At dinner that night, my father's countenance looked very good, and he talked a lot more than before, all of which were small and bits and pieces, and my father said calmly, and we listened calmly.

When I was sleeping, my father limped to our room, helped me cover the quilt, and then turned back to Jiang Sheng and said, "Jiang Sheng, you have to change your pants often in the future, and your mother bought you two more at Fengji today." ”

Jiang Sheng snorted, as if he had discovered some secret, and shyly burrowed into the quilt, blushing.

My father blew out the sheep fat lamp in the house and went back to the hall, and I slept soundly that night until the next morning I heard my mother's cry coming from next door.

My father walked in his sleep, walking very peacefully, Lao Jiang heard his mother's cry and hurried to my house, but my father's body was already cold.

Even though Lao Jiang had a premonition that his father would not live long, he didn't expect his father to leave without saying a word, and he lay on the bed as if he was asleep. At that time, I was awakened by the sound of crying, Jiang Sheng had already dressed, I ran to the next hall barefoot, and saw that the hall was already full of people, and my mother was lying on the side of my father's bed crying, she said: "Last night, I said that I wanted to eat dumplings this morning, why did I say that I would leave?" ”

My father told my mother a lot the night before, he said: "Xiumei, if our father is not there one day, this family will depend on you, you have to take care of our daughter Jiang Rong, and let her suffer a little grievance." ”

"Zhao Shugen owes me seventy-five yuan, Ma Aiguo owes me a thousand, and Carpenter Wang owes me fifty yuan, I know they will definitely pay it back, at this time the currency is depreciating, and the repayment is not authentic, it will definitely be repaid in the future, you must not ask for it."

"Jiang Sheng is a boy, and he can help you at a critical time, I suddenly feel that it is good to have multiple sons, so that you will not be too tired alone, but our family is not easy to raise, but after all, she is the future female champion, and she will have to study no matter what in the future."

At first, my mother also realized that my father's sudden refreshment was a return to the light before his death, and she thought that my father was gradually getting better, and if she was a little more bitter, our family would be able to return to the peaceful and healthy days before.

My father was not comfortable in this life, when he was a child, he and Ma Aiguo chased and fought all day long, and later dropped out of school to herd cattle at home because of the war, and when he was twelve years old, his grandmother died of tuberculosis, and then he learned the craft with the master of the construction team.

After the Japanese invasion of China, in order to make a living, my father joined the gendarmerie to repair a house under the protection of the construction team, and lived every day with trepidation.

I vaguely remember my father occasionally touching my face, his hands were like cracked old bark, and he rubbed my face last night when he helped me cover the quilt, and I took his cold, dry hands away and looked like I hated him.

The mother's crying made everyone present cry, and everyone said that they thought that their father's condition had improved and that he would be able to live a good life in the future.

People who were fine yesterday are gone if they say no.

I stood in the middle of a noisy crowd and couldn't figure out what was going on.

At the beginning, Liu Lanying was also a good living person, and she died at night, Zhang Guangshan was also a big living person, but he was shot by a group of people, but they were killed by Zhao Zhuang after all, and Zhao Zhuang, who harmed people, was also sanctioned, and the final result was to be buried at the foot of the north slope of Sanlitun.

My father's death made me a little confused, he didn't hurt anyone, no one harmed him, he didn't get sick, he didn't get old, he didn't commit suicide, so why did he die?

Later, I quietly asked Jiang Sheng about this question, and Jiang Sheng thought for a long time and told me that this is fate.

The loss of my loved ones brought me not endless sadness, but deep doubts.

I loved my father and knew that I would never see him again, but I didn't know why I couldn't cry.

When the funeral was held, in front of my father's mourning hall, Jiang Sheng and I knelt left and right respectively, and there was a brazier with burning paper in the middle.

I knelt opposite Jiang Sheng, looking at Jiang Sheng, who had always been happy and quiet, crying occasionally, and my heart was even more puzzled, because he and his father had always been at odds, and I was my father's own child.

When my father was buried, my mother was holding the coffin and crying, some villagers stepped forward to pull my mother, and Jiang Sheng stood next to me wiping his tears, also at a loss.

In the evening, everyone had already gone home, and my mother was squatting alone beside my father's grave without saying a word, looking sluggish, while Jiang Sheng and I stayed by my mother's side.

