针时也来，坐坐，说说闲话，张家长李家短。
+ 这样，王琦瑶虽然不出门，也知天下事了。
+ 这些杂碎虽说是人家的，可也把王琦瑶的日子填个半满。
+ 一早一晚，有时甚至会是忙碌的，眼和耳都有些不够用。
+ 平安里的闹，是会传染的，而且无缝不钻，渐渐地，就有些将王琦瑶的清静给打破了。
+ 楼梯上的脚步纷沓起来，门开门关频繁起来，时常有人在后弄仰头叫王琦瑶的名字，一声声的。
+ 尤其是在那种悠闲的下午，这叫声便传远，有一股殷切的味道。
+ 夹竹桃也开了。
+ 平安里也是有几棵夹竹桃的，栽在晒台上碎砖围起来的一掬泥土中，开出绚烂的花朵。
+ 白昼里虽不会有奇遇，可却是悉心积累起许多细枝末节，最后也要酿成个什么。
+ 王琦瑶和人相熟起来。
+ 人们知道她是个年轻的寡妇，自然就有热心说媒的人上门。
+ 王琦瑶见过其中的一个，是个做教师的，说是三十岁，却已谢顶。
+ 两人在电影院里见面，看一场农民翻身的电影，是王琦瑶最不要看的那种，硬撑到底的。
+ 其中有静默的间隙，便听见那教书的局促的呼吸声，带了一股胸腔里的啸音，是哮喘的症状。
+ 王琦瑶从此便对说媒的人婉言谢绝，她知道再介绍谁也跳不出教书先生这个窠臼。
+ 她不怪别人，只怪自己命运不济。
+ 她望着平安里油烟弥漫的上空，心里想，还会有什么好事情来临呢？
+ 人们有说她骄傲，也有说她守节，什么闲话她都作耳边风，什么开导的话她也作耳边风。
+ 虽是相熟，却还是隔的，这也是正常。
+ 平安里的相熟中不知有多少隔，浑水里不知有多少大鱼。
+ 平安里的相熟都是不求甚解，浮皮潦草，表面上闹，底下还是寂寞，这寂寞是人不知，己也不知。
+ 日子就糊里糊涂地过下去。
+ 王琦瑶是糊涂一半，清楚一半，糊涂的那半供过，清楚的一半是供想。
+ 白天忙着应付各样的人和事，到了夜晚，关了灯，月光一下子跳到窗帘上，把那大朵大朵的花推近眼前，不想也要想。
+ 平安里的夜晚其实也是有许多想头的，只不过没有王琦瑶窗帘上的大花朵，映显不出来罢了。
+ 许多想头都是沉在心底，沉渣一般。
+ 全是叫生计熬炼的，挤干汁，沥干水，凝结成块，怎么样的激荡也泛不起来。
+ 王琦瑶还没到这一步，她的想头还有些枝叶花朵，在平安里黯淡的夜里，闪出些光亮来。
+ 7．熟客
+ 常来的人中间，有一个人称严家师母的，更是常来一些。
+ 她也是住平安里，弄底的，独门独户的一幢。
+ 她三十六七岁的年纪，最大的儿子倒有十九岁了，在同济读建筑。
+ 她家先生一九四九年前是一爿灯泡厂的厂主，公私合营后做了副厂长，照严家师母的话， 就是摆摆样子的。
+ 严家师母在平常的日子，也描眉毛，抹口红，穿翠绿色的短夹袄，下面是舍味呢的西装裤。
+ 她在弄堂里走过，人们便都停了说话，将目光转向她。
+ 她则昂然不理会，进出如入无人之境。
+ 她家的儿女也不与邻人家的孩子嬉戏玩耍，严先生更是汽车进，汽车出，多年来，连他的面目都没看真切过。
+ 严家的娘姨是不让随便出来的，又换得勤，所以就连她家娘姨，也像是骄傲的，与人们并不相识。
+ 严家师母每逢星期一和四，到王琦瑶这里打一种进口的防止感冒的营养针。
+ 她第一眼见王琦瑶，心中便暗暗惊讶，她想，这女人定是有些来历。
+ 王琦瑶一举一动，一衣一食，都在告诉她隐情，这隐情是繁华场上的。
+ 她只这一眼就把王琦瑶视作了可亲可近。
+ 严家师母在平安里始终感到委屈，住在这里全为了房价便宜，因严先生是克勤克俭的人。
+ 为此她没少发牢骚，严先生枕头上也立下千般愿，万般誓，不料公私合营，产业都归了国家，能保住一处私房就是天恩地恩，花园洋房终成泡影。
+ 严家师母在平安里总是鹤立鸡群，看别人都是下人一般，没一个可与她平起平坐。
+ 现在，三十九号住进一个王琦瑶，不由她又惊又喜，还使她有同病相怜之感。
+ 也不管王琦瑶同意不同意，便做起她的座上客。
+ 严家师母总是在下午两点钟以后来王琦瑶处，手里拿一把檀香扇，再加身上的脂粉，人未见香先到。
+ 下午来打针多是在三四点钟，这一小时总空着，只她们俩，面对面地坐。
+ 夏天午间的困盹还没完全过去，禁不住哈欠连哈欠的。
+ 她们强打精神，自己都不知说的什么。
+ 弄口梧桐树上的蝉一迭声叫，传进来是嗡嗡的，也是不清楚。
+ 王琦瑶舀来自己做的乌梅汤给客人喝，一杯喝下去也不知喝的什么。
+ 等那哈欠过去，人渐渐醒了，胸中那股潮热劲平息下去，便有了些好的心情。
+ 一般总是严家师母说，王琦瑶听，说的和听的都入神。
+ 严家师母对了王琦瑶像有几百年的心里话，竹筒倒豆子似的，从娘家说到婆家，其实都是说给自己听的。
+ 王琦瑶呢？
+ 耳朵里听进的严家的事，落到心里便成了自己的事，是听自己的心声。
+ 也有时候，严家师母要问起王琦瑶的事，王琦瑶只照一般回答的话说，明知道她未必信，也只能叫她自己去猜，猜对了也别出口。
+ 严家师母虽是能猜出几分，却偏要开口问，像是检验王琦瑶的诚心似的。
+ 王琦瑶不是不诚心，只是不能说。
+ 两人有些兜圈子，你追我躲，心里就种下了芥蒂。
+ 好在女人和女人是不怕种下芥蒂的，女人间的友谊其实是用芥蒂结成的，越是有芥蒂，友情越是深。
+ 她们两人有时是不欢而散，可下一日又聚在了一处，比上一日更知心。
+ 这一日，严家师母要与王琦瑶做媒，王琦瑶笑着说不要。
+ 严家师母问这又是为什么。
+ 王琦瑶并不说理由，只把那一日同教书先生看电影的情景描绘给她。
+ 她听了便是笑，笑过后则正色道：我要介绍给你的，一不教书，二不败顶，三不哮喘，说到此处，两人就又忍不住地笑，笑断肠子了。
+ 笑完后，严家师母就不提做媒的事，王琦瑶自然更不提，是心照不宣，也是顺水推舟。
+ 两人都是聪敏人，又还年轻，没叫时间磨钝了心，一点就通的。
+ 虽然相差有近十岁的年纪，可一个浅了几岁，另一个深了几岁，正好走在了一起。
+ 像她们这样半路上的朋友，各有各的隐衷，别看严家师母竹筒倒豆子，内中也有自己未必知道的保留，彼此并不知根知底，能有一些同情便可以了。
+ 所以尽管严家师母有些不满足的地方，可也担待下来，做了真心相待的朋友。
+ 严家师母就是时间多，虽有严先生，却是早出晚归；有三个孩子，大的大了，小的丢给奶妈；再有些工商界的太太们的交际，毕竟不能天天去。
+ 于是，王琦瑶家便成了好去处，天天都要点个卯的，有时竟连饭也在这里陪王琦瑶吃。
+ 王琦瑶要去炒两个菜，她则死命拦着不放，说是有啥吃啥。
+ 她们常常是吃泡饭，黄泥螺下饭。
+ 王琦瑶这种简单的近于苦行的日子，有着淡泊和安宁，使人想起闺阁的生活，那已是多么遥远的了。
+ 当她们正说着闲话，会有来打针的人，严家师母就帮着端椅子，收钱接药，递这递那。
+ 来人竟把装扮艳丽的她看成是王琦瑶的妹妹，严家师母便兴奋得红了脸，好像孩子得到了大人的夸奖。
+ 事后，她必得鼓动王琦瑶烫头发做衣服，怀着点自我牺牲的精神。
+ 她说着做女人的道理，有关青春的短暂和美丽。
+ 想到青春，王琦瑶不由哀从中来。
+ 她看见她二十五岁的年纪在苍白的晨曦和昏黄的暮色里流淌，她是挽也挽不住，抽刀断水水更流的。
+ 严家师母的装束是常换常新，紧跟时尚，也只能拉住青春的尾巴。
+ 她的有些装束使王琦瑶触目惊心，却有点感动。
+ 她的光艳照人里有一些天真，也有一些沧桑，杂糅在一起，是哀绝的美。
+ 经不住严家师母言行并教的策动，王琦瑶真就去烫了头发。
+ 走进理发店，那洗发水和头油的气味，夹着头发的焦糊味，扑鼻而来，真是熟得不能再熟。
+ 一个女人正烘着头发，一手拿本连环画看，另一手伸给理发师修剪的样子，也是熟进心里去的。
+ 洗头，修剪，卷发，电烫，烘干，定型，一系列的程序是不思量，自难忘。
+ 王琦瑶觉得昨天还刚来过的，周围都是熟面孔。
+ 最后，一切就绪，镜子里的王琦瑶也是昨天的，中间那三年的岁月是一剪子剪下，不知弃往何处。
+ 她在镜子里看见站在身后的严家师母瞠目结舌的表情，几乎是后悔怂恿她来烫发的。
+ 理发师正整理她的鬓发，手指触在脸颊，是最悉心的呵护。
+ 她微微侧过脸，躲着吹风机的热风，这略带娇憨的姿态也是昨天的。
+
+ Childbirth
+ ONE DAY MR. CHENG went to Wang Qiyao's after work to find her pale and flustered, lying down every so often and then getting up to pace around.
+ She even knocked over a glass, which shattered on the floor, but didn't bother to pick up the pieces.
+ Mr. Cheng hurried out to call a pedicab, came back in to help her downstairs, and then rushed them off to the hospital.
+ Having arrived at the hospital, she seemed to improve, and Mr. Cheng went out to get something for their dinner.
+ By the time he got back, Wang Qiyao had already been taken into the delivery room.
+ It was a baby girl.
+ She was born at eight o'clock.
+ They told Mr. Cheng that she had long arms and legs and a full head of black hair.
+ This set him wondering, Just who does she look like?
+ When, three days later, he brought mother and daughter home from the hospital, the threesome attracted quite a few curious stares down the longtang.
+ Mr. Cheng had fetched Wang Qiyao's mother the day before, setting up a place for her on the sofa, and even going to the trouble of preparing a set of toiletries.
+ Mrs. Wang was silent the whole time, but, as Mr. Cheng busied himself with the household chores, she blurted out, "If only you had been the child's father . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng trembled and almost lost hold of the things in his hands.
+ He wanted to say something but his throat had closed up.
+ By the time he was able to speak, he had forgotten what to say.
+ So he simply pretended that he had not heard.
+ When Wang Qiyao came home the next day, her mother had already prepared a pot of chicken broth and the customary bowl of soup with red jujube and longan, which was supposed to be so nourishing for new mothers.
+ She handed the bowl to her daughter in silence.
+ She did not bother to even look at her granddaughter; it was as if the child did not exist.
+ Neighbors began to call on them, but they were only the most casual of acquaintances—the only contact they normally had with Wang Qiyao was waving hello as she went in and out of the longtang; now they came out of curiosity.
+ Each one went on about how much the baby looked like Wang Qiyao, all the while wondering who the father was.
+ Going into the kitchen to fetch the hot water Thermos, Mr. Cheng found Mrs. Wang standing in front of the window, looking out at the overcast sky and quietly wiping away the tears.
+ Mr. Cheng had always thought her a calculating woman.
+ Back when he used to call on Wang Qiyao, she would never even bother to greet him but always sent the maid down to talk to him at the door instead.
+ Now, he sensed, she was much closer to him, perhaps more understanding and sympathetic even than her daughter.
+ He stood behind her for a moment before offering a timid attempt at consolation.
+ "Don't worry, Auntie.
+ I'll take care of her."
+ With those words he could feel the tears welling up and hastened back into the room with the hot water thermos.
+ The next day Madame Yan, who had not visited for ages, came to see Wang Qiyao.
+ She had long heard of the pregnancy from her servant Mama Zhang, who had seen Wang Qiyao coming and going with that protruding belly of hers; Wang Qiyao obviously wasn't worried about the rumors her pregnancy might stir up.
+ Kang Mingxun and Sasha had by this time long vanished from the scene, one hiding out at home while the other fled far away.
+ Then, out of nowhere, appeared this Mr. Cheng, who suddenly started coming by at least three times a day.
+ Although Madame Yan wasn't exactly sure what had transpired, she wasn't in the least bit taken off guard; in fact, she fancied herself one imbued with keen insights into the situation of women like Wang Qiyao.
+ Still, she was intrigued by Mr. Cheng.
+ She could tell from the fine quality of the old suit he wore that this Mr. Cheng had been a stylish man back in the old days.
+ She took him to be some kind of playboy whom Wang Qiyao must have known back in her dance hall days.
+ Madame Yan imagined all kinds of things about Mr. Cheng.
+ She had run into him a few times in the alley: he was always on his way to Wang Qiyao's with snacks like "stinky tofu," and would always rush briskly past lest the food get cold.
+ The grease from the tofu had already soaked the bottom of the bag and was about to drip through.
+ Madame Yan was touched, even somewhat jealous of Wang Qiyao for having such a devoted friend.
+ Hearing that Wang Qiyao had given birth, she was moved to sympathy; being a woman, she could relate to how difficult things must have been for Wang Qiyao, and decided to go over to see how she was.
+ Mrs. Wang, sensing that Madame Yan was a cut above the others, felt favored by the visit and tried to make herself pleasant.
+ She even brewed some tea and sat down with Madame Yan.
+ With Mr. Cheng away at work, these three women of different generations compared notes about the hardships of childbirth.
+ Wang Qiyao mostly just sat and listened, as if the shady circumstances surrounding the father of her child prevented her from claiming her share of the glory.
+ Her mother and Madame Yan, on the other hand, vividly recalled every detail from earlier decades.
+ When Mrs. Wang started to speak about how hard it was giving birth to Wang Qiyao, the irony of the present situation was not lost on her and her eyes reddened.
+ She quickly found an excuse to scurry off into the kitchen, leaving the other two in an awkward silence.
+ The baby had just been fed and was deep in sleep, her outline barely visible in the candle light.
+ Wang Qiyao had been looking down as she picked her fingernails, but she abruptly raised her head and laughed.
+ It was a tragic laugh that affected even Madame Yan.
+ "Madame Yan, I really appreciate you coming to see me . . . especially after all that's happened.
+ I was worried you would look down on me," Wang Qiyao said.
+ "Oh, cut it out, Wang Qiyao!" replied Madame Yan.
+ "Nobody is looking down on you!
+ I'm calling on Kang Mingxun in a few days and I'm going to see to it that he comes to see you."
+ At the mention of his name, Wang Qiyao turned away.
+ It was only after a long silence that she replied, "That's right, it's been ages since I've seen him."
+ Madame Yan grew suspicious, but was forced to keep her thoughts to herself; instead she casually suggested that they all get together again.
+ "It's a pity that Sasha's no longer around.
+ He must be off in Siberia eating his Russian bread!
+ But that's okay, you can bring along that new friend of yours and we'll have a foursome for our mahjong games."
+ She took the opportunity to ask Wang Qiyao the gentleman's name, his age, where he was from, and where he worked, all of which Wang Qiyao responded to matter-of-factly.
+ At that point Madame Yan asked bluntly, "He is so loyal to you, and neither of you is getting any younger....
+ Why don't you just get married?"
+ Wang Qiyao responded with another laugh.
+ Raising her head, she looked Madame Yan straight in the eye.
+ "A woman like me. . . .
+ How could I talk of marriage?"
+ The next day, Kang Mingxun indeed came by to call on Wang Qiyao.
+ Although she had expected him to show up after Madame Yan's visit, she was still caught by surprise.
+ Standing there face to face, neither knew what to say.
+ Mrs. Wang sized up the situation and decided it was best to give them some privacy, but slammed the door shut on her way out to register her disapproval.
+ But Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun didn't even notice.
+ This was the first time they had been together since their parting.
+ It felt like thousands of years since they had last seen each other.
+ They had appeared in each other's dreams, but the images in their dreams were so far from the real person that they would have been better off not even dreaming.
+ They had, in truth, resolved not to think of each other—and succeeded.
+ But, face to face once again, they discovered that letting go was not as easy as they had thought.
+ They stood there for a moment before Kang Mingxun walked around to the other side of the bed to take a look at the baby.
+ Wang Qiyao stopped him.
+ When he asked why he shouldn't see the baby, she said, "Because I said so. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun pressed for an explanation.
+ Wang Qiyao said that it wasn't his baby.
+ They fell silent for a while before he said, "Well, whose is it then, if it isn't mine?"
+ "Sasha's."
+ At that, the two of them broke down in tears.
+ All the sorrow they had suppressed back when they had to make that difficult decision suddenly came rushing back; they wondered how they had ever got through everything that had brought them to this point.
+ "I'm so sorry . . . I'm so sorry. . . ."
+ Kang Mingxun kept apologizing, knowing it would do no good even if he said it a thousand times over.
+ Wang Qiyao kept shaking her head, aware that if she did not accept the apology, she would have nothing at all.
+ They were both in tears, but it was Wang Qiyao who stopped crying first.
+ Wiping away her tears, she insisted, "She really is Sasha's child."
+ Hearing her say this, Kang Mingxun also pulled back his tears and sat himself down.
+ There was no more mention of the baby; it was as if she had ceased to exist.
+ Wang Qiyao had Kang Mingxun make himself some tea and, as he busied himself, she asked him what he had been doing of late—did he still play bridge?
+ Was there any news on the job front?
+ "For the past few months, it feels like I have been doing only one thing—waiting in line.
+ I get in line at nine thirty every morning to get into the Chinese restaurant.
+ Then I line up again around four at a Western restaurant.
+ Sometimes I have to line up just to get a cup of coffee or a quick bite, like a bowl of rice with salted pork."
+ He explained that he was the one who usually got stuck holding a place in line for the rest of the family; once it got to close to his turn, everyone else would show up.
+ "Everyone talks about there not being enough to eat, but I feel like all I do all day long is eat!"
+ Wang Qiyao took a closer look at him and jokingly observed, "You've been eating so much that you're starting to grow gray."
+ "I don't think that's from eating too much—it's from missing someone too much...."
+ Wang Qiyao rolled her eyes.
+ "Oh no, I'm not singing Rendezvous at the Pavilion with you again!"
+ They seemed to have slipped back into their old ways—except that there was this new addition asleep on the bed.
+ Sparrows were pecking at crumbs on the windowsill and they could hear someone forcefully shaking out a comforter on a nearby balcony.
+ Kang Mingxun was just on his way out as Mr. Cheng came back from work.
+ Passing on the stairs, they exchanged a quick glance but neither left much of an impression on the other.
+ It wasn't until he got inside that Wang Qiyao explained that the man was her neighbor Madame Yan's cousin, the one she used to spend time with.
+ "It's almost dinner time.
+ How come you didn't ask him to stay for dinner?"
+ Mr. Cheng asked.
+ "We really don't have anything special to entertain a guest... so I thought it would be rude to invite him," she explained.
+ Mrs. Wang kept quiet but had a disgusted look on her face.
+ She went out of her way to be nice to Mr. Cheng, who wondered who had crossed her—he knew it wasn't him.
+ As usual, he spent some time playing with the baby after dinner.
+ Seeing the baby fed and contentedly asleep with her tiny fist in her mouth, he took his leave.
+ It was around eight o'clock.
+ People and cars passed back and forth under the bright city lights.
+ Instead of taking the trolley, Mr. Cheng draped his fall coat over his arm and walked home.
+ He took in the familiar scents of the city and soaked up the evening scene.
+ Now that the burden weighing on him for so long had been finally lifted, he felt relaxed: mother and child were safe and sound and the baby didn't bother him as he had originally feared.
+ In fact, Mr. Cheng was struck with a peculiar happiness; it was as if he, and not the child, had been given a new lease on life.
+ The late show was about to begin at the cinemas, which added a feeling of excitement to the night air.
+ The city still had the spirit of a night owl, and the same energy of years ago was still there.
+ The tricolor revolving pole outside the barbershop was the emblem of this unsleeping city.
+ The strong aroma of Brazilian coffee wafting out of Old Chang's gives the impression that time is flowing backward.
+ How exciting the night is!
+ Desire and contentment abound and, despite the compromises that have to be made, everyone gives their all, living life to the fullest.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes grew moist and a strange excitement welled up in his heart, the like of which he had not experienced in a long time.
+ The next time Kang Mingxun showed up, Mrs. Wang did not go into the kitchen to avoid him.
+ She sat on the sofa reading a cartoon version of the Dream of the Red Chamber.
+ Wang Qiyao and Kang Mingxun couldn't help but feel awkward and fell back on making small talk about the weather.
+ When the baby woke up crying, Wang Qiyao asked Kang Mingxun to hand her a clean diaper.
+ To her dismay, her mother got up and, taking the diaper out of Kang Mingxun's hand, scolded her.
+ "How could you have the gentleman do this kind of thing?"
+ "I don't mind," explained Kang Mingxun.
+ "It's not like I'm busy with anything else. . . ."
+ "Right, let him help out," Wang Qiyao added.
+ Mrs. Wang drew a long face.
+ "Don't you have any manners?
+ How could you ask a gentleman like him to lay his hands on these filthy articles?
+ He is decent enough to treat you with respect and come to visit; but don't take it as a sign that you can walk all over him.
+ Show some tact!"
+ Stunned by the innuendo in her mother's sudden attack, Wang Qiyao burst into tears.
+ Mrs. Wang became even more incensed.
+ She flung the diaper in her daughter's face, screaming, "I try to help you save face, but you just don't seem to care!
+ You demean yourself, and it's all your own doing!
+ If you want to lead a life of shame, go ahead!
+ Nobody's going to be able to help you if you don't help yourself!"
+ With that, Mrs. Wang also burst out crying.
+ Kang Mingxun was thoroughly bemused; he had no idea what had brought this on.
+ Not knowing what else to do, he set about trying to mollify Mrs. Wang, "Please don't be upset, Auntie.
+ You know that Wang Qiyao has a good heart. . . ."
+ His words made Mrs. Wang laugh.
+ She turned to him, "Mister, you are very perceptive.
+ Wang Qiyao does indeed have a good heart.
+ She has no choice.
+ Where would she be if she didn't have a good heart?"
+ Suddenly Kang Mingxun realized that he was the object of her wrath.
+ He stepped back and stammered something inaudible.
+ At this point, the baby, whom no one had been tending to, began to howl.
+ Of the four people in the room, three were now in tears.
+ Aghast at the chaos, Kang Mingxun felt impelled to say, "It is less than a month since Wang Qiyao gave birth.
+ She should still be resting and we should try not to make her upset."
+ Mrs. Wang laughed coldly.
+ "Oh, so Wang Qiyao should be resting this month, should she?
+ That's funny, I didn't know.
+ With no man around to rely on, how is she supposed to be able to rest?
+ Will you explain that to me?"
+ Those words brought an abrupt end to Wang Qiyao's tears.
+ When she had finished changing and feeding the baby, she said, "Mom, you said I lack tact; but what about you?
+ How do you think it looks when you say such things in front of our guest?
+ After all, it's not as if he has anything to do with our family.
+ You're the one who is demeaning me—and yourself!
+ At any rate, I'll always be your daughter!"
+ Mrs. Wang was dumbstruck.
+ By the time she was ready to respond, Wang Qiyao cut her off.
+ "This gentleman has the decency to come by and pay his respects.
+ I would never dream of making any unseemly demands on him—and neither should you!
+ All my life I've had no one to rely on but myself; I make no other claims besides that.
+ I'm sorry to have troubled you to help out during this difficult time, but I promise you that I will repay you for your trouble."
+ Her remarks were directed at her mother, but they were also meant for Kang Mingxun.
+ Mother and daughter both fell silent for a time, until Ms. Wang wiped away her tears and murmured bleakly, "I see I've been worrying too much.
+ Well, you are almost through your first month, and it looks like I'm no longer needed here."
+ Even as she spoke, she began to gather up her personal effects.
+ Neither Wang Qiyao nor Kang Mingxun dared say a word to persuade her to stay.
+ They watched in shock as she packed her things and placed a red envelope on the baby's chest.
+ She went out the door and down the stairs; then they heard the sound of the downstairs door closing, and she was gone.
+ Inside the red envelope were 200 yuan and a gold pendant.
+ When Mr. Cheng arrived, he found Wang Qiyao out of bed cooking dinner in the kitchen.
+ He asked where Mrs. Wang had gone.
+ Wang Qiyao told him that her father was not feeling well and, since it was already almost a month since the birth, she had persuaded her mother to go home to look after him.
+ Mr. Cheng noticed her swollen eyes and guessed that she had been crying, but he decided not to press her and simply let things go at that.
+ With Mrs. Wang gone, the mood that evening was a bit dull.
+ Wang Qiyao was not very talkative and answered Mr. Cheng's questions absentmindedly, leaving her guest rather down.
+ Mr. Cheng sat off to one side and read the newspaper.
+ He read on for quite some time and the apartment grew quiet.
+ He thought that Wang Qiyao must be asleep, but when he looked over he saw that she had propped her head against the pillow and was staring up at the ceiling, lost in thought.
+ He quietly approached to ask what she was thinking.
+ The last thing he expected was for her to jerk back and ask him what he wanted.
+ There was alarm in her eyes and a distant look that made Mr. Cheng feel like a stranger.
+ He retreated to the sofa and went on with reading his newspaper.
+ All of a sudden, rowdy noises broke out from the longtang outside.
+ Opening the window to look out, Mr. Cheng saw that a crowd had gathered around a man holding up a weasel he had caught in his chicken coop.
+ After recounting the beast's crimes, the man carried it toward the entrance to the longtang with the crowd following close behind.
+ Mr. Cheng was about to close the window when he caught the scent of osmanthus blossoms in the air; it wasn't terribly strong, but the fragrance went straight to his heart.
+ He also noticed the narrow span of sky above Peace Lane—a deep, deep blue.
+ He felt exhilarated.
+ Turning to Wang Qiyao, he said, "Let's have a banquet to celebrate the child's one-month birthday."
+ Wang Qiyao did not say anything at first.
+ Then, breaking into a smile: "Is that cause for celebration?"
+ "Yes," Mr. Cheng said more earnestly.
+ "A first-month birthday is always a happy and auspicious occasion!"
+ "What's so happy and auspicious about it?"
+ Mr. Cheng did not know how to answer.
+ Although she had been the one to crush his excitement, he pitied her.
+ Wang Qiyao rolled over away from him.
+ After a pause, she continued, "Let's not fuss over this one-month celebration.
+ Let's simply make a few dishes, buy a bottle of wine, and invite Madame Yan and her cousin over.
+ They have been good to me, coming to see me and all."
+ That was enough to put Mr. Cheng back in high spirits.
+ He pondered what kind of soup and dishes they should serve.
+ Wang Qiyao objected to virtually every one of his suggestions, and he had to start from scratch.
+ They became more animated as they argued back and forth about the menu and gradually things went back to normal.
+ On the afternoon of the dinner Mr. Cheng left work early to pick up the food for that evening.
+ They put the baby to bed early and chatted as they cooked.
+ Mr. Cheng saw that Wang Qiyao was in a good mood, which also put him in a good mood.
+ They arranged the cold dishes in a delightful pattern, garnishing the plate with purple radishes.
+ Wang Qiyao declared, "Mr. Cheng, you're not only a great photographer, but you can cook too!"
+ "And you didn't even mention what I'm best at . . ."
+ "What's that?"
+ "Railroad engineering."
+ "I practically forgot your true calling.
+ You see, all along you have been entertaining us with your hobbies, and hiding your real talent!"
+ "It's not that I was trying to hide it....
+ I just never get the chance to show it off!"
+ Their jovial banter was interrupted by the guests, who had come bearing gifts.
+ Madame Yan brought a pound of cashmere yarn, and Kang Mingxun a pair of gold ingots.
+ Wang Qiyao wanted to tell him that he shouldn't have given such an expensive gift, but was worried that Madame Yan would take that as a sign that her gift wasn't lavish enough, so she decided to accept them both and save her misgivings for another day.
+ Everyone went inside to see the baby before dinner and they all commented on how precious she looked.
+ Since there were four of them, it worked out perfectly when they sat down at the table, one person on each side.
+ This was the first time that Mr. Cheng had met the evening's guests.
+ Madame Yan had taken note of him, but he had never noticed her, and he had only passed Kang Mingxun on the staircase, when neither could get a good look at the other.
+ Wang Qiyao made the introductions and they proceeded with dinner as if they were all acquainted.
+ Madame Yan already had a good impression of Mr. Cheng and was especially friendly toward him; it wasn't long before she felt like they were old friends.
+ Although Mr. Cheng was a bit overwhelmed by her warmth, he realized she had nothing but the best intentions.
+ Kang Mingxun, on the other hand, was stiff and subdued.
+ He said little, focusing on the warm rice wine.
+ They finished off the first bottle rather quickly and started on a second.
+ Mr. Cheng excused himself so he could go to the kitchen to prepare another dish, but seeing he was a bit tipsy, Wang Qiyao put her hand on his shoulder, motioning him to sit back down, and insisted that she take care of it.
+ He gently caressed the hand on his shoulder, but she instinctively pulled it away.
+ Kang Mingxun, in spite of himself, flashed Mr. Cheng a rather sharp glance.
+ The effect on Mr. Cheng was instantaneously sobering.
+ Wang Qiyao returned to the table with the new dish she had just whipped up.
+ By then even Madame Yan, whose cheeks were red, was getting a bit tipsy.
+ She proposed a toast to Mr. Cheng, declaring him a rare gentleman and even quoting the old adage, "It's easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend who can really understand you."
+ Her words were inappropriate to the occasion; obviously, alcohol was bringing out some hidden truths.
+ Not content to propose a toast on her own, she insisted that Kang Mingxun also drink to Mr. Cheng.
+ Kang Mingxun raised his cup but didn't know quite what to say.
+ As the rest of the party waited anxiously, he finally came out with something that sounded even more inappropriate.
+ "Here's to Mr. Cheng soon finding matrimonial bliss!"
+ Mr. Cheng accepted their toast with equanimity and a "thank you."
+ Then, turning to Wang Qiyao, he asked if she had anything to say.
+ Wang Qiyao was a bit disconcerted by the unfamiliar glint in his eyes—she wasn't sure if it was the alcohol or something else—so she put on a placating smile.
+ "Naturally, I should have been the first one to toast Mr. Cheng.
+ Just as Madame Yan said, it is easier to find ten thousand ounces of gold than a true friend.
+ No one else here understands me the way Mr. Cheng does.
+ He has always been there for me during my most difficult times.
+ And for all the mistakes I have made, he has always forgiven me.
+ I owe him a debt of gratitude that I will never be able to repay."
+ Conscious that it was the alcohol that had emboldened her to open up, Mr. Cheng couldn't help being at once deeply disappointed and hurt by her words; all she spoke of was gratitude, with not a word about love.
+ On the brink of tears, he lowered his head.
+ Only after a long pause did he manage to force a smile and say,
+ "Hey, we're not here to celebrate my one-month birthday!
+ Why is everyone toasting me?
+ Drinking to Wang Qiyao would be more like it!"
+ And so, with Madame Yan leading the way, they all toasted Wang Qiyao.
+ But, perhaps because they had all talked too much already, no one had much left to say.
+ So they just drank, one cup after another.
+ Mr. Cheng's eyes met Kang Mingxun's once again.
+ They stared mutely at each other, neither fully understanding the circumstances.
+ But the seeds of suspicion had been planted.
+ Everyone drank more than they should have that evening.
+ Mr. Cheng couldn't remember how he had seen the guests out or whether he had washed the dishes after they left.
+ He woke up to discover himself on Wang Qiyao's sofa, a thin blanket draped over him.
+ Leftover food was still on the table, and the room was filled with the sweet and sour fragrance of rice wine.
+ The moon shining through the curtains on his face was cool as water.
+ He felt utterly at peace as he watched the moonlight dancing on the curtain; he decided to let his mind go blank and not worry about anything that had happened that night.
+ Suddenly he heard a gentle voice ask, "Would you care for some tea?"
+ He followed the voice and saw Wang Qiyao lying in bed across the room.
+ She had also woken up, but her face was obscured by the shadows and Mr. Cheng could only make out her silhouette.
