Mo Yingfeng
Translated by Jacob Zhu
Dad once said, that is a river, everyone repeated: river... river...
When I was a child, I thought our family lived by the river, but then I heard from others that we originally came from the mountains, how is that possible? There is a river. People who have seen the world say, "A river is a river where boats can pass, and a river where boats can't pass is not a river." When I was a child, I had never seen a boat, but I heard my father say that a boat is like a duck, bigger than a duck. When I saw a goose for the first time, I jumped for joy and shouted, "Look at that boat! There's a boat here!"
I never figured out exactly what I meant by a river until now. When the water is long, do you call it a river? If the water is wide, is it also a river? Is there anything on the river that can be navigated by boat? Some things are funny when you can't understand them. Rivers, creeks, streams, it is what it is, and it doesn't matter what you call it.
"Hey River! Listen to me ......"
I often stand by the river and shout. The river does not answer, it is deaf. It clatters and rushes on, not knowing what it is going to do.
My father said I would have a lot of money in the future because of this river. He took me to my grandfather's grave to see the geomancy. My grandfather was a geomancy master and he made a lot of money. He was very famous and had various sizes of round gauges and a topography book. But he didn't choose this mountain for his grave; it was my father who looked at it. My father was a savage, so he knew nothing about geomancy, only a little from his grandfather's gossip. He pointed to the river and said to me: "Look, this river flows out from the left, goes in the opposite direction, and then crosses several bays in front of it, gathering a deep pool before leaving. When the water reaches this point, it seems reluctant to leave. Blessed water! Blessed mountain, it is a river of wealth..."
My grandfather's grave is on the hill behind my house, and this river of wealth not only governs the hill of graves, but also the house yard. However, my family's house is not isolated, the whole village is crowded together. The river belongs to everyone, so according to geomancy it is logical that everyone would be wealthy. However in another year, many families were so poor that they had no rice to feed themselves, and a dozen of old and young people died of starvation for some unknown reason.
I love the river, it is fun to play around. There is grass on the river instead of soy and green beans grown in farms, you can graze the cows, they are generous companions. The grain and rice grown is fed to the people, and the cow eats the grass with its cubs. As long as there is grass on the riverbank, it does not eat the wheats from the farmlands. It knows that the wheat grows from the fields, that the fields are ploughed by it, and it cherishes its labour. The cow eats grass and moves slowly, going slower than the sun. I would take off my coat and trousers and jump into the river to float and swim. Sometimes when I saw a girl walking in the distance, I hid under the roots of a willow tree and silently counted her steps. one step, two steps, ninety-nine steps ...... and estimated when she will be approaching, then swooped up to the riverbank and stood naked and drenched in water in front of her. She is bound to jump and twist her head back, cursing as she goes. I had fun, I enjoyed it, I liked hearing the scolding, it tickled my bones. The elders said that if you knew how to swim well, you could go out into the world someday when you’re older and not be afraid of capsizing.
On the river there are blackberries from early March and May whilst some are grown recently in July. They all grow on small thorny trees. The March fruits are sour, May fruits are sweet and the July berries are the biggest and juiciest. Few people eat the berries from July, these silly pups. I had enough to eat, and when I had eaten enough I brought it back with me, filling my coat bag to the brim. When the bubbles burst, the bag turned a saucy colour and I couldn't wash it off with ash. My mother said that the black puffs were insect-prone in July and should not be eaten. I didn't believe her at first, she said hers and I ate mine. Mum broke open the puffs and showed them to me. "Oh my!" I shouted in my dialect tongue, fainting with fear. The black puffy seeds were densely packed with worms, thinner than the tip of a needle. I was thick-hearted and thick-eyed, and God knows how many worms I had eaten. Master Xianman, who was in the house above, said that the worms would grow into maggots when eaten in the stomach. I thought, "No wonder there were so many maggots in the maw. Master Xianman also said that the worms would sometimes crawl down my throat and into my mouth, which scared me so much that I immediately ran into the river and washed my mouth with a quart of water. For a long time afterwards, I always suspected that my belly would be burst by the maggots, and I often had frightening dreams of it.