Later, I leaned on Jiang Sheng's shoulder and fell asleep in a daze, and in the middle of the night, my mother came to her senses and asked Jiang Sheng to carry me home to sleep.

I lay on Jiang Sheng's neck, smelling the faint serene smell of his body, and soon fell into a dream.

In my dream, I saw my father carrying me to the woods west of Sanlitun to pick a purple fruit called sour yoer, which was very sweet and delicious.

At the end of the dream, my father said to me with a solemn expression: "Jiang Rong, you are the future female champion in our village, you must fight for me." ”

I was a little afraid of my father's expression, so I turned around and fled, I wanted to find Jiang Sheng to protect me, but Jiang Sheng was gone, in the memory of my dream, Jiang Sheng left me, and I remembered what my mother said to me when she lay on my bedside.

"Your brother will never come back, if you want to go to him, study hard, and you can go to sea to study and find him in the future."

I woke up from my sleep, my pillow was wet, and in the early morning light, I saw Jiang Sheng sleeping on his bed, looking a little tired.

I don't know if I shed tears because I never saw my father again, or because I dreamed of Jiang Sheng.

But maybe my father's death is not a bad thing, at least in the next disaster, his early departure saved a lot of sadness.

This catastrophe was a sudden plague.

In 1947, in Beiping, economic depression and famine caused countless families to lack food and clothing, and homeless people from all over the country gathered in this former capital of the Son of Heaven, and many people died of starvation, disease and freezing on the road, some were buried by nearby kind villagers, some were eaten by wild dogs or rats, and some were recruited maggots until they became white bones in the wilderness.

At that time, medical care was very poor, and many people had no money to treat them, so they had to endure it, and there was a shortage of drugs because of the war.

Some people are buried directly in the soil after they die, and after they die, they have to put money in the coffin, and some people will dig graves to get money for that money, and they will accidentally get sick.

What's even more terrifying is that some people are so hungry that they have no food at home, so they go to catch fish, shrimp and insects, and catch mice to eat after these things are eaten.

At that time, the most indispensable animal was the mouse, I could hear the chirping of the mouse almost every night, even if there was rat poison in every corner of the house, every day my mother would clean out a few mice, the granary was rampant with mice, there were many rat holes in the wall, and the mother of peanuts or corn that had been gnawed by the rats never dared to pick them up, and they were thrown together with the corpses of the mice.

And rats will eat their own kind, and the corpses of rats will be thrown into the stinky ditch, and the rats in the stinky ditch will also gnaw on them.

People who are hungry and crazy think that they can fill their stomachs by roasting rats, and some people are even happy to eat a meal of meat.

At that time, if you have a cold and cough, you may die, and there are countless sick people in every urban area of Beiping City every day, and the apprentices and temporary workers of major pharmacies who know a little about pharmacology have to be treated, and those who have no money are of course blown away.

The villagers in the villages near Sanlitun also know that Lao Jiang's medical skills are good and the medical treatment is cheap, so there are not a few people who come to seek medical treatment, but Lao Jiang often goes out to see a doctor, and they are all old friends he knew before, as well as relatives and friends of old friends.

Later, there were too many people who came to seek medical treatment, so Lao Jiang had to see a doctor at home all day long.

After drinking a pair of medicines for colds, coughs and fevers, it will be almost good in two or three days, and the major illness at that time is edema, because hunger leads to eating disorders, the human body is weak, and external evils invade, so that the lungs are out of tune, the spleen is not healthy, and the kidneys are out of order, resulting in water retention in the body, and the head, limbs and even all of them may be edema.

There was a patient with edema in Sanlitun before, this kind of medical treatment is secondary, and dietary therapy is the key, but there is no food at home, Lao Jiang can send some herbs for free, and we can't send our food out. Some unreasonable people said that Lao Jiang would not save him when he saw death, and Lao Jiang could only blast people out.

At that time, there were many people who came to Lao Jiang to see edema, this disease was only available to people who were too poor to eat, Lao Jiang did not take a penny, although most of the people who had this disease still died, but he also did his best.

In the past two days, Lao Jiang found that most of the people who came to see the doctor were patients with fever, some had low-grade fever, some had acute high fever, and even some people had shivering all the time when they came, and their skin was bruised and bleeding.

