Chapter 26
Zhou Yue always felt that this could not be considered a story of a farmer and a snake. The farmer saved the snake only because he felt sorry for it, while Zhou Yue saved him because he had something in return.
The only thing she was grateful to Dai Yan for was not giving her a pretty face, but giving her strength. He was tall, as tall as Kang Xingxing, and as heavy as a dead person, and she just dragged him back like that...
The sultry air along the way was filled with not only the salty smell of sea water, but also the fishy smell of blood.
She took a quick look and saw that he only had knife wounds on his body, no gunshot wounds, and no fatal injuries. Most of the wounds were on his arms and back, with a few on his legs. There was only one knife wound on his chest. His entire body was torn apart, like a pine cone fallen from a tree.
When they were dragged to the first floor, Aunt Mei and the guest came down. Aunt Mei, who had just kicked someone in the vitals, smiled passionately again in the blink of an eye. She hooked her arms around the man's neck and stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. The man also smiled ecstatically, and the two of them came over hugging each other.
Fortunately, there was only a kerosene lamp in the corridor, making it pitch black. Fortunately, there was a big hole in the wall, which might have been a cage for raising chickens and ducks a long time ago. Zhou Yue stuffed herself in and stood at the entrance of the hole, so frightened that she didn't dare to raise her head.
Aunt Mei walked over gracefully, holding the man's arm, and looked Zhou Yue up and down with a smile, "Waiting for guests?" After that, the two of them left with laughter.
After the people walked away, Zhou Yue dragged the man out of the cave. Where there were steps, he carried him on his back. Where there were no steps, he dragged him on the ground like a sack. He then carried him upstairs and brought him home.
That day she couldn't remember how many times she had drawn clean water in the quiet and deserted bathroom in the early morning, how she had flushed several buckets of bloody water, how she had run back and forth again and again, and cleaned up the bloodstains in the corridor on the rainy night. She couldn't tell whether the water on her body was rain or sweat. She also went to a 24-hour pharmacy and bought a lot of medicine, gauze and bandages.
"Miss, are you okay?" The young girl in the white coat looked at her face worriedly. "Does anyone in your family need to be taken to the hospital?"
"No! Thank you!" She ran all the way home with the things, still in shock. It was already twelve o'clock.
The string broke after being stretched too long. When she finally applied the medicine and bandaged him, she was like a numb machine, feeling no tiredness or fear. She moved subconsciously, propped up his naked upper body and leaned it against herself, wrapping it with gauze circle by circle. Even after smelling the blood for a long time, she didn't feel sick.
He buried his head in her shoulder, feeling heavy and hot. His breath was hot, as if it had burned, and it went into her neck. He mumbled something but she couldn't hear it clearly. She felt her body stiffen and subconsciously wanted to slap him, but in the end she only patted his back lightly...
Zhou Yue curled up on the sofa, always feeling that the dripping sound of the faucet was still in her ears, and it sounded like the sound of blood dripping, tormenting her in the darkness for the rest of the night. It was too hot, the air was sticky, and the sticky smell of blood in her nose would not go away.
There was another person in the house. Although he was half dead, he was still a grown man, and he had been chopped to death. She kept her eyes open all night, staring at the dark door. She accidentally fell asleep, and was awakened by the sound of a car engine roaring past the window. She stared again, stared and stared, and fell asleep again...
It was already one in the morning when she had treated his injuries. Shenzhen gets light early, and it was bright at six o'clock. During this time, she went to his bedroom to check on him at least three times. She held a fruit knife in one hand, standing one step away from the bed, and reached out with the other hand to feel his breath. He was breathing, and it was not weak. It seemed more like he was too tired and fell asleep.
At daybreak, she sat by the bed and looked at him. After so many years, he still looked the same as on TV, except that he was thinner and had less fat on his face. He looked like he was in his thirties.
Thirty-something? She didn't know. All she could see was that summer. She was lying on the sofa, her face bruised and swollen, her body covered in purple medicine, her mouth full of instant noodles. Kang Xingxing sat next to her, eating the instant noodles with seasoning and drinking boiled water to fill her stomach. The two of them kept praising Brother Jiang for being such a good person and donating so much money to sick children that she couldn't even count the zeros.
He was part of the past, breathing, his bandaged chest rising and falling with his breath, as if her distant past had come alive and was breathing as well.