+ Mr. Cheng did not feel awkward; on the contrary, he was filled with a sense of serenity.
+ "I'm so embarrassed!" he said.
+ Wang Qiyao responded with a silent laugh.
+ "You fell asleep with your head on the table.
+ It took the three of us to get you onto the sofa."
+ "I drank too much," he said.
+ "But that was only because I was happy."
+ After a silence, Wang Qiyao responded, "Actually . . . you drank so much because you were upset. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed.
+ "What's there for me to be upset about?
+ I was really happy."
+ Neither of them spoke and gradually the moonlight shifted a bit closer.
+ Bathed in the moonlight, Mr. Cheng had the sensation that he was lying in water.
+ Quite some time passed, and he was certain that Wang Qiyao must have long fallen asleep, when she suddenly called out his name.
+ He was surprised to hear her call him.
+ "What is it?"
+ Wang Qiyao hesitated before asking, "Can't you get to sleep?"
+ "I think I got all the sleep I needed when I passed out earlier!"
+ "That's not what I meant. . . ."
+ "I think I know quite well what you meant," insisted Mr. Cheng.
+ "I don't think so. . . ."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed, "Of course I do."
+ "If you understand what I meant, then why don't you tell me...?"
+ "If that's what you want, I will then," replied Mr. Cheng.
+ "You meant that all this time we have been but just one step away from taking our relationship somewhere else.
+ And if I were to take that step, you would not refuse me."
+ Wang Qiyao marveled at Mr. Cheng's perceptiveness, especially since he usually came off so stiff and bookish.
+ Embarrassed, she tried to find an excuse to explain things away.
+ "I know I don't deserve you . . . and that's why I wanted to wait for you to make the first move."
+ Mr. Cheng laughed again.
+ He felt extremely relaxed, as if floating on air.
+ When he spoke, it felt almost as if someone else was doing the talking, but the words that came out were indeed his deepest and most honest inner thoughts.
+ "We talked about taking that one last step. . . .
+ Well, I have been waiting practically half my life to take that step.
+ But it's not as easy as it sounds.
+ Have you ever heard the saying, 'People can be a short distance away, yet poles apart'?
+ There are a lot of things in life that simply can't be forced."
+ Wang Qiyao remained silent and Mr. Cheng, unconcerned as to whether she was really listening, continued to pour out the feelings he had accumulated inside himself all those years.
+ He explained how he had long ago come to understand this principle.
+ So long as they could be close friends, confidants, he thought, his life would not have been in vain.
+ But once people are together, it is as the saying goes: "A boat sailing against the current must forge ahead or else be driven back."
+ "I would be lying if I said that I didn't have the desire to forge ahead . . . but when the boat won't go forward anymore . . . all I can do is turn back."
+ After a long silence, he suddenly asked, "Kang Mingxun is the father, isn't he?"
+ Wang Qiyao laughed, "What does it matter whether he is or not?"
+ Mr. Cheng grew a bit self-conscious.
+ "I was only asking."
+ The two of them turned over, away from each other, and before long they were both fast asleep, snoring lightly.
+ The following day Mr. Cheng did not show up at Wang Qiyao's after work—he went to see Jiang Lili instead.
+ He had called her at her office, and they agreed to meet on Tilan Bridge.
+ By the time Mr. Cheng arrived, Jiang Lili was already standing there waiting, constantly looking at her watch.
+ She had clearly arrived too early but insisted on blaming Mr. Cheng for being late.
+ Mr. Cheng refused to argue with her.
+ They found a small restaurant nearby, went in, and ordered a few dishes.
+ As soon as the waiter turned away, Mr. Cheng bent over the table and started to cry, a stream of tears falling steadily on the bleached table cloth.
+ Jiang Lili could pretty much figure out what had happened, but made no effort to comfort him.
+ All she offered was silence as she silently fixed her gaze on the ashen wall, which had recently been stained a pale white.
+ At that moment, all Mr. Cheng was focused on was his own pain, and he made no effort to understand what Jiang Lili might be feeling.
+ Even people as good-natured and generous as Mr. Cheng can become extremely selfish and unfair in love.
+ They tiptoe around their loved ones, fearful of giving offense; but with the people who love them they are thoroughly inconsiderate and arrogant, behaving like spoiled brats.
+ This was what had motivated him to seek out Jiang Lili.
+ Jiang Lili did not speak for a long time.
+ Then, seeing that he was still crying, she sneered, "What's wrong?
+ Went out and got your heart broken, did you?"
+ Mr. Cheng gradually stopped crying and sat in silence.
+ Jiang Lili had the urge to taunt him further, but, taking pity on him, softened up.
+ "You know, it seems like the harder we try to get something, the more elusive it becomes.
+ But when we don't want something, it ends up falling into our lap."
+ Mr. Cheng asked softly, "And what if one gives up on something but it still remains elusive?"
+ Jiang Lili was livid.
+ She raised her voice, "What, are all the women in the world dead?
+ Don't tell me that I'm the only one left?
+ Sent here to listen to you ramble on about your grievances over her?"
+ Mr. Cheng lowered his head contritely and was silent.
+ Jiang Lili also gave up speaking to him, and the two of them sat for some time in an awkward silence.
+ In the end, it was Mr. Cheng who continued.
+ "Actually, I came here to ask a favor of you. . . .
+ I'm not sure what made me break down like that.
+ I'm so sorry."
+ Somewhat mollified, Jiang Lili told him to go ahead and say what he had to say.
+ "I've been thinking about this for a long time, and you are the only one I can go to for help.
+ I know it's not right, but there is no one else I can turn to."
+ "Whatever it is, let's hear it!"
+ Mr. Cheng explained that he would never again visit Wang Qiyao.
+ He wanted to ask Jiang Lili to look out for her.
+ Jiang Lili did not know whether to be angry or bitter.
+ It took a long time before she managed to say, "Well I guess all the women in the world are dead . . . even me."
+ Mr. Cheng took her ridicule in stride and Jiang Lili stopped herself from saying more.
+ Wang Qiyao waited for Mr. Cheng's return.
+ She waited several days, but in the end it was Jiang Lili who came to visit.
+ She had come straight from work in Yangshupu and had had to transfer several times on the bus.
+ By the time she got there, her hair was disheveled, her shoes were covered with dust, and she was quite hoarse.
+ She carried a netted bag stuffed with fruits, crackers, milk powder, and a barely used bed sheet.
+ She emptied everything out onto the table before Wang Qiyao could stop her, and with several forceful motions, ripped the bed sheet into several small pieces to be used as diapers.
+
+ 14.分娩
+ 这天，程先生下班后到王琦瑶处，见她脸色苍白，坐立不安，一会儿躺倒，一会儿站起，一个玻璃杯碰在地上，摔得粉碎，也顾不上去收拾。
+ 程先生赶紧去叫来一辆三轮车，扶她下楼，去了医院。
+ 到医院倒痛得好些了，程先生就出来买些吃的做晚饭。
+ 再回到医院，人已经进了产房，晚上八点便生下了，是个女孩，说是一出娘胎就满头黑发，手脚很长。
+ 程先生难免要想：她究竟像谁呢？
+ 三天之后，程先生接了王琦瑶母女出院，进弄堂时，自然招来许多眼光。
+ 程先生早一天就把王琦瑶的母亲接来，在沙发上安了一张铺，还很细心地准备了洗漱用具。
+ 王琦瑶母亲一路无言，看程先生忙着，忽然间说了一句：程先生要是孩子的爸爸就好了。
+ 程先生拿东西的手不禁抖了一下，他想说什么，喉头却哽着，待咽下了，又不知该说什么了，只得装没听见。
+ 王琦瑶到家后，她母亲已炖了鸡汤和红枣桂圆汤，什么话也没有地端给她喝，也不看那孩子一眼，就当没这个人似的。
+ 过一会儿，就有人上门探望，都是弄堂里的，平时仅是点头之交，并不往来，其时都是因好奇而来。
+ 看了婴儿，口口声声直说像王琦瑶，心里都在猜那另一半像谁。
+ 程先生到灶间拿热水瓶给客人添水，却见王琦瑶母亲一个人站在灰蒙蒙的窗前，静静地抹着眼泪。
+ 程先生向来觉得她母亲势利，过去并不把他放在眼里，他在楼下叫王琦瑶，她连门都不肯开，只让老妈子伸出头来回话。
+ 这时，他觉着她的心与他靠近了些，甚至是比王琦瑶更有了解和同情的。
+ 他站在她的身后，嗫嚅了一会儿，说道：伯母，请你放心，我会对她照顾的。
+ 说完这话，他觉着自己也要流泪，赶紧拎起热水瓶回房间去了。
+ 过了一天，严师母来看王琦瑶了。
+ 她已经很久没有上门，早听娘姨张妈说，王琦瑶有喜了，挺着肚子在弄堂里进出，也不怕人笑话。
+ 其时，康明逊和萨沙都销声匿迹了似的，一个闭门不出，一个远走高飞，倒是半路里杀出个程先生，一日三回地来。
+ 严师母虽然不清楚究竟发生了怎样的事，但自视对王琦瑶一路的女人很了解，并不大惊小怪，倒是那个程先生给了她奇异的印象。
+ 她看出他的旧西装是好料子的，他的做派是旧时代的摩登。
+ 她猜想他是一个小开，舞场上的旧知那类人物，就从他身上派生出许多想象。
+ 她曾有几回在弄口看见他，手里捧着油炸臭豆腐什么的，急匆匆地走着，怕手里的东西凉了，那油浸透了纸袋，几乎要滴下来的样子。
+ 严师母不由受了感动，觉出些江湖不忘的味道，暗里甚至还对王琦瑶生出羡嫉。
+ 这时听说王琦瑶生了，也动了恻隐之心，感触到几分女人共同的苦衷，便决定上门看望。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲看出严师母身份不同，有一些安慰似的，脸色和悦了一些，泡来茶，一同坐下聊天。
+ 程先生上班去了，就只这老少三个女人，互诉着生产的苦情。
+ 比起来，王琦瑶多是听，少是说，因不是来路明正的生产，不敢居功似的。
+ 严师母和她母亲却是越说越热乎，虽然是多年前的事情，一点一滴都不忘怀的。
+ 她母亲说到生王琦瑶的艰辛，不觉触动心事，又红了眼圈，赶紧推说有事，避到灶间去了。
+ 留下这两人，竟一时无语。
+ 婴儿吃足了奶已睡着，蜷在蜡烛光里，也看不见个人形。
+ 王琦瑶低头剔着手指甲，忽然抬头一笑。
+ 这一笑是有些惨然的，严师母都不觉有一阵酸楚。
+ 王琦瑶说：严师母，谢谢你不嫌弃我，还来看我。
+ 严师母说：王琦瑶，你快不要说这样的话了，谁嫌弃你了？
+ 过几天我去叫康明逊也来看你。
+ 听到这个名字，王琦瑶把脸转到一边，背着严师母，停了一会儿才说：是呀，我也有好久没看见他了。
+ 严师母心里狐疑，嘴上却不好说，只闲扯着要重新聚一聚，可惜萨沙不在了，去西伯利亚吃苏联面包了，不过，补上那位新来的先生，也够一桌麻将了。
+ 说到这里，便问王琦瑶那位先生姓什么，贵庚多少，籍贯何处，在哪里高就。
+ 王琦瑶一一告诉她后，她便直截了当问道：看他对你这样忠心，两人又都不算年轻，为什么不结婚算了呢？
+ 王琦瑶听了这话又是一笑，仰起脸看了严师母说道：我这样的人，还谈什么结婚不结婚的话呢？
+ 又过了一天，康明逊果然来了。
+ 王琦瑶虽是有准备，也是意外。
+ 两人一见面，都是怔怔的，说不出话来。
+ 她母亲是个明眼人，见这情形便走开去，关门时却重重地一摔，不甘心似的。
+ 这两人则是什么也听不见了。
+ 自从分手后，这是第一次见，中间相隔有十万八千年似的。
+ 彼此的梦里都做过无数回，那梦里的人都不大像了，还不如不梦见。
+ 其实都已经决定不去想了，也真不再想了，可人一到了面前，却发觉从没放下过的。
+ 两人怔了一时，康明逊就绕到床边要看孩子。
+ 王琦瑶不让看，康明逊问为什么，王琦瑶说，不让看就是不让看。
+ 康明逊还问为什么，王琦瑶就说因为不是他的孩子。
+ 两人又沉默了一会儿，康明逊问：不是我的是谁的？
+ 王琦瑶说：是萨沙的。
+ 说罢，两人都哭了。
+ 许多辛酸当时并不觉得，这时都涌上心头，心想，他们是怎样才熬过来的呀！
+ 康明逊连连说道：对不起，对不起。
+ 自己知道说上一万遍也是无从补过，可不说对不起又说什么呢？
+ 王琦瑶只是摇头，心里也知道不要这个对不起，就什么也没了。
+ 哭了一会儿，王琦瑶先止住了，擦干眼泪说道：确是萨沙的孩子。
+ 听她这一说，康明逊的眼泪也干了，在椅子上坐下，两人就此不再提孩子的话，也像没这个人似的。
+ 王琦瑶让他自己泡茶，问他这些日子做什么，打不打桥牌，有没有分配工作的消息。
+ 他说这几个月来好像只在做一件事，就是排队。
+ 上午九点半到中餐馆排队等吃饭，下午四点钟再到西餐社排队等吃饭，有时是排队喝咖啡，有时是排队吃咸肉菜饭。
+ 总是他一个人排着，然后家里老老少少的来到。
+ 说是闹饥荒，却好像从早到晚都在吃。
+ 王琦瑶看着他说：头上都吃出白头发来了。
+ 他就说：这怎么是吃出来的呢？
+ 分明是想一个人想出来的。
+ 王琦瑶白他一眼，说：谁同你唱“楼台会”！
+ 过去的时光似乎又回来了，只是多了床上那个小人。
+ 麻雀在窗台上啄着什么碎屑，有人拍打晒透的被子，啪啪地响。
+ 程先生回来时，正好康明逊走，两人在楼梯上擦肩而过，互相看了一眼，也没留下什么印象。
+ 进房间才听王琦瑶说是弄堂底严师母的表弟，过去常在一起玩的。
+ 就说怎么临吃晚饭了还让人走。
+ 王琦瑶说没什么菜好留客的。
+ 王琦瑶的母亲并不说什么，脸色很不好看，但对程先生倒比往日更殷勤。
+ 程先生知道这不高兴不是对自己，却不知是对谁。
+ 吃过饭后，照例逗那婴儿玩一会儿，看王琦瑶给她喂了奶，她将小拳头塞进嘴巴，很满足地睡熟，便告辞出来。
+ 其时是八点钟左右，马路上人来车往，华灯照耀，有些流光溢彩。
+ 程先生也不去搭电车，臂上搭着秋大衣，信步走着。
+ 他在这夜晚里嗅到了他所熟悉的气息。
+ 灯光令他亲切，是驻进他身心里的那种。
+ 程先生现在的心情是闲适的，多日来的重负终于卸下，王琦瑶母女平安，他又不像担心的那样，对那婴儿生厌。
+ 程先生甚至有一种奇怪的兴奋心情，好像新生的不是那婴儿，而是他自己。
+ 电影院正将开映第四场电影，这给夜晚带来了活跃的空气。
+ 这城市还是睡得晚，精力不减当年。
+ 理发店门前的三色灯柱旋转着，也是夜景不熄的内心。
+ 老大昌的门里传出浓郁的巴西咖啡的香气，更是时光倒转。
+ 多么热闹的夜晚啊！
+ 四处是活跳跳的欲望和满足，虽说有些得过且过，却也是认真努力，不虚此生。
+ 程先生的眼睛几乎湿润了，心里有一种美妙的悸动，是他长久没体验过的。
+ 康明逊再一次来的时候，王琦瑶的母亲没有避进厨房，她坐在沙发上看一本连环画的《红楼梦》。
+ 这两个人难免尴尬，说着些天气什么的闲话。
+ 孩子睡醒哭了，王琦瑶让康明逊将干净尿布递一块给她，不料她母亲站了起来，拿过康明逊手中的尿布，说：怎么好叫先生你做这样的事情呢。
+ 康明逊说不要紧，反正他也没事，王琦瑶也说让他拿好了。
+ 她母亲便将脸一沉，说：你懂不懂规矩，他是一位先生，怎么能碰这些屎尿的东西，人家是对你客气，把你当个人来看望你，你就以为是福气，要爬上脸去，这才是不识相呢！
+ 王琦瑶被她母亲劈头盖脸一顿说，话里且句句有所指，心里委屈，脸上又挂不住，就哭了起来。
+ 她这一哭，她母亲更火了，将手里的尿布往她脸上摔去，接着骂道：给你脸你不要脸，所以才说自作自践，这“践”都是自己“作”出来的。
+ 自己要往低处走，别人就怎么扶也扶不起了！
+ 说着，自己也流泪了。
+ 康明逊蒙了，不知是怎么会引起来这一个局面，又不好不说话，只得劝解道：伯母不要生气，王琦瑶是个老实人……
+ 她母亲一听这话倒笑了，转过脸对了他道：先生你算是明白人，知道王琦瑶老实，她确实是老实，她也只好老实，她倘若要不老实呢？
+ 又怎么样？
+ 康明逊这才听出这一句句原来都是冲着他来的，不由后退了几步，嘴里嗫嚅着。
+ 这时，孩子见久久没人管她，便大哭起来。
+ 房间里四个人有三个人在哭，真是乱得可以。
+ 康明逊忍不住说：王琦瑶还在月子里，不能伤心的。
+ 她母亲便连连冷笑道：王琦瑶原来是在坐月子，我倒不知道，她男人都没有，怎么就坐月子，你倒给我说说这个道理！
+ 话说到这样，王琦瑶的眼泪倒干了，她给孩子换好尿布，又喂给她奶吃，然后说：妈，你说我不懂规矩，可你自己不也是不懂规矩？
+ 你当了客人的面，说这些揭底的话，就好像与人家有什么干系似的，你这才是作践我呢！
+ 也是作践你自己，好歹我总是你的女儿。
+ 她这一席话把她母亲说怔了，待要开口，王琦瑶又说道：人家先生确是看得起我才来看我，我不会有非分之想，你也不要有非分之想，我这一辈子别的不敢说，但总是靠自己，这一次累你老人家侍候我坐月子，我会知恩图报的。
+ 她这话，既是说给母亲听，也是说给康明逊听，两人一时都沉默着。
+ 她母亲擦干眼泪，怆然一笑，说：看来我是多操了心，反正你也快出月子了，我在这里倒是多余了。
+ 说罢就去收拾东西要走，这两人都不敢劝她，怔怔地看她收拾好东西，再将一个红纸包放在婴儿胸前，出了门去，然后下楼，便听后门一声响，走了。
+ 再看那红纸包里，是装了二百块钱，还有一个金锁片。
+ 程先生到来时，见王琦瑶已经起床，在厨房里烧晚饭。
+ 问她母亲上哪里去了，王琦瑶说是爹爹有些不舒服，她这里差几天就满月，劝母亲回去了。
+ 程先生又见她眼睛肿着，好像哭过的样子，无端的却不好问，只得作罢。
+ 这天晚上，兴许少了一个人的缘故，显出了沉闷。
+ 王琦瑶不太说话，问她什么也有些答非所问，程先生不免扫兴，一个人坐在一边看报纸。
+ 看了一会儿，听房间里没动静，以为王琦瑶睡着了，回过头去，却见她靠在枕上，两眼睁着，望了天花板，不知在想什么。
+ 他轻轻走过去，想问她什么，不料她却惊了一跳，回头反问程先生要什么。
+ 她的眼睛是漠然警觉的表情，使程先生觉着自己是个陌生人，就退回到沙发上，重新看报纸。
+ 忽听窗下弄堂里嘈杂声起，便推窗望去，原来是谁家在鸡窝里抓住一只黄鼠狼。
+ 那人倒提着黄鼠狼控诉它的罪孽，围了许多人看，然后，人们簇拥着他向弄口走去。
+ 程先生正要关窗，却在空气里嗅到一股桂花香，虽不浓烈，却沁人肺腑。
+ 他还注意到平安里上方的狭窄的天空，是十分彻底的深蓝。
+ 他心里有些跃然，回过头对王琦瑶说：等孩子满月，办一次满月酒吧！
+ 王琦瑶先不回答，然后笑了笑说：办什么满月酒！
+ 程先生更加积极地说：满月总是高兴吉利的事。
+ 王琦瑶反问：有什么高兴吉利？
+ 程先生被她问住了，虽然被泼了冷水，心里却只有对她的可怜。
+ 王琦瑶翻了个身，面向壁地躺着，停了一会儿，又说：也别提什么满不满月了，就烧几个菜，买一瓶酒，请严师母和她表弟吃顿便饭，他们都待我不错的，还来看我。
+ 程先生就又高兴起来，盘算着炒几个菜，烧什么汤，王琦瑶总是与他唱反调，把他的计划推翻再重来。
+ 两人你一句我一句地争执着，才有些热闹起来。
+ 这天下午，程先生提前下班，买了菜到王琦瑶处，两人将孩子哄睡了，便一起忙了起来，一边忙一边说话。
+ 程先生见王琦瑶情绪好，自己的情绪也就好，将冷盆摆出各色花样，紫萝卜镶边的。
+ 王琦瑶说程先生不仅会照相，还会烹饪啊！
+ 程先生说：我最会的一样你却没有说。
+ 王琦瑶问：最会的是哪一样？
+ 程先生说：铁路工程。
+ 王琦瑶说：我倒忘了程先生的老本行了，弄了半天，原来都是在拿副业敷衍我们，真本事却藏着。
+ 程先生就笑，说不是藏着，而是没地方拿出来。
+ 两人正打趣，客人来了，严师母表姐弟俩一同进了门，都带着礼物。
+ 严师母是一磅开司米绒线，康明逊则是一对金元宝。
+ 王琦瑶想说金元宝的礼过重了，又恐严师母误以为嫌她的礼轻，便一并收下，日后再说。
+ 大家再看一遍孩子，称赞她大有人样，然后就围桌坐下，正好一人一面。
+ 程先生同这两位全是初次见面。
+ 严师母见过他，他却没见过严师母，和康明逊则是楼梯上交臂而过，谁也没看清谁。
+ 这时候，便由王琦瑶做了介绍，算是认识了。
+ 严师母在此之前就对程先生有好印象，便分外热情，见面就熟。
+ 程先生虽是有些招架不住，可也心领她的好意，并不见怪。
+ 相比之下，康明逊倒显得拘谨和沉默，也不大吃菜，只是喝温热的黄酒，一瓶黄酒很快喝完了，又开了一瓶。
+ 程先生说要去炒菜，站起来却有些摇晃，王琦瑶就说她去炒，按他坐下。
+ 他抬起手，在王琦瑶按他的肩的手背上抚摸了一下，王琦瑶本能地一抽手。
+ 对面的康明逊不禁看他一眼，是锐利的目光。
+ 程先生心里一动，清醒了一半。
+ 王琦瑶炒了热菜上来，重又入座。
+ 严师母也脸热心跳地有了几分醉意。
+ 她向程先生敬一杯酒，称他是世上少有的仁义之士，又说是黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求。
+ 话都说得有些不搭调，可也是借酒吐真言，放了平时则是难出口的。
+ 严师母自己敬了酒不算，又怂恿康明逊也向程先生敬酒。
+ 康明逊只得也举酒杯，却不晓得该说什么，看大家都等着，心里着急，说出的话更不搭调，说的是：祝程先生早结良缘。
+ 程先生照单全收，都是一个“谢”字，然后问王琦瑶有什么话说。
+ 王琦瑶看程先生的眼睛很不像过去，有些无赖似的，不知是喝了酒还是有别的原因，心里不安着，脸上便带了安抚的笑容，说：
+ 我当然是第一个要敬程先生酒的，就像方才严师母说的，“黄金万两容易得，知心一个也难求”，要说知心，这里人没一个比得上程先生对我的，程先生是我王琦瑶最难堪时的至交，王琦瑶就算是有一万个错处，程先生也是一个原谅，这恩和义是刻骨铭心，永世难报。
+ 程先生听她只说恩义，却不提一个“情”字，也知她是借了酒向他交心的意思，胸中有无穷的感慨，还是伤感，眼泪几乎都到了下眼睑，只是低头，停了一会儿，才勉强笑道：今天又不是我满月，怎么老向我敬酒，应当敬王琦瑶才对呢！
+ 于是又由严师母带头，向王琦瑶敬酒。
+ 可大约是方才的话都说多了，这时倒都不说话，只喝酒。
+ 喝着喝着，程先生与康明逊的目光又碰在一起，相互看了一眼，虽没看明白什么的，可心里却都种下了疑窦。
+ 这天的酒都喝过量了，程先生不记得是怎么送走的客人，也不记得洗没洗碗盏了，他一觉醒来，发现竟是睡在王琦瑶的沙发上，身上盖一床薄被，桌上还摆着碗碟剩菜，满屋都是黄酒酸甜的香。
+ 月光透过窗帘，正照在他的脸上，真是清凉如水。
+ 他心里很安宁，看着窗帘上的光影，什么都不去想的。
+ 忽听有声音轻轻问道：要不要喝茶？
+ 他循声音望去，见是王琦瑶躺在房间那头的床上，也醒了。
+ 脸在阴影里，看不清楚，只见一个隐约的轮廓。
+ 程先生并不觉局促，反是一片静谧，他说：真是现世啊！
+ 王琦瑶不出声地笑了：趴在桌上就睡着了，三个人一起把你抬到了沙发。
+ 他说：喝过头了，也是高兴的缘故。
+ 静了一下，王琦瑶说：其实你是不高兴。
+ 程先生笑了一声：我怎么会不高兴？
+ 真的是高兴。
+ 两人都不说话，月光又移近了一些。
+ 程先生觉着自己像躺在水里似的。
+ 过了很久，程先生以为王琦瑶睡着了，不料却听她叫了声程先生。
+ 他问：什么事啊？
+ 王琦瑶停了一下，说：程先生睡不着吗？
+ 程先生说：方才那一大觉是睡足了。
+ 王琦瑶说，你没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生说：我很明白。
+ 王琦瑶就说：你还是没明白我的意思。
+ 程先生笑了：我当然明白的。
+ 王琦瑶就说：倘若明白，你说给我听听。
+ 程先生道：要我说我就说，你的意思是，如今你我只这一步之遥，只要我程先生跨过这一步，你王琦瑶是不会说一个“不”的。
+ 王琦瑶心里诧异这个呆木头似的程先生其实解人至深，面上却有些尴尬，解嘲说：我自知是不配，所以只能等程先生提出。
+ 程先生又笑了，这时他感到身心都十分轻松，几乎要飘起来似的，他听着自己的声音就好像听着别人在说话，说的都是体己的话。
+ 他说：要说这一步，我程先生几乎等了有半辈子了，可这不是说跨过就跨过的，不是还有咫尺天涯的说法吗？
+ 许多事情都是强求不得的。
+ 王琦瑶那边悄然无声，程先生不管她是否醒着，只顾自己滔滔不绝地说，像是把积攒了十余年的话全一股脑儿地倒出来。
+ 他说他其实早就明白这个道理，并且想好就做个知己知彼的朋友，也不枉为一世人生；可这人和人在一起，就有些像古话说的“逆水行舟，不进则退”的道理，要说没有进一步的愿望是不真实的，要进又进不了的时候，看来就只得退了。
+ 停了一会儿，他突然问道：康明逊是孩子的父亲吧？
+ 王琦瑶出声地笑了，说：是又如何？
+ 不是又如何？
+ 程先生倒反有些窘，说：随便问问的。
+ 两人各自翻了个身，不一会儿都睡熟了，发出了轻微的鼾声。
+ 第二天，程先生下了班后，没有到王琦瑶处，他去找蒋丽莉了。
+ 事先他给她往班上打了电话，约好在提篮桥见面。
+ 程先生到时，蒋丽莉已在那里站着了，不停地看表。
+ 分明是她到早了，却怨程先生晚了。
+ 程先生也不与她争辩，两人在附近找了个小饭馆，坐进去，点好菜。
+ 那堂倌一转身，程先生便伏在桌上哭了，眼泪成串地落在碱水刷白的白木桌面上。
+ 蒋丽莉心里明白了大半，并不劝解，只沉默着，眼睛看着对面的墙壁，墙壁是刷了石灰水的，惨白的颜色。
+ 这时的程先生只顾着发泄自己的难过，全然不顾别人是什么心情，即便是如程先生这样的忠厚人，爱起来也极端自私的，也极其地不公平。
+ 在他所爱的人面前，兢兢业业，小心翼翼，而到了爱他的人面前，却无所顾忌，目中无人，有些像耍赖的小孩。
+ 也正是这个，促使程先生来找蒋丽莉了。
+ 蒋丽莉沉默了一会儿，回头看他还在流泪，嘲笑道：怎么，失恋了？
+ 程先生的泪渐渐止了，坐在那里不作声。
+ 蒋丽莉还想刺他，又看他可怜，就换了口气道：世上东西，大多是越想越不得，不想倒得了。
+ 程先生轻声说：要不想也不得怎么办呢？
+ 蒋丽莉一听这话就火了，大了声说：天下女人都死光了吗？
+ 可不还有个蒋丽莉活着吗？
+ 这蒋丽莉是专供听你哭她活着的吗？
+ 程先生自知有错，低头不语，蒋丽莉也不说了。
+ 两人僵持了一会儿，程先生说：我本是有事托你，可不知道怎么就哭了起来，真是不好意思。
+ 听他这话，蒋丽莉也平和下来，说有什么事尽管说好了。
+ 程先生说：这件事我想来想去只能托你，其实也许是最不妥的，可却再无他人了。
+ 蒋丽莉说：有什么妥不妥的，有话快说。
+ 程先生就说托她今后多多照顾王琦瑶，她那地方，他从此是不会再去了。
+ 蒋丽莉听他说出的这件事情，心里不知是气还是怨，憋了半天才说出一句：天下女人原来真就死光了，连我一同都死光的。
+ 程先生忍着她奚落，可蒋丽莉就此打住，并没再往下说什么。
+ 王琦瑶等程先生来，等了几日，却等来蒋丽莉。
+ 她是下班后从杨树浦过来，调了几部车，头发蓬乱着，鞋面上全是灰，声音嘶哑。
+ 手里提了一个网兜，装了水果、饼干、奶粉，还有一条半新的床单。
+ 进门就抖出来，王琦瑶来不及去阻止，就唰唰几下子，撕成一堆尿布。
+
+ Old Colour
+ "LAO KE-LA" REFERS to a specific breed of debonair figures active during the fifties and sixties.
+ These were the keepers of old-style Shanghai fashion in the new society, at a time when holding on to the past was considered radical.
+ The term probably originated with the English word "old colour," or perhaps "old classic," a remnant of the colonial culture of Shanghai in the day of the treaty ports.
+ As the lingo of the city incorporated bits and pieces of foreign languages, words became dismembered and, with the passage of time, grew increasingly distant from their original meanings.
+ By the eighties, people who fell into the category of "Old Colour" were virtually extinct.
+ The surviving handful were all fairly advanced in age, their erstwhile shape completely transformed; eventually even the term itself was forgotten.
+ But then something odd happened.
+ In the mid eighties, a new generation of Old Colours emerged quietly upon the scene.
+ Lacking their predecessors' craving for notoriety, they were not compelled to behave ostentatiously and appeared more easygoing.
+ It was not even easy to spot them in the crowd.
+ Where might one go to find such a specimen?
+ These Old Colours—when everyone was out buying a stereo, they were listening to old phonographs.
+ When Nikon and Minolta cameras equipped with auto-focus features were all the rage, they were busy fiddling with their vintage Rolleiflex 120s.
+ They sported wind-up watches, drank coffee brewed in small pots, shaved with old-fashioned razor blades and shaving cream, took great delight in antique slide projectors, and wore large leather shoes shaped like boats.
+ When you saw these markings, you could be certain that you had found one.
+ Then, having found one, you couldn't help but notice just how crude and boorish the so-called fashionable were in comparison.
+ The rush to be trendy left no time for elegance or refinement.
+ One was driven about by a succession of waves.
+ Speed and quantity were all that mattered, and the result was that corners were cut and things got done in a slipshod manner and had eventually to be discarded.
+ You could tell this by looking at the clothing shops where advertisements for markdowns were posted all over the walls, shelves, and counters—even the stalls outside.
+ Before the last season's clothes had sold out, they were two steps behind the latest fashion, which had already arrived.
+ What choice was there but to run constant sales and markdowns?
+ In this crude and uncultured fashion world, the "Old Colours" were the stewards in charge of safekeeping refinement.
+ They were the only ones paying attention to the things that mattered; though they never advertised themselves or talked about what they were doing, they had their feet firmly planted on the ground.
+ They took things one step at a time; men of action, they let others do the talking.
+ They didn't even have a name.
+ The term "Old Colour" was given to them by the few who remembered the old days, but it never gained wide circulation.