Eating bugs wasn’t the scariest part but eating water mangrove is the real scary part. The riverbanks are full of water mangrove, which is very poisonous. Ask the adults what the vine looks like, most of the adults won't tell you, they just tell you that what the cows don't eat is the water mangrove vine. The bull's eye is different from the human eye, which can see ghosts. There is a ghost of death beside each vine, and every person who eats a vine must be transformed into a new vine. If he cannot find a replacement, he will stand on the riverbank for a thousand years and cannot leave. Cows can see ghosts, and when they see them, they run away. It is one thing to see a ghost or not, and another to eat it when you know it is there. I have seen the neighbour's daughter-in-law came to eat the vine. That woman, what a looker, with her dark eyes and long eyelashes, always squinting up at people and shooting a seductive light through the dark slit. I was still a child when she became a bride, and she was always two or three years older than me, wasn't she? I was afraid of that light in the slit of her eyes, it made my body tingle. I avoided her and never looked at her face to face. That day she came up to the river to eat the water vine, and I was leading the cows to graze on the other bank. She looked different from her usual appearance, her face was carved out of wood and her eyes were fish-blistered. Her legs were straight, like two moving sticks, and her little blue coat, faded and empty, fluttered and swayed in the wind. His hair is dishevelled and torn in the wind as if by a hundred people.
Strangely enough, she was laughing, a strange laugh that made people cringe. She didn't see me, nor the cow, but I guess she saw nothing but the water mangrove. She grabbed that poisonous thing, strangled off the leaves and shoved them into her mouth, chewing woodenly, green water running from the corners of her mouth. I froze, thinking I had seen a water mangrove ghost. How could a ghost not be afraid of the sun when it was out in broad daylight? I thought, "No, she is the neighbour's daughter-in-law, Fang Mei. I saw her picking cucumbers from the vegetable garden early in the morning, she is a living person. Why did she eat the water mangrove vine? Didn't she know that the vine was poisonous? I woke up with a start. She was seeking death. OH my goodness！
“Come on, someone! Sister Fang is eating the water manganese vine! Help!”
I shouted and shouted. The wind sent my shouts in the opposite direction, and the villagers couldn't hear me clearly and swung their heads around towards me in confusion. I shouted a few times, my voice hoarse, I was in a hurry, and I stammered. I tripped across the river and ran towards the village, pointing my finger at the riverbank, waving and making horrified gestures.
Fang Mei was dragged back and the village turned into a pot of boiling porridge. They tied her up like a meat dumpling. I wondered, "These heartless people, they didn't save her, but tied her up, because they thought she would die slowly? It was the first time I looked at her seriously and she looked even better than usual lying on the ground. I felt sorry for her. She should never have married into this family. Her man was incompetent too, just crouching on the ground with his head in his hands, crying like a castrated pig. I suddenly thought that some single man would carry her back to save her life. If I had been older, a year or two older, I would have had the courage to take her. What fools, to let a good woman die in her home. Sign…
Then someone brought in a woven bamboo mat, which is used for drying grain during the autumn harvest. Some people piled the woven mat with their hands and feet. Then they lifted the meat palm onto the woven mat and rolled it up so that only a human head was left outside. Then there was a shout and someone scooped up a scoop of dung from a thatched jar, shouting as they walked along, "Look at this, you water mangled vine eater!" The ladle of dung reached out to Fang Mei's mouth. Fang Mei cried, twisting her head and begging, "Do a good deed and let me die!" Before she could say more, someone pinched her nose. She clenched her teeth and shut her mouth, determined to suffocate herself. Soon, her face was red and her eyes bulged. The veins on her forehead flared up and she finally couldn't hold on and opened her mouth. In that very moment, filth poured into her mouth and got all over her face. She blew hard, splashing gold everywhere, and then vomited with a loud, wailing sound. First, she vomited feces, then she vomited the scum of the water vine and finally green bile. The man pushed the jar and rolled her a few times to get her out of the filthy spot. He poured a basin of water over her face as if she were a watery taro dug out of the gutter.