The person on the bed moved and turned his face, but he was not awake. The cinnabar mole between his eyebrows and the slender willow-leaf eyes made him look fragile and harmless even if they were not injured.
Later, she fell asleep again. She didn't even see the sun rise. She fell asleep just like that, lying on the side of the bed. In her dreams, it was still him. Every minute and every second was him. In the dead of night, he would swim to her side wrapped in a quilt, like a small hill swimming towards her. His small fleshy hands were placed under his face. His face was so dark that only his big white teeth could be seen floating. His bright eyes looked at her motionlessly and said hoarsely, "Don't be afraid. The stars are here. The stars are the home of the moon."
It was getting noisier and noisier outside. The long-faced old man on the first floor was brushing his teeth on the public balcony again, retching with a hoarse voice like an old goat chewing the cud. The door of the aunt's house was wide open again. The sad and melodious singing of the Cantonese opera "Butterfly Shadow and Red Pear" appeared and disappeared on the radio, drifting far away and dissipating in the stuffy and smelly air of the tube building.
An airplane flew over Shahe Street and headed north. The low roar seemed to be passing over people's heads. Zhou Yue woke up and as soon as she opened her eyes, her ears were filled with noise.
She sat up suddenly. The cement wall outside the window was already illuminated by the sun, and the little remaining sunlight came in and sprinkled on the blue sheets like diluted white water.
The bed was empty, the sheets were flat, and the quilt was folded into a square on the pillow. It seemed as if she was just lying on the bed and having a dream. Until she saw the fruit knife at hand, the sticky sweat from the hot night suddenly cooled down, as if a bucket of ice was poured over her head. She jumped up and rushed out.
The area outside the bedroom cannot be called a living room. It is just a transition. A sofa, a coffee table, and a desk are squeezed into a few square meters. The desk is connected to the balcony.
The man was sitting at the desk by the balcony, with his back to her, writing something. He was wearing a white shirt, the only piece of men's clothing in her closet. It was too loose on him, making him look even thinner. He sat there writing furiously, with the sunlight as light as water shining on his back, giving him the temperament of a revolutionary youth.
In the cramped space of a few square meters, the rustling sound of the pen falling on the paper seemed to be right next to my ears, stopping from time to time, but the person sitting there never turned back.
Zhou Yue leaned against the wall with her hands behind her back, wanting to speak but unable to open her mouth. It was as if she was the guest and the person sitting there was the host. After a long pause, she whispered, "Brother, you're awake."
"Yeah!" He said in a clear voice. He wrote the last word with his back to her before turning back. His soft eyes looked at her face with a smile, "How old are you?" He spoke in very standard Mandarin.
"Me?" Zhou Yue didn't expect him to ask this. After hesitating for a moment, she said, "Nineteen."
"Hmm..." He smiled and replaced the pen cap, turning his head to admire what he had written. "You can call me brother, but in the old society, I should be your father."
"Ah?" Zhou Yue couldn't contain her surprise and her voice rose a lot. She always thought that he was only twelve or thirteen years older than her and Kang Xingxing, but as a father, it seemed too exaggerated no matter how she thought about it.
He looked up at her when she heard the sound, and the smile in his eyes turned cold, but after blinking his eyelashes, his eyebrows curved again. "Yes, I'm thirty-six years old. You can calculate it, right?"
"Oh... yes." Zhou Yue also knew that her voice was too loud, and her ears were burning. She looked at him with an awkward smile. He also looked at her with a smile, waiting for her to speak.
"Um..." She left the wall, took a half step forward, and said, "You were chopped."
He laughed as he heard it, nodding in agreement, "Yeah, I feel like I was hacked too."
Zhou Yue's face turned red as a monkey's butt, and she kept scratching her head with a smile. He smiled too, his eyebrows and lips curved into crescents. He glanced down and said, "Are you going to stab me again?"
"Oh!" Zhou Yue glanced down and said hurriedly, "No, no!" She quickly walked over and put the fruit knife on the fruit bowl on the coffee table, which brought her closer to him. She looked at him hesitantly, sat on the sofa, lowered her head and rubbed her knees. When she looked up again, she met his knowing smile, "Brother, can you give me some money?"
He didn't say anything, just laughed, and her laughter made her feel guilty. She looked down at the weed-like thorns growing around her fingernails, and finally confessed: "My mother fell from the upstairs and has become a vegetable. She's not breathing yet, and she can't wake up. The doctor said to treat her slowly, slowly..." She looked up and smiled at him helplessly, "He just wants money."