+ A small minority called them Western-style "Yuppies," but that never caught on either.
+ And so they remained nameless, silently tilling their little plot of land.
+ We could, if we chose, refer to them as nostalgic "lovers of the past," although they were all young and didn't have a past to love per se.
+ But they had all been to the Bund and seen, riding on the ferry, what it looked like from out on the water: there they saw the ramparts formed by the Georgian buildings, the Gothic bell tower with its pointed steeple, and the dark forbidding windows staring back at them—all of which sent them down the tunnel of time.
+ They had also climbed up to the rooftops to release pigeons and fly kites, and there, looking out over the sea of rooftops, a few of which jutted out like sails, felt as if they were navigating against the currents of time.
+ Besides these, the ivy crawling up the sides of the walls and the sounds of someone playing the piano in the Western-style house next door also came to feed their nostalgia.
+ Wang Qiyao knew one of these "Old Colours."
+ He was twenty-six years old, so calling him an "Old Colour" was a bit ironic, a way of emphasizing his youth.
+ A gym teacher at a local middle school, he normally dressed in sweatpants, and his hair looked like the bristle end of a scrub brush.
+ He had a dark complexion from years of working outdoors.
+ At school he kept to himself and never fraternized with his colleagues.
+ Who would have guessed that he was an accomplished flamenco guitar player with a collection of more than a hundred jazz records?
+ This "Old Colour" lived in a traditional longtang in Hongkou, with parents who were honest, hardworking government employees and watched what they spent; his sister had left home to get married.
+ He himself occupied the third-floor tingzijian: his palmwood cot lay on the floor along with his record player.
+ As soon as he entered his room, he would take off his shoes and, sitting on the bare floor, enter into his own little universe.
+ Outside his dormer window was a slanted portion of the roof.
+ Occasionally, during the summer, he would climb out the window with a backpack, spread a mat out over the roof tiles, and, tying himself to the windowsill with a rope around his waist, spend the evening lying outside.
+ Looking up, he would see a sprinkling of stars suspended in the deep blue sky above.
+ He could faintly make out the rumbling sounds of the machinery from a factory in the distance, and the smoke from the factory's smokestack billowed white against the sky.
+ The scattered sounds of the night seemed to have sunk down to earth, while he himself had dissolved into the air, empty of thoughts and desires.
+ Old Colour was still without a girlfriend.
+ Although he got on quite well with some of the girls in his regular circle of friends, things had never developed past the point of ordinary friendship.
+ As there was nothing further he needed, he had no particular aspirations and was content just to have a job.
+ However, he recognized that he had only himself to rely on, and this made him approach things with a positive attitude.
+ And, though he lacked long-term goals, he did have some short-term plans.
+ This meant that, while never vexed by major problems, he was struck by the occasional fit of inexplicable depression.
+ For these depressions he found an antidote in his collection of old jazz records from the twenties.
+ The sound of the saxophone, mixed with the hissing sound of the needle against the vinyl, gave him a feeling of an almost palpable intimacy.
+ Old Colour was a bit old-fashioned: nothing new suited his taste, because to him it lacked substance and smacked of the nouveau riche; but then neither was he a fan of things that were too old, which would have felt antiquated and dismal.
+ A hundred years was just about enough.
+ He longed for a time back when, like the sprinkling of stars in the night sky, only the elite prospered—for a European-style house on a smooth cobblestone road, and the spiraling sounds of the phonograph twisting their way up through an otherwise perfect silence.
+ This was, when all was said and done, what all those old jazz records stood for.
+ His young friends were all modern individuals at the cutting edge of fashion, quite the opposite of Old Colour.
+ When Shanghai inaugurated its first tennis court, his friends were the first customers standing in line; when a certain luxury hotel opened up a bowling alley, they were the first to try it out.
+ All of them were college classmates of Old Colour from the phys-ed department; they prided themselves on their athletic spirit and prowess, which happened to be right in tune with worldwide fashion.
+ Just look at the most popular brand names of the day—Nike and Puma—you could see that they were all athletic apparel, whereas brands like Pierre Cardin had long been on the way down.
+ This cohort would appear on the streets on motorcycles, a girl seated at the back with her hair streaming down from her helmet, and you could feel the rush of wind as they flew past.
+ They were the wildest ones on the dance floor at the discos.
+ They always managed to get hold of a foreigner or two to give their gatherings an international flavor—which, incidentally, gained them entry into all kinds of exclusive places where only international guests were welcome.
+ Among them, Old Colour was always the quiet one: he never really contributed to the group.
+ When everyone else was having a great time, he would be off standing in one corner as if he did not count.
+ He seemed a bit lonely, but it was precisely such loneliness that provided this fashionable, happy-go-lucky crowd with a certain substance.
+ So it actually wouldn't have been the same if he hadn't been there.
+ As for himself, he needed a modern backdrop to set himself off from everyone else; had he been thrown into the sea of people unattached, his old-fashioned style would have been completely drowned out.
+ Because his style appeared outdated on the surface, people had a hard time identifying it for what it was; but it really stood out against a super-modern background, like an antique placed on a velvet mat.
+ Without the mat, someone would probably have thrown the piece away, thinking it was junk.
+ Therefore Old Colour had to run with that crowd, lonely as he may have been.
+ If he had left, he would have lost even the distinction of being lonely—he would have simply disappeared among the teeming masses.
+ Old Colour's parents always thought of him as a responsible son; he didn't drink or smoke, had a steady job and a healthy hobby, and never got mixed up with the wrong sort of girl.
+ They themselves had been fairly conservative in their youth; going to the movies once a week was their sole entertainment.
+ There was a period when his mother became obsessed with collecting movie pamphlets, but during the Cultural Revolution she took it upon herself to burn her entire collection; later the movie theaters stopped putting them out.
+ Once his parents bought a television set, they stopped going to the movies altogether.
+ Every night they would turn on the television after dinner and watch until eleven o'clock.
+ With this television set, their golden years seemed perfect.
+ The music their son played up in the tingzijian had a familiar sound, which tended to confirm their opinions that he was steady.
+ The fact that he was taciturn also put them at ease.
+ Even when they had dinner together at the same table, the entire meal would pass with barely a few words.
+ When it came down to it, they were all strangers to each other, but seeing each other, day in, day out, they didn't think much about their state, as if this was how it was supposed to be.
+ But they were, in truth, decent people; their thoughts and actions were always in line and, whether it be spiritual or material, just a little bit of space was enough for them.
+ Crammed in under the rooftops of the Shanghai longtang were countless people living out their frugal lives just like that.
+ On occasion you might feel that it is rather noisy—as soon as the windows were opened, your ears would be assaulted by all kinds of sounds.
+ But don't be offended: what you hear are the accumulated sounds of the activities of prudent people over their lifetime; at least the noise shows that they are lively.
+ And Old Colour certainly wasn't the only one stargazing from the rooftop on those summer nights; the hearts of all these people are restless and unsure of where to go—and so up they go to the rooftops.
+ There everything is wide open; even the knowing pigeons are bedded down for the evening, leaving the sky empty of their flight.
+ All the noise and clatter remain below, but they have floated to the top and it feels good to drift for a while.
+ In these longtang with the dormer windows, the songs of the heart have quite a distinctive sound, and the dormer windows are the throats through which the songs are forced out.
+ Old Colour finds true understanding in the neighborhoods on the west side of Shanghai, and he likes to wander there along the tree-lined streets.
+ Even the canopies of the trees there have a history, having filtered out the sunlight for a century.
+ Maoming Road passes from a roaring hubbub on one end to quietude on the other, both of which have the vintage of years.
+ Old Colour loved traversing this area, where he had the feeling that time had been turned back.
+ Examining the trolley tracks on the street, he tried to imagine what it was like when the cars were still running; he could picture two rows of wooden benches facing each other inside the trolley, just like the ones he had seen in old silent films.
+ There seemed to be writing on the brick and stonework of the old hotels; as he patiently read them, the words recounted trials and tribulations from the past.
+ The areas on the east side of the city also understood Old Colour.
+ Every major street there leads to the river.
+ Though the scene is less refined, it has a sharpness about it.
+ The silent film being played here is more like a sweeping epic, the action coming on like a hurricane.
+ Time has stopped for the seagulls soaring across the sky, as it has for the pigeons.
+ That's what he, too, wanted—for time to stop.
+ That's not too much to ask, is it?
+ He didn't ask for an eternity, only the last fifty years.
+ His request was restrained, like the sunrise in the city, which does not come up over the sea or the horizon, but from the rooftops—its beginning and the end curtailed.
+ In fact, the city is still a child and doesn't have many days to look back upon.
+ But a child like Old Colour was already an old man, who, bypassing experience, went straight to reminiscence.
+ All of his deepest thoughts were dialogues with the past.
+ At least the clock in the Customs House was still ringing, in a world where everything else seemed to have vanished like clouds and mist, and the sound he heard was the very sound heard decades ago.
+ As Old Colour walked down the street, the wind blowing against his face was a draft squeezed through the space between two buildings.
+ He may have looked calm on the surface, but his heart was vibrant, almost dancing with joy.
+ He loved the sunset over Shanghai; the streets at dusk were like a faded oil painting, a perfect match for the mood of the city.
+ One day a friend of his told Old Colour about a party someone was having.
+ All kinds of people were supposed to be coming, including a former Miss Shanghai from the old days.
+ He hopped onto the back of his friend's motorcycle, and they headed west to the new residential area near the airport.
+ The man lived on the thirteenth floor of a building that he was managing for the owner, a relative of his who was living overseas.
+ He didn't normally live there, but every few days he would invite friends over for a fun-filled afternoon or evening.
+ Gradually, his parties started to gain some notoriety: word traveled fast, as one guest brought ten friends and each of them brought along others—but he didn't mind, everyone was welcome.
+ As the numbers started to build up, it was inevitable that some questionable individuals would weasel their way in, and sometimes unpleasant things, such as thefts, would happen.
+ But with so many people, the probability of someone extraordinary showing up was also quite high.
+ Occasionally, real celebrities would appear, such as movie stars, the first violin from a famous orchestra, and reporters, as well as the children and grandchildren of powerful Communist and Nationalist leaders.
+ This friend's parties were like small political meetings, where old stories and the latest gossip were passed around the living room, the whole place abuzz with excitement.
+ In this new district, all you saw when you opened the windows was a forest of buildings.
+ Some of the windows were lit up while others remained dark; the sky was unobstructed, but this made the stars seem more distant.
+ Below, the cars speeding down the straight broad roads looked like a chain of pearls.
+ Not far off there would always be a construction site, where the lights blazed through the night and the noise of pile-drivers, hammering away in rhythm, filled the entire space below the heavens.
+ The air is choked with particles of chalky cement and the wind is especially strong as it whips between the buildings.
+ The lights over in the hotel district look a little lonely due to the heights of the buildings around it, but theirs is a resplendent loneliness that pierces the heart with rapture.
+ This was indeed a brand-new district that greeted everything with an open heart, quite unlike the downtown area, whose convoluted feelings are more difficult to grasp.
+ Arriving in the new district, one has the feeling that one has left the city behind.
+ The style of the streets and buildings—built at right angles in a logical manner—is so unlike downtown, which seems to have been laid out by squeezing the emotions out from the heart.
+ Under the sky of the new district, the joyful laughter coming from the thirteenth floor of this joint-venture construction suddenly dissipates and the music fades away.
+ But how much does that bit of happiness really matter in this new district?
+ Playing out behind the honeycomb-like windows of those tall buildings is a fresh new form of happiness.
+ In hotels so new that they have yet to acquire their four or five stars, there are buffets, dances, and receptions every night, as well as brazen games of passion that offered no excuses as they announced themselves to the world with "do not disturb" signs.
+ With people of all races and colors taking part, it feels like a party of universal jubilation.
+ This is especially so around Christmas time: as soon as the Christmas carols break out, you are hard pressed to discern whether you are in China or abroad.
+ When you first arrive here, the place seems to lack a heart because it is so carefree—but that is because it hasn't yet had time to build up a reservoir of recollections; its mind is blank and has not begun to feel the need to call on its memory.
+ Such is the spiritual state of the entire district.
+ The laughter and gaiety coming from the thirteenth floor form but a drop in the ocean.
+ The only one who seems a bit annoyed is the elevator attendant, as people come rushing in and out of the elevator, in couples or crowds, holding wine and flowers—mostly strangers, in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
+ More than a dozen groups of guests had already arrived by the time Old Colour got to the party.
+ The door had been left half-open and the room was filled with people moving about.
+ No one paid the newcomers much attention as they came in; the stereo was blaring loud music.
+ A few people sat around watching a television miniseries in the first room, which led out to the balcony.
+ The door to the balcony was ajar and the wind was agitating the curtains.
+ In a corner of this room sat a woman with fair skin, wearing light makeup, in a pinkish-purple suit made of raw silk.
+ She was leaning forward slightly toward the television screen with her arms crossed.
+ The curtain brushed against her skirt from time to time, but this didn't seem to distract her.
+ Only when the screen suddenly lit up did her drooping eyelids show, giving away her age.
+ But the stamp of age passes in a flickering instant: she carefully wrapped hers up and tucked it away inside her bones.
+ The years had tiptoed around her, careful not to leave too many traces, but in the end they couldn't help leaving a few.
+ This was Wang Qiyao in 1985.
+ Around this time the opulence of 1946 was revived in a few essays reminiscing about old Shanghai, and the name Wang Qiyao suddenly came into the spotlight again.
+ One or two nosy reporters even went so far as to investigate what had happened to Wang Qiyao in the years following the pageant; several articles were published in the back pages of the newspapers but failed to generate much interest, and the whole thing eventually died down.
+ A lot of time had indeed gone by.
+ No matter how glamorous a woman has been, once she has entered the black hole of time, she is lucky to generate even a few flickers of light.
+ The aura surrounding the beauty pageant, no less than Wang Qiyao herself, had also faded after forty years, and it only served to date her by revealing her age.
+ It was like the old clothes at the bottom of her chest: though many were still in good shape, wearing them only made her look older, because they were from the wrong era.
+ The only one who seemed to be moved by any of this history was Zhang Yonghong.
+ She didn't believe the story initially, but once she had accepted it she had an endless array of questions for Wang Qiyao.
+ Wang Qiyao, for her part, resisted answering them at first, but once she began to open up, she had an endless series of revelations for Zhang Yonghong to uncover.
+ There were many things that Wang Qiyao thought she had completely forgotten, but as soon as she got started, all of those tiny bits and fragments of detail came together to make a flowing river of memories.
+ The stories she told were those of a woman who had stood in the limelight; but wasn't that the goal of all those girls on Huaihai Road trying to outdress one another?
+ Wave after wave of fashion that came and went—weren't they all vying for their moment in the spotlight?
+ Zhang Yonghong, who understood the magnitude of the splendor Wang Qiyao was describing, exclaimed, "I'm so envious!"
+ Zhang Yonghong introduced Wang Qiyao to all of her boyfriends and invited her to all kinds of parties.
+ These were mostly parties for young people, and, knowing her own place, Wang Qiyao would usually sit off to one side.
+ Nevertheless, her elegance would still add a touch of distinction to the party.
+ Barring the occasional glance, people didn't pay her any attention, but everyone was aware that there was a "Miss Shanghai" in their presence.
+ On occasion there might even be a few people eagerly awaiting her arrival, not realizing that she had been sitting in the corner all along—she sat there alone until the music stopped and the show was over.
+ Wang Qiyao was always well dressed and elegant; she was never awkward and never got in the way.
+ She was an ornament, a painting on the wall to adorn the living room.
+ The painting was done in somber hues, with a dark yellow base; it had true distinction, and even though the colors were faded, its value had appreciated.
+ Everything else was simply transient flashes of light and shadow.
+ It was under these circumstances that Old Colour first met Wang Qiyao.
+ Could that be the "Miss Shanghai" everyone was talking about? he wondered.
+ Just as he was about to walk away, he saw Wang Qiyao look up and scan the room before lowering her head again.
+ The look in her eyes had a hint of panic, but she was not at all looking for sympathy or forgiveness.
+ It was then that Old Colour realized how callous he had been.
+ He thought, The Miss Shanghai pageant was nearly forty years ago.
+ His vision grew blurry as he stared at Wang Qiyao, as if his eyes couldn't focus properly, and through that hazy vision he saw an image of her from more than three decades ago.
+ Gradually the image became clearer, taking on depth and new details.
+ But none of those details looked real; they floated on the surface, piercing Old Colour's heart.
+ He came face to face with a cruel reality—the corrosive power of time.
+ At twenty-six years of age, Old Colour should have been too young to care about the passing of time; time had yet to teach him such truths, but that is precisely why he longed for the past—that is the only reason he dared to extol the fruits of time!
+ The passage of time associated with those old jazz records was indeed a good thing; it had smoothed things out until they were strong and fine, rubbing off the superficial layers to reveal the inner grain, like gold emerging when the fire has burned away the dross.
+ But what he saw that day was not an object, like an old jazz record, but a person.
+ He was at a complete loss as to what to say, because the situation had an element of the tragic.
+ He had finally touched the heart of that bygone era, whereas before he had only paced back and forth on its surface.
+ Something halted his steps and Old Colour couldn't bring himself to walk away.
+ He picked up a glass of wine and leaned up against the door, fixing his gaze on the television.
+ Eventually Wang Qiyao got up from the corner to go to the restroom.
+ As she walked past him, he flashed her a smile.
+ She immediately accepted his smile, responding with a look of gratitude before smiling back at him.
+ When she came back, he asked her if he could get her a drink.
+ She pointed to the corner and said that she already had a cup of tea, so there was no need.
+ He asked her to dance.
+ She hesitated for a moment . . . and accepted.
+ Disco music was blaring in the living room, but they danced the four-step at half speed.
+ With all manner of wild movements swirling around them, only they were stationary, like a lone island in a rushing torrent.
+ She apologized, suggesting that he go back to disco dancing rather than waste his time with her.
+ But he insisted that he was having a good time.
+ He put his hand on her waist and could feel the slight pulsations of her body.
+ It was a strategy of nonmovement in response to the myriad changes taking place around her, of finding her own rhythm, no matter what the tempo of her surroundings might be, a rhythm that could carry her through time.
+ Moved by this, he remained lost in silence until she suddenly complimented his dance skills; they were now doing a traditional Latin number.
+ When the tune changed, someone else invited Wang Qiyao to dance.
+ During the next number, they each danced with their respective partners but their eyes occasionally met, whereupon they exchanged a knowing smile, lit up with the joy of this chance meeting.
+ The party took place on the evening of National Day and fireworks were being set off from one of the balconies.
+ A single rocket shot up into the darkness and slowly unfurled its fiery petals in the night sky before breaking up into a stream of falling stars, which vanished slowly, leaving a faint white shadow in the sky.
+ It was some time before the last of the light was absorbed into the blackness.
+
+ 10．老克腊
+ 所谓“老克腊”指的是某一类风流人物，尤以五十和六十年代盛行。
+ 在那全新的社会风貌中，他们保持着上海的旧时尚，以固守为激进。
+ “克腊”这词其实来自英语“colour”，表示着那个殖民地文化的时代特征。
+ 英语这种外来语后来打散在这城市的民间口语中，内中的含义也是打散了重来，随着时间的演进，意思也越来越远。
+ 像“老克腊”这种人，到八十年代，几乎绝迹，有那么三个五个的，也都上了年纪，面目有些蜕变，人们也渐渐把这个名字给忘了似的。
+ 但很奇怪的，到了八十年代中叶，于无声处地，又悄悄地生长起一代年轻的老克腊，他们要比旧时代的老克腊更甘于寂寞，面目上也比较随和，不作哗众取宠之势。
+ 在熙来攘往的人群中，人们甚至难以辨别他们的身影，到哪里才能找到他们呢？
+ 人们都在忙着置办音响的时候，那个在听老唱片的；人们时兴“尼康”“美能达”电脑调焦照相机的时候，那个在摆弄“罗莱克斯”一二零的；手上戴机械表，喝小壶煮咖啡，用剃须膏刮脸，玩老式幻灯机，穿船形牛皮鞋的，千真万确，就是他。
+ 找到他，再将眼光从他身上移开，去看目下的时尚，不由看出这时尚的粗陋鄙俗。
+ 一窝蜂上的，都来不及精雕细刻。
+ 又像有人在背后追赶，一浪一浪接替不暇。
+ 一个多和一个快，于是不得不偷工减料，粗制滥造，然后破罐破摔。
+ 只要看那服装店就知道了，墙上，货架上，柜台里，还有门口摊子上挂着大甩卖牌子的，一代流行来不及卖完，后一代后两代已经来了，不甩卖又怎么办？
+ “老克腊”是这粗糙时尚中的一点精细所在。
+ 他们是真讲究，虽不作什么宣言，也不论什么理，却是脚踏实地，一步一个脚印，自己做，让别人说。
+ 他们甚至也没有名字，叫他们“老克腊”只是一两个过来人的发明，也流传不开。
+ 另有少数人，将他们归到西方的“雅皮士”里， 也是难以传播。
+ 因此，他们无名无姓的，默默耕耘着自己的一方田地。
+ 其实，我们是可以把他们叫做“怀旧”这两个字的，虽然他们都是新人，无旧可念，可他们去过外滩呀，摆渡到江心再蓦然回首，便看见那屏障般的乔治式建筑，还有歌特式的尖顶钟塔，窗洞里全是森严的注视，全是穿越时间隧道的。
+ 他们还爬上过楼顶平台，在那里放鸽子或者放风筝，展目便是屋顶的海洋，有几幢耸起的，是像帆一样，也是越过时间的激流。
+ 再有那山墙上的爬墙虎，隔壁洋房里的钢琴声，都是怀旧的养料。
+ 王琦瑶认识的便是其中一个，今年二十六岁。
+ 人们叫他“老克腊”，是带点反讽的意思，指的是他的小。
+ 他在一所中学做体育教师，平时总穿一身运动衣裤，头发是板刷式的那种。
+ 由于室外作业，长年都是黝黑的皮肤。
+ 在学校里少言寡语，与同事没有私交，谁也不会想到他其实弹了一手好吉它，西班牙式的，家里存有上百张爵士乐的唱片。
+ 他家住虹口一条老式弄堂房子，父母都是勤俭老实的职员，姐姐已经出嫁。
+ 他自己住一个三层阁，将棕绷放在地上，唱机也放在地上，进去就脱了鞋，席地而坐，自成一统的天下。
+ 他的老虎天窗开出去就是一片下斜的屋瓦，夏天有时候他在屋瓦上铺一张席子，再用根背包带系了腰，拴在窗台上，爬出去躺着。
+ 眼前便是一片深蓝的天空，悬挂着一些星星。
+ 远处有一家工厂，有隐约的轰鸣声传来，那烟囱里的一柱烟，在夜空里是白色的。
+ 一些琐细的夜声沉淀下去，他就像被空气溶解了似的，思无所思，想无所想。
+ 他还没有女朋友。
+ 在一起玩的男女中，虽也不乏相互有好感的，但只到好朋友这一层上，便停止了发展，因为没有进一步的需要。
+ 他对生活也没什么理想，只要有事干就行，也晓得事情是要自己去找，因此还是抱积极的态度。
+ 没有远的目标，近的目标是有的。
+ 所以，他便也没有大的烦恼，只不过有时会有一些无名的忧郁。
+ 这点忧郁，也是有安慰的，就是那些二十年代的爵士乐。
+ 萨克斯管里夹带着唱片的走针声，嘶嘶的，就有了些贴肤可感的意思。
+ 他是有些老调子的，新东西讨不得他欢心，觉着是暴发户的味道，没底气的。
+ 但老也不要老得太过，老得太过便是老八股，亦太荒凉，只须有百十年的时间尽够了。
+ 要的是那刚开始的少数人的繁华，黑漆漆的夜空里，那一小丛灿烂，平整的蛋硌路上，一座欧式洋房，还有那万籁俱寂中的一点蜿蜒曲折的音响。
+ 说起来，其实就是那老爵士乐可以代表和概括的。
+ 老克腊的那些男女青年朋友，都是摩登的人物，他们与老克腊处在事物的两极，他们是走在潮流的最前列。
+ 这城市有网球场了，他们是第一批顾客；某宾馆进得保龄球了，他们也是第一批顾客。
+ 他们是老克腊读体育系时的同学，以体育的精神独领风骚，也体现了当今世界的潮流特征。
+ 只看那些名牌：耐克，彪马，几乎都来自于运动服装，而西装的老牌子“皮尔·卡丹”，却是在衰落下去。
+ 他们这一列人出现在马路上的形象，多是骑着摩托车，后座上有个姑娘，长发从头盔下飘起来，一阵风地过去。
+ 迪斯科舞厅中最疯狂的一伙也是他们。
+ 他们以各种方式，总能结识一个或两个外国人，参加在其中，使他们这一群人有了国际的面目，并可自由出入一些国际场所。
+ 老克腊在其中是默默无闻的一个，没有建树的一个。
+ 别人热闹的时候，他大多是靠边站，有他没他都行的。
+ 他看上去是有些寂寞的，但正是这寂寞，为这个快乐新潮的群体增添了底蕴。
+ 所以，有他和没他还是不一样的。
+ 对他来说呢，也是需要有一个摩登背景衬底，真将他抛入茫茫人海，无依无托的，他的那个老调子，难免会被淹没。
+ 因那老调子是有着过时的表象，为世人所难以识辨，它只有在一个崭崭新的座子上，才可显出价值。
+ 就好像一件古董是要放在天鹅绒华丽的底子上，倘若没这底子，就会被人扔进垃圾箱了。
+ 所以，他也离不开这个群体，虽然是寂寞的，但要是离开了，就连寂寞也没有，有的只是同流合俗。
+ 老克腊的父母，将他看作一个老实的孩子：不抽烟，不喝酒，有正经的工作，也有正经的业余生活，亦不乱交女朋友。
+ 他们年轻的时候，也都不是贪玩的人，每周看一回电影，便是他们所有的娱乐。
+ 他母亲曾有一度，热衷于收集电影说明书，“文化大革命”时自觉烧掉了她的收藏，后来的电影院也再不出售说明书了。
+ 再往后，他们因有了电视机，就不去电影院了。
+ 每天晚饭吃过，打开电视机，一直看到十一点。
+ 有了电视机，他们的晚年便很完美了。
+ 儿子在阁楼上放的老音乐，在他们听来是有些耳熟，更使他们认定儿子是个老实的孩子。
+ 他的少言寡语，也叫他们放心。
+ 他们即便在一张桌上吃饭，从头到尾都说不上几个字。
+ 其实彼此是陌生的，但因为朝夕相处，也不把这陌生当回事，本该如此似的。
+ 说到底，这都是些真正的老实人，收着手脚，也收着心，无论物质还是精神，都只顾一小点空间就够用了。
+ 在上海弄堂的屋顶下，密密匝匝地存着许多这样的节约的生涯。
+ 有时你会觉着那里比较嘈杂，推开窗便噪声盈耳，你不要怪它，这就是简约人生聚沙成塔的动静。
+ 他们毕竟是活泼泼的，也是要有些声响的。
+ 在夏夜的屋顶上，躺着看星空的其实不止一个孩子，他们心里都是有些鼓荡，不知要往哪里去，就来到屋顶。
+ 那里就开阔多了，也自由多了，连鸽子也栖了，让出了它们的领空。
+ 那嘈杂都在底下了，而他们浮了上来，漂流一会儿就会好的。
+ 像这样有老虎天窗的弄堂，也是有些不同凡响的心曲，那硬是被挤压出来的，老虎天窗就是它的歌喉。
+ 真了解老克腊的是上海西区的马路。
+ 他在那儿常来常往，有树阴罩着他。
+ 这树阴也是有历史的，遮了一百年的阳光，茂名路是由闹至静，闹和静都是有年头的。
+ 他就爱在那里走动，时光倒流的感觉。
+ 他想，路面上有着电车轨道，将是什么样的情形，那电车里面对面的木条长椅间，演的都是黑白的默片，那老饭店的建筑，砖缝和石棱里都是有字的，耐心去读，可读出一番旧风雨。
+ 上海东区的马路也了解老克腊，条条马路通江岸，那风景比西区粗犷，也爽利，演的黑白默片是史诗题材，旧风雨也是狂飙式的。
+ 江鸥飞翔，是没有岁月的，和鸽子一样，他要的就是这没有岁月。
+ 要的也不过分，不是地老天荒的一种，只是五十年的流萤。
+ 就像这城市的日出，不是从海平线和地平线上起来的，而是从屋脊上起来的，总归是掐头去尾，有节制的。
+ 论起来，这城市还是个孩子，真没多少回头望的日子。
+ 但像老克腊这样的孩子，却又成了个老人，一下地就在叙旧似的，心里话都是与旧情景说的。
+ 总算那海关大钟还在敲，是烟消云灭中的一个不灭，他听到的又是昔日的那一响。
+ 老克腊走在马路上，有风迎面吹来。
+ 是从楼缝中挤过来的变了形的风，他看上去没什么声色，心却是活跃的，甚至有些歌舞的感觉。
+ 他就喜欢这城市的落日，落日里的街景像一幅褪了色的油画，最合乎这城市的心境。
+ 这一天，朋友说谁家举行一个派对，来人有谁谁谁，据说还有一个当年的上海小姐。
+ 他坐在朋友的摩托车后座，一路西去，来到靠近机场的一片新型住宅区。
+ 那朋友住一幢侨汇房的十三楼，是他国外亲戚买下后托他照管的。
+ 平时他并不来住，只是三天两头地开派对，将各种的朋友汇集起来，过一个快乐的夜晚，或者快乐的白天。
+ 他的派对渐渐地有了名声，一传十，十传百的，来的人呢，也是一带十，十带百，他全是欢迎。
+ 人多了，难免鱼目混珠，掺和进来一些不正经的人，就会有不愉快的事情发生，比如撬窃的案子。
+ 但按照概率来说，人多了也会沙里淘金地出现精英。
+ 因此，有时他的派推对上会有特别的人物出场，比如电影明星，乐团的首席提琴手，记者，某共产党或国民党将领的子孙。
+ 他的派对就像一个小政协似的，许多旧闻和新闻在客厅上空交相流传，可真是热闹。
+ 在这新区，推开窗户，便可看见如林的高楼，窗户有亮有暗，天空显得很辽阔，星月反而远了。
+ 低头看去，宽阔笔直的马路上跑着如豆的汽车，成串的亮珠子。
+ 不远处永远有一个工地，彻夜的灯光，电力打夯机的声音充满在夜空底下，有节律地涌动着。
+ 空气里有一些水泥的粉末，风又很浩荡，在楼之间行军。
+ 那宾馆区的灯光却因为天地楼群的大和高，显得有些寂寥，却是璀璨的寂寥，有一些透心的快乐似的。
+ 这真是新区，是坦荡荡的胸襟，不像市区，怀着曲折衷肠，叫人猜不透。
+ 到新区来，总有点出城的感觉，那种马路和楼房的格式全是另一路的，横平竖直是讲道理讲出来的，不像市区，全是掏心窝掏出来的。
+ 在新区的夜空底下，这幢侨汇房十三楼里的欢声笑语，一下子就消散了，音乐声也消散了。
+ 这点快乐在新区算得上什么？
+ 在那高楼的蜂窝般的窗洞里，全是新鲜的快乐。
+ 还没加上四星或五星级的酒店里的，那里每晚都举行着冷餐会，舞会，招待会。
+ 还储留着一些艳情，那也是响当当的，名正言顺，门口挂着“请勿打扰”的牌子。
+ 那里的快乐因有着各色人种的参加，带着普天同庆的意思。
+ 尤其到了圣诞节，圣诞歌一唱，你真分不清是中国还是外国。
+ 这地方一上来就显得有些没心肺，无忧虑，是因为它没来得及积蓄起什么回忆，它的头脑里还是空白一片，还用不着使用记忆力。
+ 这就是一整个新区的精神状态。
+ 十三楼里那点笑闹，只是沧海一粟罢了。
+ 只有开电梯的那女人有些不耐烦，这一群群，一伙伙，手里拿着酒或捧着花，涌进和涌出电梯，又大多是生人，形形色色的。
+ 老克腊来到时，已不知是第十几批了。
+ 门半开着，里面满是人影晃动。
+ 他们走进去，谁也不注意他们，音响开着，有很暴烈的乐声放出。
+ 通往阳台的一间屋里，掩着门坐了一些人在看电视里的连续剧。
+ 阳台门开着，风把窗幔卷进卷出，很鼓荡的样子。
+ 屋角里坐着一个女人，白皙的皮肤，略施淡妆，穿一件丝麻的藕荷色套裙。
+ 她抱着胳膊，身体略向前倾，看着电视屏幕。
+ 窗幔有时从她裙边扫过去，也没叫她分心。
+ 当屏幕上的光陡地亮起来，便可看见她下眼睑略微下坠，这才显出了年纪。
+ 但这年纪也瞬息即过，是被悉心包藏起来，收在骨子里。
+ 是蹑着手脚走过来的岁月，唯恐留下痕迹，却还是不得已留下了。
+ 这就是一九八五年的王琦瑶。
+ 其时，在一些回忆旧上海的文章中，再现了一九四六年的繁盛场景，于是，王琦瑶的名字便跃然而出。
+ 也有那么一两个好事者，追根溯源来找王琦瑶，写一些报屁股文章，却并没有引起反响，于是便销声匿迹了。
+ 到底是年经月久，再大的辉煌，一旦坠入时间的黑洞，能有些个光的渣就算不错了。
+ 四十年前的这道光环，也像王琦瑶的人一样，不尽人意地衰老了。
+ 这道光环，甚至还给王琦瑶添了年纪，给她标上了纪年。
+ 它就像箱底的旧衣服一样，好是好，可是错过了年头，披挂上身，一看就是个陈年累月的人，所以它还是给王琦瑶添旧的。
+ 唯有张永红受了感动，她起先不相信，后来相信了，便涌出无数个问题。
+ 王琦瑶开始矜持着，渐渐就打开了话匣子，更是有无数个回答等着她来问的。
+ 许多事情她本以为忘了，不料竟是一提就起，连同那些琐琐碎碎的细节，点点滴滴的，全都汇流成河。
+ 这是一个女人的风头，淮海路上的争奇斗艳的女孩，要的不就是它？
+ 那一代接一代的新潮流，推波助澜的，不就是抢一个风头？
+ 张永红掂得出那光荣的分量，她说：你真是叫人羡慕啊！
+ 她向她每一任男友介绍王琦瑶，将王琦瑶邀请到各类聚会上。
+ 这些大都是年轻人的聚会上，王琦瑶总是很识时务地坐在一边，却让她的光辉为聚会添一笔奇色异彩。
+ 人们常常是看不见她，也无余暇看她，但都知道，今夜有一位“上海小姐”到场。
+ 有时候，人们会从始至终地等她莅临，岂不知她就坐在墙角，直到曲终人散。
+ 她穿着那么得体，态度且优雅，一点不扫人兴的，一点不碍人事情的。
+ 她就像一个摆设，一幅壁上的画，装点了客厅。
+ 这摆设和画，是沉稳的色调，酱黄底的，是真正的华丽，褪色不褪本。
+ 其余一切，均是浮光掠影。
+ 老克腊就是在此情此景下见到王琦瑶的，他想：这就是人们说的“上海小姐”吗？
+ 他要走开时，见王琦瑶抬起了眼睛，扫了一下又低下了。
+ 这一眼带了些惊恐失措，并没有对谁的一种茫茫然的哀恳，要求原谅的表情。
+ 老克腊这才意识到他的不公平，他想，“上海小姐”已是近四十年的事情了。
+ 再看王琦瑶，眼前便有些发虚，焦点没对准似的，恍惚间，他看见了三十多年前的那个影。
+ 然后，那影又一点一点清晰，凸现，有了些细节。
+ 但这些细节终不那么真实，浮在面上的，它们刺痛了老克腊的心。
+ 他觉出了一个残酷的事实，那就是时间的腐蚀力。
+ 在他二十六岁的年纪里，本是不该知道时间的深浅，时间还没把道理教给他，所以他才敢怀旧呢，他才敢说时间好呢！
+ 老爵士乐里头的时间，确是个好东西，它将东西打磨得又结实又细腻，把东西浮浅的表面光泽磨去，呈现出细密的纹路，烈火见真金的意思。
+ 可他今天看见的，不是老爵士乐那样的旧物，而是个人，他真不知说什么好了。
+ 事情竟是有些惨烈，他这才真触及到旧时光的核了，以前他都是在旧时光的皮肉里穿行。
+ 老克腊没走开，有什么拖住了他的脚步。
+ 他就端着一杯酒，倚在门框上，眼睛看着电视。
+ 后来，王琦瑶从屋角走出来想是要去洗手间。
+ 走过他身边时，他微笑了一下。
+ 她立即将这微笑接了过去，流露出感激的神情，回了一笑。
+ 等她回来，他便对她说，要不要替她去倒杯饮料？
+ 她指了屋角，说那里有她的一杯茶，不必了。
+ 他又请她跳舞，她略迟疑一下，接受了。
+ 客厅里在放着迪斯科的音乐，他们跳的却是四步，把节奏放慢一倍的。
+ 在一片激烈摇动之中，唯有他们不动，狂潮中的孤岛似的。
+ 她抱歉道，他还是跳迪斯科去吧，别陪她磨洋工了。
+ 他则说他就喜欢这个。
+ 他扶在她腰上的手，觉出她身体微妙的律动，以不变应万变，什么样的节奏里都能找到自己的那一种律动，穿越了时光。
+ 他有些感动，沉默着，忽听她在说话，夸他跳得好，是老派的拉丁风。
+ 接下来的舞曲，也有别人来邀请王琦瑶了。
+ 他们各自和舞伴悠然走步，有时目光相遇，便会心地一笑，带着些邂逅的喜悦。
+ 这一晚是国庆夜，有哪幢楼的平台上，放起礼花，孤零零的一朵，在湛黑的天空上缓缓地舒开叶瓣，又缓缓凋零成细细的流星，渐渐消失，空中还留有一团浅白的影。
+ 许久，才融入黑夜。
+
+ The Madness Years
+ China, 1967
+ The Red Union had been attacking the headquarters of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade for two days.