She closed her eyes, grunted for a while and passed out.
A blind old woman, sitting on the doorstep, facing the flowing river, sang sadly
"Raise a son, not a daughter, a flower girl.
A woman's life is a thin sheet of paper.
Good for her mother to enjoy the blessings.
Good for her man to live happily ever after ......"
No one listens to her singing, which she always does, and she has long been called an insane person. When you listen carefully, she sings with a bit of flavour, mostly in relation to current events in the village. The river continued to rumble as the pentatonic singing broke off.
The whole village is talking about the water manganese vine ghost. They said that Fang Mei was possessed by a ghost. Her mother did not scold her, nor did the man beat her, but only had a quarrel and then went off to die. Some people counted the number of people who had died from eating the vine, young and old, those who had seen and those who had heard, and they counted dozens of them. More than that! The river is 30 miles long, and there are ghosts of the water vine all along the way, who can count them?
On this night, no one dared to go down to the river to catch shrimps.
Catching prawns in the river at night was the most enjoyable of all. Take down a bamboo fence, split it into gabions, tie it into a torch, take a rice drainer and carry a bucket, and you're good to go. If you have a partner, invite one, but if you don't, you can go alone. The river has few deep pools and many shallow pools, so the young glassy shrimps and the old black shrimps like to come to the shallow water at night to rest and cool off. I don't know if it's a resting place or not, the water is not ventilated. That leisurely attitude is very much like resting comfortably. They stretch out their long, thin pincers and twist their soft tentacles, moving slowly on the sinking sand, on the pebbles, or lying still, dumbfounded by the torch shining above them, and crawling towards them when the firelight appears nearby. It is a lover of light, like the moth. At this point, even the dumbest person can catch it with their bare hands, but only from behind. If it accidentally touches its tentacles, it will fall back a few feet and make a splash. If you put a basket behind it and wait for it, you are sure to catch it. I loved to go down to the river to catch shrimps and every year I would burn the bamboo fence to the ground before I would give up. The clear water running down the back of my feet made my heart feel cold; the shrimps struggled in my hands and I couldn't tell you how much fun it was. This was our meat dish. We fed the pigs to sell to others for meat, and only caught shrimps, loaches and carp for ourselves. Even cats know how to eat mice, but don't we people eat something fresh?
For fresh food, there's a trick. After a rainstorm, the water is so yellow that the prawns and shrimps crawl out of their burrows and cling to the walls of the river, poking their heads out for air. At this point, a man comes with a fishing head to clean them up. The triangular head with a long bamboo handle is scraped against the river wall by a few or a large bowl. At this point I only had the right to carry the bucket, I couldn't carry the heads. When I went out to make a turn, I always had to come back with half a bucket of prawns. For this reason, I used to pray to the heavens when I was herding cattle. I would cut a willow stick with a bakelite knife, split it in half and make a set of trigrams to divine the fortune. The trigram would be Yin on a cloudy day, Yang on a sunny day, and Xun on a non-sunny day. "One yin trigram for clouds coming, two yin trigrams for rain, and three yin trigrams for the sky falling."