Because of the large number of people who came to see the doctor, Lao Jiang did not eat with our family when he ate, and every time he made a meal, his mother would ask me or Jiang Sheng to send the food over.

A patient from a neighboring village died that night after seeing a doctor from Lao Jiang, and the patient's family called Lao Jiang that night, and Lao Jiang saw that the person had herpes, bruises and bleeding, and his whole body was black, and he realized that something was wrong.

In the evening, Lao Jiang wondered if it was the time when the chicken plague broke out in the late spring of the year, but he never expected that the plague could be transmitted in Beiping City.

It was not the patient Lao Jiang who first contracted the plague, as early as two days ago in various urban districts of Beiping City, such symptoms appeared one after another.

Lao Jiang hurriedly reported to the town's health department, and when he arrived in the town, he learned that someone had reported the situation yesterday, and several people died at noon today, and several old Chinese medicine doctors judged it to be plague.

The bubonic plague, also known as the Black Death, was a time of poor health care, poverty and violence in an area where the plague spread, and once it spread, it was equivalent to the slaughter of the city.

The next morning we didn't know about it when we went to school, and the school was suddenly locked down at noon.

At that time, Mr. Zhang suddenly led a policeman into the classroom, and the policeman asked anyone in our class who was sick with a fever, and a child had a cough and was called home by Mr. Zhang, and it was said that a student in the upper grade had a fever and was taken away.

On the same day, several doctors came to the school to check the students' pulses one by one, and left in a hurry after no problems were found.

Mr. Zhang summoned all the teachers and students of the school to the playground for an emergency meeting, so that all of us were not allowed to go home for the next two days, let alone sneak out, and if we saw rats and any small animals in the school, we must report to the school, and we must not kill them privately, otherwise we will be expelled.

We didn't know what was going on outside at school for two days, except that we could occasionally hear crying outside the school.

Mr. Zhang told the students not to go home for two days, and our food was provided by the school, so we lived in the classroom at that time, and we could sleep all night on the desk.

Everyone eats and lives together, at first they all think it is fun, sometimes play until the middle of the night before going to bed, Mr. Zhang also sits in the classroom with us, and whoever goes to the toilet has to inform him.

Two days later, I thought I could go home to take a good shower and sleep, but Mr. Zhang still didn't let us go home, and let the teachers guard the whole process, at that time, there were disobedient children who wanted to go out over the wall, and were caught by the teacher and beat the ghost to cry wolf, Mr. Zhang shouted on the side, saying that he would not give in if he was killed.

At that time, some parents of students rushed to the school gate to pick up their children, but Mr. Zhang refused to go out, and a notice was posted at the door, and even money, food and bedding were not allowed to enter.

In this way, everyone was trapped in school for a week, eating rice with bran all day long, barely filling their stomachs. One time in the morning class, Mr. Zhang asked me to go out to check my endorsement, and a female teacher came to Mr. Zhang and said, "Principal, the school's money has run out, how can the school afford more than 300 children?" ”

Mr. Zhang motioned for me to come into the classroom before discussing with the teacher.

In those days, some people who love cleanliness will secretly go to the school well to fetch water and take a bath, and the boys hide next to the pine trees and are not afraid to look at them, but the girls are the same, and they dare not take a bath at all.

Jiang Sheng fetched a bucket of water and led me to the corner of the wall, which was blocked by a pine tree, and Xiao Wu and Zhao Dahai stood by and let me take a bath with cold water.

When I was taking a shower, Xiao Wu secretly looked back at me, and I shouted hooligans and said, "Brother, Xiao Wu peeked at me!" ”

Jiang Sheng looked at Xiao Wu with some annoyance, Xiao Wu scratched his head in embarrassment, and said, "I didn't see it, there are pine trees blocking it." ”

I walked out from behind the pine tree after taking a shower, looked at Xiao Wu angrily and said, "Dead fatty, you are a hooligan!" ”

Jiang Sheng shook his head and returned to the classroom with a bucket, while Xiao Wu pulled Zhao Dahai and said secretly: "The sea, I found that Jiang Rong seems to be about to develop~"

In the evening, Xiao Wu quietly called Jiang Sheng out of the classroom and said, "Jiang Sheng, I think something is wrong, it stands to reason that my mother should come to me no matter what, why don't we escape tonight to see what is going on?" ”