"How much does that cost?" He turned around, crossed his legs, and put one hand on the back of the chair.
"Fifteen thousand." She blurted out. It was a number she had calculated long ago.
"Okay." He agreed without thinking, and then he didn't say anything else. The air was stuffy and suffocating. Upstairs, Sister Mei was fighting with her benefactor again. The sounds of shouting and cursing and the crying of a baby were endless.
Zhou Yue blinked, feeling like she should say something, but thanks were too pale. She swallowed hard and added, "I'm not asking for it, I'm borrowing it. I'll slowly..."
"That's not necessary," he interrupted her, lowering his head and smiling, "My life is still worth 150,000. I just want to remind you that your mother's condition is a bottomless pit. After you..."
"Just this once!" This time she interrupted him, straightening up, her eyes shining, her voice bright, "Don't worry, I won't bother you anymore."
She turned her head and saw that the rickety broken cabinet on the balcony was piled with shoe boxes, leaving only a small piece of blue sky.
The clothesline was filled with backless dance dresses. The synthetic fabrics were not washed well and were so heavy that they were about to fall to the ground. The red, green and yellow plastic scales on the dresses were sticking up. They didn't look like mermaids, but more like grass carp that had been gutted in the market.
The sunlight was cut into pieces by the scales, and the broken spots of light were reflected on the wall, swaying in her eyes like tiny stars.
She remembered what she said at her mother's bedside and smiled, "Just trust me this time."
The man looked at her for a moment longer, then smiled and patted his knee. "Alright! I believe you're an honest and trustworthy child."
After saying that, he proudly picked up something on the table and waved it at her, "It hurts so much, do a crossword puzzle to distract yourself."
It was a stack of newspapers, and the handwriting written in blue-black ink in the grids was elegant and graceful, like clouds falling on paper.
"But there's a blank I haven't been able to fill, and seeing you gives me some inspiration." He took off the pen cap, and the tip of the pen rustled across the paper smoothly. He picked it up again, and the wet ink shone with water.
"Snow gathers in the moon."
Zhou Yue glanced at him and then avoided his gaze, lowering her head and smiling, "Yeah, it's pretty good."
The man didn't get a response but wasn't annoyed. He put down the newspaper and smiled apologetically, "Sorry, I need to go to the bathroom and haven't washed yet."
Zhou Yue was stunned by this series of demands. She remembered that he was also a human being, and humans had to eat, drink, defecate, urinate, wash their faces and brush their teeth. He was looking at her innocently at this moment. She stood up in a panic, rushed to the bedroom, and took out the spittoon from under the bed. Fortunately, she secretly felt lucky that she had bought it and had never used it. She stood up and rushed out again, rushed to his side, almost touching the tip of his shoe, handed the thing to him with shining eyes, and said:
"Brother, the bathroom here is shared and dirty. Can you use the spittoon for now? It's new and unused. I'll pour it for you later. Now I'll get you some water to wash up."
The man sat there watching her busy, as happy as watching a play. When he saw her rushing towards him, his smile became even more happy. Like an amateur actor interacting with an actor on stage, he craned his neck to look at her, then lowered his head to look at the ceramic spittoon in her hand and said, "Thank you. Just now it was just the wound that hurt, but now it hurts my heart."
She held the spittoon in a daze, watching him stand up with the help of the table. His arms trembled as he exerted force, but he stood there with his back straight. He put away his smile and looked down at her, saying, "My mother raised me alone. We lived in a pigeon coop in Hong Kong with only one bed. They would sit on our bed to play cards. When I was one year old, my left leg was broken from sitting like that. My mother tied it with a piece of cloth and forcibly pried it back together. I walked with a limp until I was three. From the age of four, the first thing every morning was to empty the spittoon. I didn't recognize my ancestors until I was fifteen. Rich people in mainland China value status, but in Hong Kong, only those who can endure hardship are worthy of being a superior person."
That was the most he had ever spoken to her. He never spoke as much as he did that day. She tilted her neck upwards, and even after he finished speaking, she was still holding the spittoon in a daze, until he smiled again, opened his arms and said coquettishly, "But people always have their strength that makes them feel weak. Could you please help me up for a while?"