+ Their red flags fluttered restlessly around the brigade building like flames yearning for firewood.
+ The Red Union commander was anxious, though not because of the defenders he faced.
+ The more than two hundred Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were mere greenhorns compared with the veteran Red Guards of the Red Union, which was formed at the start of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in early 1966.
+ The Red Union had been tempered by the tumultuous experience of revolutionary tours around the country and seeing Chairman Mao in the great rallies in Tiananmen Square.
+ But the commander was afraid of the dozen or so iron stoves inside the building, filled with explosives and connected to each other by electric detonators.
+ He couldn't see them, but he could feel their presence like iron sensing the pull of a nearby magnet.
+ If a defender flipped the switch, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries alike would all die in one giant ball of fire.
+ And the young Red Guards of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade were indeed capable of such madness.
+ Compared with the weathered men and women of the first generation of Red Guards, the new rebels were a pack of wolves on hot coals, crazier than crazy.
+ The slender figure of a beautiful young girl emerged at the top of the building, waving the giant red banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade.
+ Her appearance was greeted immediately by a cacophony of gunshots.
+ The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard-issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the "August Editorial"; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears.
+ Together, they formed a condensed version of modern history.
+ Numerous members of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade had engaged in similar displays before.
+ They'd stand on top of the building, wave a flag, shout slogans through megaphones, and scatter flyers at the attackers below.
+ Every time, the courageous man or woman had been able to retreat safely from the hailstorm of bullets and earn glory for their valor.
+ The new girl clearly thought she'd be just as lucky.
+ She waved the battle banner as though brandishing her burning youth, trusting that the enemy would be burnt to ashes in the revolutionary flames, imagining that an ideal world would be born tomorrow from the ardor and zeal coursing through her blood....
+ She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest.
+ Her fifteen-year-old body was so soft that the bullet hardly slowed down as it passed through it and whistled in the air behind her.
+ The young Red Guard tumbled down along with her flag, her light form descending even more slowly than the piece of red fabric, like a little bird unwilling to leave the sky.
+ The Red Union warriors shouted in joy.
+ A few rushed to the foot of the building, tore away the battle banner of the April Twenty-eighth Brigade, and seized the slender, lifeless body.
+ They raised their trophy overhead and flaunted it for a while before tossing it toward the top of the metal gate of the compound.
+ Most of the gate's metal bars, capped with sharp tips, had been pulled down at the beginning of the factional civil wars to be used as spears, but two still remained.
+ As their sharp tips caught the girl, life seemed to return momentarily to her body.
+ The Red Guards backed up some distance and began to use the impaled body for target practice.
+ For her, the dense storm of bullets was now no different from a gentle rain, as she could no longer feel anything.
+ From time to time, her vinelike arms jerked across her body softly, as though she were flicking off drops of rain.
+ And then half of her young head was blown away, and only a single, beautiful eye remained to stare at the blue sky of 1967.
+ There was no pain in that gaze, only solidified devotion and yearning.
+ And yet, compared to some others, she was fortunate.
+ At least she died in the throes of passionately sacrificing herself for an ideal.
+ Battles like this one raged across Beijing like a multitude of CPUs working in parallel, their combined output, the Cultural Revolution.
+ A flood of madness drowned the city and seeped into every nook and cranny.
+ At the edge of the city, on the exercise grounds of Tsinghua University, a mass "struggle session" attended by thousands had been going on for nearly two hours.
+ This was a public rally intended to humiliate and break down the enemies of the revolution through verbal and physical abuse until they confessed to their crimes before the crowd.
+ As the revolutionaries had splintered into numerous factions, opposing forces everywhere engaged in complex maneuvers and contests.
+ Within the university, intense conflicts erupted between the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution Working Group, the Workers' Propaganda Team, and the Military Propaganda Team.
+ And each faction divided into new rebel groups from time to time, each based on different backgrounds and agendas, leading to even more ruthless fighting.
+ But for this mass struggle session, the victims were the reactionary bourgeois academic authorities.
+ These were the enemies of every faction, and they had no choice but to endure cruel attacks from every side.
+ Compared to other "Monsters and Demons," reactionary academic authorities were special:
+ During the earliest struggle sessions, they had been both arrogant and stubborn.
+ That was also the stage in which they had died in the largest numbers.
+ Over a period of forty days, in Beijing alone, more than seventeen hundred victims of struggle sessions were beaten to death.
+ Many others picked an easier path to avoid the madness:
+ Lao She, Wu Han, Jian Bozan, Fu Lei, Zhao Jiuzhang, Yi Qun, Wen Jie, Hai Mo, and other once-respected intellectuals had all chosen to end their lives.
+ Those who survived that initial period gradually became numb as the ruthless struggle sessions continued.
+ The protective mental shell helped them avoid total breakdown.
+ They often seemed to be half asleep during the sessions and would only startle awake when someone screamed in their faces to make them mechanically recite their confessions, already repeated countless times.
+ Then, some of them entered a third stage.
+ The constant, unceasing struggle sessions injected vivid political images into their consciousness like mercury, until their minds, erected upon knowledge and rationality, collapsed under the assault.
+ They began to really believe that they were guilty, to see how they had harmed the great cause of the revolution.
+ They cried, and their repentance was far deeper and more sincere than that of those Monsters and Demons who were not intellectuals.
+ For the Red Guards, heaping abuse upon victims in those two latter mental stages was utterly boring.
+ Only those Monsters and Demons who were still in the initial stage could give their overstimulated brains the thrill they craved, like the red cape of the matador.
+ But such desirable victims had grown scarce.
+ In Tsinghua there was probably only one left.
+ Because he was so rare, he was reserved for the very end of the struggle session.
+ Ye Zhetai had survived the Cultural Revolution so far, but he remained in the first mental stage.
+ He refused to repent, to kill himself, or to become numb.
+ When this physics professor walked onto the stage in front of the crowd, his expression clearly said: Let the cross I bear be even heavier.
+ The Red Guards did indeed have him carry a burden, but it wasn't a cross.
+ Other victims wore tall hats made from bamboo frames, but his was welded from thick steel bars.
+ And the plaque he wore around his neck wasn't wooden, like the others, but an iron door taken from a laboratory oven.
+ His name was written on the door in striking black characters, and two red diagonals were drawn across them in a large X.
+ Twice the number of Red Guards used for other victims escorted Ye onto the stage: two men and four women.
+ The two young men strode with confidence and purpose, the very image of mature Bolshevik youths.
+ They were both fourth-year students majoring in theoretical physics, and Ye was their professor.
+ The women, really girls, were much younger, second-year students from the junior high school attached to the university. Dressed in military uniforms and equipped with bandoliers, they exuded youthful vigor and surrounded Ye Zhetai like four green flames.
+ His appearance excited the crowd.
+ The shouting of slogans, which had slackened a bit, now picked up with renewed force and drowned out everything else like a resurgent tide.
+ After waiting patiently for the noise to subside, one of the male Red Guards turned to the victim.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you are an expert in mechanics.
+ You should see how strong the great unified force you're resisting is.
+ To remain so stubborn will lead only to your death!
+ Today, we will continue the agenda from the last time.
+ There's no need to waste words.
+ Answer the following question without your typical deceit: Between the years of 1962 and 1965, did you not decide on your own to add relativity to the intro physics course?"
+ "Relativity is part of the fundamental theories of physics," Ye answered.
+ "How can a basic survey course not teach it?"
+ "You lie!" a female Red Guard by his side shouted.
+ "Einstein is a reactionary academic authority.
+ He would serve any master who dangled money in front of him.
+ He even went to the American Imperialists and helped them build the atom bomb!
+ To develop a revolutionary science, we must overthrow the black banner of capitalism represented by the theory of relativity!"
+ Ye remained silent.
+ Enduring the pain brought by the heavy iron hat and the iron plaque hanging from his neck, he had no energy to answer questions that were not worth answering.
+ Behind him, one of his students also frowned.
+ The girl who had spoken was the most intelligent of the four female Red Guards, and she was clearly prepared, as she had been seen memorizing the struggle session script before coming onstage.
+ But against someone like Ye Zhetai, a few slogans like that were insufficient.
+ The Red Guards decided to bring out the new weapon they had prepared against their teacher.
+ One of them waved to someone offstage.
+ Ye's wife, physics professor Shao Lin, stood up from the crowd's front row.
+ She walked onto the stage dressed in an ill-fitting green outfit, clearly intended to imitate the military uniform of the Red Guards.
+ Those who knew her remembered that she had often taught class in an elegant qipao, and her current appearance felt forced and awkward.
+ "Ye Zhetai!"
+ She was clearly unused to such theater, and though she tried to make her voice louder, the effort magnified the tremors in it.
+ "You didn't think I would stand up and expose you, criticize you?
+ Yes, in the past, I was fooled by you.
+ You covered my eyes with your reactionary view of the world and science!
+ But now I am awake and alert.
+ With the help of the revolutionary youths, I want to stand on the side of the revolution, the side of the people!"
+ She turned to face the crowd.
+ "Comrades, revolutionary youths, revolutionary faculty and staff, we must clearly understand the reactionary nature of Einstein's theory of relativity.
+ This is most apparent in general relativity: Its static model of the universe negates the dynamic nature of matter.
+ It is anti-dialectical!
+ It treats the universe as limited, which is absolutely a form of reactionary idealism...."
+ As he listened to his wife's lecture, Ye allowed himself a wry smile.
+ Lin, I fooled you?
+ Indeed, in my heart you've always been a mystery.
+ One time, I praised your genius to your father—he's lucky to have died early and escaped this catastrophe—and he shook his head, telling me that he did not think you would ever achieve much academically.
+ What he said next turned out to be so important to the second half of my life: "Lin Lin is too smart.
+ To work in fundamental theory, one must be stupid."
+ In later years, I began to understand his words more and more.
+ Lin, you truly are too smart.
+ Even a few years ago, you could feel the political winds shifting in academia and prepared yourself.
+ For example, when you taught, you changed the names of many physical laws and constants: Ohm's law you called resistance law, Maxwell's equations you called electromagnetic equations, Planck's constant you called the quantum constant....
+ You explained to your students that all scientific accomplishments resulted from the wisdom of the working masses, and those capitalist academic authorities only stole these fruits and put their names on them.
+ But even so, you couldn't be accepted by the revolutionary mainstream.
+ Look at you now: You're not allowed to wear the red armband of the "revolutionary faculty and staff"; you had to come up here empty-handed, without the status to carry a Little Red Book....
+ You can't overcome the fault of being born to a prominent family in pre-revolutionary China and of having such famous scholars as parents.
+ But you actually have more to confess about Einstein than I do.
+ In the winter of 1922, Einstein visited Shanghai.
+ Because your father spoke fluent German, he was asked to accompany Einstein on his tour.
+ You told me many times that your father went into physics because of Einstein's encouragement, and you chose physics because of your father's influence.
+ So, in a way, Einstein can be said to have indirectly been your teacher.
+ And you once felt so proud and lucky to have such a connection.
+ Later, I found out that your father had told you a white lie.
+ He and Einstein had only one very brief conversation.
+ The morning of November 13, 1922, he accompanied Einstein on a walk along Nanjing Road.
+ Others who went on the walk included Yu Youren, president of Shanghai University, and Cao Gubing, general manager of the newspaper Ta Kung Pao.
+ When they passed a maintenance site in the road bed, Einstein stopped next to a worker who was smashing stones and silently observed this boy with torn clothes and dirty face and hands.
+ He asked your father how much the boy earned each day.
+ After asking the boy, he told Einstein: five cents.
+ This was the only time he spoke with the great scientist who changed the world.
+ There was no discussion of physics, of relativity, only cold, harsh reality.
+ According to your father, Einstein stood there for a long time after hearing the answer, watching the boy's mechanical movements, not even bothering to smoke his pipe as the embers went out.
+ After your father recounted this memory to me, he sighed and said, "In China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground.
+ The gravity of reality is too strong."
+ "Lower your head!" one of the male Red Guards shouted.
+ This may actually have been a gesture of mercy from his former student.
+ All victims being struggled against were supposed to lower their heads.
+ If Ye did lower his head, the tall, heavy iron hat would fall off, and if he kept his head lowered, there would be no reason to put it back on him.
+ But Ye refused and held his head high, supporting the heavy weight with his thin neck.
+ "Lower your head, you stubborn reactionary!"
+ One of the girl Red Guards took off her belt and swung it at Ye.
+ The copper belt buckle struck his forehead and left a clear impression that was quickly blurred by oozing blood.
+ He swayed unsteadily for a few moments, then stood straight and firm again.
+ One of the male Red Guards said, "When you taught quantum mechanics, you also mixed in many reactionary ideas."
+ Then he nodded at Shao Lin, indicating that she should continue.
+ Shao was happy to oblige.
+ She had to keep on talking, otherwise her fragile mind, already hanging on only by a thin thread, would collapse completely.
+ "Ye Zhetai, you cannot deny this charge!
+ You have often lectured students on the reactionary Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics."
+ "It is, after all, the explanation recognized to be most in line with experimental results."
+ His tone, so calm and collected, surprised and frightened Shao Lin.
+ "This explanation posits that external observation leads to the collapse of the quantum wave function.
+ This is another expression of reactionary idealism, and it's indeed the most brazen expression."
+ "Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?"
+ Ye's sudden counterattack shocked those leading the struggle session.
+ For a moment they did not know what to do.
+ "Of course it should be the correct philosophy of Marxism that guides scientific experiments!" one of the male Red Guards finally said.
+ "Then that's equivalent to saying that the correct philosophy falls out of the sky.
+ This is against the idea that the truth emerges from experience.
+ It's counter to the principles of how Marxism seeks to understand nature."
+ Shao Lin and the two college student Red Guards had no answer for this.
+ Unlike the Red Guards who were still in junior high school, they couldn't completely ignore logic.
+ But the four junior high girls had their own revolutionary methods that they believed were invincible.
+ The girl who had hit Ye before took out her belt and whipped Ye again.
+ The other three girls also took off their belts to strike at Ye.
+ With their companion displaying such revolutionary fervor, they had to display even more, or at least the same amount.
+ The two male Red Guards didn't interfere.
+ If they tried to intervene now, they would be suspected of being insufficiently revolutionary.
+ "You also taught the big bang theory.
+ This is the most reactionary of all scientific theories."
+ One of the male Red Guards spoke up, trying to change the subject.
+ "Maybe in the future this theory will be disproven.
+ But two great cosmological discoveries of this century—
+ Hubble's law, and observation of the cosmic microwave background–show that the big bang theory is currently the most plausible explanation for the origin of the universe."
+ "Lies!"
+ Shao Lin shouted.
+ Then she began a long lecture about the big bang theory, remembering to splice in insightful critiques of the theory's extremely reactionary nature.
+ But the freshness of the theory attracted the most intelligent of the four girls, who couldn't help but ask, "Time began with the singularity?
+ So what was there before the singularity?"
+ "Nothing," Ye said, the way he would answer a question from any curious young person.
+ He turned to look at the girl kindly.
+ With his injuries and the tall iron hat, the motion was very difficult.
+ "No ... nothing?
+ That's reactionary!
+ Completely reactionary!" the frightened girl shouted.
+ She turned to Shao Lin, who gladly came to her aid.
+ "The theory leaves open a place to be filled by God."
+ Shao nodded at the girl.
+ The young Red Guard, confused by these new thoughts, finally found her footing.
+ She raised her hand, still holding the belt, and pointed at Ye.
+ "You: you're trying to say that God exists?"
+ "I don't know."
+ "What?"
+ "I'm saying I don't know.
+ If by 'God' you mean some kind of superconsciousness outside the universe, I don't know if it exists or not.
+ Science has given no evidence either way."
+ Actually, in this nightmarish moment, Ye was leaning toward believing that God did not exist.
+ This extremely reactionary statement caused a commotion in the crowd.
+ Led by one of the Red Guards on stage, another tide of slogan-shouting exploded.
+ "Down with reactionary academic authority Ye Zhetai!"
+ "Down with all reactionary academic authorities!"
+ "Down with all reactionary doctrines!"
+ Once the slogans died down, the girl shouted, "God does not exist.
+ All religions are tools concocted by the ruling class to paralyze the spirit of the people!"
+ "That is a very one-sided view," Ye said calmly.
+ The young Red Guard, embarrassed and angry, reached the conclusion that, against this dangerous enemy, all talk was useless.
+ She picked up her belt and rushed at Ye, and her three companions followed.
+ Ye was tall, and the four fourteen-year-olds had to swing their belts upward to reach his head, still held high.
+ After a few strikes, the tall iron hat, which had protected him a little, fell off.
+ The continuing barrage of strikes by the metal buckles finally made him fall down.
+ The young Red Guards, encouraged by their success, became even more devoted to this glorious struggle.
+ They were fighting for faith, for ideals.
+ They were intoxicated by the bright light cast on them by history, proud of their own bravery....
+ Ye's two students had finally had enough.
+ "The chairman instructed us to 'rely on eloquence rather than violence'!"
+ They rushed over and pulled the four semicrazed girls off Ye.
+ But it was already too late.
+ The physicist lay quietly on the ground, his eyes still open as blood oozed from his head.
+ The frenzied crowd sank into silence.
+ The only thing that moved was a thin stream of blood.
+ Like a red snake, it slowly meandered across the stage, reached the edge, and dripped onto a chest below.
+ The rhythmic sound made by the blood drops was like the steps of someone walking away.
+ A cackling laugh broke the silence.
+ The sound came from Shao Lin, whose mind had finally broken.
+ The laughter frightened the attendees, who began to leave the struggle session, first in trickles, and then in a flood.
+ The exercise grounds soon emptied, leaving only one young woman below the stage.
+ She was Ye Wenjie, Ye Zhetai's daughter.
+ As the four girls were taking her father's life, she had tried to rush onto the stage.
+ But two old university janitors held her down and whispered into her ear that she would lose her own life if she went.
+ The mass struggle session had turned into a scene of madness, and her appearance would only incite more violence.
+ She had screamed and screamed, but she had been drowned out by the frenzied waves of slogans and cheers.
+ When it was finally quiet again, she was no longer capable of making any sound.
+ She stared at her father's lifeless body, and the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.
+ After the crowd dispersed, she remained like a stone statue, her body and limbs in the positions they were in when the two old janitors had held her back.
+ After a long time, she finally let her arms down, walked slowly onto the stage, sat next to her father's body, and held one of his already-cold hands, her eyes staring emptily into the distance.
+ When they finally came to carry away the body, she took something from her pocket and put it into her father's hand: his pipe.
+ Wenjie quietly left the exercise grounds, empty save for the trash left by the crowd, and headed home.
+ When she reached the foot of the faculty housing apartment building, she heard peals of crazy laughter coming out of the second-floor window of her home.
+ That was the woman she had once called mother.
+ Wenjie turned around, not caring where her feet would carry her.
+ Finally, she found herself at the door of Professor Ruan Wen.
+ Throughout the four years of Wenjie's college life, Professor Ruan had been her advisor and her closest friend.
+ During the two years after that, when Wenjie had been a graduate student in the Astrophysics Department, and through the subsequent chaos of the Cultural Revolution, Professor Ruan remained her closest confidante, other than her father.
+ Ruan had studied at Cambridge University, and her home had once fascinated Wenjie: refined books, paintings, and records brought back from Europe; a piano; a set of European-style pipes arranged on a delicate wooden stand, some made from Mediterranean briar, some from Turkish meerschaum.
+ Each of them seemed suffused with the wisdom of the man who had once held the bowl in his hand or clamped the stem between his teeth, deep in thought, though Ruan had never mentioned the man's name.
+ The pipe that had belonged to Wenjie's father had in fact been a gift from Ruan.
+ This elegant, warm home had once been a safe harbor for Wenjie when she needed to escape the storms of the larger world, but that was before Ruan's home had been searched and her possessions seized by the Red Guards.
+ Like Wenjie's father, Ruan had suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution.
+ During her struggle sessions, the Red Guards had hung a pair of high heels around her neck and streaked her face with lipstick to show how she had lived the corrupt lifestyle of a capitalist.
+ Wenjie pushed open the door to Ruan's home, and she saw that the chaos left by the Red Guards had been cleaned up: The torn oil paintings had been glued back together and rehung on the walls; the toppled piano had been set upright and wiped clean, though it was broken and could no longer be played; the few books left behind had been put back neatly on the shelf....
+ Ruan was sitting on the chair before her desk, her eyes closed.
+ Wenjie stood next to Ruan and gently caressed her professor's forehead, face, and hands—all cold.
+ Wenjie had noticed the empty sleeping pill bottle on the desk as soon as she came in.
+ She stood there for a while, silent.
+ Then she turned and walked away.
+ She could no longer feel grief.
+ She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero.
+ But as she was about to leave Ruan's home, Wenjie turned around for a final look.
+ She noticed that Professor Ruan had put on makeup.
+ She was wearing a light coat of lipstick and a pair of high heels.