Taking advantage of the rain is not quite the hustle and bustle, but when it comes to the day of the fish, it's a real festival. Every year, when the early rice seeds are strong, the river always dries up and the water is introduced into the fields. This is a great opportunity to have a fish festival. The villagers agree to boil water with Polygonum multiflorum, and make a mess of it by crushing tea kernels and soaking them in it. When it gets dark, a shout goes out: "Let's go and play with the fish!" The village was immediately abuzz with excitement. Countless torches flocked to the river, and the sound of shouting and shouting rang through the night air. Except for those lying in their cradles and those who were sick in bed, no one would stay home to sleep. Some occupy the bay and get off the fishnet, some wander the riverbank with their harpoons, some cut off the mouth of the water with their fishing heads, and some wait at the beach with their nets. Most of the tangos, the saeki, are standing in the shallow water with their shawls and skips, waiting for small fish and shrimps to come to the surface. Putting on the haunting drug had an immediate effect, and the river was full of fish and prawns that were drunk. Some turned white, some floated, some fled with the current and some tried to jump onto the bank. Those who caught big fish hailed their good fortune, while those who didn't mumbled and cursed the ghosts of bad times. The shouts of the people, the jumping of the fish, the tumbling of the water and the swimming of the fires almost lifted the riverbed. Not everyone had a significant catch, some had worked hard all night and still came up empty-handed. I don't regret the lack of harvest, half of it is catching fish and half of it is playing. Except for the New Year, when you can play the Di Hua drum, there is nothing better than this.
Some people have come to the conclusion that some people are fish-like and others are cats. He who is a fisher of men can catch a big fish without much effort, but the fish will run away as soon as it sees the cat men.
In our village, the most famous fisherman is the Fourth Deaf Man. He was the fourth in line, hence his name, but no one knows his real name. Fang Mei, who eats water mangrove vines, is his daughter-in-law, and he is Fang Mei's family master. In his house, he has a fishnet, a net, a fishing rod and a fishing head, so he has all kinds of fishing equipment.
There is a legend in the village that when the four deaf man first went down to the river to look for fish, they caught a fish in their hands. When he stepped on a rock, his foot sank into a hole, and he felt a slippery feeling underneath his foot, and a living creature struggling. When he reached out, he caught another salamander. There is no way to check the truth of this story, so when I asked the four deaf man about it, he just laughed, not knowing if he had understood. Whether it is true or not, it is true that the four deaf man are close to fish.
Some say that he is the nemesis of fish and shrimps, and that whenever there is a river in that place, there are bound to be a few nemeses descending on the river, as the heavens have decreed. The river is not a peaceful place, as it is also the ghost of the water vine and the nemesis of the fish. I don't know which nosy man has asked an old man to tell him that the four deaf man was born in the river. Unless one is an epileptic. Who would go into the river to give birth? It's a strange thing. I heard that his mother was pregnant with him and never took him seriously, until she was full term, with a big belly and a spring pestle. That day, she was washing clothes on the stone jetty by the river, pounded a few times and her stomach hurt. Knowing it was a seizure, she still tried to finish the laundry. When she finished washing her clothes and put them in a bucket, she stood up, blacked out and fell into the river with a thud. Just then, the baby descended into the human world and the river was red. His mother felt him out of the water and as soon as he was out of the water he wailed. His mother said, "You should really cry, you little boy, who is like you, born in the river! Later, someone told a joke that the boy had been picked up in the river.
The four deaf man is the nemesis and saviour of fish and prawns. For every three fish he caught, he would always take one of them and release it. The same goes for the shrimps, those that jump high and are pregnant, they are picked up and released back into the river. Some people, who were not able to catch fish themselves, would beat the master up when he released the fish. Whenever he came back with fish, someone would follow him around, bowing and kowtowing to ask for two fish to be released. "Fourth father, let me do something good too, all the good things are yours alone, when you die and ascend to heaven, no one will play companion for you!" The deaf man never suspected that there was a ghost in his belly, so he handed over the released fish to the man and asked no more questions about their whereabouts. The man who had received the fish went to the river and, pretending to be a man, broke a willow and put it through his mouth and stuck it on the river bank. When it was dark, he took the fish home again. There are those who are even more cunning than this, who watch out for the actions of the crooks and take the fish away before it gets dark. It is true to the old saying, "The mantis catches the cicada, but the bird is behind it". This trick was played for a long time, but the four deaf man saw through it finally.
