Chapter 14 76.8-35.5=41.3
She kicked an overturned enamel basin, and the sound of broken porcelain scraping against each other was heard in the darkness - it was the teacup with the words "Labor is Glorious" printed on it that her father treasured the most.
"Dad?" Xu Yao fumbled to light the kerosene lamp, and her fingertips touched the sticky medicine juice on the edge of the table.
The moment the match was lit, she saw Father Xu's dry, branch-like hand hanging on the edge of the kang, with half a piece of candy wrapper clenched in his palm. The orange-red word "Wei" was soaked in brown medicine stains, like dried blood.
The kerosene lamp flickered with dim light on the kang table, and Xu Yao's hand was hanging on her father's wrist with bulging veins.
The half piece of candy wrapper became soft due to cold sweat, and the word "为" in "为人民服服" was broken into two pieces in the folds.
The cry of a night owl was heard outside the window, startling the last drop of medicine in the medicine jar, causing it to slide off the edge of the jar and create a dark brown flower on the stove.
"Yao..."
Xu's mother groped her way through the door frame and came in, tapping her bamboo stick on the broken porcelain pieces, making a thin sound. "Aunt Wang in the west room said that the supply and marketing cooperative has just received Fritillaria cirrhosa."
Xu Yao gathered the broken pieces of the enamel basin into her apron, and the bitter taste of the medicine residue seeped into the cracks between her fingernails.
The barefoot doctor's manual was open next to her father's pillow, and on the yellowed pages were annotations she had made in red and blue pencils when she was studying nursing.
Suddenly she found that the ink was blurred by water stains somewhere, and the page with the words "tangerine peel" had half a piece of tangerine peel in it - but she clearly remembered that there was no such smell in the medicine she got this morning.
When the dew rose in the late night, Xu Yao stood outside the Sun family's courtyard wall, holding five yuan and thirty cents.
The straw piles in the threshing ground glowed silvery white in the moonlight. She stared at the Dacron shirts that her mother had hung on the bamboo poles, and remembered that Sun Zhiqiang had used this material to make new clothes for his "third sister" on New Year's Eve last year.
A baby cried in the tile-roofed house. The third sister's voice was moist and sounded like it was soaked in honey: "Brother Zhiqiang, the baby wants to eat malted milk."
"Xu's Girl"
The cough of the grocery store owner startled Nightingale and said, "It's not that I don't want to lend it to you, but the tractor payment for the commune has not been paid off yet..."
The glass counter trembled slightly as he spoke, and the jar of fruit hard candy reflected Xu Yao's pale lips.
The clock on the wall of the supply and marketing cooperative pointed to three o'clock in the morning, and the sound of opera came from the radio in the duty room.
When the morning mist covered the old locust tree at the entrance of the village, Xu Yao ran into Xue Han by the well.
A military green shoulder bag dangled around his waist, revealing half of a military medal wrapped in red silk.
He was putting dried honeysuckle vines into a bamboo basket when he saw the wilted plantain in Xu Yao's basket. He suddenly grabbed two handfuls of Panax notoginseng roots and stuffed them in.
"Comrade Xue!" Xu Yao took two steps forward and her heel got stuck in the crack of the stone slab.
The morning light shone through his rolled-up sleeves, revealing a centipede-shaped scar on his forearm stained with fresh medicine.
I seemed to have seen this figure last night at the foot of the Sun family's wall. The moonlight was shining on the shovel on someone's shoulder.
When the sun climbed up the eaves of the ancestral hall, Xu Yao found the blue cloth bag in the woodshed.
Twenty pieces of the Great Unity of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers were neatly stacked on oil paper, with a piece of candied orange pressed on the top.
The crane's wings made of candy wrappers smelled of saltpeter, which reminded her of the iron door of the armed forces' ammunition depot.
The newspaper containing the money was last year's National Day special edition. In the corner of one of the reports there was a formula written in pen: 76.8-35.5=41.3, which was exactly the difference in the cost of my father's surgery.
When dusk once again crept in through the window, Xue Han's shadow was cast obliquely on the medicine grinder.
He turned the military canteen upside down and shook it, and the copper whistle made a muffled sound: "Mr. Zhou from the county hospital is my co-worker." Xu's mother fumbled to add tea to him, and her blind eyes happened to be facing his empty right wrist - there should have been a Shanghai brand watch there.
Father Xu suddenly started coughing violently, and the candy wrapper in his palm fell onto the quotations in the enamel basin.