+
+ 疯狂年代
+ 中国，1967年。
+ “红色联合”对“四·二八兵团”总部大楼的攻击已持续了两天，他们的旗帜在大楼周围躁动地飘扬着，仿佛渴望干柴的火种。
+ “红色联合”的指挥官心急如焚，他并不惧怕大楼的守卫者，那二百多名“四·二八”战士，与诞生于l966年初、经历过大检阅和大串联的“红色联合”相比要稚嫩许多。
+ 他怕的是大楼中那十几个大铁炉子，里面塞满了烈性炸药，用电雷管串联起来，他看不到它们，但能感觉到它们磁石般的存在，开关一合，玉石俱焚，而“四·二八”的那些小红卫兵们是有这个精神力量的。
+ 比起已经在风雨中成熟了许多的第一代红卫兵，新生的造反派们像火炭上的狼群，除了疯狂还是疯狂。
+ 大楼顶上出现了一个娇小的身影，那个美丽的女孩子挥动着一面“四·二八”的大旗，她的出现立刻招来了一阵杂乱的枪声，射击的武器五花八门，有陈旧的美式卡宾枪、捷克式机枪和三八大盖，也有崭新的制式步枪和冲锋枪——后者是在“八月社论”发表之后从军队中偷抢来的——连同那些梭标和大刀等冷兵器，构成了一部浓缩的近现代史……
+ “四·二八”的人在前面多次玩过这个游戏，在楼顶上站出来的人，除了挥舞旗帜外，有时还用喇叭筒喊口号或向下撒传单，每次他们都能在弹雨中全身而退，为自己挣到了崇高的荣誉。
+ 这次出来的女孩儿显然也相信自己还有那样的幸运。
+ 她挥舞着战旗，挥动着自己燃烧的青春，敌人将在这火焰中化为灰烬，理想世界明天就会在她那沸腾的热血中诞生……
+ 她陶醉在这鲜红灿烂的梦幻中，直到被一颗步枪子弹洞穿了胸膛，十五岁少女的胸膛是那么柔嫩，那颗子弹穿过后基本上没有减速，在她身后的空中发出一声啾鸣。
+ 年轻的红卫兵同她的旗帜一起从楼顶落下，她那轻盈的身体落得甚至比旗帜还慢，仿佛小鸟眷恋着天空。
+ “红色联合”的战士们欢呼起来，几个人冲到楼下，掀开四·二八的旗帜，抬起下面纤小的遗体，作为一个战利品炫耀地举了一段，然后将她高高地扔向大院的铁门。
+ 铁门上带尖的金属栅条大部分在武斗初期就被抽走当梭镖了，剩下的两条正好挂住了她，那一瞬间，生命似乎又回到了那个柔软的躯体。
+ 红色联合的红卫兵们退后一段距离，将那个挂在高处的躯体当靶子练习射击，密集的子弹对她来说已柔和如雨，不再带来任何感觉。
+ 她那春藤般的手臂不时轻挥一下，仿佛拂去落在身上的雨滴，直到那颗年轻的头颅被打掉了一半，仅剩的一只美丽的眼睛仍然凝视着一九六七年的蓝天，目光中没有痛苦，只有凝固的激情和渴望。
+ 其实，比起另外一些人来，她还是幸运的，至少是在为理想献身的壮丽激情中死去。
+ 这样的热点遍布整座城市，像无数并行运算的CPU，将“文革大革命”联为一个整体。
+ 疯狂如同无形的洪水，将城市淹没其中，并渗透到每一个细微的角落和缝隙。
+ 在城市边缘的那所著名大学的操场上，一场几千人参加的批斗会已经进行了近两个小时。
+ 在这个派别林立的年代，任何一处都有错综复杂的对立派别在格斗。
+ 在校园中，红卫兵、文革工作组、工宣队和军宣队，相互之间都在爆发尖锐的冲突，而每种派别的内部又时时分化出新的对立派系，捍卫着各自不同的背景和纲领，爆发更为残酷的较量。
+ 但这次被批斗的反动学术权威，却是任何一方均无异议的斗争目标，他们也只能同时承受来自各方的残酷打击。
+ 与其他的牛鬼蛇神相比，反动学术权威有他们的特点：当打击最初到来时，他们的表现往往是高傲而顽固的，这也是他们伤亡率最高的阶段。
+ 在首都，四十天的时间里就有一千七百多名批斗对象被活活打死，更多的人选择了更快捷的路径来逃避疯狂：老舍、吴晗、翦伯赞、傅雷、赵九章、以群、闻捷、海默等，都自己结束了他们那曾经让人肃然起敬的生命。
+ 从这一阶段幸存下来的人，在持续的残酷打击下渐渐麻木，这是一种自我保护的精神外壳，使他们避免最后的崩溃。
+ 他们在批斗会上常常进入半睡眠状态，只有一声恫吓才能使其惊醒过来，机械地重复那已说过无数遍的认罪词。
+ 然后，他们中的一部分人便进入了第三阶段，旷日持久的批判将鲜明的政治图像如水银般注入了他们的意识，将他们那由知识和理性构筑的思想大厦彻底摧毁，他们真的相信自己有罪，真的看到了自己对伟大事业构成的损害，并为此痛哭流涕，他们的忏悔往往比那此非知识分子的牛鬼蛇神要深刻得多，也真诚得多。
+ 而对于红卫兵来说，进入后两个阶段的批判对象是最乏味的，只有处于第一阶段的牛鬼蛇神才能对他们那早已过度兴奋的神经产生有效的刺激，如同斗牛士手上的红布，但这样的对象越来越少了，在这所大学中可能只剩下一个，他由于自己的珍稀而被留到批判大会最后出场。
+ 叶哲泰从文革开始一直活到了现在，并且一直处于第一阶段，他不认罪，不自杀，也不麻木。
+ 当这位物理学教授走上批判台时，他那神情分明在说：让我背负的十字架更沉重一些吧！
+ 红卫兵们让他负担的东西确实很重，但不是十字架。
+ 别的批判对象戴的高帽子都是用竹条扎的框架，而他戴的这顶却是用一指粗的钢筋焊成的，还有他挂在胸前的那块牌子，也不是别人挂的木板，而是从实验室的一个烤箱上拆下的铁门，上面用黑色醒目地写着他的名字，并沿对角线画上了一个红色的大叉。
+ 押送叶哲泰上台的红卫兵比别的批判对象多了一倍，有六人，两男四女。
+ 两个男青年步伐稳健有力，一副成熟的青年布尔什维克形象，他们都是物理系理论物理专业大四年级的，叶哲泰曾是他们的老师；那四名女孩子要年轻得多，都是大学附中的初二学生，这些穿着军装扎着武装带的小战士挟带着逼人的青春活力，像四团绿色的火焰包围着叶哲泰。
+ 叶哲泰的出现使下面的人群兴奋起来，刚才已有些乏力的口号声又像新一轮海潮般重新高昂起来，淹没了一切。
+ 耐心地等口号声平息下去后，台上两名男红卫兵中的一人转向批判对象：“叶哲泰，你精通各种力学，应该看到自己正在抗拒的这股伟大的合力是多么强大，顽固下去是死路一条！
+ 今天继续上次大会的议程，废话就不多说了。
+ 老实回答下面的问题：在六二至六五届的基础课中，你是不是擅自加入了大量的相对论内容？！”
+ “相对论已经成为物理学的古典理论，基础课怎么能不涉及它呢？”
+ 叶哲泰回答说。
+ “你胡说！”
+ 旁边的一名女红卫兵厉声说，“爱因斯坦是反动的学术权威，他有奶便是娘，跑去为美帝国主义造原子弹！
+ 要建立起革命的科学，就要打倒以相对论为代表的资产阶级理论黑旗！”
+ 叶哲泰沉默着，他在忍受着头上铁高帽和胸前铁板带来的痛苦，不值得回应的问题就沉默了。
+ 在他身后，他的学生也微微皱了一下眉头。
+ 说话的女孩儿是这四个中学红卫兵中天资最聪颖的一个，并且显然有备而来，刚才上台前还看到她在背批判稿，但要对付叶哲泰，仅凭她那几句口号是不行的。
+ 他们决定亮出今天为老师准备的新武器，其中的一人对台下挥了一下手。
+ 叶哲泰的妻子，同系的物理学教授绍琳从台下的前排站起来，走上台。
+ 她身穿一件很不合体的草绿色衣服，显然想与红卫兵的色彩拉近距离，但熟悉绍琳的人联想到以前常穿精致旗袍讲课的她，总觉得别扭。
+ “叶哲泰！”
+ 绍琳指着丈夫喝道，她显然不习惯于这种场合，尽量拔高自己的声音，却连其中的颤抖也放大了，“你没有想到我会站出来揭发你，批判你吧！？
+ 是的，我以前受你欺骗，你用自己那反动的世界观和科学观蒙蔽了我！
+ 现在我醒悟了，在革命小将的帮助下，我要站到革命的一边，人民的一边！”
+ 她转向台下，“同志们、革命小将们、革命的教职员工们，我们应该认清爱因斯坦相对论的反动本质，这种本质，广义相对论体现得最清楚：它提出的静态宇宙模型，否定了物质的运动本性，是反辩证法的！
+ 它认为宇宙有限，更是彻头彻尾的反动唯心主义……”
+ 听着妻子滔滔不绝的演讲，叶哲泰苦笑了一下。
+ 琳，我蒙蔽了你？
+ 其实你在我心中倒一直是个谜。
+ 一次，我对你父亲称赞你那过人的天资——他很幸运，去得早，躲过了这场灾难——老人家摇摇头，说我女儿不可能在学术上有什么建树；接着，他说出了对我后半生很重要的一句话：琳琳太聪明了，可是搞基础理论，不笨不行啊。
+ 以后的许多年里，我不断悟出这话的深意。
+ 琳，你真的太聪明了，早在几年前，你就嗅出了知识界的政治风向，做出了一些超前的举动，比如你在教学中，把大部分物理定律和参数都改了名字，欧姆定律改叫电阻定律，麦克斯韦方程改名成电磁方程，普朗克常数叫成了量子常数……
+ 你对学生们解释说：所有的科学成果都是广大劳动人民智慧的结晶，那些资产阶级学术权威不过是窃取了这些智慧。
+ 但即使这样，你仍然没有被“革命主流”所接纳，看看现在的你，衣袖上没有“革命教职员工”都戴着的红袖章；你两手空空地上来，连一本语录都没资格拿……
+ 谁让你出生在旧中国那样一个显赫的家庭，你父母又都是那么著名的学者。
+ 说起爱因斯坦，你比我有更多的东西需要交待。
+ 1922年冬天，爱因斯坦到上海访问，你父亲因德语很好被安排为接待陪同者之一。
+ 你多次告诉我，父亲是在爱因斯坦的亲自教诲下走上物理学之路的，而你选择物理专业又是受了父亲的影响，所以爱翁也可以看作你的间接导师，你为此感到无比的自豪和幸福。
+ 后来我知道，父亲对你讲了善意的谎言，他与爱因斯坦只有过一次短得不能再短的交流。
+ 那是l922年11月l3日上午，他陪爱因斯坦到南京路散步，同行的好像还有上海大学校长于右任、《大公报》经理曹谷冰等人，经过一个路基维修点，爱因斯坦在一名砸石子的小工身旁停下，默默看着这个在寒风中衣衫破烂、手脸污黑的男孩子，问你父亲：他一天挣多少钱？
+ 问过小工后，你父亲回答：五分。
+ 这就是他与改变世界的科学大师唯一的一次交流，没有物理学，没有相对论，只有冰冷的现实。
+ 据你父亲说，爱因斯坦听到他的回答后又默默地站在那里好一会儿，看着小工麻木的劳作，手里的烟斗都灭了也没有吸一口。
+ 你父亲在回忆这件事后，对我发出这样的感叹：在中国，任何超脱飞扬的思想都会砰然坠地的，现实的引力太沉重了。
+ “低下头！”
+ 一名男红卫兵大声命令。
+ 这也许是自己的学生对老师一丝残存的同情，被批斗者都要低头，但叶哲泰要这样，那顶沉重的铁高帽就会掉下去，以后只要他一直低着头，就没有理由再给他戴上。
+ 但叶哲泰仍昂着头，用瘦弱的脖颈支撑着那束沉重的钢铁。
+ “低头！
+ 你个反动顽固分子！ ！”
+ 旁边一名女红卫兵解下腰间的皮带朝叶哲泰挥去，黄铜带扣正打在他脑门上，在那里精确地留下了带扣的形状，但很快又被淤血模糊成黑紫的一团。
+ 他摇晃了一下，又站稳了。
+ 一名男红卫兵质问叶哲泰：“在量子力学的教学中，你也散布过大量的反动言论！”
+ 说完对绍琳点点头，示意她继续。
+ 绍琳迫不及待地要继续下去了，她必须不停顿地说下去，以维持自己那摇摇欲坠的精神免于彻底垮掉。
+ “叶哲泰，这一点你是无法抵赖的！
+ 你多次向学生散布反动的哥本哈根解释！”
+ “这毕竟是目前公认的最符合实验结果的解释。”
+ 叶哲泰说，在受到如此重击后，他的口气还如此从容，这让绍琳很吃惊，也很恐惧。
+ “这个解释认为，是外部的观察导致了量子波函数的坍缩，这是反动唯心论的另一种表现形式，而且是一种最猖狂的表现！”
+ “是哲学指引实验还是实验指引哲学？”
+ 叶哲泰问道，他这突然的反击令批判者们一时不知所措。
+ “当然是正确的马克思主义哲学指引科学实验！”
+ 一名男红卫兵说。
+ “这等于说正确的哲学是从天上掉下来的。
+ 这反对实践出真知，恰恰是违背马克思主义对自然界的认知原则的。”
+ 绍琳和两名大学红卫兵无言以对，与中学和社会上的红卫兵不同，他们不可能一点儿道理也不讲。
+ 但来自附中的四位小将自有她们“无坚不摧”的革命方式，刚才动手的那个女孩儿又狠抽了叶哲泰一皮带，另外三个女孩子也都分别抡起皮带抽了一下，当同伴革命时，她们必须表现得更革命，至少要同样革命。
+ 两名男红卫兵没有过问，他们要是现在管这事，也有不革命的嫌疑。
+ “你还在教学中散布宇宙大爆炸理论，这是所有科学理论中最反动的一个！”
+ 一名男红卫兵试图转移话题。
+ “也许以后这个理论会被推翻，但本世纪的两大宇宙学发现：哈勃红移和3K宇宙背景辐射，使大爆炸学说成为目前为止最可信的宇宙起源理论。”
+ “胡说！”
+ 绍琳大叫起来，又接着滔滔不绝地讲起了宇宙大爆炸，自然不忘深刻地剖析其反动本质。
+ 但这理论的超级新奇吸引了四个小女孩儿中最聪明的那一个，她不由自主地问道：“连时间都是从那个奇点开始的！？
+ 那奇点以前有什么？”
+ “什么都没有。”
+ 叶哲泰说，像回答任何一个小女孩儿的问题那样，他转头慈祥地看着她，铁高帽和已受的重伤，使他这动作很艰难。
+ “什么…… 都没有？！
+ 反动！
+ 反动透顶！ ！”
+ 那女孩儿惊恐万状地大叫起来，她不知所措地转向绍琳寻求帮助，立刻得到了回应。
+ “这给上帝的存在留下了位置。”
+ 绍琳对女孩儿点点头提示说。
+ 小红卫兵那茫然的思路立刻找到了立脚点，她举起紧握皮带的手指着叶哲泰，“你，是想说有上帝？！”
+ “我不知道。”
+ “你说什么！”
+ “我是说不知道，如果上帝是指宇宙之外的超意识的话，我不知道它是不是存在；正反两方面，科学都没给出确实的证据。”
+ 其实，在这噩梦般的时刻，叶哲泰已倾向于相信它不存在了。
+ 这句大逆不道的话在整个会场引起了骚动，在台上一名红卫兵的带领下，又爆发了一波波的口号声。
+ “打倒反动学术权威叶哲泰！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学术权威！！”
+ “打倒一切反动学说！！” ……
+ “上帝是不存在的，一切宗教，都是统治阶级编造出来的麻痹人民的精神工具！”
+ 口号平息后，那个小女孩儿大声说。
+ “这种看法是片面的。”
+ 叶哲泰平静地说。
+ 恼羞成怒的小红卫兵立刻做出了判断，对于眼前这个危险的敌人，一切语言都无意义了。
+ 她抡起皮带冲上去，她的三个小同志立刻跟上。
+ 叶哲泰的个子很高，这四个十四岁的女孩儿只能朝上抡皮带才能打到他那不肯低下的头。
+ 在开始的几下打击后，他头上能起一定保护作用的铁高帽被打掉了，接下来带铜扣的宽皮带如雨点般打在他的头上和身上——他终于倒下了。
+ 这鼓舞了小红卫兵们，她们更加投入地继续着这“崇高”的战斗，她们在为信念而战，为理想而战，她们为历史给予自己的光辉使命所陶醉，为自己的英勇而自豪……
+ “最高指示：要文斗不要武斗！”
+ 叶哲泰的两名学生终于下定了决心，喊出了这句话，两人同时冲过去，拉开了已处于半疯狂状态的四个小女孩儿。
+ 但已经晚了，物理学家静静地躺在地上，半睁的双眼看着从他的头颅上流出的血迹，疯狂的会场瞬间陷入了一片死寂。
+ 那条血迹是唯一在动的东西，它像一条红蛇缓慢地蜿蜒爬行着，到达台沿后一滴滴地滴在下面一个空箱子上，发出有节奏的“哒哒”声，像渐行渐远的脚步。
+ 一阵怪笑声打破了寂静，这声音是精神已彻底崩溃的绍琳发出的，听起来十分恐怖。
+ 人们开始离去，最后发展成一场大溃逃，每个人想都尽快逃离这个地方。
+ 会场很快空了下来，只剩下一个姑娘站在台下。
+ 她是叶哲泰的女儿叶文洁。
+ 当那四个女孩儿施暴夺去父亲生命时，她曾想冲上台去，但身边的两名老校工死死抓住她，并在耳边低声告诉她别连自己的命也不要了，当时会场已经处于彻底的癫狂，她的出现只会引出更多的暴徒。
+ 她曾声嘶力竭地哭叫，但声音淹没在会场上疯狂的口号和助威声中，当一切寂静下来时，她自己也发不出任何声音了，只是凝视台上父亲已没有生命的躯体，那没有哭出和喊出的东西在她的血液中弥漫、溶解，将伴她一生。
+ 人群散去后，她站在那里，身体和四肢仍保持着老校工抓着她时的姿态，一动不动，像石化了一般。
+ 过了好久，她才将悬空的手臂放下来，缓缓起身走上台，坐在父亲的遗体边，握起他的一只已凉下来的手，两眼失神地看着远方。
+ 当遗体要被抬走时，叶文洁从衣袋中拿出一样东西放到父亲的那只手中，那是父亲的烟斗。
+ 文洁默默地离开了已经空无一人一片狼藉的操场，走上回家的路。
+ 当她走到教工宿舍楼下时，听到了从二楼自家窗口传出的一阵阵痴笑声，这声音是那个她曾叫做妈妈的女人发出的。
+ 文洁默默地转身走去，任双脚将她带向别处。
+ 她最后发现自己来到了阮雯的家门前。
+ 在大学四年中，阮老师一直是她的班主任，也是她最亲密的朋友。
+ 在叶文洁读天体物理专业研究生的两年里，再到后来停课闹革命至今，阮老师一直是她除父亲外最亲近的人。
+ 阮雯曾留学剑桥，她的家曾对叶文洁充满了吸引力，那里有许多从欧洲带回来的精致的书籍、油画和唱片，一架钢琴；还有一排放在精致小木架上的欧式烟斗，父亲那只就是她送的，这些烟斗有地中海石楠根的，有土耳其海泡石的，每一个都仿佛浸透了曾将它们拿在手中和含在嘴里深思的那个男人的智慧，但阮雯从未提起过他。
+ 这个雅致温暖的小世界成为文洁逃避尘世风暴的港湾。
+ 但那是阮雯的家被抄之前的事，她在运动中受到的冲击和文洁父亲一样重。
+ 在批斗会上，红卫兵把高跟鞋挂到她脖子上，用口红在她的脸上划出许多道子，以展示她那腐朽的资产阶级生活方式。
+ 叶文洁推开阮雯的家门，发现抄家后混乱的房间变得整洁了，那几幅被撕的油画又贴糊好挂在墙上，歪倒的钢琴也端正地立在原位，虽然已被砸坏不能弹了，但还是擦得很干净，残存的几本精装书籍也被整齐地放回书架上……
+ 阮雯端坐在写字台前的那把转椅上，安详地闭着双眼。
+ 叶文洁站在她身边，摸摸她的额头、脸和手，都是冰凉的，其实文洁在进门后就注意到了写字台上倒放着的那个已空的安眠药瓶。
+ 她默默地站了一会儿，转身走去，悲伤已感觉不到了，她现在就像一台盖革计数仪，当置身于超量的辐射中时，反而不再有任何反应，没有声响，读数为零。
+ 但当她就要出门时，还是回过头来最后看了阮雯一眼，她发现阮老师很好地上了妆，她抹了口红，也穿上了高跟鞋。
+
+ The location for the Three Body players' meet-up was a small, out-of-the-way coffee shop.
+ Wang had always imagined game meet-ups would be lively events full of people, but this meet-up consisted of only seven players, including himself.
+ Like Wang, the other six did not look like gaming enthusiasts.
+ Only two were relatively young.
+ Another three, including a woman, were middle-aged.
+ There was also an old man who appeared to be in his sixties or seventies.
+ Wang had originally thought that as soon as they met they'd begin a lively discussion of Three Body, but he was wrong.
+ The profound but strange content of Three Body had had a psychological impact on the participants.
+ All the players, including Wang himself, couldn't bring it up easily.
+ They only made simple self-introductions.
+ The old man took out a refined pipe, filled it with tobacco, and smoked as he strolled around, admiring the paintings on the walls.
+ The others sat silently, waiting for the meet-up organizer to show up.
+ They had all come early.
+ Actually, of the six, Wang already knew two.
+ The old man was a famous scholar who had made his name by imbuing Eastern philosophy with the content of modern science.
+ The strangely dressed woman was a famous writer, one of those rare novelists who wrote in an avant-garde style but still had many readers.
+ You could start one of her books on any page.
+ Of the two middle-aged men, one was a vice president at China's largest software company, plainly and casually dressed so that his status wasn't obvious at all; and the other was a high-level executive at the State Power Corporation.
+ Of the two young men, one was a reporter with a major media outlet, and the other was a doctoral student in the sciences.
+ Wang now realized that a considerable number of Three Body players were probably social elites like them.
+ The meet-up organizer showed up not long after.
+ Wang's heart began to beat faster as soon as he saw the man: it was Pan Han, prime suspect for the murder of Shen Yufei.
+ He took out his phone when no one was looking and texted Shi Qiang.
+ "Haha, everyone got here early!"
+ Pan greeted them in a relaxed manner, as though nothing was wrong.
+ Appearing in the media, he usually looked disheveled, like a vagrant, but today, he was dressed sharply in a suit and dress shoes.
+ "You're just like I imagined.
+ Three Body is intended for people in your class because the common crowd cannot appreciate its meaning and mood.
+ To play it well requires knowledge and understanding that ordinary people do not possess."
+ Wang sent out his text: Spotted Pan Han.
+ At Yunhe Coffee Shop in Xicheng District.
+ Pan continued.
+ "Everyone here is an excellent Three Body player.
+ You have the best scores and are devoted to it.
+ I believe that Three Body is already an important part of your lives."
+ "It's part of what keeps me alive," the young doctoral student said.
+ "I saw it by accident on my grandson's computer," the old philosopher said, lifting his pipe stem.
+ "The young man abandoned it after a few tries, saying it was too abstruse.
+ But I was attracted to it.
+ I find it strange, terrible, but also beautiful.
+ So much information is hidden beneath a simple representation."
+ A few players nodded at this description, including Wang himself.
+ Wang received Da Shi's reply text: We also see him.
+ No worries.
+ Carry on.
+ Play the fanatic in front of them, but not so much that you can't pull it off.
+ "Yes," the author agreed, and nodded.
+ "I like the literary elements of Three Body.
+ The rises and falls of two hundred and three civilizations evoke the qualities of epics in a new form."
+ She mentioned 203 civilizations, but Wang had only experienced 184.
+ This told Wang that Three Body progressed independently for each player, possibly with different worlds.
+ "I'm a bit sick of the real world," the young reporter said.
+ "Three Body is already my second reality."
+ "Really?"
+ Pan asked, interested.
+ "Me too," the software company vice president said.
+ "Compared to Three Body, reality is so vulgar and unexciting."
+ "It's too bad that it's only a game," said the power company executive.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ Wang noticed his eyes sparkling with excitement.
+ "I have a question that I think everyone wants to know the answer to," Wang said.
+ "I know what it is.
+ But you might as well ask."
+ "Is Three Body only a game?"
+ The other players nodded.
+ Clearly the question was also on their minds.
+ Pan stood up and said solemnly, "The world of Three Body, or Trisolaris, really does exist."
+ "Where is it?" several players asked in unison.
+ After looking at each of them in turn, Pan sat down and spoke.
+ "Some questions I can answer.
+ Others I cannot.
+ But if you are meant to be with Trisolaris, all your questions will be answered someday."
+ "Then ... does the game really portray Trisolaris accurately?" the reporter asked.
+ "First, the ability of Trisolarans to dehydrate through its many cycles of civilization is real.
+ In order to adapt to the unpredictable natural environment and avoid extreme environmental conditions unsuitable for life, they can completely expel the water in their bodies and turn into dry, fibrous objects."
+ "What do Trisolarans look like?"
+ Pan shook his head.
+ "I don't know.
+ I really don't.
+ In every cycle of civilization, the appearance of Trisolarans is different.
+ However, the game does portray something else that really existed on Trisolaris: the Trisolaran-formation computer."
+ "Ha!
+ I thought that was the most unrealistic aspect," the software company vice president said.
+ "I conducted a test with more than a hundred employees at my company.
+ Even if the idea worked, a computer made of people would probably operate at a speed slower than manual computation."
+ Pan gave a mysterious smile.
+ "You're right.
+ But suppose that of the thirty million soldiers forming the computer, each one is capable of raising and lowering the black and white flags a hundred thousand times per second, and suppose also that the light cavalry soldiers on the main bus can run at several times the speed of sound, or even faster.
+ Then the result would be very different.
+ "You asked about the appearance of the Trisolarans just now.
+ According to some signs, the bodies of the Trisolarans who formed the computer were covered by a purely reflective surface, which probably evolved as a response to survival under extreme conditions of sunlight.
+ The mirrorlike surface could be deformed into any shape, and they communicated with each other by focusing light with their bodies.
+ This kind of light-speech could transmit information extremely rapidly and was the foundation of the Trisolaran-formation computer.
+ Of course, this was still a very inefficient machine, but it was capable of completing calculations that were too difficult to be performed manually.
+ The computer did in fact make its first appearance in Trisolaris as formations of people, before becoming mechanical and then electronic."
+ Pan stood up and paced behind the players.
+ "As a game, Three Body only borrows the background of human society to simulate the development of Trisolaris.
+ This is done to give players a familiar environment.
+ The real Trisolaris is very different from the world of the game, but the existence of the three suns is real.
+ They're the foundation of the Trisolaran environment."
+ "Developing this game must have cost an enormous amount of effort," the vice president said.
+ "But the goal is clearly not profit."
+ "The goal of Three Body is very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals," Pan said.
+ "What ideals do we have in common, exactly?"
+ Wang immediately regretted the question.
+ He wondered whether asking it sounded hostile.
+ Pan studied everyone meaningfully, and then added in a soft voice, "How would you feel if Trisolaran civilization were to enter our world?"
+ "I would be happy."
+ The young reporter was the first to break the silence.
+ "I've lost hope in the human race after what I've seen in recent years.
+ Human society is incapable of self-improvement, and we need the intervention of an outside force."
+ "I agree!" the author shouted.
+ She was very excited, as though finally finding an outlet for pent-up feelings.
+ "The human race is hideous.
+ I've spent the first half of my life unveiling this ugliness with the scalpel of literature, but now I'm even sick of the work of dissection.
+ I yearn for Trisolaran civilization to bring real beauty to this world."
+ Pan said nothing.
+ That glint of excitement appeared in his eyes again.
+ The old philosopher waved his pipe, which had gone out.
+ He spoke with a serious mien.
+ "Let's discuss this question with a bit more depth: What is your impression of the Aztecs?"
+ "Dark and bloody," the author said.
+ "Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fires seen through dark forests.
+ Those are my impressions."
+ The philosopher nodded.
+ "Very good.
+ Then try to imagine: If the Spanish Conquistadors did not intervene, what would have been the influence of that civilization on human history?"
+ "You're calling black white and white black," the software company vice president said.
+ "The Conquistadors who invaded the Americas were nothing more than murderers and robbers."
+ "Even so, at least they prevented the Aztecs from developing without bound, turning the Americas into a bloody, dark great empire.
+ Then civilization as we know it wouldn't have appeared in the Americas, and democracy wouldn't have thrived until much later.
+ Indeed, maybe they wouldn't have appeared at all.
+ This is the key to the question: No matter what the Trisolarans are like, their arrival will be good news for the terminally ill human race."
+ "But have you thought through the fact that the Aztecs were completely destroyed by the Western invaders?" the power company executive asked.
+ He looked around, as though seeing these people for the first time.
+ "Your thoughts are very dangerous."
+ "You mean profound!" the doctoral student said, raising a finger.
+ He nodded vigorously at the philosopher.
+ "I had the same thought, but I didn't know how to express it.
+ You said it so well!"
+ After a moment of silence, Pan turned to Wang.
+ "The other six have all given their views.
+ What about you?"
+ "I stand with them," Wang said, pointing to the reporter and the philosopher.
+ He kept his answer simple.
+ The less said the better.
+ "Very good," Pan said.
+ He turned to the software company vice president and the power company executive.
+ "The two of you are no longer welcome at this meet-up, and you are no longer appropriate players for Three Body.
+ Your IDs will be deleted.
+ Please leave now.
+ Thank you."
+ The two stood up and looked at each other; then glanced around, confused, and left.
+ Pan held out his hand to the remaining five, shaking each person's hand in turn.
+ Then he said, solemnly, "We are comrades now."
+
+ 《三体》网友的聚会地点是一处僻静的小咖啡厅。
+ 在汪淼的印象中，这个时代的游戏网友聚会都是人数众多的热闹盛会，但这次来的连自己在内也只有七个人，而那六位，同自己一样，不论怎么看都不像游戏爱好者。
+ 比较年轻的只有两位，另外五位，包括一位女士，都是中年人，还有一个老者，看上去有六七十岁了。
+ 汪淼本以为大家一见面就会对《三体》展开热烈的讨论，但现在发现自己想错了。
+ 《三体》那诡异而深远的内涵，已对其参与者产生了很深的心理影响，使得每个人，包括汪淼自己，都很难轻易谈起它。
+ 大家只是简单地相互做了自我介绍，那位老者，掏出一把很精致的烟斗，装上烟丝抽了起来，踱到墙边去欣赏墙上的油画。
+ 其他人则都坐着等待聚会组织者的到来，他们都来得早了。
+ 其实这六个人中，汪淼有两个已经认识。
+ 那位鹤发童颜的老者，是一位著名学者，以给东方哲学赋予现代科学内涵而闻名。
+ 那位穿着怪异的女士，是著名作家，是少见的风格前卫却拥有众多读者的小说家，她写的书，从哪一页开始看都行。
+ 其他四位，两名中年人，一位是国内最大软件公司的副总裁（穿着朴素随意，丝毫看不出来），另一位是国家电力公司的高层领导。
+ 两名年轻人，一位是国内大媒体的记者，另一位是在读的理科博士生。
+ 汪淼现在意识到，《三体》的玩家，可能相当一部分是他们这样的社会精英。
+ 聚会的组织者很快来了，汪淼见到他，心跳骤然加快，这人竟是潘寒，杀死申玉菲的头号嫌疑人。
+ 他悄悄掏出手机，在桌下给大史发短信。
+ “呵呵，大家来得真早！”
+ 潘寒轻松地打招呼，似乎什么事都没有发生。
+ 他一改往常在媒体上那副脏兮兮的流浪汉模样，西装革履，显得风度翩翩，“你们和我想象的差不多，都是精英人士，《三体》就是为你们这样的阶层准备的，它的内涵和意境，常人难以理解；玩它所需要的知识，其层次之高，内容之深，也是常人不可能具备的。”
+ 汪淼的短信已经发出：见到潘寒，在西城区云河咖啡馆。
+ 潘寒接着说：“在座的各位都是《三体》的优秀玩家，成绩最好，也都很投人。
+ 我相信，《三体》已成为你们生活中的一部分。”
+ “是生命中的一部分。”
+ 那位年轻的博士生说。
+ “我是从孙子的电脑上偶然看到它的，”老哲学家翘着烟斗柄说，“年轻人玩了几下就放弃了，说太深奥。
+ 我却被它吸引，那深邃的内涵，诡异恐怖又充满美感的意境，逻辑严密的世界设定，隐藏在简洁表象下海量的信息和精确的细节，都令我们着迷。”
+ 包括汪淼在内的几位网友都连连点头。
+ 这时汪淼收到了大史回的短信：我们也看到他了，没事，该干什么干什么。
+ 注意，在他们面前你要尽量表现得极端些，但不要太过了，那样装不像。
+ “是的，”女作家点头赞同。
+ “从文学角度看，《三体》也是卓越的，那二百零三轮文明的兴衰，真是一首首精美的史诗。”
+ 她提到二百零三轮文明，而汪淼经历的是一百九十一轮，这让汪淼再次确信了一点：《三体》对每个玩家都有一个独立的进程。
+ “我对现实世界真有些厌倦了，《三体》已成为我的第二现实。”
+ 年轻的记者说。
+ “是吗？”
+ 潘寒很有兴趣地插问一句。
+ “我也是，与《三体》相比，现实是那么的平庸和低俗。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “可惜啊，只是个游戏。”
+ 国电公司领导说。
+ “很好。”
+ 潘寒点点头，汪淼注意到他眼中放出兴奋的光来。
+ “有一个问题，我想是我们大家都渴望知道的。”
+ 汪淼说。
+ “我知道是什么，不过你问吧。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “《三体》仅仅是个游戏吗？”
+ 网友们纷纷点头，显然这也是他们急切想问的。
+ 潘寒站起来，郑重地说：“三体世界是真实存在的。”
+ “在哪里？”
+ 几个网友异口同声地问。
+ 潘寒坐下，沉默良久才开口：“有些问题我能够回答，有些不能，但如果各位与三体世界有缘，总有一天所有的问题都能得到解答。”
+ “那么，游戏中是否表现了三体世界的某些真实成分呢？”
+ 记者问。
+ “首先，在很多轮文明中，三体人的脱水功能是真实的，为了应对变幻莫测的自然环境，他们随时可以将自己体内的水分完全排出，变成干燥的纤维状物体，以躲过完全不适合生存的恶劣气候。”
+ “三体人是什么样子的？”
+ 潘寒摇摇头：“不知道，真的不知道。
+ 每一轮文明中，三体人的外形都完全不同，另外，游戏中还反映了一个三体世界中的真实存在：人列计算机。”
+ “哈，我觉得那是最不真实的！”
+ IT副总裁说，“我用公司的上百名员工进行过一个简单的测试，即使这想法真能实现，人列计算机的运算速度可能比一个人的手工计算都慢。”
+ 潘寒露出神秘的笑容说：“不错，但假如构成计算机的三千万个士兵，每个人在一秒钟内可以挥动黑白小旗十万次，总线上的轻骑兵的奔跑速度是几倍音速甚至更快，结果就不一样了。
+ 你们刚才问过三体人的外形，据一些迹象推测，构成人列计算机的三体人，外表可能覆盖着一层全反射镜面，这种镜面可能是为了在恶劣的日照条件下生存而进化出来的，镜面可以变化出各种形状，他们之间就通过镜面聚焦的光线来交流，这种光线语言信息传输的速度是很快的，这就是人列计算机得以存在的基础。
+ 当然，这仍是一台效率很低的机器，但确实能够完成人类手工力不能及的运算。
+ 计算机在三体世界首先确实是以人列形式出现，然后才是机械式和电子式的。”
+ 潘寒站起来，围着网友们的背后踱步：
+ “我现在能告诉大家的只是：作为一个游戏，《三体》只是借用人类的背景来模拟三体世界的发展，这样做只是为游戏者提供一个熟悉的环境，真实的三体世界与游戏中的差别很大，但其中三颗太阳的存在是真实的，这是三体世界自然结构的基础。”
+ “开发这个游戏肯定花费了很大的力量，但它的目的显然不是盈利。”
+ IT副总裁说。
+ “《三体》游戏的目的很单纯，就是为了聚集起我们这样志同道合的人。”
+ 潘寒说。
+ “什么志和什么道呢？”
+ 汪淼问，但旋即有些后悔，仔细想着自己的问题是否露出了些许的敌意。
+ 这个问题果然令潘寒沉默下来，他用意味深长的目光逐个将在座的每个人打量一遍，轻轻地说：“如果三体文明要进入人类世界，你们是什么态度？”
+ “我很高兴，”年轻的记者首先打破沉默说，“这些年看到的事，让我对人类已经失望了，人类社会已经无力进行自我完善，需要一个外部力量的介入。”
+ “同意！”
+ 女作家大声说，她很激动，似乎终于找到了一个发泄某种东西的机会，“人类是什么？
+ 多么丑恶的东西，我上半生一直在用文学这把解剖刀来揭露这种丑恶，现在连这种揭露都厌倦了。
+ 我向往着三体文明能把真正的美带到这个世界上来。”
+ 潘寒没有说话，那种兴奋的光芒又在双眼中亮起来。
+ 老哲学家挥着已经熄灭的烟斗，一脸严肃地说：“让我们来稍微深入地探讨一下这个问题：你们对阿兹特克文明有什么印象？”
+ “黑暗而血腥，从林中阴森的火光照耀着鲜血流淌的金字塔。
+ 这就是我对它的印象。”
+ 女作家说。
+ 哲学家点点头：“很好，那么想象一下，假如后来没有西班牙人的介入，这个文明会对人类历史产生什么影响？”
+ “你这是颠倒黑白，”IT副总裁指着哲学家说，“那时入侵美洲的西班牙人不过是强盗和凶手！”
+ “就算如此，他们至少制止了下面事情的发生：阿兹特克无限制地发展，把美洲变成一个血腥和黑暗的庞大帝国，那时美洲和全人类的民主和文明时代就要更晚些到来，甚至根本就不会出现。
+ 这就是问题的关键之处——不管三体文明是什么样子，它们的到来对病入膏育的人类文明总是个福音。”
+ “可您想过没有，阿兹特克文明最后被西方人侵者毁灭了。”
+ 国电公司领导说， 同时环视了一下四周，仿佛是第一眼见到这些人，“这里的思想很危险。”
+ “是深刻！”
+ 博士生举起一根手指说，同时对哲学家连连点头，“我也有这个想法，但不知道如何表达，您说得太好了。”
+ 一阵沉默后，潘寒转向汪淼：“他们六人已经表明了自己的态度，您呢？”
+ “我站在他们一边。”
+ 汪淼指指记者和哲学家等人说。
+ 言多必失，他只是简单地答这一句。
+ “很好，”潘寒说着，转向了IT经理和国电公司领导，“你们二位，已经不适合这场聚会了，也不适合继续玩《三体》游戏。
+ 你们的ID将被注销，下面请你们离开。
+ 谢谢你们的到来，请！”
+ 两人站起身来对视一下，又困惑地看看周围，转身走出门去。
+ 潘寒向剩下的五个人伸出手来，挨个与他们紧紧握手。
+ 最后庄严地说：“我们，是同志了。”
+
+ The deaths of Lei and Yang were treated as accidents.