So he cursed. The language was vicious, but the tone of his voice was not high, and his mouth murmuring, as if he is cursing to himself. He cursed those people who were wicked and desperate, who had no sons or daughters, and who would die in vain; he prophesied that they would be rotten in their guts if they were wronged, that they would be dragged by the ghosts who fell into the water, that they would die in the river to feed the fish, that they would have a black conscience, that they would be beaten by lightning, that they would give birth to children with no eyes, and so on. When someone comes to him again to ask for fish to be released, he will repeat these curses. If you smile, he will stomp his feet, eyes bulging, cursing more fiercely, often adding a few unpleasant foul words, "thieves, pig intestines," and so on.
He no longer trusted anyone, and every time he released a life by himself. From this he came to the startling conclusion that there are no good people in the world. Anyone who tried to argue with him was only in vain; you could say a piffle of reason, and he would still say the same thing: "There are no good people in the world." When someone thundered in his ear and asked him why he caught and released the fish, he said, "The river feeds the fish, and the fish feed the river. If they are caught and not released, they will all be caught and eaten, and will they still have seeds? Without fish and shrimps in the river, the water will dry up. If the river dries up, how can you live? You want to die? God knows where he learnt this theory from. He stuck to his beliefs and never changed, catching, and releasing fish, year after year.
One year, the people of our village all went mad, and instead of growing food they made steel, they smashed the ready-made iron pots and pans and boiled them down to a congealed heap of iron, which could not be used. We ate all the grain in the barn, so we ate the grass and shared it with pigs and cows. The pigs had big bellies and the cows had even bigger bellies, so the cows ate for a day and the people ate for a year. The pigs and cows had to be killed. After the cows were killed, who would carry the ploughs and harrows? The epileptics who ate the grass took over the work of the oxen themselves. In the end, human labour was not as powerful as the oxen, so after all the hard work, the fields could only produced a few grains of grain. Luckily, with the spring rains, the grass that had been eaten up last year sprouted again this year, so that those who were dying of hunger finally had grass to eat, and not all of them died.
The four deaf man must have been starving, he was near the fish nature and ate fish. God knows what the karma was, the fields did not bear grain and the river did not grow fish. The water is clearer than in previous years, the grass is thinner than in previous years, and the green moss on the rocks has turned black. In previous years, the fish fought in the river, but this year it is so peaceful. The four deaf man dip into the river all day long, but the fish basket on his waist never moves. Some people say that he is so hungry that he catches fish and brings them to his mouth, eating them alive. His daughter-in-law, Fang Mei, believed it to be true and hid in the water mangrove bushes to take a peek. This year, the vines grew better than in previous years. As far as the eye could see, there were water mangrove vines on both sides of the river. Some people said it was because of the sun this year, others said it was because they had eaten everything they could; no other grasses competed with it for fertiliser and that was why it grew so well. I don't know who has a point, but perhaps these things just don't make sense in the first place. Fang Mei hid in the vines for two hours, but she did not see the four deaf man feeding the live fish into their mouths. Later, a firewood collector came along the riverbank, and when he saw Fang Mei in the vine, he was so frightened that he shouted, "Ghost! The firewood was thrown away and the man fell over.
The four deaf man originally looked down on fishing with a rod. He said, "A man with a thin rod, what a sight! Although he had a fishing rod at home, it was only for children to play with. This year, he also took up a fishing rod and sat on a rock with his back and neck hunched, staring at the deep pool in front of him and rubbing his eyes after a while. He finally caught the fishes in the deep pool, which is good for hiding. He caught three carats of fish and held the last one in his hand. The fish was stuck in his hand. He was in pain! The fish was so painful that he wanted to cry for it as he watched its mouth open and close for a long time. Then he woke up with a start as if he had fallen asleep, and when he looked at the fish in his hand, it was dead. He threw the fish on the grass and cursed, "Thief's ghost! The ghost is not small!" He was no longer interested in fishing, so he put his rod away and went home.
