(viii)

In late autumn, the morning sun is slightly dewy and the fog is thick. There was not a single pedestrian on the empty road, and the wind swirled and fluttered in large foliage trees. In the swaddling clothes, a boy kicked and kicked "wow" on both legs and cried, the cry was as bleak and desolate as a morning crow, and it came far away...... Such dreams have been with Zhongshan for as long as he can remember. Later, the dream had some color, the swaddling cloth was a home weave with white flowers on a blue ground, and the leaves were the leaves of the French plane tree that had withered and yellowed. The rest is still gray and chaotic.

Zhong Shan clearly remembers that since he was a child, his father only beat him once, in the summer when he was 12 years old.

Zhong Shan grew up day by day, and all kinds of information kept coming into his mind, sometimes it was a casual word from an adult, sometimes it was a very special look, and sometimes it was the clue of the objects in the house that Zhong Shan himself had discovered - he was the child who was coming.

One day, he stared at the large and small black and white photos hanging in the photo frame on the wall, which included a photo of his small-footed grandmother sitting on a flower stand next to a chair that he had never met, a photo of his father wearing a military uniform and a belt around his waist and a box gun when he was young, a group photo of his parents half-body, a family photo of his parents on both sides and him in the middle, and a single photo of his mother with her short hair combed to her ears. So enlarged and placed in a prominent position. Looking at it, Zhong Shan found a problem, the photo clearly said "taken in June 1962", according to his birthday, it was July 1962, at that time his mother should have a big belly, Zhu Zi was like that when he was pregnant with his younger brother, even his face plate was bigger. But the mother in the photo, wearing a two-breasted waist-pinching Lenin suit, with a thin waist, and a small round face like a spoon, does not show the slightest sign of pregnancy.

Zhong Shan couldn't remember who had said that the children he wanted had small quilts and small notes or something to prove their identity, so he secretly used the key to open his mother's big wooden cabinet and turned it over, and really turned out a small quilt woven by the blue ground and white flowers, washed and folded squarely, pressed at the bottom of the cabinet, Zhong Shan didn't remember that he had covered such a quilt, he concluded that this was the small quilt that was wrapped around him when he was discarded when he was a child, but he didn't find a small note.

What makes Zhong Shan even more suspicious is that every family living in this alley has several children, and there are 6 in his family, but Zhong Shan has only one brother, and his father is older than Zhuzi's parents. He just didn't understand, he heard that his stepparents beat and abused the child, but his parents loved him very much, which made Zhong Shan a little aggrieved. He feels as if he has been captured by the enemy, and he will serve you well and well, and one day he will ask you to confess something you do not want to say. If you don't do what they ask, there will be a big punishment waiting for you, a leather whip, a tiger chair, a bamboo skewer, a chili pepper, an iron and a soldering iron, you can use anything, and if you can't judge anything, you will be pulled out and quietly shot on a dark and windy night. Zhong Shan is often awakened by such nightmares and sweats all over his head.

The teenager Zhong Shan secretly decided not to cooperate with his parents' conspiracy, and he would not go home after school, so he had nothing to do, so he ran to the pond in the suburbs to catch toads and pick lotus flowers, bent willow strips into a circle and tied them to wooden sticks, and took cobwebs everywhere to stick dragonflies, or simply rented a villain book and sat on the steps in front of the department store and saw Hei. He wanted to protest against his parents by going on a hunger strike, but he always felt that if he had eaten enough and fattened up, disaster might come one day earlier. On several occasions at the dinner table, he lied that he was full after eating only half a bowl, and refused to eat again despite his mother's persuasion and begging. But before the next meal could be served, he was so hungry that he panicked, and the idea of hunger strike had to be stopped.