True Love (novella) Zhang Baotong

Early the next morning, Xu Li took Liu Shiliang back to her parents' house to visit her parents. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 infoThey took a car from the county seat to a roadside called Shahekou and got off, swayed from a chain bridge that could only be crossed to the other side of the river, and then began to go up the mountain along a winding path. As soon as you go up the mountain, you will see that the houses in the mountains are very different from the houses by the river. The houses on the side of the highway are all small tiled second-floor houses, while the houses in the mountains are all old and dilapidated houses made of adobe bricks and gray tiles. Some of the houses were so dilapidated that it almost felt like they were going to collapse in the event of a storm. Moreover, the further you go into the mountains, the older and more dilapidated the houses become.

Xu Li told Liu Shiliang that many families had moved to live on the other side of the river, and those who did not move away were too poor to pay for them. Liu Shiliang asked if they had all moved to the other side of the river, what should they do with farming. Xu Li said that some people ride motorcycles up the mountain to farm, while others simply don't farm and leave the land deserted, and they can't make money farming anyway.

The mountainous terrain is relatively poor and lacks water. So, corn and wheat don't grow well. They followed the mountain path all the way deeper into the mountains. After passing a mountain, you can see that there are higher and deeper mountains ahead. I walked more than ten miles. They finally came to Xu Li's maiden home. Xu Li's family lives in the middle of a mountain by a stream, and there are only three or four families in total. The houses were naturally very small and old, a small house with only three cabins, and it was pitch black in broad daylight.

There was an old man who seemed to be in his sixties sitting in front of the door, and it was the May Day Festival, which was early summer, but the old man was still wearing a cotton shirt and cotton pants of tattered black cloth, and his body was very weak, as if he was seriously ill. Xu Li walked up to the old man and shouted, "Dad." ”

The old man recognized his daughter, showed some joy, and said, "Baby, are you back?"

The daughter handed the old man a bag of cakes and asked, "Where's my mother?"

The old man said, "Your mother is in the field." ”

Xu Li took Liu Shiliang into the house and put the two bags of fruits and food she brought on the small wooden table in the hall. On both sides of the hall are two large chests of grain, and on the other side are a wooden coffin. Xu Li took Liu Shiliang into the hut on the east side, saying that this was the house where she lived when she was a child. There was a large bed in the cabin. There was only a thick, large quilt on the bed. Next to the head of the bed was a large wooden box for clothes.

Liu Shiliang asked, "Do your families live in this same house?"

Xu Li said, "At that time, there were two beds in this room, my parents slept on the big bed, and my brother and I slept on the small bed. ”

Liu Shiliang said, "Isn't there another room over there?"

Xu Li said, "The house over there is for sundries. ”

Liu Shiliang said, "It's too inconvenient for a family to live in the same house. ”

Xu Li said, "There are many families who sleep in the same bed as a family. Then, she added, "There is a girl named Liu Qiaolian in our village, and her family sleeps in the same bed, and when she was 14 years old, she let her father sleep on her belly. Later, his father was arrested by the police, and he is still in prison. ”

Liu Shiliang looked into another hut again. I saw that the hut was piled up with fertilizer, pesticides, farm tools, and a large pile of artichokes, as well as some messy debris. Liu Shiliang knew that Xu Li's family was poor in the past, but he didn't expect it to be so poor. Otherwise, she wouldn't even be able to afford to go to school.

Coming out of the house, Xu Li took a small stool and asked Liu Shiliang to sit in the sun in front of the door, and walked to the path up the mountain at the back of the house to find her mother.

Liu Shiliang sat in front of the door and talked to Xu Li's father. After a while, a woman of almost fifty years old came down the path behind the house carrying a large basket with a large basket of potatoes in it.

Without waiting for the woman to put down the basket, Xu Li said to the woman, "Mom, this is Chen Xu's cousin, I want to come and see you." ”

The woman smiled at Liu Shiliang very politely and said, "We are so miserable here, don't laugh at it." ”

Liu Shiliang immediately said, "It's like this in the mountains. As he spoke, he took out five hundred yuan and stuffed it into the woman's hand, and said, "I didn't bring any gifts here, so I'll give you some money, and you can buy something." ”

The woman was taken aback when she saw that Liu Shiliang had given so much money, and said, "You are too polite." With that, he went into the kitchen to cook for the guests. After a while, the rice was ready, and it was tomato egg noodles. And, put five eggs in the bowl. Liu Shiliang saw that Xu Li didn't have a single egg in her bowl, so he said to Xu Li, "No, how can I eat five eggs at once." As he spoke, he set aside three eggs from Xu Li's bowl. But Xu Li couldn't eat three eggs, so she put two eggs in her father's bowl.

After eating, Xu Li's mother called Xu Li's cousin and asked him to take Liu Shiliang around the neighborhood. Liu Shiliang followed Xu Li's cousin to the top of the mountain along the path where Xu Li went up the mountain to find her mother just now. There are a few sour pear trees at the top of the hill, but more are walnut trees. And each tree is huge. However, there were no canals or ponds on the hills. Liu Shiliang asked Xu Li's cousin where the villagers drew water. Xu Li's cousin took him to a small puddle. The water in the small puddle was thin and small from a place at the top of the mountain, and there was a patch of small red bugs floating on the water.

Liu Shiliang asked, "Can you eat this water?"

Xu Li's cousin said, "Brush the insects on it with a scoop, put a clean water spoon into a bucket, and take it home to boil, so that you can cook and drink." ”

After walking around the top of the mountain and the slope for a while, Liu Shiliang felt that it was time to go down the mountain and return to the county seat, so he returned to Xu Li's house with Xu Li's cousin. However, as soon as he entered the house, he saw Xu Li's mother scolding Xu Li very fiercely. In order to get rid of Xu Li's mother's scolding. Liu Shiliang said to Xu Li, "It's not too early, we should go back to Xi'an." ”

At this time, Xu Licai wiped her tears, stood up from her mother's side, walked out of the house, and without saying anything, she followed Liu Shiliang towards the path back to the county seat.

After leaving the village, Xu Li told Liu Shiliang that her mother wanted her brother to take someone to Chen Xu's house to ask for an explanation because of Chen Xu's support for a little lover. She resolutely disagreed, because she was afraid that it would affect the growth of the child and the relationship between the two families, and she had officially divorced Chen Xu. But her mother didn't know that they were divorced, so she thought Xu Li was too weak and unproductive, so she yelled and scolded Xu Li.

As Xu Li spoke, she sat on the grass and cried, saying that she was really unlucky, she was abandoned by Chen Xu over there, and she was insulted by her mother here. Liu Shiliang sat on the grass and persuaded her for a while, then pulled her up from the grass and walked down the mountain.