"Oh!" She hurriedly put down the spittoon and supported him.
"Oh, and," he put a hand on her shoulder and looked down at his trousers, "these trousers are so big, they're about to fall off. Do you have a belt?"
Zhou Yue quickly glanced at his waist and said, "I'll go buy it later."
He smiled at the pink tips of her ears and the back of her neck, "Boyfriend's?"
After hearing this, she lowered her eyes and remained silent. He didn't ask any more questions. The two of them went out. The corridor was very lively. Aunt Lou was warming up her voice facing the skylight. After taking two more steps, the black and white TV in the open door was still playing a Hong Kong police and gangster movie. The crackling sound of gunfire echoed in the tube-shaped building. The long-faced old man was sitting on the sofa with his back to the door, sleeping soundly with his head tilted.
Several children ran past them, turned a corner, and ran back. The leader, Little Tongdou, slapped Zhou Yue on the waist and screamed, "Baoqi! You're seducing me again!"
Zhou Yue frowned and endured the pain, then looked up at the person next to her. He was looking straight ahead with a calm expression, probably because he didn't understand such dirty words.
So in the next few days, there was always a figure of a young girl supporting a man walking slowly in the narrow and long public corridor of the tube building. The man wore a white shirt and suit pants, and the girl wore jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. It had nothing to do with sexiness, but the handsome man and beautiful woman always aroused people's imagination.
At night, some curious people leaned against the window to listen, but there was only silence. They thought that this patron who looked like Pan An was handsome but not masculine enough, so he was probably powerless.
Zhou Yue listened to the rustling sounds outside the window, pretending not to hear them. The man was even more oblivious to the outside world, absorbed in reading the sages' books. He never missed a newspaper, and even at night he read with fervent concentration by the light of a kerosene lamp. Zhou Yue stood beside him, carefully applying iodine to the scratch on his cheek with a thin cotton swab. It was caused by a broken pair of glasses. She whispered to him, "I saw that my glasses were broken that day, but I didn't pick them up. Can you see clearly?"
Her breath rustled her hair and brushed against his cheek. He turned a page of the newspaper and hummed softly, thinking he had heard her. After reading a report, he answered her, "My eyesight isn't very high, so I can see clearly."
When it was time to go to bed, he would sleep in the bedroom while Zhou Yue would sleep on the sofa. When he woke up, his whole body would ache and his neck would crack when he twisted it. Sometimes when he wanted to get up at night, he would knock on the wall. Zhou Yue would then half-roll and half-crawl down from the sofa, rub his sleepy eyes, and help him to the toilet.
It was late at night, the moon was bright and the stars were sparse. He spoke very little along the way. After he went to the toilet, she bent down outside the toilet partition to fasten his belt. They were both silent. Her hand went around his back. He never overstepped the boundaries with such an ambiguous gesture. Only his breath brushed against her head.
Occasionally, she would look up and ask him, "Is it too tight?" Meeting his smiling eyes, tender and tender in the moonlight, she could only say, "Not bad."
To treat the wounds, Zhou Yue only needed to change the medicine on his back and arms. He never let her see his lower body.
It was hot in Shenzhen, and once you sweated, your body would stick like candy. Zhou Yue bought a big wooden bathtub, and boiled water over and over again. She filled three kettles with water and poured it into the bathtub, then went to get a few basins of cold water, and carefully mixed a bucket of warm water for him to bathe. While he was bathing, she would wait in the bedroom. When it was time to wash his back, he would shout, "I'm ready!" At this time, she would go to the living room, move a small stool and sit next to the bathtub, and gently rub his back with a towel smeared with soap. The room was filled with steam, and soon her forehead was covered with sweat. Her short hair was soaked and stuck to her face, and her face was also steamed red. The sweat beads on the tip of her nose dripped into the water with a plop, and her clothes and pants stuck to her skin. She couldn't tell whether it was sweat or steam.
After he finished washing, he stood up with the help of the bathtub, and Zhou Yue wrapped the prepared bath towel around him from behind, closing her eyes while doing so.
After such a busy schedule, she seemed to have taken a hot bath. After she helped him to sleep, she took a basin, towel and soap to the nearby public bathhouse to take a bath. The two of them did not speak to each other from beginning to end.
He didn't ask why she didn't go to school at her school age, the dance dress on the clothesline, the high heels in the shoe box, where she was from, whether there was anyone else in her family besides her mother, or even her name.