The next day he fished again in a different place, as if he had forgotten the previous day's events. However, he never let a fish die in his hands again, one, two, three, every third time he released it. Strangely enough, when he released them, he caught more fish. It was as if the fish that had survived had become tigers, taking the lives of their own kind for their own reward.
It's true that people don't know how to be content. The four deaf man families ate the fish and complained that he should not have released them. He didn't bother to argue with them. He continued to catch three fish and release one. His daughter-in-law, Fang Mei, hates him so much that whenever he goes out with his fishing rod, she curses him behind his back: "A ghostly old man. A monster! Why not die sooner! It probably didn't occur to her that once the four deaf man died, they wouldn't even be able to eat a single fish. The four deaf man couldn't hear her, so she cursed him a thousand times, but he remained the same.
Does letting go of life always make him more productive? Neither. Even the gods cannot calculate everything that happens under the sky. That day there was suddenly no more fish to catch. It was all of a sudden, as if the fish had gone down to the cave lake in groups last night. They were so clean and thorough in their departure that the buoys swung on the water all day, not moving a muscle. Thinking that it was a different day, the four deaf men put away his fishing rod early and planned to return tomorrow.
The next day, it was the same again. On the third day, it was still the same. The four deaf man understood that this was the will of God, and that man could not resist God. Still, he could not leave the riverbank and sat there for a long time in a daze. The fishing rod was stuck at his side, pointing straight up at the blue sky above him. Pointing at it was tantamount to cursing it. How can the sky be so damned powerful at this time of year? People have to survive! It seemed impossible to live, the rice in the field was still just flowering.
The four deaf man just sat and sat while staring at the flowing water.
It had been a long time since anyone had sung, and only the female epileptic still sang
"In my past life I owed you a debt of guilt.
In this life, you ask for my fate.
This little life of mine doesn't matter.
In a blink of the eye everything fades away ......"
Hell knows what she's singing about. It's remarkable that she can still sing, and kind of weird. In these days, even fish and shrimps are extinct, and an epileptic can still sing. What would the four deaf man do if they were also insane? People say that a female insane person cannot pass this hurdle, but she has come through.
Seven or eight out of ten people from the village came over. The rice was yellow, the buckets were ringing, and everyone had new rice to eat. Most of the shrines were decorated with fasting rice, the largest bowls were chosen and the rice was piled up into a small mountain with a pair of chopsticks on top to honour the recently deceased relatives.
The four deaf man's wife have died and the children have gone to the underworld to do their filial duty, leaving a family of six, four of them, he, his daughter-in-law Fang and two granddaughters. In a year of great desolation, even the fish and shrimps in the river were almost dead, but it was good luck to have half of the family left.
Slowly, there were fish in the river again. The four deaf man returned to his old trade, catching and releasing fish, and as the days moved on, the mountains and rivers remained the same.
People don't feel comfortable after a long time of peace and quiet. People in our village like to have a good time. I don't know who first found the river unpleasant and decided to take a hard look at it. First they said that the river was a source of disaster, that it was curved and twisted like an evil dragon. Everyone believed it, remembering that twenty years ago the dragon had been angry and drowned hundreds of people. It was also said that the river was not a dragon, but a dragon that came out of the river and went down the river, carrying the flood down to Dongting Lake, and that the guilty party was the dragon, not the river. Later, it was said that the river had taken over the good land. If it hadn't been for it, all those places would have grown grain. The people of the village were so hungry that when they met they used to ask. "Have you eaten?" This is the greatest care of all. Probably since ancient times, it has been difficult to find food in this place, hence this unique greeting. Rice is cooked, rice is produced in the fields, and the river does not produce rice. So someone said, fill up the river! What a big mouthful! Fill it with what? With mountains, and we have plenty of mountains here. If the river is filled in, where will the water come from? Without water to irrigate the fields, without water for food, people cannot survive. Luckily, the people in our village had read the Doctrine of Golden Mean and had a good solution. In the end, they said that we should leave the river as it is and just straighten it out. When the abacus was rattled, they came up with an amazing sum of fields to be created.