+ Everybody at the base knew that Ye and Yang were a happy couple, and no one suspected her.
+ A new commissar came to the base, and life returned to its habitual peace.
+ The tiny life inside Ye grew bigger every day, and she also felt the world outside change.
+ One day, the security platoon commander asked Ye to come to the gatehouse at the entrance to the base.
+ When she entered the gatehouse, she was surprised to see three children: two boys and a girl, about fifteen or sixteen.
+ They all wore old coats and dog fur hats, obviously locals.
+ The guard on duty told her that they came from the village of Qijiatun.
+ They had heard that the people on Radar Peak were learned and had come to ask some questions related to their studies.
+ Ye wondered how they dared to come onto Radar Peak.
+ This was a restricted military zone, and the guards were authorized to warn intruders only once before shooting.
+ The guard saw that Ye was puzzled and explained that they had just received orders that Red Coast Base's security rating had been reduced.
+ The locals were allowed onto Radar Peak as long as they stayed outside the base.
+ Several local peasants had already come yesterday to bring vegetables.
+ One of the children took out a worn-out middle school physics textbook.
+ His hands were dirty and cracked like tree bark.
+ In a thick Northeastern accent, he asked a simple physics question:
+ The textbook said that a body in free fall is under constant acceleration but will always reach a terminal velocity.
+ They had been thinking about this for several nights and could not understand why.
+ "You walked all this way just to ask this?" Ye asked.
+ "Teacher Ye, don't you know that they've restarted the exam?" the girl said excitedly.
+ "The exam?"
+ "The National College Entrance Exam!
+ Whoever studies hard and gets the best score gets to go to college!
+ It began two years ago.
+ Didn't you know?"
+ "There's no need for recommendations anymore?"
+ "No.
+ Anyone can take the exam.
+ Even the children of the Five Black Categories in the village can take it."
+ Ye was stunned.
+ This change left her with mixed feelings.
+ Only after a while did she realize that the children were still waiting with their books held up.
+ She hurriedly answered their question, explaining that it was due to air resistance reaching equilibrium against the force of gravity.
+ Then she promised that if they encountered any difficulties in their studies in the future, they could always come to her for help.
+ Three days later, seven children came to seek Ye.
+ In addition to the three who had come last time, there were four more from villages located even farther away.
+ The third time, fifteen children came to find her, and even a teacher at a small-town high school came along.
+ Because there was a shortage of teachers, he had to teach physics, math, and chemistry, and he came to ask Ye for some help on teaching.
+ The man was over fifty years old, and his face was already full of wrinkles.
+ He was very nervous in front of Ye, and spilled books everywhere.
+ After they left the gatehouse, Ye heard him say to the students: "Children, that was a scientist.
+ A real, bona fide scientist!"
+ After that, children would come to her for tutoring every few days.
+ Sometimes there were so many of them that the gatehouse couldn't accommodate them all.
+ With the permission of the officers in charge of base security, the guards would escort them to the cafeteria.
+ There, Ye put up a small blackboard and taught the children.
+ It was dark by the time Ye got off work on the eve of Chinese New Year, 1980.
+ Most people at the base had already left Radar Peak for the three-day holiday, and it was quiet everywhere.
+ Ye returned to her room.
+ This was once the home of her and Yang Weining, but now it was empty, her only companion the unborn child within her.
+ In the night outside, the cold wind of the Greater Khingan Mountains screamed, carrying with it the faint sound of firecrackers going off in the village of Qijiatun.
+ Loneliness pressed down on Ye like a giant hand, and she felt herself being crushed; compressed until she was so small that she disappeared into an invisible corner of the universe....
+ Just then, someone knocked on her door.
+ When she opened it, Ye first saw the guard, and then, behind him, the fire of several pine branch torches flickering in the cold wind.
+ The torches were held aloft by a crowd of children, their faces bright red from the cold, and icicles hung from their hats.
+ When they came into her room, they seemed to bring the cold air in with them.
+ Two of the boys, thinly dressed, had suffered the most.
+ They had taken off their thick coats and wrapped them around something that they carried in their arms.
+ Unwrapping the coats revealed a large pot, the fermented cabbage and pork dumplings inside still steaming hot.
+ That year, eight months after she sent her signal toward the sun, Ye went into labor.
+ Because the baby was malpositioned and her body was weak, the base clinic couldn't handle her case and had to send her to the nearest town hospital.
+ This became one of the hardest times in Ye's life.
+ After enduring a great deal of pain and losing a large amount of blood, she sank into a coma.
+ Through a blur she could only see three hot, blinding suns slowly orbiting around her, cruelly roasting her body.
+ This state lasted for some time, and she hazily thought it was probably the end for her.
+ It was her hell.
+ The fire of the three suns would torment her and burn her forever.
+ This was punishment for her betrayal, the betrayal that exceeded all others.
+ She sank into terror: not for her, but for her unborn child—was the child still in her?
+ Or had she already been born into this hell to suffer eternally with her?
+ She didn't know how much time had passed.
+ Gradually the three suns moved farther away.
+ After a certain distance, they suddenly shrank and turned into crystalline flying stars.
+ The air around her cooled, and her pain lessened.
+ She finally awoke.
+ Ye heard a cry next to her.
+ Turning her head with great effort, she saw the baby's pink, wet, little face.
+ The doctor told Ye that she had lost more than 2,000 ml of blood.
+ Dozens of peasants from Qijiatun had come to donate blood to her.
+ Many of the peasants had children who Ye had tutored, but most had no connection to her at all, having only heard her name from the children and their parents.
+ Without them, she would certainly have died.
+ Ye's living situation became a problem after the birth of her child.
+ The difficult birth had damaged her health.
+ It was impossible for her to stay at the base with the baby all by herself, and she had no relatives who could help.
+ Just then, an old couple living in Qijiatun came to talk to the base leaders and explained that they could take Ye and her baby home with them and take care of them.
+ The old man used to be a hunter and also gathered some herbs for traditional medicine.
+ Later, after the forest around the area was lost to logging, the couple had turned to farming, but people still called him Hunter Qi out of habit.
+ They had two sons and two daughters.
+ The daughters were married and had moved out.
+ One of the sons was a soldier away from home, and the other was married and lived with them.
+ The daughter-in-law had also just given birth.
+ Ye still hadn't been rehabilitated politically, and the base leadership was unsure about this suggested solution.
+ But in the end, there was no other way, and so they allowed the couple to take Ye and the baby home from the hospital on a sled.
+ Ye lived for more than half a year with this peasant family in the Greater Khingan Mountains.
+ She was so weak after giving birth that her milk did not come in.
+ During this time, the baby girl, Yang Dong, was breastfed by all the women of the village.
+ The one who nursed her the most was Hunter Qi's daughter-in-law, called Feng.
+ Feng had the strong, solid frame of the women of the Northeast.
+ She ate sorghum every day, and her large breasts were full of milk even though she was feeding two babies at the same time.
+ Other nursing women in Qijiatun also came to feed Yang Dong.
+ They liked her, saying that the baby had the same clever air as her mother.
+ Gradually, Hunter Qi's home became the gathering place for all the women of the village.
+ Old and young, matrons and maidens, they all liked to stop by when they had nothing else going on.
+ They admired Ye and were curious about her, and she found that she had many women's topics to discuss with them.
+ On countless days, Ye held Yang Dong and sat with the other women of the village in the yard, surrounded by birch posts.
+ Next to her was a lazy black dog and the playing children, bathing in the warm sunlight.
+ She paid attention especially to the women with the copper tobacco pipes.
+ Leisurely, they blew smoke out of their mouths, and the smoke, filled with sunlight, gave off a silvery glow much like the fine hairs on their plump limbs.
+ One time, one of them handed her the long-stemmed cupronickel pipe and told her it would make her feel better.
+ She took only two hits before she became dizzy, and they laughed about it for several days.
+ As for the men, Ye had little to say to them.
+ The matters that occupied them all day also seemed outside her understanding.
+ She gathered that they were interested in planting some ginseng for cash while the government seemed to be relaxing policies a little, but they didn't quite have the courage to try.
+ They all treated Ye with great respect and were very polite toward her.
+ She didn't pay much attention to this at first.
+ But after a while, after observing how those men roughly beat their wives and flirted outrageously with the widows in the village, saying things that made her blush, she finally realized how precious their respect was.
+ Every few days, one of them would bring a hare or pheasant he had caught to Hunter Qi's home.
+ They also gave Yang Dong strange and quaint toys that they'd made with their own hands.
+ In Ye's memory, these months seemed to belong to someone else, like a segment of another life that had drifted into hers like a feather.
+ This period condensed in her memory into a series of classical paintings—not Chinese brush paintings but European oil paintings.
+ Chinese brush paintings are full of blank spaces, but life in Qijiatun had no blank spaces.
+ Like classical oil paintings, it was filled with thick, rich, solid colors.
+ Everything was warm and intense: the heated kang stove-beds lined with thick layers of ura sedge, the Guandong and Mohe tobacco stuffed in copper pipes, the thick and heavy sorghum meal, the sixty-five-proof baijiu distilled from sorghum—all of these blended into a quiet and peaceful life, like the creek at the edge of the village.
+ Most memorable to Ye were the evenings.
+ Hunter Qi's son was away in the city selling mushrooms—the first to leave the village to earn money elsewhere, so she shared a room in his house with Feng.
+ Back then, there was no electricity in the village, and every evening, the two huddled around a kerosene lamp.
+ Ye would read while Feng did her needlework.
+ Ye would lean closer and closer to the lamp without noticing, and her bangs would often get singed, at which point the two of them would glance up and smile at each other.
+ Feng, of course, never had this happen to her.
+ She had very sharp eyes, and could do detailed work even in the dim light from heating charcoal.
+ The two babies, not even half a year old, would be sleeping together on the kang next to them.
+ Ye loved to watch them sleep, their even breathing the only sound in the room.
+ At first, Ye did not like sleeping on the heated kang, and often got sick, but she gradually got used to it.
+ As she slept, she would imagine herself becoming a baby sleeping in someone's warm lap.
+ The person who held her wasn't her father or mother, or her dead husband.
+ She didn't know who it was.
+ The feeling was so real that she would wake up with tears on her face.
+ One time, she put down her book and saw that Feng was holding the cloth shoe she was stitching over her knee and staring into the kerosene lamp without moving.
+ When she realized that Ye was looking at her, Feng asked, "Sister, why do you think the stars in the sky don't fall down?"
+ Ye examined Feng.
+ The kerosene lamp was a wonderful artist and created a classical painting with dignified colors and bright strokes:
+ Feng had her coat draped over her shoulders, exposing her red belly-band, and a strong, graceful arm.
+ The glow from the kerosene lamp painted her figure with vivid, warm colors, while the rest of the room dissolved into a gentle darkness.
+ Close attention revealed a dim red glow, which didn't come from the kerosene lamp, but the heating charcoal on the ground.
+ The cold air outside sculpted beautiful ice patterns on the windowpanes with the room's warm, humid air.
+ "You're afraid of the stars falling down?"
+ Ye asked softly.
+ Feng laughed and shook her head.
+ "What's there to be afraid of?
+ They're so tiny."
+ Ye did not give her the answer of an astrophysicist.
+ She only said, "They're very, very far away.
+ They can't fall."
+ Feng was satisfied with this answer, and went back to her needlework.
+ But Ye could no longer be at peace.
+ She put down her book and lay down on the warm surface of the kang, closing her eyes.
+ In her imagination, the rest of the universe around their tiny cottage disappeared, just the way the kerosene lamp hid most of the room in darkness.
+ Then she substituted the universe in Feng's heart for the real one.
+ The night sky was a black dome that was just large enough to cover the entirety of the world.
+ The surface of the dome was inlaid with countless stars shining with a crystalline silver light, none of which was bigger than the mirror on the old wooden table next to the bed.
+ The world was flat and extended very far in each direction, but ultimately there was an edge where it met the sky.
+ The flat surface was covered with mountain ranges like the Greater Khingan Mountains, and with forests dotted with tiny villages, just like Qijiatun....
+ This toy-box-like universe comforted Ye, and gradually it shifted from her imagination into her dreams.
+ In this tiny mountain hamlet deep in the Greater Khingan Mountains, something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie's heart.
+ In the frozen tundra of her soul, a tiny, clear lake of meltwater appeared.
+ Ye eventually returned to Red Coast Base with Yang Dong.
+ Another two years passed, divided between anxiety and peace.
+ Ye then received a notice: Both she and her father had been politically rehabilitated.
+ Soon after, a letter arrived for her from Tsinghua, stating that she could return to teach right away.
+ Accompanying the letter was a sum of money: the back pay owed to her father after his rehabilitation.
+ Finally, at base meetings, her supervisors could call her comrade.
+ Ye faced all these changes with equanimity, showing no sign of excitement or elation.
+ She had no interest in the outside world, only wanting to stay at the quiet, out-of-the-way Red Coast Base.
+ But for the sake of Yang Dong's education, she finally left the base that she had once thought would be her home for the rest of her life, and returned to her alma mater.
+ Leaving the mountains, Ye felt spring was everywhere.
+ The cold winter of the Cultural Revolution really was over, and everything was springing back to life.
+ Even though the calamity had just ended, everything was in ruins, and countless men and women were licking their wounds.
+ The dawn of a new life was already evident.
+ Students with children of their own appeared on college campuses; bookstores sold out of famous literary works; technological innovation became the focus in factories; and scientific research now enjoyed a sacred halo.
+ Science and technology were the only keys to opening the door to the future, and people approached science with the faith and sincerity of elementary school students.
+ Though their efforts were naïve, they were also down-to-earth.
+ At the first National Conference on Science, Guo Moruo, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, declared that it was the season of rebirth and renewal for China's battered science establishment.
+ Was this the end of the madness?
+ Were science and rationality really coming back?
+ Ye asked herself these questions repeatedly.
+ Ye never again received any communication from Trisolaris.
+ She knew that she would have to wait at least eight years to hear that world's response to her message, and after leaving the base, she no longer had any way of receiving extraterrestrial replies.
+ It was such an important thing, and yet she had done it all by herself.
+ This gave her a sense of unreality.
+ As time passed, that sense grew ever stronger.
+ What had happened resembled an illusion, a dream.
+ Could the sun really amplify radio signals?
+ Did she really use it as an antenna to send a message about human civilization into the universe?
+ Did she really receive a message from the stars?
+ Did that blood-hued morning, when she had betrayed the entire human race, really happen?
+ And those murders ...
+ Ye tried to numb herself with work so as to forget the past—and almost succeeded.
+ A strange kind of self-protective instinct caused her to stop recalling the past, to stop thinking about the communication she had once had with another civilization.
+ Her life passed this way, day after day, in tranquility.
+ After she had been back at Tsinghua for a while, Ye took Dong Dong to see her grandmother, Shao Lin.
+ After her husband's death, Shao had soon recovered from her mental breakdown and found ways to survive in the tiny cracks of politics.
+ Her attempts to chase the political winds and shout the right slogans finally paid off, and later, during the "Return to Class, Continue the Revolution" phase, she went back to teaching.
+ But then Shao did something that no one expected.
+ She married a persecuted high-level cadre from the Education Ministry.
+ At that time, the cadre still lived in a "cowshed" for reform through labor.
+ This was part of Shao's long-term plan.
+ She knew that the chaos in society could not last long.
+ The young rebels who were attacking everything in sight had no experience in managing a country.
+ Sooner or later, the persecuted and sidelined old cadres would be back in power.
+ Her gamble paid off.
+ Even before the end of the Cultural Revolution, her husband was partially restored to his old position.
+ After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee, he was soon promoted to the level of a deputy minister.
+ Based on this background, Shao Lin also rose quickly as intellectuals became favored again.
+ After becoming a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she very wisely left her old school and was promoted to be the vice president of another famous university.
+ Ye Wenjie saw this new version of her mother as the very model of an educated woman who knew how to take care of herself.
+ There was not a hint of the persecution that she went through.
+ She enthusiastically welcomed Ye and Dong Dong, inquired after Ye's life during those years with concern, exclaimed that Dong Dong was so cute and smart, and meticulously directed the cook in preparing Ye's favorite dishes.
+ Everything was done with skill, practice, and the appropriate level of care.
+ But Ye could clearly detect an invisible wall between her mother and herself.
+ They carefully avoided sensitive topics and never mentioned Ye's father.
+ After dinner, Shao Lin and her husband accompanied Ye and Dong Dong down to the street to say good-bye.
+ Then Shao Lin returned home while the deputy minister asked to have a word with Ye.
+ In a moment, the deputy minister's kind smile turned to frost, as though he had impatiently pulled off his mask.
+ "We're happy to have you and the child visit in the future under one condition: Do not try to pursue old historical debts.
+ Your mother bears no responsibility for your father's death.
+ She was a victim as well.
+ Your father clung to his own faith in a manner that was not healthy and walked all the way down a blind alley.
+ He abandoned his responsibility to his family and caused you and your mother to suffer."
+ "You have no right to speak of my father," Ye said, anger suffusing her voice.
+ "This is between my mother and me.
+ It has nothing to do with you."
+ "You're right," Shao Lin's husband said coldly.
+ "I'm only passing on a message from your mother."
+ Ye looked up at the residential apartment building reserved for high-level cadres.
+ Shao Lin had lifted a corner of the curtain to peek down at them.
+ Without a word, Ye bent down to pick up Dong Dong and left.
+ She never returned.
+ Ye searched and searched for information about the four female Red Guards who had killed her father, and eventually managed to locate three of them.
+ All three had been sent down to the countryside and then returned, and all were unemployed.
+ After Ye got their addresses, she wrote a brief letter to each of them, asking them to meet her at the exercise grounds where her father had died.
+ Just to talk.
+ Ye had no desire for revenge.
+ Back at Red Coast Base, on that morning of the transmission, she had gotten revenge against the entire human race, including those Red Guards.
+ But she wanted to hear these murderers repent, wanted to see even a hint of the return of humanity.
+ That afternoon after class, Ye waited for them on the exercise grounds.
+ She didn't have much hope, and was almost certain that they wouldn't show up.
+ But at the time of the appointment, the three old Red Guards came.
+ Ye recognized them from a distance because they were all dressed in now-rare green military uniforms.
+ When they came closer, she realized that the uniforms were likely the same ones they had worn at that mass struggle session.
+ The clothes had been laundered until their color had faded, and they had been conspicuously patched.
+ Other than the uniforms, the three women in their thirties no longer resembled the three young Red Guards who had looked so valiant on that day.
+ They had lost not only youth, but also something else.
+ The first impression Ye had was that, though the three had once seemed to be carved out of the same mold, they now looked very different from each other.
+ One had become very thin and small, and her uniform hung loose on her.
+ Already showing her age, her back was bent and her hair had a yellow tint.
+ Another had become thick framed, so that the uniform jacket she wore could not even be buttoned.
+ Her hair was messy and her face dark, as though the hardship of life had robbed her of any feminine refinement, leaving behind only numbness and rudeness.
+ The third woman still had hints of her youthful appearance, but one of her sleeves was now empty and hung loose as she walked.
+ The three old Red Guards stood in front of Ye in a row—just like they had stood against Ye Zhetai—trying to recapture their long-forgotten dignity.
+ But the demonic spiritual energy that had once propelled them was gone.
+ The thin woman's face held a mouselike expression.
+ The thickset woman's face showed only numbness.
+ The one-armed woman gazed up at the sky.
+ "Did you think we wouldn't dare to show up?" the thickset woman asked, her tone trying to be provocative.
+ "I thought we should see each other.
+ There should be some closure to the past," Ye said.
+ "The past is finished.
+ You should know that."
+ The thin woman's voice was sharp, as though she was always frightened of something.
+ "I meant spiritual closure."
+ "Then you want to hear us repent?" the thick woman asked.
+ "Don't you think you should?"
+ "Then who will repent to us?" the one-armed woman asked.
+ The thickset woman said, "Of the four of us, three had signed the big-character poster at the high school attached to Tsinghua.
+ Revolutionary tours, the great rallies in Tiananmen, the Red Guard Civil Wars, First Red Headquarters, Second Red Headquarters, Third Red Headquarters, Joint Action Committee, Western Pickets, Eastern Pickets, New Peking University Commune, Red Flag Combat Team, The East is Red—we went through every single milestone in the history of the Red Guards from birth to death."
+ The one-armed woman took over.
+ "During the Hundred-Day War at Tsinghua, two of us were with the Jinggang Mountain Corps, and the other two were with the April Fourteenth Faction.
+ I held a grenade and attacked a homemade tank from the Jinggang Mountain faction.
+ My arm was crushed by the treads on the tank.
+ My blood and muscle and bones were ground into the mud.
+ I was only fifteen years old."
+ "Then, we were sent to the wilderness!"
+ The thickset woman raised her arms.
+ "Two of us were sent to Shaanxi, the other two to Henan, all to the most remote and poorest corners.
+ When we first went, we were still idealistic, but that didn't last.
+ After a day of laboring in the fields, we were so tired that we couldn't even wash our clothes.
+ We lay in leaky straw huts and listened to wolves cry in the night, and gradually we woke from our dreams.
+ We were stuck in those forgotten villages and no one cared about us at all."
+ The one-armed woman stared at the ground numbly.
+ "While we were down in the countryside, sometimes, on a trail across the barren hill, I'd bump into another Red Guard comrade or an enemy.
+ We'd look at each other: the same ragged clothes, the same dirt and cow shit covering us.
+ We had nothing to say to each other."
+ The thickset woman stared at Ye.
+ "Tang Hongjing was the girl who gave your father the fatal strike with her belt.
+ She drowned in the Yellow River.
+ There was a flood that carried off a few of the sheep kept by the production team.
+ So the Party secretary called to the sent-down students, 'Revolutionary youths!
+ It's time to test your mettle!'
+ And so, Hongjing and three other students jumped into the river to save the sheep.
+ It was early spring, and the surface of the river was still covered by a thin layer of ice.
+ All four died, and no one knew if it was from drowning or freezing.
+ When I saw their bodies ...
+ I ... I ... can't fucking talk about this anymore."
+ She covered her eyes and sobbed.
+ The thin woman sighed, tears in her eyes.
+ "Then, later, we returned to the city.
+ But so what if we're back?
+ We still have nothing.
+ Rusticated youths who have returned don't lead very good lives.
+ We can't even find the worst jobs.
+ No job, no money, no future.
+ We have nothing."
+ Ye had no words.
+ The one-armed woman said, "There was a movie called Maple recently.
+ I don't know if you've seen it.
+ At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who had died during the faction civil wars.
+ The child asks the adult, 'Are they heroes?'
+ The adult says no.
+ The child asks, 'Are they enemies?'
+ The adult again says no.
+ The child asks, 'Then who are they?'
+ The adult says, 'History.'"
+ "Did you hear that?"
+ The thickset woman waved an arm excitedly at Ye.
+ "History!
+ History!
+ It's a new age now.
+ Who will remember us?
+ Who will think of us, including you?
+ Everyone will forget all this completely!"
+ The three old Red Guards departed, leaving only Ye on the exercise grounds.
+ More than a dozen years ago, on that rainy afternoon, she had stood alone here as well, gazing at her dead father.
+ The old Red Guard's final remark echoed endlessly in her mind....
+ The setting sun cast a long shadow from Ye's slender figure.
+ The small sliver of hope for society that had emerged in her soul had evaporated like a drop of dew in the sun.
+ Her tiny sense of doubt about her supreme act of betrayal had also disappeared without a trace.
