A lover (novella) Zhang Baotong 2017.8.6

My stepfather was guarding the water station on the top of a hill four or five kilometers away from our house. He was a crippled soldier who had been shot in the right arm and has not yet taken the bullet out. So, for many years he has been in the unit either guarding the warehouse, or the materials, or the water station. He had no hobbies or culture, except for smoking. If he had been educated, he would have become the President of the Agency's trade unions. I heard my mother say that the department has always asked him to be the chairman of the trade union, but he said that he was uneducated and insisted on refusing to be, and the leader of the department gave him a secretary, but he refused to do it, and insisted on recommending the educated and talented Wang Wenjun to be the chairman of the trade union. That is, this Wang Wenjun, Chairman Wang, combined him and my mother into a new family.

He smoked too much, lived an irregular life, had no one to take care of him, and did not pay attention to recuperation, suffered from serious stomach problems, sometimes he couldn't sleep at night when he was in pain, and he was so thin that he was almost only a handful of bones. My mother was very concerned about his body, and resolutely refused to let him eat leftovers and cold rice, and had to cover him with a thick quilt and wear thick cotton clothes in winter. Under my mother's service, he started to gain a little weight and his stomach problems no longer flare-up.

He was guarding the water station at the top of the hill and could not come back for dinner at noon because there was only one person on duty at the top of the mountain. If the station was unmanned and someone took the opportunity to poison the water, the entire staff and families of the Agency would suffer. At that time, when the national army was ****, there were often planes of the national army on the nearby mountains that dropped the agents, and then flew away in a hurry. We've all seen these things with our own eyes. Of course, we can only see the lights of the planes flashing in the dark depths of the mountains, and we can't see anyone parachuting, and some people are only listening to the adults.

I have to deliver food to my stepfather at noon every day, because there is no one in the wilderness in the mountains, and it is very dangerous for my sister and a girl to go out, so the responsibility of delivering food at noon falls on me. I was only seven or eight years old, very timid, and most afraid of snakes. However, every time the food was delivered, we had to walk all the way down the hillside to the top of the mountain, and there were people on the mountain road who went into the mountain to cut firewood, and usually no one walked at all, so all kinds of snakes were everywhere, and at one moment a very long snake came out of the grass on the side of the road, and got into the other side of the path, and then I saw a snake coiled on the side of the road. Especially the lizard, which the locals call it a four-legged snake, is so big and long that it runs almost all over the ground, and it scares my heart. So, I carried my lunch box and walked on the mountain path, just like I do when I was on a plane now, always worried that the plane would fall from the sky.

When I arrived at the water station on the top of the mountain, I handed my lunch box to my stepfather, who took me into the water station to see the cistern in order to express his gratitude to me. The pool was large and deep, and it smelled of bleaching. After he finished eating, he gave me the lunch box and asked me to take it back. So, I had to experience a heart-pounding fear again.

My mom gave birth to a son to my stepfather, and this is the best gratitude and reward she gave him. Although she has been conscientiously taking care of the housework, washing and cooking for him. However, those are nothing, and only giving birth to a child for him can be regarded as a real reward for him. Although he has three of us, the three of us are not surnamed Yan, but Gao, and although he is raising us, we are still being raised by Xi'an Station, because they have to send us a pension every month.

My stepfather had never had a smile in his life, but when he picked up his son, he was so happy that he didn't know how to get better. He never hugged other people's children, and he never cared too much about us, but he held his son in his arms as soon as he got off work, as if with this son, he would be satisfied with his life and no longer ask for anything.

The reason why I say this is my mother's gratitude and return to my stepfather is because my mother never loved my stepfather, and my mother married my stepfather purely for the sake of our three children. Because if we didn't do it at that time, we would have to go back to our rural hometown in Su County, Anhui Province. From the time my mom married my stepfather to the time my stepdad died, I never saw my mom have sex with my stepdad in the decades, let alone kissing and holding hands, that is, neither of them had ever walked on the street or walked together. I've been in love, and I've seen others fall in love, lovers are like two magnets attracting, no one can do without each other, and when they leave, they will be very nostalgic and missed, and when they meet, they will love to die and make love. However, they just have been separated for a long time, even if they only see each other once a year, and they are always like that. As for whether my stepfather loved my mother, I think it may have been true at first, at that time, my mother was only twenty-seven or eighteen years old when she married him, he was still young and handsome, and he had been single for so many years, and it was not normal not to love women. But in old age, especially after he retired at the age of sixty, the two quarreled for three days. The reason for the quarrel was mainly because of my brother. He himself regarded my brother as the pearl of his palm, holding it for fear of falling off, and with fear of melting, he spoiled my brother to a problem, and as a result, my brother had an accident, and he blamed my mother for not educating my brother well, and muttered and complained to my mother all day long. My mother knew that he had a bad temper and didn't care much about him, but sometimes she was annoyed by him, and even scolded him like a cannon, I have raised so many children, which child has not been educated well? If the fourth child hadn't let you be so pampered since childhood, how could he have an accident? When my mother was angry and scolded, he stopped talking.

Actually, both my mom and stepdad were losers in love and marriage. My mom loved my dad, but my dad left early. And the stepfather did not marry until he was thirty-five or sixteen years old because of his eccentric personality. My mom was loved by my dad affectionately, and she loved my dad affectionately, so she had a love life for almost ten years. However, it is precisely because of that affectionate love that my mother can never forget my father, even when she is 88 years old this year, she is still full of nostalgia and sighs when she mentions my father. And the stepfather is even more pitiful in terms of love. He had never been in a relationship before he met my mother, and he didn't even know how to talk to a woman. In addition to going to work, his life is to sleep, and then smoking, in order to save money, he does not drink, does not drink tea, eats the cheapest food, smokes the coarsest dry tobacco, and lives a very frugal and monotonous life.

He and my mom were married overnight by an organization, apparently a family built out of special circumstances. On the one hand, for the sake of the children's livelihood, on the other hand, in order to solve urgent personal problems. If you want to talk about love, maybe my stepfather still has some love in his heart, and my mother cried to death because of my father's departure, and there can't be any love in her heart. Even after they got married, they didn't make up for the lesson of love. Therefore, the stepfather only had marriage in his life, but he was not in love. He was very pitiful in his life in terms of feelings. However, although my mother didn't love her stepfather in her heart, she also gave everything a woman can give to her stepfather. She gave birth to a boy and two girls for her stepfather, and never let her stepfather do any housework, just begging her stepfather not to mumble and nag at her, and she was satisfied.

Later, I also thought for a long time about the marriage of my mother and stepfather, they can stay together for a lifetime, maybe not because of love and romance, but more of a traditional concept and family responsibility, for a kind of love and righteousness, and this kind of love and righteousness far beyond love and romance, unlike the current hedonistic love and divorce and then look for it, you have to use marriage to satisfy your desire and need for love.

My stepfather fell ill and left us at the age of 76, and that was the second major grief our family experienced. Our family buried my stepfather's body on a grave hill not far from home, and left a cemetery for my mother to be with him in a hundred years. Because half of our family is in other places and half is in the local area, my mother asks us to go to the grave mountain in two batches to burn paper and send money to my stepfather.