The village people were really united, and when the leader shouted, all those who could walk went up to the river bank with hoes and skips, making it even more lively than when there was a fish festival. In the sun during the day and in the stars at night, no one spent the whole winter roasting in their homes, and the river was straightened out. As winter turned to spring, it was time to make a spring farming. The old bays that had been abandoned were too late to be filled in, so they had to be put aside for the time being.
People in our village are not persistent, they only do things at the beginning and not at the end. After one winter of hustle and bustle and a taste of hard work, the next winter came and no one wanted to take the lead in filling the old bays. It was as if they were all suffering from amnesia and couldn't remember what those old bays were. Every day people walked past without looking. What was once living water became stagnant, the ducks went looking for food, the buffalo went rolling around. The water stank. Only good for the frogs, the stinking water is full of bugs and they are happy to roost there, sleeping during the day and singing hard at night. The song attracts countless water snakes, lurking in the water plants, waiting for the frogs to bring them to their mouths. When they have had their fill, they sometimes come to the shore to catch their breath, and if people accidentally step on them, they will be scared out of their wits even if they are not bitten. There were no leeches in this area, but since the arrival of those stagnant bays, the leeches have fallen from the sky and have grown to millions at once. The leeches are vampires, they can't be torn off and sometimes they burrow half an inch deep into the flesh. Some people planted lotus roots in the stinking bay, but were too afraid of the leeches to go into the water to dig them up. When the lotus seeds ripened, they fell again, and when the lotus leaves gave up, they sprouted again. After a few years, the bay was densely covered with roots. However, the roots did not grow well because the feet of mud were too shallow.
The new river, however, is magnificent, with its straight, pointed banks that plunge into the hills as far as the eye can see. There are no more deep pools, no more water plants. There are only pebbles, sand and concrete lumps at the bottom. Such a riverbed cannot hide fish, and even the shrimps have run out. The river banks are built up with large stones, so that the grasses have no place to take root. The water vines on the river's edge are also extinct, and the poisonous creatures have no place here. Where have the water mangrove ghosts gone? Do they no longer need to find a replacement? It is a mystery. Nowadays, when people want to find death, they don't eat water manganese vine, they eat pesticides instead, potassium ammonia phosphorus, one fifty-nine, all of them. Perhaps the water mangold vine ghosts have come up with a new way to find a double? The ghosts are very powerful. Some people say that the heavy presence of people during the construction of the river scared the ghosts away and they went into the pesticide bottles. They changed their names and are now called pesticide ghosts.
The river has changed, the feng shui has gone bad, but the village is better off than before. Grain production has more than doubled and we can sell more than we can eat. There are more people with money and they have the same televisions that are available in the city. Since the river was straightened out, there has been no more joint work, and each family has been cleaning its own snow. The people of the village lost interest in the river and just picked water from it to eat. The old bays were left untouched and everyone pretended not to see them.
Only one person remembers them, and that is the four deaf man. When the river was being rebuilt, Four Deafness also went to dig the soil, each hoe with a tear in it. Close to the ear, I asked him, "Fourth father, are you crying?" He said, "My eyes cannot been blown in the wind." At first they believed him, but as time went on they didn't. He was always going around the old bay, sometimes for half a day. Was it to see if there were any fish there? Did he want to fill them up and grow food? Some people thought he was fascinated by the ghost of the water mangrove, but after a long time, he never touched a single leaf of the water mangrove. It became clear to everyone that he was attached to the old river!
He is not the only one who is saddened by the mention of the old river! People often talk about the old days of fish and shrimp catching, accompanied by the sound of hopeless laments. Nowadays, every family has meat, but they only eat the fine ones, not the fat ones, but they still can't forget the bitter taste of the fire-roasted fish and the fragrance of the fried shrimps. The older I get, the better I feel about the old days, when the river and the pesticide ghosts of today were not as tasty as they once were.