But during the day he would be more approachable, smiling, looking at the books she had piled on her desk, and even testing her on what was in the books.
"Do you like Wuthering Heights?" He held the hardcover book in his hands and looked around. The spine of the book was rubbed and the pages were curled like vegetable leaves in the humid air.
"But only this paragraph is marked. Is there anything special about it?" He turned around and smiled at her, as if he had discovered her secret.
Zhou Yue was sitting on a small stool on the balcony, washing clothes with her back to him. When she heard him ask this, she paused and said with a shy smile, "Nothing special. I just think this paragraph can summarize the whole book and is the central idea."
"Oh?" He became interested. "Then try reciting it on your back."
Zhou Yue put down her wet clothes, looked at the remaining blue sky on the balcony, and recited:
"My greatest pain in the world was Heathcliff's. I watched and felt every one of his pains from the first.
He is my chief concern in this world. If everything else were destroyed, but he were still there, I could go on living. If everything else were still there, but he were destroyed, the world would become a strange one. I would no longer feel like a part of it.
My love for Linton is like the leaves in the woods, and I know well that time will change them, as the trees wither in winter.
But my love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rock under the ground.
Nelly, I am Heathcliff, and he is always in my mind, not as a delight, but as my very being."
After she finished reciting, she forced a smile and turned back, "Did you make any mistakes?"
"No," he shook his head and praised, "Not a single word is missing." He flipped through a few pages and asked with a hint of interest, "What about the rest? Can you recite it?"
Zhou Yue wanted to say that she could recite every word in the book, but the words went in the opposite direction when they came to her lips. "No, I can't recite it anymore." She smiled apologetically while rubbing the clothes. "My memory is not good. After reading it so many times, I can only remember this much."
"Oh..." He didn't say anything, just nodded.
In this way, his injuries gradually healed, he could go to the toilet by himself, his appetite improved, and he could eat a bowl of rice for one meal.
One day, Zhou Yue bought some groceries and came home, and Aunt Lou came running over to say that there was a call for her.
It was a call from the hospital, saying that her mother's heart rate had dropped suddenly and she was afraid she might die. But when she rushed to the hospital, her heart rate returned to normal.
When she came back, there were already two dishes on the coffee table: one with lettuce in oyster sauce, and one with stir-fried beef with Chinese kale. Each dish had a bowl on top. He was sitting at the desk reading a newspaper. When he saw her come back, he put down the newspaper and stood up with a smile on his face. "You're back? Come eat! Try my cooking."
"Is it delicious?" He sat beside her and added more food to her bowl, putting all the meat into her bowl and eating only the vegetables himself. "Eat more, you're too thin."
"Delicious." She was hungry and also amazed at his cooking skills. Her cheeks were stuffed. He smiled when he heard it. The weather was hot and humid but he was still pale, only the corners of his eyes were bright red, red to the temples. His eyes roamed over her face like spring rain and looked into her eyes.
That night, Zhou Yue slept on the sofa as usual. Half asleep and half awake, she saw him sitting beside the sofa looking at her.
She suddenly woke up and sat up. He smiled at her in the night, the fruit knife in his hand flashing coldly.
"I'll take good care of your mother. Do you have any unfinished business?" He was still concise and to the point. He gently brushed the hair away from her face, as if feeling sorry for her. He said softly, "Just tell me. I'll definitely do it."
She was wrong, wrong from the beginning, extremely wrong, it was wrong from the moment she praised Brother Jiang as a good man on TV, she laughed.
"What are you laughing at?"
"nothing."
But all she felt was calm, as if she had finally breathed a sigh of relief. She looked back at the night sky, but the stars were still gone, only a crescent moon.
The star left, and went far away. When she died, he would no longer have to sacrifice anything for her.
She turned back, lowered her eyes to look at her hands on her knees, and shook her head. "I have no unfinished business."
Closing her eyes, she saw the willow trees beside the Bridge of Sighs, gently caressed by the wind across the water. The water shimmered in the sunlight, and the jingle of bicycle bells echoed in her ears. She sat on the back seat, hugging his waist. His white T-shirt still smelled of laundry detergent, flowers, and grass, but none of them were as pleasant as his...
When I opened my eyes again, there was no one in the silent night. The fruit knife was in the fruit bowl, and a peeled apple was on the coffee table.
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