child

Like a crop

Parents watered with painstaking efforts

Put the eyes again

Transformed into the sun

and the moon

Do a day and night cycle

Hope

……

——Zhang Mian, "Expectation"

Zhang Lu rode his bicycle all the way to Zhangjia Village, feeling the urine emanating from his body, forming a long streamer behind him that was invisible to the naked eye, and he felt guilty every time there was a pedestrian passing by.

When I got home, my mother was still busy in the clinic, and my father was also at home, helping my mother greet patients.

Seeing Zhang Mian come back, his father's eyebrows immediately stretched, walked to the bicycle, and took off the luggage in the back seat.

"I'll take my son to take a shower." Zhang's father said to his busy mother. The mother didn't answer, just looked up at them, and in response, went on busy.

When he was five years old, he didn't like to go to the bathhouse to take a bath, the steam from the bathhouse made him feel difficult to breathe, the water in the pool was always hot and unacceptable to him, and he didn't understand the adults who were humming and chirping comfortably in the water.

At that time, Zhangjia Village was full of dirt roads, and after the heavy snow melted in winter, the dirt roads would be muddy, and it was impossible to go out without rubber shoes.

In the winter morning of Zhangjia Village, there are long ice cubes hanging under the eaves of each house, the big ponds and ditches in the village are all covered with thick ice, and the muddy dirt road is frozen tightly.

Before the sun came out, Zhang Mian's father wrapped Zhang Mian tightly in his sleep with a big jacket, stepped on the frozen rattling soil, and carried Zhang Mian to the bathhouse in the biting cold wind.

At that time, Zhang Mian's father was in his early thirties, with a straight waist and a body as strong as a calf.

Zhang Mian once asked his father why he didn't take him to the bathhouse at noon when he was young, and his father told him that the bathhouse water in the morning was clean, and the morning bath was particularly relieving.

In fact, the most important reason is that Zhang Mian is resolutely unwilling to go to the bathhouse to take a bath when he is awake, for him, it is like taking a bath in the bathhouse is his life.

At home, Zhang Mian's father dragged him to the bathhouse after a series of threats and pulling, and after entering the bathhouse and undressing, Zhang Mian saw the pool that was constantly bubbling white gas, and every time he carefully tested the temperature of the water with his feet, it was still hot without suspense, and Zhang Mian sat on the edge of the pool and did not want to go down to the pool to wash the water from the pool, at this time his father would deceive Zhang Mian into the pool with various promises and guarantees.

If Zhang Mian still doesn't cooperate, his father will magnify his move, directly pick up Zhang Mian and throw him into the pool, Zhang Mian screamed and provoked the surrounding adults to laugh and then only accept his fate, and finally sat quietly on the highest steps in the pool and gritted his teeth.

This scene is basically the same as the process of killing pigs in the morning of the second grandfather who sells meat, the second grandfather pulls the pig to be killed out of the pigsty, the pig will find a large pot of hot water boiling in the yard, is gurgling white gas, the pig that was dragged out of the pigsty at this time seems to have improved his IQ and understood, and suddenly stopped the pig step, no matter how to reprimand it is no longer like taking a step forward, the sharp voice keeps resisting and howling, and the grumpy second grandfather will take out a wooden stick and whip the pig's buttocks. In the end, the desperate pig was disemboweled, and finally lay quietly in the steaming cauldron, motionless, and was shaved clean by the second grandfather.

……

This time, Zhang Mian's father took Zhang Mian to take a bath, and Zhang Mian readily agreed, if he didn't take a bath, urine might invade the bone marrow, and Bian Que could only cover his nose and run helplessly while alive.

If he met an oncoming swallow on the street of Zhangjia Village at this time, Zhang Mian would rather die than have such a thing happen.

The one who opened the bathhouse was the thin old man who called him uncle, and the people in the village called him Lao Yue.

He opened his first bathhouse in the village in his thirties, and by then it had been open for more than ten years, and the bathhouse had been renovated several times during the bathhouse, and the pool was much larger than before.

Zhang Xuan's father bought a ticket from Lao Yue, who was still smoking dry tobacco for more than ten years, listening to the radio drama "The Complete Biography of Yue", slowly looking for money, and slowly smoking dry tobacco. Seeing Zhang Xuan, Lao Yue slowly knocked the head of the copper cigarette pouch.

"Baby, you're back." The voice is dry and smells of tobacco.

Zhang Mian smiled in response, and without waiting for his father's urging, Zhang Mian took off his clothes and put them on the bench after taking off his clothes and changing into slippers.

It was still steamy, and there was no air conditioning in the bathhouse at that time, and the heating depended on the steaming water vapor, and there were five or six people lying in the pool.

Zhang Mian tested the water temperature with his feet, it was still hotter than he imagined, and he rubbed the water on his body a few times to get used to it, and finally gritted his teeth and lay in the pool.

When his body was completely wrapped in water, Zhang Mian felt an unprecedented feeling of relief emanating from the outside to the inside, and all the commotion on his body was dissolved in the water.

This is an experience that Zhang Mian has never had before, no wonder his father will say that they will take a bath when they meet and greet each other when they go to take a bath.

It turned out that the bath was used for soaking, and the bathing was the business of the people in the city at that time.

Zhang Mian's father then came in and was surprised to see Zhang Mian lying in the pool on all fours, just like the pig to be killed in the second master's house lying down with his head stretched out and motionless waiting for the knife to fall.

After only holding on for a few minutes, sweat was on his head, and Zhang Mian came up from the pool with a weak body.

Seeing this, his father immediately stepped forward and asked Zhang Mian to lie on the edge of the pool, rubbing his back, and at that time, Zhang Mian was so dirty, and the black ash on his neck and back was rubbed out in strips, and it was no exaggeration to rub it down, there was half a catty of ash.

Still unable to fully adapt to the large amount of water vapor rising in the pool, he came up from the pool after washing his hair, and his father soaked in the pool and chatted with the villagers.

After getting dressed, Zhang Mian lay on a bench, listening to Shan Tianfang's storytelling with Lao Yue with nothing to do, the sun shone down from the very high patio and fell on Lao Yue's dry tobacco pouch.

In the future, Zhang Mian took a bath in various bathhouses in different cities, but he didn't feel like that day, although the conditions were much better than before, but he always felt that there was something missing.

In the several diaries that Zhang Mian now keeps, Zhang Mian also recorded the experience of the bath that day and wrote a limerick poem.

The owner of the bathhouse smoked dry cigarettes, and the father and son lifted the curtain and lay in the pool.

The water vapor is steaming and sweating, and it is refreshing to take a bath in winter.