Other people can talk about the past and fill the gaps in their hearts, but the four deaf man cannot. His suffering is only known to him, and no one can fill the gap in his heart. He often went to the stone arch bridge and sat there in a daze.
The stone arch bridge is not far from his family's house site and is the only remaining remnant of the old river on the New River. Legend has it that the bridge was built in the early Ming Dynasty, while others say that it was even earlier, in the Song Dynasty. The bridge is paved with green stone, flat in the middle and with stone steps at both ends. The edges of the stone steps have long been rounded, who knows how many people have walked across the bridge? There are two deep stone grooves on the bridge surface, which were made by a wheelbarrow. In the old days, the only thing people used to carry here was a cart, and every family had a wheelbarrow. A quintal could only carry a hundred or so pounds, and a cart could push four or five hundred pounds. The stone arch bridge was the only way out of the village, and the wheelbarrow always had to cross a difficult barrier before it came to the bridge. Often two pushers would walk in pairs to help each other when crossing the bridge. How much of the unicycle's iron hoop was worn away by the two deep stone grooves? It's a muddled account. Now that the road has been built, a flat concrete bridge crosses the river at a different place. Unicycles have long since disappeared, and there are only cars, bicycles and tractors. These vehicles do not cross the stone arch bridge, and even pedestrians have gone with the flow. The stone arch bridge is covered with grass and moss grows in the deep stone grooves.
The four deaf man brought a large stone from somewhere and set it up on the stone arch bridge as a seat. Every night, unless it rains or snows, he comes to sit on the bridge for a long time. At first I thought he was after the fish, as there was a deep pool under the bridge, so maybe there were fish in it? Later on, he realised that there were no fish in the pool. The four deaf man never took fishing rods and never went off the net, but always carried a dry tobacco pouch and a fan when it was hot. The sparks from the cigarette pot flickered on the bridge, and the fan puffed and rattled to chase away the mosqueto. Is it because it is windy on the bridge that it is cooler? But he sits on the bridge even in the season when he wears a cotton jacket, so it's not for a ride, is it? Is it because his daughter-in-law, Fang Mei, treats him badly and he can't settle down at home? I've heard people say that his family has never quarrelled over the years when life has been better. The new cotton jacket he is wearing was made by his daughter-in-law, and the pigskin shoes on his feet were bought by her from the city. The woman, who was about to become a grandmother, knew the importance of respecting her elders and no longer cursed "monster" or "why don't you die early", words that were contrary to filial piety. What was the reason for the four deaf men? When asked, he would not say. He used to talk to himself, but now he doesn't even talk to himself anymore. The people in the village took him for a quirk of old age and gradually became accustomed to his behaviour. If he didn't see him sitting on the bridge one night, they knew he must be too ill to get up from bed. I don't know how many nights he spent on the bridge, but his back was getting hunched, his body was getting smaller and smaller, and he was getting more and more sluggish, rarely moving once he sat down. In the light of the sky, he looked like a stone monkey. The stone arch bridge and the stone monkey are together, and the stone monkey guards the old stone arch bridge.
One night, the stone monkey disappeared. Fang Mei was looking for him, and everyone in the village was looking for him, as if they had all lost their souls together. The adults were so nervous that they were sweating, and the children were shivering with fear. Fang Mei took the lead in lighting a torch and everyone else came out of the house with their torches. There were fires and shouts everywhere, just as there had been in the past.
Fourth father! Where are you——"
The cry was faltering and mournful, tearing the night to shreds.
The villages above and below were also engaged, and all went out with torches. I don't know whether it was the shouts or the ghosts that lured them, but all of them ran to the old river bays with their bare feet in a frenzy. The fires danced like dragons and the shouts thundered, and the spectacle was far greater than the time of the fish festival that had ever been seen before.
It was then that a miracle occurred, the long-dead, curving old river came back to life. In the darkness, like in another world, a river that glistened, a river of fire and red.
From Hunan Literature, 1986, No. 2
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