Lovers (novella) Zhang Baotong 2017.8.6

That's how my mom and stepdad got together. I don't know how many times I have turned through the drawers where we put our bank passbooks and money, and I have never seen their marriage certificates. In fact, the witnesses of their marriage are the chairman of the trade union of the unit and those in the trade union, who represent the cadres and workers of the entire unit. I do not know if other people's parents have marriage certificates, but none of the nearly 1,000 families in the Agency's seven family districts have ever been divorced. Although there are often men and women outside of marriage**, and even give birth to the children of outside lovers, even if this kind of thing is spread in the family area, no family has ever divorced.

I didn't pay much attention to what was happening at that time, except for the inexplicable and novel. During the day, I always play alone by the river as I please, and when the construction site is empty, I feel like I am in an empty and wild ancient time, and I often do not see a person for a whole day, except for the gentle river and the high banks. I used to sit by the river and watch the sun rise over the eastern mountains, dispel the fog from the river, and then I could see the river in the distance. Especially in the evening, when the sun is about to set, the glow will reflect the bright red ripples on the surface of the river. It often stirs my weak mind and makes me think about many, many things inexplicably.

After breakfast, hundreds of workers wearing work clothes and hard hats suddenly poured in from nowhere, distributed throughout the operation area, and the sound of construction began to sound everywhere. When the workers left work, the hundreds of workers suddenly disappeared as if by magic. The valley was quiet. At this time, my mother would stand on the high slope of loess in front of my house, shouting at me to come back for dinner.

By the time we finished eating, it was slowly getting dark. Especially when the stars fill the sky and the moon rises above the valley, it is completely dark, and you can hear the wolves howling from valley to valley. The voices were very miserable, very desperate, they must have been very hungry. Because in those days, people couldn't eat enough, and they didn't have anything to eat.

Hungry wolves are meant to eat people, and we often hear that children have been eaten by wolves, so at night, we don't dare to go out of the house. Even if an adult goes out of the house, he must bring a lantern or flashlight, because wolves are afraid of lights. Actually, after a whole day of playing by the river, I was already tired, so I hardly knew anything about what happened at night. Many things were later told by my mom and others.

However, ever since I was rescued from the river by the girl in red, I have a sense of lovesickness and anticipation in my heart. I stayed by the river all day, watching the path go from one side of the river to the other, hoping that the girl in red would suddenly appear. Her beauty and beauty have been reflected in my heart, giving me an incomparably beautiful anticipation in the carefree and hazy time. The gorgeous red glow of the sunset is destined to be reflected in my heart, making me feel that there is beauty in the wild time and space. I was tempted to relate her appearance to my life, but she only appeared once and was never seen again, like my poor sister who flashed in my memory and then disappeared in the wind.

After my mother and Lao Yantou got married, Lao Yantou became my stepfather. My mother and we became his family, so the Agency gave our family a house. We moved to the Pinglongmiao Railway Family Compound, which is about four or five kilometers away from the construction site. Our family has been living in a cave for many years from Wusheling to Baolan Line, and then to Baocheng Line and Luohe Bridge, and now we finally live in a house.

When our family moved, everyone was in high spirits, but I felt a little lost because I never saw the girl again, and I was afraid that I would never see her again after I left there. It made me feel like she was going to lose touch with me forever, so I had a kind of nostalgia and sadness when the trees were transplanted.

We stayed in the family compound for almost two years until the Luohe Bridge was completed and opened to traffic, and the Agency left Pucheng, Shaanxi Province. In 1963, my stepfather took us by train to Nanping City, Fujian Province. What a big world it is, full of people, lots of streets and buildings. I've never seen so many people. At Luohe Bridge, I only saw the more than 100 bridge repairers at most, and later, we moved to the Pinglongmiao Railway Family Compound, where there were only three or four hundred people at best. Outside the walls of the compound is the wilderness and land where you can't see the village and people. Therefore, we did not dare to go out of the fence at night, because the outside of the compound was full of wolves wailing.

What is presented here is a bigger surprise, a brighter world, and a more superior and comfortable environment. The family compound with red walls and red tiles has long been built. So, as soon as our family came here, we lived in a spacious bungalow. My mom took me to school that day, and it was a very big school with six grades and four parallel classes in each grade. And the playground is very spacious. I was pleasantly surprised. When I went to school at the Luoheqiao Railway Family Compound, there were only four classes in the school, with the first and third grades in one classroom and the second and fourth grades in another. There are no desks in the classroom, and there are no stools. The students were asked to write on a long, narrow wooden plank on a brick stack. I was in the first and third grades, which was the first and third grade classes together. There were only twenty or thirty people in the class, and the two grades sat on one side. When the teacher gives us a lecture, he always gives a lecture to the first grade, and after the lecture, the first grade students do their homework, and then they give a lecture to the third grade students. Since there were only two teachers in the school, we only had two classes, arithmetic and Chinese, and as soon as the class was over, the teacher let us move freely in front of the classroom. Together, we jumped the room, threw corners, and played marbles. The girls danced rubber bands together. In the afternoon, we don't have classes.

Entering this school really made me feel the incomparable excitement and surprise that Grandma Liu had entered the Grand View Garden. But what I didn't expect the most was that I met the girl who rescued me from the water of the Luo River. I was overjoyed that I had waited for her by the Luohe Bridge for so long and had not seen her again, but from now on, I could see her every day. Her name is Lin Yuqing, and this name is very good, I can remember it forever after hearing it for the first time.