Lovers (novella) Zhang Baotong 2017.8.6

I used to tell my son about my childhood, but he always felt that I was telling him fairy tales, and that my stories were either fanciful or Inca mythology. Therefore, I will not tell him anymore, and telling him these things is simply playing the harp to the cow, and it is a waste of words. If we were living in that era, it would be incredible, and when we think back to the life of that era, we will still think about it, sigh and sigh, and feel like a world away.

My mother told my father about it when she didn't know what a lover was. At that time, my grandfather was the tax chief of Pingliang City in Gansu, and it was said that there were many gold rings and gold earrings in large bowls. He has a wife in his hometown in Anhui, and he has married several wives outside, and he often visits the kiln. Perhaps this is the source of the tragedy in our family. For the retribution of some people's sins will fall on other family members.

My mother was born in 1931, and when she was 16 years old, she was taken by my father's family, and my grandfather's eldest wife, that is, my mother's mother-in-law, looked at my mother who was tall and straight, clear and delicate, but with a pair of big and square feet, frowned, and said to my mother, you are a delicate little girl, with a pair of rough feet how ugly, quickly wrap your feet well. My mother is a child of a poor family, and even if she burns high incense when she can enter a big family, she no longer worries about food and clothing. At that time, my mother didn't know how to love, and it was all up to my parents to make the decisions. But my mom still likes my dad a lot. My father is the second young master of a large family in Gaojia Village, Daze Township, Suxian County, Anhui Province, only eighteen or nineteen years old, well-dressed, dignified, and literate. Because my mother doesn't know a single word, she naturally worships cultured people. In order to make my future mother-in-law look pleasing to the eye, the most important thing my mother did every day was to wrap her feet tightly with those two pieces of black cloth until they were completely deformed. Because my mother only started to wrap her feet when she was sixteen years old, her feet have grown a little long, and she can't be wrapped into that kind of small short three-inch golden lotus, which is also a helpless thing. I heard that in order to truly wrap a three-inch golden lotus, you must start binding your feet at a very young age. However, soon the whole country solved it, and small feet and illiteracy became the biggest distress and inconvenience in my mother's life.

My mom and my dad got married a year before the liberation, and after that, my dad went to my grandfather's place in Gansu to work in the city. My mother-in-law was a cruel and vicious woman, and she instructed my mother to do all the housework, and she also used all kinds of tricks to make my mother angry, so that she could let out her own stuffiness. Because my grandfather was out marrying a little wife and visiting the kiln, she was angry but had nowhere to go, so I had to find my mother to vent my anger.

One day, my mother couldn't help it, and used more than ten pieces of Guangyang that she had secretly saved into a cloth bag, and went to Gansu to find my father. At that time, the country had just been liberated, and my grandfather had been imprisoned by the government and almost shot to death. And my dad had already entered the railway engineering department, building a railway under a high mountain called Wusheling Ridge. I checked on the Internet that Wusheling is located in the middle of Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Wuwei City, Gansu Province, at the southeast end of the Qilian Mountains, which is the natural boundary between the Longzhong Plateau and the Hexi Corridor. Known as "the snow flies in midsummer, the cold air is skull", it is an important pass to Chang'an in the Hexi Corridor on the ancient Silk Road.

I still can't imagine that an illiterate woman with small feet, with a few pieces of Guangyang, dared to walk from Anhui to Gansu alone. At that time, the republic had just been established, and there were no roads or railways in many places, and in many desolate places, wolves were everywhere and law and order was chaotic. My mom dared to walk thousands of kilometers to find my dad alone. My mother has small feet, and it is very difficult to walk, and after walking for a long time, the soles of her feet are full of blood blisters, and the pain is so painful that she can't even stand up. But she actually stepped on the blood blisters on her feet, walked step by step for more than three months, and finally found my father. At that time, the workers on the construction site lived in a shed, which was surrounded by reed mats and covered with a layer of linoleum. My mom didn't have a place to live, so my dad called a few friends, dug a hole in the side of the mountain, and let my mom stay.

The railway construction site is always far away from the city, and life is very hard, but my mother is very happy because she no longer has to be angry with others. At that time, my father and my mother had nothing but a hole in the earth, a bed made of several wooden planks on the ground, and a small iron pot supported by three bricks in the doorway. In fact, they don't need to have too many things, as long as there is love, they will feel rich and happy.

My brother was born here, my sister was born on the Baolan Railway, and I was born on the small Honghuapu station along the Baocheng Railway in the mountains of the Qinling Mountains. Therefore, my name is Baocheng, which means Baocheng Railway. And my sister was born on the banks of the Luo River. In the ten years that my parents were together, my mother gave birth to four children in a row. My dad was tall and handsome, full of talent, well-dressed, gentle and warm. And my mother is young and beautiful, with a strong body, quick hands and feet, and can bear hardships and stand hard work. So, it was the heyday of our family and the United States.

Maybe God was retributing my grandfather, because he ate, drank, prostituted, gambled, and indulged in indulgence during his tenure as the tax commissioner, so after liberation, God not only repaid him and imprisoned him, but also did not spare his two sons. Whether that's the case or not, we all think so. Two months ago, his eldest son, my father's older brother, was stoned to death in a collapse at the Baotou coal mine. And his second son, my poor father, was run over by a train half a year after he was transferred to Xi'an Station. Later, when I took over the shift to work at Xi'an Station, I heard the old workers say that he was on the night shift, and in the early morning, the sky was just bright, the fog was very big, he was wiping the turnout with cotton yarn, and a train came, he didn't see it, he didn't hear it, and he let the train run over him. After I came to work at Xi'an Station, I went to Xi'an Sanzhao Cemetery with my brother to move the grave, and his bones were dug up and cremated, and his bones were all broken and broken.

My father's death is a great tragedy for our family, just like the sudden collapse of the beams of the house, and the whole family has no support. My mother took my sister and me to Xi'an in a horse-drawn carriage while crying, but the Wei River was flooding, flooding dozens of miles away from the river, and the eyes were full of yellow muddy water, and there was no edge in sight. We couldn't cross the river, so my mom took us to sit by the river and wait for three whole days. My two-year-old sister died on the river's edge the next night when she suddenly developed a high fever and had nowhere to be treated. I watched my mother cry loudly, borrow a shovel, dig a hole in the river, and bury my sister. So, until now, we don't know where my sister is buried. Every time I think about it, I can't help but burst into tears, feeling that my poor sister is like a lonely soul who has no one to care about and no one to ask, abandoned by her family forever.