+
+ 雷志成和杨卫宁遇难后，上级很快以普通工作事故处理了这件事，在基地所有人眼中，叶文洁和杨卫宁感情很好，谁也没有对她起疑心。
+ 新来的基地政委很快上任，生活又恢复了以往的宁静，叶文洁腹中的小生命一天天长大，同时，她也感到了外部世界的变化。
+ 这天，警卫排排长叫叶文洁到门岗去一趟。
+ 她走进岗亭，吃了一惊：这里有三个孩子，两男一女，十五六岁的样子，都穿着旧棉袄，戴着狗皮帽，一看就是当地人。
+ 哨兵告诉她，他们是齐家屯的，听说雷达峰上都是有学问的人，就想来问几个学习上的问题。
+ 叶文洁暗想，他们怎么敢上雷达峰？
+ 这里是绝对的军事禁区，岗哨对擅自接近者只需警告一次就可以开枪。
+ 哨兵看出了叶文洁的疑惑，告诉她刚接到命令，红岸基地的保密级别降低了，当地人只要不进入基地，就可以上雷达峰来，昨天已经来过几个当地农民，是来送菜的。
+ 一个孩子拿出一本已经翻得很破旧的初中物理课本，他的手黑乎乎的，像树皮一般满是皴裂，他用浓重的东北口音问了一个中学物理的问题：课本上说自由落体开始一直加速，但最后总会以匀速下落，他们想了几个晚上，都想不明白。
+ “你们跑这么远，就为问这个？”
+ 叶文洁问。
+ “叶老师，您不知道吗？
+ 外头高考了！”
+ 那女孩儿兴高采烈地说。
+ “高考？”
+ “就是上大学呀！
+ 谁学习好，谁考的分高谁就能上！
+ 一年前就是了，您还不知道？！”
+ “不推荐了？”
+ “不了，谁都可以考，连村里‘黑五类’的娃都行呢！”
+ 叶文洁愣了半天，这个变化很让她感慨。
+ 过了好一会儿，她才发现面前捧着书的孩子们还等着，赶忙紧回答他们的问题，告诉他们那是由于空气阻力与重力平衡的缘故；同时还许诺，如果以后有学习上的困难，可以随时来找她。
+ 三天后，又有七个孩子来找叶文洁，除了上次来过的三个外，其他四个都是从更远的村镇来的。
+ 第三次来找她的孩子是十五个，同来的还有一位镇中学的老师，由于缺人，他物理、数学和化学都教，他来向叶文洁请教一些教学上的问题。
+ 这人已年过半百，满脸风霜，在叶文洁面前手忙脚乱，书什么的倒了一地。
+ 走出岗亭后，叶文洁听到他对学生们说：“娃娃们，科学家，这可是正儿八经的科学家啊！”
+ 以后隔三差五地就有孩子来请教，有时来的人很多，岗亭里站不下，经过基地负责安全警卫的领导同意，由哨兵带着他们到食堂的饭厅里，叶文洁就在那儿支起一块小黑板给孩子们讲课。
+ 1978年的除夕夜，叶文洁下班后天已经完全黑了，基地的人大部分已在三天假期中下了山，到处都是一片寂静。
+ 叶文洁回到自己的房间，这里曾是她和杨卫宁的家，现在空荡荡的，只有腹中的孩子陪伴着她。
+ 外面的寒夜中，大兴安岭的寒风呼啸着，风中隐隐传来远处齐家屯的鞭炮声。
+ 孤寂像一只巨掌压着叶文洁，她觉得自己被越压越小，最后缩到这个世界看不到的一个小角落去了……
+ 就在这时，响起了敲门声，开门后叶文洁首先看到哨兵，他身后有几支松明子的火光在寒风中摇曳着，举火把的是一群孩子，他们脸冻得通红，狗皮帽上有冰碴子，进屋后带着一股寒气。
+ 有两个男孩子冻得最厉害，他们穿得很单薄，却用两件厚棉衣裹着一个什么东西抱在怀里，把棉衣打开来，是一个大瓷盆，里面的酸菜猪肉馅饺子还冒着热气。
+ 那一年，在向太阳发出信号八个月后，叶文洁临产了，由于胎位不正，她的身体又很弱，基地卫生所没有条件接生，就把她送到了最近的镇医院。
+ 这竟是叶文洁的一个鬼门关，她遇到了难产，在剧痛和大出血后陷入昏迷，冥冥中只看到三个灼热刺眼的太阳围绕着她缓缓转动，残酷地炙烤着她。
+ 这情景持续了很长时间后，她在朦胧中想到，这可能就是她永恒的归宿了，这就是她的地狱，三个太阳构成的地狱之火将永远灼烧着她，这是她因那个超级背叛受到的惩罚。
+ 她陷入强烈的恐惧中，不是为自己，而是为孩子——孩子还在腹中吗？
+ 还是随着她来到这地狱中蒙受永恒的痛苦？
+ 不知过了多久，三个太阳渐渐后退了，退到一定距离后突然缩小，变成了晶莹的飞星，周围凉爽了，疼痛也在减轻，她终于醒了过来。
+ 叶文洁听到耳边的一声啼哭，她吃力地转过脸，看到了婴儿粉嘟嘟、湿乎乎的小脸儿。
+ 医生告诉叶文洁，她出血达两千多毫升，齐家屯的几十位农民来给她献血，他们中很多人的孩子她都辅导过，但更多的是素昧平生，只是听孩子和他们的父母说起过她，要不是他们的话，她死定了。
+ 以后的日子成了问题，叶文洁产后虚弱，在基地自己带孩子是不可能的，她又无亲无故。
+ 这时，齐家屯的一对老人来找基地领导，说他们可以把叶文洁和孩子带回家去照顾。
+ 男的原来是个猎户，也采些药材，后来周围的林子越来越少，就种地了，但人们还是叫他齐猎头儿。
+ 他们有两儿两女，女孩都嫁出去了，一个儿子在外地当兵，另一个成家后与他们一起过，儿媳妇也是刚生了娃。
+ 叶文洁这时还没有平反，基地领导很是为难，但也只有这一个办法了，就让他们用雪橇把叶文洁从镇医院接回了家。
+ 叶文洁在这个大兴安岭的农家住了半年多，她产后虚弱，没有奶水，这期间，杨冬吃着百家奶长大了。
+ 喂她最多的是齐猎头儿的儿媳妇，叫大凤，这个健壮的东北妮子每天吃着高粱米大渣子，同时奶两个娃，奶水还是旺旺的。
+ 屯子里其他处于哺乳期的媳妇们也都来喂杨冬，她们很喜欢她，说这娃儿有她妈的灵气儿。
+ 渐渐地，齐猎头儿家成了屯里女人们的聚集地，老的少的，出嫁了的和大闺女，没事儿都爱向这儿跑，她们对叶文洁充满了羡慕和好奇，她也发现自己与她们有很多女人间的话可谈。
+ 记不清有多少个晴朗的日子，叶文洁抱着杨冬同屯子里的女人们坐在白桦树柱围成的院子里，旁边有玩耍的孩子和懒洋洋的大黑狗，温暖的阳光拥抱着这一切。
+ 她每次都特别注意看那几个举着铜烟袋锅儿的，她们嘴里悠然吐出的烟浸满了阳光，同她们那丰满肌肤上的汗毛一样，发出银亮的柔光。
+ 有一次她们中的一位将长长的白铜烟锅递给她，让她“解解乏”，她只抽了两口，就被冲得头昏脑涨，让她们笑了好几天。
+ 同男人们叶文洁倒是没什么话说，他们每天关心的事儿她也听不太明白，大意是想趁着政策松下来种些人参，但又不太敢干。
+ 他们对叶文洁都很敬重，在她面前彬彬有礼。
+ 她最初对此没有在意，但日子长了后，当她看到那些汉子如何粗暴地打老婆，如何同屯里的寡妇打情骂俏时，说出那些让她听半句都脸红的话，才感到这种敬重的珍贵。
+ 隔三差五，他们总有人把打到的野兔山鸡什么的送到齐猎头儿家，还给杨冬带来许多自己做的奇特而古朴的玩具。
+ 在叶文洁的记忆中，这段日子不像是属于自己的，仿佛是从别的人生中飘落的片断，像一片羽毛般飞入自己的生活。
+ 这段记忆被浓缩成一幅幅欧洲古典油画，很奇怪，不是中国画，就是油画，中国画上空白太多，但齐家屯的生活是没有空白的，像古典的油画那样，充满着浓郁得化不开的色彩。
+ 一切都是浓烈和温热的：铺着厚厚乌拉草的火坑、铜烟锅里的关东烟和莫合烟、厚实的高粱饭、六十五度的高粱酒……
+ 但这一切，又都在宁静与平和中流逝着，像屯子边上的小溪一样。
+ 最令叶文洁难忘的是那些夜晚。
+ 齐猎头儿的儿子到城里卖蘑菇去了，他是屯里第一个外出挣钱的人，她就和大凤住在一起。
+ 那时齐家屯还没通电，每天晚上，她们俩守在一盏油灯旁，叶文洁看书，大凤做针线活。
+ 叶文洁总是不自觉地将书和眼睛凑近油灯，常常刘海被烤得吱啦一下，这时她俩就抬头相视而笑。
+ 大凤从来没出过这事儿，她的眼神极好，借着炭火的光也能干细活儿。
+ 两个不到半周岁的孩子睡在她身边的炕上，他们的睡相令人陶醉，屋里能听到的，只有他们均匀的呼吸声。
+ 叶文洁最初睡不惯火炕，总是上火，后来习惯了，睡梦中，她常常感觉自己变成了婴儿，躺在一个人温暖的怀抱里，这感觉是那么真切，她几次醒后都泪流满面——但那个人不是父亲和母亲，也不是死去的丈夫，她不知道是谁。
+ 有一次，她放下书，看到大凤把纳着的鞋底放到膝上，呆呆地看着灯花。
+ 发现叶文洁在看自己，大凤突然问：“姐，你说天上的星星咋的就不会掉下来呢？”
+ 叶文洁细看大凤，油灯是一位卓越的画家，创作了这幅凝重色调中又带着明快的古典油画：
+ 大凤披着棉袄，红肚兜和一条圆润的胳膊露出来，油灯突出了她的形象，在她最美的部位涂上了最醒目的色彩，将其余部分高明地隐没于黑暗中。
+ 背景也隐去了，一切都淹没于一片柔和的黑暗中，但细看还是能看到一片暗红的光晕，这光晕不是来自油灯，而是地上的炭火照出来的，可以看到，外面的严寒已开始用屋里温暖的湿气在窗户上雕出美丽的冰纹了。
+ “你害怕星星掉下来吗？”
+ 叶文洁轻轻地问。
+ 大凤笑着摇摇头，“怕啥呢？
+ 它们那么小。”
+ 叶文洁终于还是没有做出一个天体物理学家的回答，她只是说：“它们都很远很远，掉不下来的。”
+ 大凤对这回答已经很满意，又埋头做起针线活儿来。
+ 但叶文洁却心绪起伏，她放下书，躺到温暖的炕面上，微闭着双眼，在想象中隐去这间小屋周围的整个宇宙，就像油灯将小屋中的大部分隐没于黑暗中一样。
+ 然后，她将大凤心中的宇宙置换过来。
+ 这时，夜空是一个黑色的巨大球面，大小正好把世界扣在其中，球面上镶着无数的星星，晶莹地发着银光，每个都不比床边旧木桌上的那面圆镜子大。
+ 世界是平的，向各个方向延伸到很远很远，但总是有边的。
+ 这个大平面上布满了大兴安岭这样的山脉，也布满了森林，林间点缀着一个个像齐家屯一样的村庄……
+ 这个玩具盒般的宇宙令她感到分外舒适，渐渐地这宇宙由想象变成了梦乡。
+ 在这个大兴安岭深处的小山村里，叶文洁心中的什么东西渐渐融化了，在她心灵的冰原上，融出了小小的一汪清澈的湖泊。
+ 杨冬出生后，在红岸基地，时间在紧张和平静中又过去了两年多。
+ 这时，叶文洁接到了通知，她和父亲的案件都被彻底平反；不久之后又收到了母校的信，说她可以立刻回去工作。
+ 与信同来的还有一大笔汇款，这是父亲落实政策后补发的工资。
+ 在基地会议上，领导终于称她为叶文洁同志了。
+ 叶文洁很平静地面对这一切，没有激动和兴奋。
+ 她对外面的世界不感兴趣，宁愿一直在僻静的红岸基地待下去，但为了孩子的教育，她还是离开了本以为要度过一生的红岸基地，返回了母校。
+ 走出深山，叶文洁充满了春天的感觉，“文革”的严冬确实结束了，一切都在复苏之中。
+ 虽然浩劫刚刚结束，举目望去一片废墟，无数人在默默地舔着自己的伤口，但在人们眼中，未来新生活的曙光已经显现。
+ 大学中出现了带着孩子的学生，书店中文学名著被抢购一空，工厂中的技术革新成了一件最了不起的事情，科学研究更是被罩上了一层神圣的光环。
+ 科学和技术一时成了打开未来之门的唯一钥匙，人们像小学生那样真诚地接近科学，他们的奋斗虽是天真的，但也是脚踏实地的。
+ 在第一次全国科学大会上，郭沫若宣布科学的春天到来了。
+ 这是疯狂的终结吗？
+ 科学和理智开始回归了？
+ 叶文洁不止一次地问自己。
+ 直到离开红岸基地，叶文洁再也没有收到来自三体世界的消息。
+ 她知道，要想收到那个世界对她那条信息的回答，最少要等八年，何况她离开了基地后，已经不具备接收外星回信的条件了。
+ 那件事实在太重大了，却由她一个人静悄悄地做完，这就产生了一种不真实的感觉。
+ 随着时间的流逝，这种虚幻感越来越强烈，那件事越来越像自己的幻觉，像一场梦。
+ 太阳真的能够放大电波吗？
+ 她真的把太阳作为天线，向宇宙中发射过人类文明的信息吗？
+ 真的收到过外星文明的信息吗？
+ 她背叛整个人类文明的那个血色清晨真的存在过？
+ 还有那一次谋杀……
+ 叶文洁试着在工作中麻木自己，以便忘掉过去——她竟然几乎成功了，一种奇怪的自我保护本能使她不再回忆往事，不再想起她与外星文明曾经有过的联系，日子就这样在平静中一天天过去。
+ 回到母校一段时间后，叶文洁带着冬冬去了母亲绍琳那里。
+ 丈夫惨死后，绍琳很快从精神错乱中恢复过来，继续在政治夹缝中求生存。
+ 她紧跟形势高喊口号，终于得到了一点报偿，在后来的“复课闹革命”中重新走上了讲台。
+ 但这时，绍琳却做出了一件出人意料的事，与一位受迫害的教育部高干结了婚，当时那名高干还在干校住“牛棚”劳改中。
+ 对此绍琳有自己的深思熟虑，她心里清楚，社会上的混乱不可能长久，目前这帮夺权的年轻造反派根本没有管理国家的经验，现在靠边站和受迫害的这批老干部迟早还是要上台执政的。
+ 后来的事实证明她这次赌博是正确的，“文革”还没有结束，她的丈夫已经部分恢复了职位，十一届三中全会后，他迅速升到了副部级。
+ 绍琳凭着这个背景，在这知识分子重新得到礼遇的时候，很快青云直上。
+ 在成为科学院学部委员之后，她很聪明地调离了原来的学校，很快升为另一所名牌大学的副校长。
+ 叶文洁见到的母亲，是一位保养得很好的知识女性形象，丝毫没有过去受磨难的痕迹。
+ 她热情地接待了叶文洁母女，关切地询问她这些年是怎么过来的，惊叹冬冬是多么的聪明可爱，细致入微地对做饭的保姆交代叶文洁喜欢吃的菜……
+ 这一切都做得那么得体，那么熟练，那么恰到好处。
+ 但叶文洁清楚地感觉到她们之间的隔阂，她们小心地避开敏感的话题，没有谈到叶文洁的父亲。
+ 晚饭后，绍琳和丈夫送叶文洁和孩子走了很远，副部长说要和叶文洁说句话，绍琳就先回去了。
+ 这时，副部长的脸色一瞬间由温暖的微笑变得冷若冰霜，像不耐烦地扯下一副面具，他说：“以后欢迎你带孩子常来，但有一条，不要来追究历史旧账。
+ 对于你父亲的死，你母亲没有责任，她也是受害者。
+ 倒是你父亲这个人，对自己那些信念的执著有些变态了，一条道走到黑，抛弃了对家庭的责任，让你们母女受了这么多的苦。”
+ “您没资格谈我的父亲，”叶文洁气愤地说，“这是我和母亲间的事，与别人无关。”
+ “确实与我无关，”绍琳的丈夫冷冷地点点头，“我是在转达你母亲的意思。”
+ 叶文洁回头看，在那座带院子的高干小楼上，绍琳正撩开窗帘的一角向这边偷窥。
+ 叶文洁无言地抱起冬冬走了，以后再也没有回去过。
+ 叶文洁多方查访当年打死父亲的那四个红卫兵，居然查到了她们中的三个。
+ 这三个人都是返城知青，现在她们都没有工作。
+ 叶文洁得知她们的地址后，分别给她们写了一封简单的信，约她们到当年父亲遇害的操场上谈谈。
+ 叶文洁并没有什么复仇的打算。
+ 在红岸基地的那个旭日初升的早晨，她已向包括她们在内的全人类复了仇，她只想听到这些凶手的忏悔，看到哪怕是一点点人性的复归。
+ 这天下午下课后，叶文洁在操场上等着她们。
+ 她并没有抱多大希望，几乎肯定她们是不会来的，但在约定的时间，三个老红卫兵来了。
+ 叶文洁远远就认出了那三个人，因为她们都穿着现在已经很少见的绿军装。
+ 走近后，她发现这很可能就是她们当年在批判会上穿的那身衣服，衣服都已洗得发白，有显眼的补丁。
+ 但除此以外，这三个三十左右的女人与当年那三名英姿飒爽的红卫兵已没有任何相似之处了，从她们身上消逝的，除了青春，显然还有更多的东西。
+ 叶文洁的第一印象就是，与当年的整齐划一相比，她们之间的差异变大了。
+ 其中的一人变得很瘦小，当年的衣服穿在身上居然还有些大了，她的背有些弯，头发发黄，已显出一丝老态；另一位却变得十分粗壮，那身衣服套在她粗笨的身体上扣不上扣子，她头发蓬乱，脸黑黑的，显然已被艰难的生活磨去了所有女性的精致，只剩下粗鲁和麻木了；第三个女人身上倒还有些年轻时的影子，但她的一只袖管是空的，走路时荡来荡去。
+ 三个老红卫兵走到叶文洁面前，面对着她站成了一排——当年，她们也是这样面对叶哲泰的——试图再现那早已忘却的尊严，但她们当年那魔鬼般的精神力量显然已荡然无存。
+ 瘦小女人的脸上有一种老鼠的表情，粗壮女人的脸上只有麻木，独臂女人的两眼望着天空。
+ “你以为我们不敢来？”
+ 粗壮女人挑衅似的问道。
+ “我觉得我们应该见见面，过去的事情总该有个了结的。”叶文洁说。
+ “已经了结了，你应该听说过的。”
+ 瘦小女人说，她的声音尖尖的，仿佛时刻都带着一种不知从何而来的惊恐。
+ “我是说从精神上。”
+ “那你是准备听我们忏悔了？”粗壮女人问。
+ “你们不该忏悔吗？”
+ “那谁对我们忏悔呢？”
+ 一直沉默的独臂女人说。
+ 粗壮女人说：“我们四个人中，有三个在清华附中的那张大字报上签过名，从大串联、大检阅到大武斗，从‘一司’、‘二司’、‘三司’到‘联动’、‘西纠’、‘东纠’，再到‘新北大公社’、‘红旗战斗队’和‘东方红’，我们经历过红卫兵从生到死的全过程。”
+ 独臂女人接着说：“在清华校园的百日大武斗中，我们四个人，两个在‘井冈山’，两个在‘四·一四’。
+ 我曾经举着手榴弹冲向‘井冈山’的土造坦克，这只手被坦克轮子压碎了，当时血肉和骨头在地上和成了泥——那年我才十五岁啊。”
+ “后来我们走向广阔天地了！”
+ 粗壮女人扬起双手说，“我们四个，两个去了陕西，两个去了河南，都是最偏僻最穷困的地方。
+ 刚去的时候还意气风发呢，可日子久了，干完一天的农活，累得连衣服都洗不动；
+ 躺在漏雨的草屋里，听着远处的狼叫，慢慢从梦里回到现实。
+ 我们待在穷乡僻壤里，真是叫天天不语，叫地地不应啊。”
+ 独臂女人呆呆地看着地面说：“有时，在荒山小径上，遇到了昔日的红卫兵战友，或是武斗中的敌人，双方互相看看，一样的衣衫破烂，一样的满身尘土和牛粪，相视无语啊。”
+ “唐红静，”粗壮女人盯着叶文洁说，“就是那个朝你父亲的头抽了最要命一皮带的女孩儿，在黄河中淹死了。
+ 洪水把队里的羊冲走了几只，队支书就冲知青们喊：革命小将们，考验你们的时候到了！
+ 于是，红静就和另外三个知青跳下河去捞羊，那时还是凌汛，水面上还浮着一层冰呢！
+ 四个人全死了，谁知是淹死的还是冻死的。
+ 见到他们尸首的时候……
+ 我…… 我他妈说不下去了……”
+ 她捂着脸哭了起来。
+ 瘦小女人流着泪长叹一声，“后来回城了，可回来又怎么样呢？
+ 还是一无所有，回来的知青日子都不好过，而我们这样的人最次的工作都找不到，没有工作没有钱没有前途，什么都没有了。”
+ 叶文洁彻底无语了。
+ 独臂女人说：“最近有一部电影，叫《枫》，不知你看过没有？
+ 结尾处，一个大人和一个小孩儿站在死于武斗的红卫兵墓前，那孩子问大人：他们是烈士吗？
+ 大人说不是；孩子又问：他们是敌人吗？
+ 大人说也不是；孩子再问：那他们是什么？
+ 大人说：是历史。”
+ “听到了吗？
+ 是历史！
+ 是历史了！”
+ 粗壮女人兴奋地对叶文洁挥着一只大手说，“现在是新时期了，谁还会记得我们，拿咱们当回事儿？
+ 大家很快就会忘干净的！”
+ 三个老红卫兵走了，把叶文洁一个人留在操场上，十多年前那个阴雨霏霏的下午，她也是这样孤独地站在这里，看着死去的父亲。
+ 那个老红卫兵最后的一句话在她脑海中不停地回响着……
+ 夕阳给叶文洁瘦弱的身躯投下长长的影子。
+ 在她的心灵中，对社会刚刚出现的一点希望像烈日下的露水般蒸发了，对自己已经做出的超级背叛的那一丝怀疑也消失得无影无踪，将宇宙间更高等的文明引入人类世界，终于成为叶文洁坚定不移的理想。
+
+ "Don't worry," Shi Qiang said to Wang, as he sat down next to him at the meeting table.
+ "I'm not radioactive anymore.
+ The last couple of days they've washed me inside and outside like a flour sack.
+ They didn't originally think you needed to attend this meeting, but I insisted.
+ Heh.
+ I bet the two of us are going to be important this time."
+ As Da Shi spoke, he picked a cigar butt out of the ashtray, lit it, and took a long drag.
+ He nodded, and, in a slow, relaxed manner, blew the smoke into the faces of the attendees sitting on the other side of the table.
+ One of the people sitting opposite him was the original owner of the cigar, Colonel Stanton of the U.S. Marine Corps.
+ He gave Da Shi a contemptuous look.
+ Many more foreign military officers were at this meeting than the last.
+ They were all in uniform.
+ For the first time in human history, the armed forces of the world's nations faced the same enemy.
+ General Chang said, "Comrades, everyone at this meeting now has the same basic understanding of the situation.
+ Or, as Da Shi here would put it, we have information parity.
+ The war between alien invaders and humanity has begun.
+ Our descendants won't face the Trisolarans for another four and a half centuries.
+ For now, our opponents are still human.
+ Yet, in essence, these traitors to the human race can also be seen as enemies from outside human civilization.
+ We have never faced an enemy like this.
+ The next war objective is very clear: We must capture the intercepted Trisolaran messages stored on Judgment Day.
+ These messages may have great significance for our survival.
+ "We haven't yet done anything to draw the suspicion of Judgment Day.
+ The ship still sails the Atlantic freely.
+ It has already submitted plans to the Panama Canal Authority to pass through the canal in four days.
+ This is a great opportunity for us.
+ As the situation develops, such an opportunity may never arise again.
+ Right now, all the Battle Command Centers around the globe are drafting up operation plans, and Central will select one within ten hours and begin implementation.
+ The purpose of this meeting is to discuss possible plans of operation, and then report one to three of our best suggestions to Central.
+ Time is of the essence, and we must work efficiently.
+ "Note that any plan must guarantee one thing: the secure capture of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Judgment Day was rebuilt from an old tanker, and both the superstructure and the interior have been extensively renovated with complex structures to contain many new rooms and passageways.
+ Supposedly even the crew relies on a map when entering unfamiliar areas.
+ We, of course, know even less about the ship's layout.
+ Right now, we cannot even be certain of the location of the computing center on Judgment Day, and we don't know whether the intercepted Trisolaran messages are stored in servers located in the computing center, or how many copies they have.
+ The only way to achieve our objective is to completely capture and control Judgment Day.
+ "The most difficult part is preventing the enemy from erasing Trisolaran data during our attack.
+ Destroying the data would be very easy.
+ The enemy would not use conventional methods to erase the data during an attack, because it's easy to recover the data using known technology.
+ But if they just emptied a cartridge clip at the server hard drive or other storage media, it would all be over, and doing so would take no more than ten seconds.
+ So we must disable all enemies near the storage equipment within ten seconds of their detecting an attack.
+ Since we don't know the exact location of the data storage or the number of copies, we must eliminate all enemies on Judgment Day within a very brief period of time, before the target has been alerted.
+ At the same time, we can't heavily damage the facilities within, especially computer equipment.
+ Thus, this is a very difficult task.
+ Some think it's impossible."
+ A Japanese Self-Defense Forces officer said, "We believe that the only chance for success is to rely on spies on Judgment Day.
+ If they're familiar with where the Trisolaran information is stored, they can control the area or move the storage equipment elsewhere right before our operation."
+ Someone asked, "Reconnaissance and monitoring of Judgment Day have always been the responsibility of NATO military intelligence and the CIA.
+ Do we have such spies?"
+ "No," the NATO liaison said.
+ "Then we have nothing more to discuss except bullshit," said Da Shi.
+ He was met with annoyed looks.
+ Colonel Stanton said, "Since the objective is eliminating all personnel within an enclosed structure without harming other equipment within, our first thought was to use a ball lightning weapon."
+ Ding Yi shook his head.
+ "The existence of this kind of weapon is now public knowledge.
+ We don't know if the ship has been equipped with magnetic walls to shield against ball lightning.
+ Even if it hasn't, a ball lightning weapon can indeed kill all personnel within the ship, but it cannot do so simultaneously.
+ Also, after the ball lightning enters the ship, it may hover in the air for some time before releasing its energy.
+ This wait time can last from a dozen seconds to a minute or longer.
+ They will have enough time to realize they've been attacked and destroy the data."
+ Colonel Stanton asked, "What about a neutron bomb?"
+ "Colonel, you should know that's not going to work."
+ The speaker was a Russian officer.
+ "The radiation from a neutron bomb cannot kill right away.
+ After a neutron bomb attack, the amount of time left to the enemy would be more than enough for them to have a meeting just like this one."
+ "Another thought was to use nerve gas," a NATO officer said.
+ "But releasing it and having it spread throughout the ship would take time, so it still doesn't achieve General Chang's requirements."
+ "Then the only choices left are concussion bombs and infrasonic waves," Colonel Stanton said.
+ Others waited for him to finish his thought, but he said nothing more.
+ Da Shi said, "I use concussion bombs in police work, but they're toys.
+ They're indeed capable of stunning people inside a building into unconsciousness, but they're only good for a room or two.
+ Do you have any concussion bombs big enough to stun a whole oil tanker full of people?"
+ Stanton shook his head.
+ "No.
+ Even if we did, such a large explosive device would certainly damage equipment inside the ship."
+ "So what about infrasonic weapons?" someone asked.
+ "They're still experimental and cannot be used in live combat.
+ Also, the ship is very large.
+ At the power level available to current experimental prototypes, the most that a full assault on Judgment Day could do is to make the people inside feel dizzy and nauseous."
+ "Ha!"
+ Da Shi extinguished the cigar butt, now as tiny as a peanut.
+ "I told you all we have left to discuss is bullshit.
+ We've been at it for a while now.
+ Let's remember what the general said: 'Time is of the essence!'"
+ He gave a sly grin to the translator, a female first lieutenant who looked unhappy with his language.
+ "Not easy to translate, eh, comrade?
+ Just get the approximate meaning across."
+ But Stanton seemed to understand what he was saying.
+ He pointed at Shi Qiang with a fresh cigar that he had just taken out.
+ "Who does this policeman think he is, that he can talk to us this way?"
+ "Who do you think you are?"
+ Da Shi asked.
+ "Colonel Stanton is an expert in special ops," a NATO officer said.
+ "He has been a part of every major military operation since the Vietnam War."
+ "Then let me tell you who I am.
+ More than thirty years ago, my reconnaissance squad managed to sneak dozens of kilometers behind Vietnamese lines and capture a hydroelectric station under heavy guard.
+ We prevented the Vietnamese plan to demolish the dam with explosives, which would have flooded the attack route for our army.
+ That's who I am.
+ I defeated an enemy who once defeated you."
+ "That's enough!"
+ General Chang slammed the table.
+ "Don't bring up irrelevant matters.
+ If you have a plan, say what it is."
+ "I don't think we need to waste time on this policeman,"
+ Colonel Stanton said contemptuously, as he lit his cigar.
+ Without waiting for a translation, Da Shi jumped up.
+ "'Pao-Li-Si'—I heard that word twice.
+ What?
+ You look down on the police?
+ If you're talking about dropping some bombs and turning that ship into smithereens, yeah, you military are the experts.
+ But if you're talking about retrieving something out of it without damage, I don't care how many stars are on your shoulder, you aren't even as good as a thief.
+ For this kind of thing, you have to think outside the box.
+ OUT. OF. THE. BOX!
+ You will never be as good at it as criminals, masters of out-of-the-box thinking.
+ "You know how good they are?
+ I once handled a robbery where the criminals managed to steal one car out of a moving train.
+ They reconnected the cars before and after the one they were interested in so that the train got all the way to its destination without anyone noticing.
+ The only tools they used were a length of wire cable and a few steel hooks.
+ Those are the real special ops experts.
+ And someone like me, a criminal cop who has been playing cat and mouse with them for more than a decade, has received the best education and training from them."
+ "Tell us your plan, then," General Chang said.
+ "Otherwise, shut up!"
+ "There are so many important people here that I didn't think it was my place to speak.
+ And I was afraid that you, General, would say I was being rude again."
+ "You're already the definition of rudeness.
+ Enough!
+ Tell me what your out-of-the-box plan is."
+ Da Shi picked up a pen and drew two parallel curves on the table.
+ "That's the canal."
+ He put the ashtray between the two lines.
+ "This is Judgment Day."
+ Then he reached across the table and pulled Colonel Stanton's just-lit cigar out of his mouth.
+ "I can no longer tolerate this idiot!" the colonel shouted, standing up.
+ "Da Shi, get out of here!" General Chang said.
+ "Give me one minute.
+ I'll be done soon."
+ Da Shi extended a hand in front of Colonel Stanton.
+ "What do you want?" the colonel asked, puzzled.
+ "Give me another one."
+ Stanton hesitated for a second before taking another cigar out of a beautiful wooden box and handing it to Da Shi.
+ Da Shi took the smoking end of the first cigar and pressed it against the table so that it stood on the shore of the Panama Canal that he'd drawn on the table.
+ He flattened the end of the other cigar and erected it on the other shore of the canal.
+ "We set up two pillars on the shores of the canal, and then between them we string many parallel, thin filaments, about half a meter apart.
+ The filaments should be made from the nanomaterial called 'Flying Blade,' developed by Professor Wang.
+ A very appropriate name, in this case."
+ After Shi Qiang finished speaking, he stood and waited a few seconds.
+ Then he raised his hands, said to the stunned crowd, "That's it," turned, and left.
+ The air seemed frozen.
+ Everyone present stayed still like stone statues.
+ Even the droning from the computers all around them seemed more careful.
+ After a long while, someone timidly broke the silence, "Professor Wang, is 'Flying Blade' really in the form of filaments?"
+ Wang nodded.
+ "Given our current molecular construction technique, the only form we can make is a filament.
+ The thickness is about one-hundredth the thickness of human hair....
+ Officer Shi got this information from me before the meeting."
+ "Do you have enough material?"
+ "How wide is the canal?
+ And how tall is the ship?"
+ "The narrowest point of the canal is one hundred fifty meters wide.
+ Judgment Day is thirty-one meters tall, with a draft of eight meters or so."
+ Wang stared at the cigars on the table and did some mental calculations.
+ "I think I should have enough."
+ Another long silence.
+ Everyone was trying to recover from their astonishment.
+ "What if the equipment storing Trisolaran data, such as hard drives and optical disks, is also sliced?"
+ "That doesn't seem likely."
+ "Even if they were sliced," a computer expert said, "it's not a big deal.
+ The filaments are extremely sharp, and the cut surfaces would be very smooth.
+ Given that premise, whether it's hard drives, optical disks, or integrated circuit storage, we could recover the vast majority of the data."
+ "Anyone got a better idea?"
+ Chang looked around the table.
+ No one spoke.
+ "All right.
+ Then let's focus on this and work out the details."
+ Colonel Stanton, who had been silent the whole time, stood up.
+ "I will go and ask Officer Shi to come back."
+ General Chang indicated that he should remain seated.
+ Then he called out, "Da Shi!"
+ Da Shi returned, grinning at everyone.
+ He picked up the cigars on the table.
+ The one that had been lit he put into his mouth, and the other he stuffed into his pocket.
+ Someone asked, "When Judgment Day passes, can those two pillars bear the force applied against the Flying Blade filaments?
+ Maybe the pillars would be sliced apart first."
+ Wang said, "That's easy to solve.
+ We have some small amounts of Flying Blade material that are flat sheets.
+ We can use them to protect the parts of the column where the filaments are attached."
+ The discussion after that was mainly between the naval officers and navigation experts.
+ "Judgment Day is at the upper limit in terms of tonnage that can pass through the Panama Canal.
+ It has a deep draft, so we have to consider installing filaments below the waterline."
+ "That will be very difficult.
+ If there's not enough time, I don't think we should worry about it.
+ The parts of the ship below the waterline are used for engines, fuel, and ballast, causing a lot of noise, vibration, and interference.
+ The conditions are too poor for computing centers and other similar facilities to be located there.
+ But for the parts above water, a tighter nanofilament net will give better results."
+ "Then it's best to set the trap at one of the locks along the canal.
+ Judgment Day is built to Panamax specifications, just enough to fill the thirty-two-meter locks.
+ Then we would only need to make the Flying Blade filaments thirty-two meters long.
+ This will also make it easier to erect the pillars and string the filaments between them, especially for the underwater parts."
+ "No.
+ The situation around the locks is too unpredictable.
+ Also, a ship inside the lock must be pulled forward by four 'mules,' electric locomotives on rails.
+ They move slowly, and the time inside the locks will also be when the crew is most alert.
+ An attempt to slice through the ship during that time would most likely be discovered."
+ "What about the Bridge of the Americas, right outside the Miraflores Locks?
+ The abutments at the two ends of the bridge can serve as the pillars for stringing the filaments."
+ "No.
+ The distance between the abutments is too great.
+ We don't have enough Flying Blade material."
+ "Then it's decided: The site of operation should be the narrowest point of the Gaillard Cut, a hundred and fifty meters across.
+ Add in some slack for the pillars ... let's call it a hundred seventy meters."
+ Wang said, "If that's the plan, then the smallest distance between the filaments will be fifty centimeters.
+ I don't have enough material for a tighter net."
+ "In other words, we have to make sure the ship crosses during the day," Da Shi said, blowing out another mouthful of smoke.
+ "Why?"
+ "At night the crew will be sleeping, which means they'll all be lying down.
+ Fifty centimeters between filaments leaves too much of a gap.
+ But during the day, even if they're sitting or crouching, the distance is sufficient."
+ A few scattered laughs.
+ The attendees, all under heavy stress, felt a bit of release tinged with the smell of blood.
+ "You're truly a demon," a female UN official said to Da Shi.
+ "Will innocent bystanders be hurt?"
+ Wang asked, his voice trembling.
+ A naval officer replied, "When the ship goes through the locks, more than a dozen cable workers will come onboard, but they'll all get off after the ship passes.
+ The Panama Canal pilot will have to accompany the ship the entire eighty-two kilometers, so the pilot will have to be sacrificed."
+ A CIA officer said, "And some of the crew aboard Judgment Day probably don't know the real purpose of the ship."
+ "Professor," General Chang said, "do not concern yourself with these thoughts.
+ The information we need to obtain has to do with the very survival of human civilization.
+ Someone else will make the call."
+ As the meeting ended, Colonel Stanton pushed the beautiful cigar box in front of Shi Qiang.
+ "Captain, the best Havana has to offer.
+ They're yours."
+ Four days later, Gaillard Cut, Panama Canal
+ Wang could not even tell that he was in a foreign country.
+ He knew that to the west, not too far away, was beautiful Gatun Lake.
+ To the east was the magnificent Bridge of the Americas and Panama City.
+ But he had had no chance to see either of them.
+ Two days earlier, he had arrived by direct flight from China to Tocumen International Airport near Panama City and then rode a helicopter here.
+ The sight before him was very common: The construction work under way to widen the canal caused the tropical forest on both slopes to be quite sparse, revealing large patches of yellow earth.
+ The color felt familiar to Wang.
+ The canal didn't seem very special, probably because it was so narrow here, but a hundred thousand people had dug out this part of the canal in the previous century, one hoe at a time.
+ Wang and Colonel Stanton sat on lounge chairs under an awning halfway up the slope.
+ Both wore loose, colorful shirts, with their Panama hats tossed to the side, looking like two tourists.
+ Below, on each shore of the canal, a twenty-four-meter steel pillar lay flat against the ground, parallel to the shore.
+ Fifty ultrastrong nanofilaments, each 160 meters long, were strung between the pillars.
+ At the end on the eastern shore, every filament was connected to a length of regular steel wire.
+ This was to give the filaments enough slack so that they could sink to the bottom of the canal, aided by attached weights.
+ The setup permitted other ships safe passage.
+ Luckily, traffic along the canal wasn't quite as busy as Wang had imagined.
+ On average, only about forty large ships passed through each day.
+ The operation's code name was "Guzheng," based on the similarity between the structure and the ancient Chinese zither by that name.
+ The slicing net of nanofilaments was thus called the "zither."
+ An hour earlier, Judgment Day had entered the Gaillard Cut from Gatun Lake.
+ Stanton asked Wang whether he had ever been to Panama before.
+ Wang said no.
+ "I came here in 1989," the colonel said.
+ "Because of that war?"
+ "Yes, that was one of those wars that left me with no impression.
+ I only remember being in front of the Vatican embassy as 'Nowhere to Run' by Martha and the Vandellas played for the holed-up Noriega.
+ That was my idea, by the way."
+ In the canal below them, a pure white French cruise ship slowly sailed past.
+ Several passengers in colorful clothing strolled leisurely on the green-carpeted deck.
+ "Second Observation Post reporting: There are no more ships in front of the target."
+ Stanton's walkie-talkie squawked.
+ Stanton gave the order.
+ "Raise the zither."
+ Several men wearing hard hats appeared on both shores, looking like maintenance workers.
+ Wang stood up, but the colonel pulled him down.
+ "Professor, don't worry.
+ They know what to do."
+ Wang watched as those on the eastern shore rapidly winched back the steel wires attached to the nanofilaments and secured the tightened nanofilaments to the pillar.
+ Then, slowly, the two pillars were stood upright using their mechanical hinges.
+ As a disguise, the pillars were decorated with some navigational markings and water depth indicators.
+ The workers proceeded leisurely, as though they were simply carrying out their boring jobs.
+ Wang gazed at the space between the pillars.
+ There seemed to be nothing there, but the deadly zither was already in place.
+ "Target is four kilometers from the zither," the voice in the walkie-talkie said.
+ Stanton put the walkie-talkie down.
+ He continued the conversation with Wang.
+ "The second time I came to Panama was in 1999, to attend the ceremony for the handover of the canal to Panama.
+ Oddly, by the time we got to the Authority's building, the Stars and Stripes were already gone.
+ Supposedly the U.S. government had requested that the flag be lowered a day early to avoid the embarrassment of lowering the flag in front of a crowd....
+ Back then, I thought I was witnessing history.
+ But now that seems so insignificant."
+ "Target is three kilometers from the zither."
+ "Yes, insignificant," Wang mumbled.
+ He wasn't listening to Stanton at all.
+ The rest of the world had ceased to exist for him.
+ All of his attention was focused on the spot where Judgment Day would appear.
+ By now the sun that had risen over the Atlantic was falling toward the Pacific.
+ The canal sparkled with golden light.
+ Close by, the deadly zither stood quietly.
+ The two steel pillars were dark and reflected no sunlight, looking even older than the canal that flowed between them.
+ "Target is two kilometers from the zither."
+ Stanton seemed to not have heard the voice from the walkie-talkie.
+ He continued, "After learning that the alien fleet is coming toward the Earth, I've been suffering from amnesia.
+ It's so strange.
+ I can't recall many things from the past.
+ I don't remember the details of the wars I experienced.
+ Like I just said, those wars all seem so insignificant.
+ After learning this truth, everyone becomes a new person spiritually, and sees the world anew.
+ I've been thinking: Suppose two thousand years ago, or even earlier, humanity learned that an alien invasion fleet would arrive a few thousand years later.
+ What would human civilization be like now?
+ Professor, can you imagine it?"
+ "Ah, no..."
+ Wang answered perfunctorily, his mind elsewhere.
+ "Target is one point five kilometers from the zither."
+ "Professor, I think you will be the Gaillard of this new era.
+ We're waiting for your new Panama Canal to be built.
+ Indeed, the space elevator is a canal.
+ Just as the Panama Canal connected two oceans, the space elevator will connect space with the Earth."
+ Wang knew that the colonel's babbling was meant to help him through this very difficult time.
+ He was grateful, but it wasn't working.
+ "Target is one kilometer from the zither."
+ Judgment Day appeared.
+ In the light from the setting sun coming over the hills to the side, it was a dark silhouette against the golden waves of the canal.
+ The sixty-thousand-ton ship was much larger than Wang had imagined.
+ Its appearance was like another peak abruptly inserted among the hills.
+ Even though Wang knew that the canal was capable of accommodating ships as large as seventy thousand tons, witnessing such a large ship in such a narrow waterway was a strange feeling.
+ Given its immensity, the canal below seemed to no longer exist.
+ The ship was a mountain gliding across solid earth.
+ After he grew used to the sunlight, Wang saw that Judgment Day's hull was pitch black, and the superstructure was painted pure white.
+ The giant antenna was gone.
+ They heard the roar from the ship's engines, accompanied by the churning sound of waves that had been generated by the round prow slapping against the shores of the canal.
+ As the distance between Judgment Day and the deadly zither closed, Wang's heart began to beat faster, and his breath became short.
+ He had a desire to run away, but he felt so weak that he could no longer control his body.
+ All at once, he was overwhelmed by a deep hatred for Shi Qiang.
+ How could the bastard have come up with such an idea?
+ Like that UN official said, he is a demon!
+ But the feeling passed.
+ He thought that if Da Shi were by his side, he would probably feel better.
+ Colonel Stanton had invited Shi Qiang to come, but General Chang refused to give permission because he said that Da Shi was needed where he was.
+ Wang felt the colonel's hand on his back.
+ "Professor, all this will pass."
+ Judgment Day was below them now, passing through the deadly zither.
+ When its prow first contacted the plane between the two steel pillars, the space that seemed empty, Wang's scalp tightened.
+ But nothing happened.
+ The immense hull of the ship continued to slowly sail past the two steel pillars.
+ When half the ship had passed, Wang began to doubt whether the nanofilaments between the steel pillars really existed.
+ But a small sign soon negated his doubt.
+ He noticed a thin antenna located at the very top of the superstructure breaking at its base, and the antenna tumbling down.
+ Soon, there was a second sign indicating the presence of the nanofilaments, a sign that almost made Wang break down.
+ Judgment Day's wide deck was empty save for one man standing near the stern hosing down the ship's bollards.
+ From his vantage point, Wang saw everything clearly.
+ The moment that that section of the ship passed between the pillars, the hose broke into two pieces not too far from the man, and water spilled out.
+ The man's body stiffened, and the nozzle tumbled from his hand.
+ He remained standing for a few seconds, then fell.
+ As his body contacted the deck, it came apart in two halves.
+ The top half crawled through the expanding pool of blood, but had to use two arms that were bloody stumps.
+ The hands had been cleanly sliced off.
+ After the stern of the ship went between the two pillars, Judgment Day continued to sail forward at the same speed, and everything seemed normal.
+ But then Wang heard the sound of the engine shift into a strange whine, before turning into chaotic noise.
+ It sounded like a wrench being thrown into the rotor of a large motor—no, many, many wrenches.
+ He knew this was the result of the rotating parts of the engine having been cut.
+ After a piercing, tearing sound, a hole appeared in the side of the stern of Judgment Day, made by a large metallic piece punching through the hull.
+ A broken component flew out of the hole and fell into the water, causing a large column of water to shoot up.
+ As it briefly flew past, Wang recognized it as a section of the engine crankshaft.
+ A thick column of smoke poured out of the hole.
+ Judgment Day, which had been sailing along the right shore, now began to turn, dragging this smoky tail.
+ Soon it crossed over the canal and smashed into the left shore.
+ As Wang looked, the giant prow deformed as it collided into the slope, slicing open the hill like water, causing waves of earth to spill in all directions.
+ At the same time, Judgment Day began to separate into more than forty slices, each slice half a meter thick.
+ The slices near the top moved faster than the slices near the bottom, and the ship spread open like a deck of cards.
+ As the forty-some metal slices moved past each other, the piercing noise was like countless giant fingernails scratching against glass.
+ By the time the intolerable noise ended, Judgment Day was spilled on the shore like a stack of plates carried by a stumbling waiter, the plates near the top having traveled the farthest.
+ The slices looked as soft as cloth, and rapidly deformed into complicated shapes impossible to imagine as having once belonged to a ship.
+ Soldiers rushed toward the shore from the slope.
+ Wang was surprised to find so many men hidden nearby.
+ A fleet of helicopters arrived along the canal with their engines roaring; crossed the canal surface, which was now covered by an iridescent oil slick; hovered over the wreckage of Judgment Day; and began to drop large quantities of fire suppression foam and powder.
+ Shortly, the fire in the wreckage was under control, and three other helicopters began to drop searchers into the wreckage with cables.
+ Colonel Stanton had already left.
+ Wang picked up the binoculars he'd left on top of his hat.
+ Overcoming his trembling hands, he observed Judgment Day.
+ By this time, the wreckage was mostly covered by fire-extinguishing foam and powder, but the edges of some of the slices were left exposed.
+ Wang saw the cut surfaces, smooth as mirrors.
+ They reflected the fiery red light of dusk perfectly.
+ He also saw a deep red spot on the mirror surface.
+ He wasn't sure if it was blood.
+ Three days later
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you understand Trisolaran civilization?
+ YE WENJIE: No.
+ We received only very limited information.
+ No one has real, detailed knowledge of Trisolaran civilization except Mike Evans and other core members of the Adventists who intercepted their messages.
+ INTERROGATOR: Then why do you have such hope for it, thinking that it can reform and perfect human society?
+ YE: If they can cross the distance between the stars to come to our world, their science must have developed to a very advanced stage.
+ A society with such advanced science must also have more advanced moral standards.
+ INTERROGATOR: Do you think this conclusion you drew is scientific?
+ YE: ...
+ INTERROGATOR: Let me presume to guess: Your father was deeply influenced by your grandfather's belief that only science could save China.
+ And you were deeply influenced by your father.
+ YE: (sighing quietly) I don't know.
+ INTERROGATOR: We have already obtained all the Trisolaran messages intercepted by the Adventists.
+ YE: Oh ... what happened to Evans?
+ INTERROGATOR: He died during the operation to capture Judgment Day.
+ But the posture of his body pointed us to the computers holding copies of the Trisolaran messages.
+ Thankfully, they were all encoded with the same self-interpreting code used by Red Coast.
+ YE: Was there a lot of data?
+ INTERROGATOR: Yes, about twenty-eight gigabytes.
+ YE: That's impossible.
+ Interstellar communication is very inefficient.
+ How can so much data have been transmitted?
+ INTERROGATOR: We thought so at first, too.
+ But things were not at all as we had imagined—not even in our boldest, most fantastic imaginations.
+ How about this?
+ Please read this section of the preliminary analysis of the captured data, and you can see the reality of the Trisolaran civilization, compared with your beautiful fantasies.
+
+ “没关系，我已经没有放射性了。”
+ 史强对坐在旁边的汪淼说，“这两天，我让人家像洗面口袋似的翻出来洗了个遍。
+ 这次会议本来没安排你参加，是我坚决要求请你来的，嘿，我保准咱哥俩这次准能出风头的。”
+ 史强说着，从会议桌上的烟灰缸中拣出一只雪茄屁股，点上后抽一口，点点头，心旷神怡地把烟徐徐吐到对面与会者的面前，其中就有这支雪茄的原主人斯坦顿，一名美国海军陆战队上校，他向大史投去鄙夷的目光。
+ 这次与会的有更多的外国军人，而且都穿上了军装。
+ 在人类历史上，全世界的武装力量第一次面对共同的敌人。
+ 常伟思将军说：“同志们，这次与会的所有人，对目前形势都有了基本的了解，用大史的话说，信息对等了。
+ 人类与外星侵略者的战争已经开始，虽然在四个半世纪后，我们的子孙才会真正面对来自异星的三体人侵者，我们现在与之作战的仍是人类；但从本质上讲，这些人类的背叛者也可以看成来自地球文明之外的敌人，我们是第一次面对这样的敌人。
+ 下一步的作战目标十分明确，就是要夺取‘审判日’号上被截留的三体信息，这些信息，可能对人类文明的存亡具有重要意义。”
+ “我们还没有惊动‘审判日’号，这艘巨轮目前仍以合法的身份行驶在大西洋上，它已向巴拿马运河管理局提出申请，将于四天后通过运河。
+ 这是我们采取行动的一次绝好的机会，随着形势的发展，很可能不会再有这样的机会了。
+ 现在，全球的各个作战中心都在制定行动方案，这些方案将由总部在十小时之内选择并确定一个。
+ 我们这次会议的任务，就是讨论行动方案，最后确定一至三个最可行的上报总部。
+ 各位，时间很紧，我们必须以最高效率工作。”
+ “请注意，所有方案都要确保一点：保证‘审判日’号上三体信息的安全并夺取得它。
+ ‘审判日’号是由油轮改装的，船体上层和内部都增加了复杂的结构，据说即使是船员，在进人不常去的区域时也要凭借地图认路，我们对其结构的了解就更少了。
+ 目前，我们甚至不知道‘审判日’号计算机中心的确切位置，也不知道被截留的三体信息是否存贮于计算机中心的服务器上、有几个备份。
+ 我们要达到目标的唯一途径，就是全面占领和控制‘审判日’号，这中间最困难的，就是在攻击行动中避免敌人删除三体信息。
+ 删除这些信息极其容易，敌人在紧急时刻不太可能进行常规删除，因为以目前的技术很容易恢复，但只需对服务器硬盘或其他存贮装置打上一梭子，一切就都完了，这前后在十秒钟内就能完成。
+ 而我们，必须在行动被觉察前十秒之内，使存贮装置附近的敌人失去行动能力。
+ 由于存贮装置的位置不明，备份数量也不清楚，所以必须在极短的时间内，在被目标觉察之前，消灭‘审判日’号上的全部敌人，同时又不能对其内部的其他设施，特别是计算机设备造成重大损坏。
+ 因此，这次任务十分困难，有人甚至认为是不可能完成的。”
+ 一名日本自卫队军官说：“我们认为，唯一可能成功的行动，是借助于我方潜伏在‘审判日’号内部，并对三体信息的存贮位置熟悉的侦察人员，在行动前控制或转移存贮设备。”
+ 有人问：“对‘审判日’号的监视和侦察一直是由北约军事情报机构和CIA负责的，有这样的潜伏者吗？”
+ “没有。”
+ 北约协调员说。
+ “那我们后面剩下的，就是扯淡了。”
+ 大史插上一句，立刻遭到很多人的白眼。
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“消灭一个封闭结构内部的人员，同时对其中的其他设施又不造成损坏，我们首先想到的就是球状闪电武器。”
+ 丁仪摇摇头：“不行，这种武器已广为人知，我们不知道船体是否装备了屏蔽球状闪电的磁场墙；即使没有，球状闪电虽然可以保证消灭船内的所有人员，但也不能保证同时性；而且，球状闪电进入船体内部后，可能还要在空中游荡一段时间才会释放能量，这段时间短则十几秒钟，长就有可能达到一分钟甚至更多，他们完全有时间察觉到袭击并采取毁灭信息的行动。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说：“那么中子弹呢？”
+ “上校，您应该知道那也是不行的！”
+ 一名俄罗斯军官说，“中子辐射不能瞬间致死，中子弹攻击后，船里敌人剩下的时间够开一次我们这样的会了。”
+ “另一个方案就是神经毒气，但由于其在船内的释放和扩散有一个过程，也不可能达到将军所说的目标。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “剩下的选择就是震荡炸弹和次声波了。”
+ 斯坦顿上校说，人们都期待着他的下文，但他却没有接着说出什么来。
+ 大史说：“震荡炸弹是我们警方用的玩意儿，确实可以一下子把建筑物里的人震昏，但目前好像只对一两个房间有用。
+ 你们有能一次震昏一船人那么大个儿的吗？”
+ 斯坦顿摇摇头，“没有，即使有，那样大的爆炸物也不可能不破坏船内的设施。”
+ “次声波武器呢？”
+ 有人问。
+ “还在实验阶段，无法用于实战。
+ 特别是那船十分巨大，以现在试验中的次声波武器的功率，如果对整个‘审判日’号同时攻击，最多也就是让里面的晕恶心而已。”
+ “哈，”大史抽得只剩下一粒花生大小的雪茄头说，“我说过剩下的就是扯淡了吧，都扯这么长了，大家记住首长的话：时间紧迫！”
+ 他坏笑着转向译员，一名一脸不自在的漂亮女中尉，“回吧同志，意思到了就行。”
+ 但斯坦顿居然似乎听懂了，他用刚刚抽出的一根雪茄指着史强说：“这个警察有什么资格这么对我们讲话？”
+ “你的资格呢？”
+ 大史反问。
+ “斯坦顿上校是资深的特种作战专家，他几乎参加过越战以来所有的重大军事行动。”
+ 一名北约军官说。
+ “那告诉你我的资格：二十多年前，我所在的侦察排，穿插到越军纵深几十公里，占领了那里的一座严密设防的水电站，阻止了越南人炸坝阻断我军进攻道路的计划。
+ 这就是我的资格：我战胜过打败了你们的敌人。”
+ “够了大史！”
+ 常伟思拍拍桌子说，“不要扯远了，你可以说出自己的方案。”
+ “我看没必要在这个警察身上浪费时间。”
+ 斯坦顿上校轻蔑地说，同时开始点雪茄。
+ 没等译员翻译，大史就跳起来说：“泡立死（Police），我两次听出这个词了，咋的，看不起警察？
+ 要说甩一堆炸弹把那大船炸成碎末，那你们军人行；但要是从里面完好地取出什么东西，别看你肩上扛着几颗星，还不如小偷儿。
+ 这种事儿，要出邪招，绝对的邪招！
+ 这个，你们远比不上罪犯，他们是出邪招的大师！
+ 知道那招儿能邪到什么程度？
+ 我办过一个盗窃案，罪犯能把行驶中的列车中间的一节车厢偷了，前后的其余部分又完好地接起来开到终点站，用的工具只是一根钢丝绳和几只铁钩子。
+ 这才是特种作战专家！
+ 而像我这样儿在基层摸爬滚打了十几年的重案刑警，受到了他们最好的培养和教育。”
+ “说你的方案，否则就不要再发言了！”
+ 常伟思指着大史说。
+ “这儿这么多重量级人物，我刚才怕轮不上我，那样老领导您又会说我这人没礼貌了。”
+ “你已经没礼貌到家了！
+ 快些。
+ 说你的邪招！”
+ 史强拿起一支笔，在桌面上画了两条弯曲的平行线，“这是运河，”
+ 又拿起烟灰缸放到两条线之间，“这是‘审判日’号。”
+ 然后，他探身越过桌面，一把扯下了斯坦顿上校刚点燃的雪茄。
+ “我不能容忍这个白痴了！”
+ 上校站起来大叫。
+ “史强，出去。”
+ 常伟思厉声说。
+ “等我说完，就一分钟。”
+ 大史说着，向斯坦顿伸出另一只手。
+ “什么？”
+ 上校不解地问。
+ “再给我一支。”
+ 斯坦顿犹豫了一下，从一个精致的木盒中又拿出一支雪茄递给史强，后者将第一支雪茄冒烟的一头按到桌面上，使它竖立在桌子上画的巴拿马运河岸边，将另一支的一头弄平，立到“运河”的另一边。
+ “在运河两岸立两根柱子，柱子之间平行地扯上许多细丝，间距半米左右，这些细丝是汪教授他们制造出来的那种叫‘飞刃’的纳米材料。”
+ 史强说完，站在那里等了几秒钟，举起双手对着还没有反应过来的人们说：“完了，就这些。”
+ 说完转身走出了会场。
+ 空气凝固了，所有人像石化般一动不动，连周围电脑的嗡嗡声似乎都变得小心翼翼。
+ 不知过了多久，才有人怯生生地打破沉寂：“江教授，‘飞刃’是丝状的吗？”
+ 汪淼点点头，“用我们现有的分子建筑技术，只能生产出丝状的材料，粗细大约相当于头发丝的十分之一……
+ 这些史警官会前向我了解过。”
+ “现有的数量够吗？”
+ “运河有多宽？
+ 船的高度？”
+ “运河最窄处一百五十米，‘审判日’号高三十一米，吃水八米左右。”
+ 汪淼盯着桌上的雪茄，粗略计算了一下，“基本上够吧。”
+ 又是一阵漫长的沉默，与会者都在试图使自己从震惊中恢复过来。
+ “如果存贮三体信息的设备，硬盘光盘之类的，也被切割呢？”有人问。
+ “几率不大吧。”
+ “被切割也问题不大，”一名计算机专家说，“那种细丝极其锋利，切口一定很齐，在这种状态下，无论是硬盘光盘，还是集成电路存贮体，其中的信息绝大部分都可以恢复。”
+ “还有别的更可行的方案吗？”
+ 常伟恩看看会场，没人说话，“好，下面就集中讨论这个方案，开始研究细节吧。”
+ 一直沉默的斯坦顿上校站了起来，“我去叫警官回来。”
+ 常伟思挥挥手示意他坐下，然后喊了一声：“大史！”
+ 史强走了进来，带着那一脸坏笑看了看众人，拿起桌上“运河”边上的两支雪茄，把点过的塞到嘴里，另一支揣进口袋。
+ 有人问：“‘审判日’号通过时，那两根柱子能承受‘飞刃’吗？
+ 会不会柱子首先被割断呢？”
+ 汪淼说：“这个能解决，有少量片状的‘飞刃’材料，可以用作细丝在柱子上固定处的垫片。”
+ 下面的讨论主要是在海军军官和航海专家们之间进行了。
+ “‘审判日’号是巴拿马运河能通过的最大吨位的船只了，吃水很深，所以还要考虑纳米丝在水下的布设。”
+ “水下部分比较困难，如果时间来不及倒是可以放弃，那里主要放置发动机、燃油和一些压舱物，噪音、震动和干扰都很大，环境恶劣，计算机中心和类似的机构不太可能设在那个位置。
+ 倒是在水上部分，如果纳米丝的间距再小一些，效果肯定更好。”
+ “那在运河的三个船闸之一动手是最好的了，‘审判日’号是巴拿马尺型船，通过时正好填满船闸，‘飞刃’丝的长度只需三十二米左右，间距可以很小，立柱子和拉丝的操作相对也容易些，特别是水下部分。”
+ “不行，船闸处情况复杂，船在闸中要由四台轨道机车牵引通过，速度很慢，而这时也肯定是‘审判日’号上最警觉的时候，在切割过程中时极有可能被发现。”
+ “是否可以考虑米拉弗洛莱斯船闸外面的美洲大桥？
+ 桥墩就可以用作拉丝的柱子。”
+ “不行，桥墩的间距太宽，‘飞刃’材料肯定不够的。”
+ “那么我们就确定下来，行动位置是盖拉德水道的最窄处，一百五十米宽，算上建支柱的余量，按一百七十米吧。”
+ 汪淼说：“要这样，拉丝的间距最小就是五十厘米，再小，材料不够了。”
+ “那就是说，”大史吐出一口烟，“得想法让那船白天过运河。”
+ “为什么？”
+ “夜里船上的人睡觉啊，都是躺着的，五十厘米的空当太大了，白天他们就是坐着或蹲着，也够了。”
+ 响起了零星的几声笑，重压下的人们感到了一丝带着血腥味的轻松。
+ “你真是个魔鬼。”
+ 一位联合国女官员对大史说。
+ “会伤及无辜吗？”
+ 汪淼问，他的声音中带着明显可以听出来的颤抖。
+ 一名海军军官回答：“过船闸时要有十几名接缆工人上船，不过船通过后他们就下去了。
+ 巴拿马引水员要随船走完八十二公里的运河，肯定要牺牲掉。”
+ 一名CIA官员说：“还有‘审判日’号上的一部分船员，他们对这船是干什么的可能并不知情。”
+ “教授，这些事现在不用想，这不是你们要考虑的事情。
+ 我们要取得的信息关系到人类文明的存亡，会有人做出最后决定的。”
+ 常伟思说。
+ 散会时，斯坦顿上校把那个精致的雪茄木盒推到史强面前：“警官，上好的哈瓦纳，送给你了。”
+ 四天后，巴拿马运河盖拉德水道。
+ 汪淼没有一点儿身处异国他乡的感觉。
+ 他知道，西面不远处是美丽的加通湖，东面则是壮丽的美洲大桥和巴拿马城，但他都无缘见到，两天前他乘坐飞机从国内直接飞到巴拿马城附近的托库门军用机场，然后就乘直升机直接来到这里。
+ 眼前的景色太平常了，正在进行的运河拓宽工程使两岸山坡上的热带雨林变得稀稀拉拉，坡上露出了大片黄土，那色彩真的使汪淼感到对这里很熟悉。
+ 运河看上去也很普通，可能是因为在这一段它十分狭窄的缘故。
+ 这段水道是在上世纪初由十万人一锹锹开凿出来的。
+ 汪淼和斯坦顿上校坐在半山坡一座凉亭的躺椅上，两人都穿着宽大的花衬衣，大草帽扔在一边，看上去就是两个普通的游客。
+ 在这个位置，下面的运河尽收眼底。
+ 就在他们下方的运河两岸上，分别平放着两根二十四米长的钢柱，五十根一百六十米的超强度纳米丝已经按约零点五米的间距连接在两根钢柱上，只是每根纳米丝靠右岸的一端还连接了一段普通钢丝，这可以使纳米丝随着系在上面的坠物沉入河底，这样做是为了让其他的船只通过。
+ 好在运河上的运输并不像汪淼想象的那么繁忙，平均每天只有四十艘左右的大型船舶通过。
+ 两根钢柱的一端都与活动铰结相连，只有等待“审判日”号前面的最后一艘船通过，才能拉回普通钢丝，把纳米丝在右岸钢柱上做最后固定，然后钢柱才能立起来。
+ 行动的代号是“古筝”，这是很自然的联想，而纳米丝构成的切割网则被称为“琴”。
+ 一小时前，“审判日”号已由加通湖驶人盖拉德水道。
+ 斯坦顿问汪淼以前是否来过巴拿马，汪淼说没有。
+ “我在1989年来过。”
+ 上校说。
+ “是那次战争吧？”
+ “是，但对我来说是最没有印象的一次战争，只记得在梵蒂冈大使馆前为被包围的诺列加总统播放杰克逊的摇滚舞曲《无处可逃》，那是我的主意。”
+ 下面的运河中，一艘通体雪白的法国游轮正在缓缓驶过，铺着绿地毯的甲板上，有几名穿得花花绿绿的游客在闲逛。
+ “二号观察哨报告，目标前方已没有任何船只。”
+ 斯坦顿的步话机响了起来。
+ “把‘琴’立起来。”斯坦顿命令道。
+ 几名头戴安全帽工人模样的人出现在两岸。
+ 汪淼站起身来，但上校拉住了他，“教授，你不用管，他们会干得很好。”
+ 汪淼看着右岸的人利索地抽回连接纳米丝的普通钢丝，把已经绷紧的纳米丝在钢柱上固定好。
+ 然后，两岸的人同时拉动几根长钢索，使两根钢柱缓缓竖立起来。
+ 为了伪装，两根钢柱上都挂了一些航标和水位标志。
+ 他们干得很从容，甚至看上去有些懒洋洋的，像是在从事一件平淡乏味的工作。
+ 汪淼盯着钢柱之间的空间看，那里看上去一无所有，但死亡之琴已经就位。
+ “目标距琴四公里！”
+ 步话机里的声音说。
+ 斯坦顿放下步话机，又继续刚才的话题，“我第二次来巴拿马是1999年，参加过运河主权交接的仪式，很奇怪，当我们来到管理局大楼前时，看到星条旗已经降下了，据说是应美国政府要求提前一天降下的，以避免在众人面前降旗的尴尬场面出现……
+ 那时以为是在目睹一个历史性的时刻，现在想想，这些事情是多么的微不足道。”
+ “目标距琴三公里！”
+ “是啊，微不足道。”
+ 汪淼附和道。
+ 他根本没有听清斯坦顿在说什么，世界的其余部分对他来说已经不存在，他的全部注意力都集中到还没有在视野中出现的“审判日”号上。
+ 这时，早晨从太平洋东海岸升起的太阳正向太平洋西海岸落下，运河中金光粼粼，更近的下方，死亡之琴静静地立着，两根钢柱黑乎乎的，反射不出一点儿阳光，看上去比流过它们中间的运河更古老。
+ “目标距琴两公里！”
+ 斯坦顿似乎没有听到步话机中的声音，仍在滔滔不绝地说着：“自从得知外星人的舰队正在向地球飞来后，我就得了失忆症。
+ 很奇怪，过去的事都记不清了，我指的是自己经历过的那些战争，都记不清了，像刚才所说的，那些战争都那么微不足道。
+ 知道这件事以后，每个人在精神上都将成为新人，世界也将成为新的世界。
+ 我一直在想，假设在两千年前或更早的时间，人们知道有一支外星入侵舰队将在几千年后到达，那现在的人类文明是什么样子？
+ 教授，你能设想一下吗？”
+ “哦，不能……”
+ 汪淼心不在焉地敷衍着。
+ “目标距琴一点五公里！”
+ “教授，我想您将成为新世纪的盖拉德，我们期待着您的‘巴拿马运河’建成。
+ 不是吗？
+ 太空电梯其实就是一条运河，像巴拿马运河连接了两个大洋一样，太空电梯将地球和太空连接起来……”
+ 汪淼现在知道，上校唠叨着这些无意义的废话，其实是想帮他度过这一艰难时刻。
+ 他很感激，但这作用不大。
+ “目标距琴一公里！”
+ “审判日”号出现了，在从侧面山脊上照过来的落日光芒中，它是河面一片金波上的一个黑色剪影。
+ 这艘六万吨级的巨轮比汪淼想象的要大得多，它出现时，仿佛西边又突现了一座山峰，虽然汪淼知道运河可以通过七万吨级的船舶，但目睹这样的巨轮在如此窄小的河道中行驶，确实有一种奇怪的感觉。
+ 与它的巨大相比，下面的河流似乎已不存在，它像一座在陆地上移动的大山。
+ 适应了朝阳的光芒后，汪淼看到“审判日”号的船体是黑色的，上层建筑是雪白的，那面巨型天线不见了。
+ 巨轮发动机的轰鸣声已经可以听到，还有一阵轰轰的水声，那是它浑圆的船首推起的浪排冲击运河两岸发出的。
+ 随着“审判日”号与死亡之琴距离的缩短，汪淼的心跳骤然加速，呼吸也急促起来，他有一种立刻逃离的冲动，但一阵虚弱使他已无法控制自己的身体。
+ 他的心中突然涌起了一阵对史强的憎恨，这个王八蛋怎么会想出这样的主意？！
+ 正像那位联合国女官员所说，他是个魔鬼！
+ 但这种感觉转瞬即逝，他想到如果现在大史在身边，那自己的情况会好得多。
+ 斯坦顿上校曾申请大史同来，但常伟思没批准，那边现在更需要他。
+ 汪淼感觉到上校拍了拍他的手。
+ “教授，一切都会过去的。”
+ “审判日”号正在过去，它在通过死亡之琴。
+ 当它的舰首接触两根钢技之间似乎空无一物的平面时，汪淼头皮一紧，但什么都没有发生，巨轮庞大的船体从两根钢技间徐徐驶过。
+ 当船体通过一半时，汪淼甚至怀疑钢柱间的纳米丝是不是真的就不存在。
+ 但一个小小的迹象否定了他的怀疑，他注意到船体上层建筑最高处的一根细长的天线从下部折断了，天线滚落下来。
+ 很快，纳米丝存在的第二个迹象出现了，而这险些让汪淼彻底崩溃。
+ “审判日”号宽阔的甲板上很空荡，只是后甲板上有一个人在用水龙头冲洗缆桩，汪淼从高处看得很清楚，当船的这一部分从钢柱间移过的瞬间，那人的身体突然僵硬了，水龙头从他手里滑落；与此同时，连接龙头的胶皮水带也在不远处断成两截，水从那里白花花地喷了出来，那人直直地站了几秒钟就倒下了，他的身体在接触甲板的同时分成两截。
+ 那人的上半部分还在血泊中爬行，但只能用两只半条的手臂爬，因为他的手臂也被切断了一半。
+ 船尾通过了两根钢柱后，“审判日”号仍在以不变的速度向前行驶，一时看不出更多的异样。
+ 但汪淼听到发动机的声音发生了怪异的扭曲，接着被一阵杂乱的巨响所代替，那声音听起来像一台大马达的转子中被扔进去一个扳手，不，是很多个扳手一一他知道，这是发动机的转动部分被切割后发出的。
+ 在一声刺耳的破裂声后，“审判日”号的船尾一侧出现了一个破洞，这洞是被一个巨大的金属构件撞出的。
+ 那个飞出的构件旋即落人水中，激起了高高的水柱，在它一闪而过之际，汪淼看出那是船上发动机的一段曲轴。
+ 一股浓烟从破洞中涌出，在右岸直线航行了一段的“审判日”号就拖着这道烟尾开始转向，很快越过河面，撞到左岸上。
+ 汪淼看到，冲上岸坡的巨大船首在急剧变形的同时，将土坡像水那样冲开，激起汹涌的土浪。
+ 与此同时，“审判日”号开始散成四十多片薄片，每一片的厚度是半米，从这个距离看去是一片片薄板，上部的薄片前冲速度最快，与下面的逐级错开来，这艘巨轮像一叠被向前推开的扑克牌，这四十多个巨大的薄片滑动时相互磨擦，发出一阵尖利的怪音，像无数只巨指在划玻璃。
+ 在这令人无法忍受的声音消失后，“审判日”号已经化做一堆岸上的薄片，越靠上前冲得越远，像从一个绊倒的服务生手中向前倾倒的一摞盘子。
+ 那些薄片看上去像布片般柔软，很快变形，形成了一堆复杂的形状，让人无法想象它曾是一艘巨轮。
+ 大批士兵开始从山坡上冲向河岸，汪淼很惊奇附近究竟在什么时候什么地方隐蔽了这么多人。
+ 直升机群轰鸣着沿运河飞来，越过覆盖着一层色彩斑斓的油膜的河面，悬停在“审判日”号的残骸上空，抛撒大量的白色灭火剂和泡沫，很快控制了残骸中正在蔓延的火势，另外三架直升机迅速用缆索向残骸放下搜索人员。
+ 斯坦顿上校已经离开了，汪淼拿起了他放在草帽上的望远镜，克服着双手的颤抖观察被“飞刃”切割成四十多片的“审判日”号。
+ 这时，它有一大半已被灭火粉剂和泡沫所覆盖，但仍有一部分暴露着。
+ 汪淼看到了切割面，像镜面般光滑，毫不走形地映着天空火红的朝霞。
+ 他还看到了镜面上一块深红色的圆斑，不知是不是血。
+ 三天以后。
+ 审问者：你了解三体文明吗？
+ 叶文洁：不了解，我们得到的信息很有限，事实上，三体文明真实和详细的面貌，除了伊文斯等截留三体信息的降临派核心人员，谁都不清楚。
+ 审问者：那你为什么对其抱有那样的期望，认为它们能够改造和完善人类社会呢？
+ 叶文洁：如果他们能够跨越星际来到我们的世界，说明他们的科学已经发展到相当的高度，一个科学如此昌明的社会，必然拥有更高的文明和道德水准。
+ 审问者：你认为这个结论，本身科学吗？
+ 叶文洁：……
+ 审问者：让我冒昧推测一下：你的父亲深受你祖父科学救国思想的影响，而你又深受父亲的影响。
+ 叶文治（不为人察觉地叹息一声）：我不知道。
+ 审问者：现在告诉你，我们已经得到了被降临派截留的全部三体信息。
+ 叶文洁：哦…… 伊文斯怎么样了？
+ 审问者：在对”审判日”号采取行动的过程中，他死了。
+ （伊文斯被“飞刃”切割成三段。
+ 当时他身处“审判日”号的指挥中心，他最上面的那部分向前爬行了一米多，死的时候双眼盯着爬向的那个方向，正是在那个方向的一台电脑中，找到了被截留的三体信息。 ）
+ 叶文洁：信息很多吗？
+ 审问者：很多，约28G。
+ 叶文洁：这不可能，星际间超远程通讯的效率很低，怎么可能传送这么大的信息量？！
+ 审问者：开始时我们也这样想，但事情远远超过了所有人的想象，即使是最大胆、最离奇的想象。
+ 这样吧，请你阅读这些信息的一部分，你将看到自己美好幻想中的三体文明是什么样子。
+