Xu Yao reached out to help, and her fingertips touched Xue Han's scabby knuckles.
The roar of a tractor came from the direction of the threshing ground. The night wind brought the scent of fresh wheat awns, mixed with the faint smell of gunpowder on his cuffs, and created a fleeting blue flame on the dying kerosene lamp.
Before the morning mist dissipated, Xu Yao pushed her father on a cart towards the town.
The wheels of the car rolled over the dew-soaked grass leaves, leaving two winding water marks on the yellow mud road.
Xu's mother followed behind, holding her daughter's clothes, and her blind stick occasionally poked the wild chrysanthemums on the roadside, startling a bunch of grasshoppers covered in morning dew.
"Yao, this money..."
Father Xu curled up in the quilt and coughed, still holding the orange candy in his hand.
The morning light shone through the gaps in the cart and fell on his sunken cheekbones, making the three words "workers, peasants and soldiers" shine brightly.
Xu Yao handed the enamel jar to her father's mouth and suddenly noticed that the medicine residue between his fingernails was an abnormal bluish-gray color.
On the brick wall of the supply and marketing cooperative in front was painted the slogan "Grasp the revolution and promote production", and red paint was flowing down the cracks between the bricks, just like the medicine that overflowed from the medicine jar last night.
The smell of Lysol wafted through the corridor of the town hospital. As Xu Yao squatted in front of an enamel basin and washed the bandages, she heard her third sister's shrill voice mixed in with the radio speaker: "It's strange that this money came in the middle of the night..."
Soap bubbles burst in the basin, reflecting the Liberation shoes that Sun Zhiqiang had deliberately stepped on the payment slip.
"Comrade, please make way."
Xu Yao's fingers turned white as she held the payment slip. The third button on Sun Zhiqiang's military uniform made her eyes hurt - that was the button she stayed up all night to sew for him on Valentine's Day last year, and now he was wearing a red hairband used by women.
The third sister, holding the baby wrapped in a military coat, suddenly cried out, "Oh, Brother Zhiqiang, the baby peed!"
She shook out a handkerchief embroidered with mandarin ducks, which was exactly the one Xu Yao had hidden at the bottom of her dowry box.
The scent of soapberry on the handkerchief mixed with the smell of baby milk made the nurse at the payment window frown.
Xu's mother suddenly fumbled to her feet and knocked the bamboo stick on the leg of the bench: "Yaoyao, listen to this sound."
The tip of the blind stick tapped the gap between the floor tiles, and the two "tap, tap" sounds sounded very much like the Morse code that her husband taught her.
The old woman's cloudy eyes turned towards the noise: "There's an evil wind blowing in this room. We should open the window and let some fresh air in."
It was at this time that Xue Han came in to the tune of radio gymnastics.
There were still fresh wheat awns on the strap of his army green shoulder bag. He was holding a net bag of apples in his left hand and a yellowed receipt in his right hand.
When the third sister mentioned the "midnight money" for the fifth time, he suddenly shook out the receipt, and the sound of paper tearing startled the sparrows outside the window.
"July 18th, Xiling Forest Farm." Xue Han's voice was like tempered steel, startling Sun Zhiqiang so much that he took a half step back and crushed the glass medicine bottle on the ground. "The lumberjack team paid in cash, and Accountant Zhang stamped it."
The red star ink print on the lower right corner of the receipt was shining, just reflecting the pale face of the third sister.
The corridor exploded instantly.
The barefoot doctor who was dozing off suddenly sat up straight: "I was thinking I saw a stranger in the forest farm that day, could it be Comrade Xue?" A head popped out of the pharmacy window: "No wonder I saw Xue Han carrying fir wood down the mountain a few days ago, with pine resin all over his trouser legs!"
The baby in the third sister's arms suddenly started crying, and Sun Zhiqiang hurriedly covered the child's mouth.
Xu Yao saw a scabbed abrasion on the back of Xue Han’s neck. There was sawdust on the fresh scar - it was clearly caused by the hemp rope being rubbed when carrying logs.
As dusk dyed the pharmacy glass red, Father Xu's cough suddenly became much lighter.
Xu Yao helped her father drink porridge and found that the bruise on the inside of the old man's wrist had faded to goose yellow.
Smoke wafted in from outside the window, mixed with the bitter aroma of Chinese medicine boiled in someone's home, and made the "Save the dying and heal the wounded" slogan on the wall turn slightly yellow.
"Yao..." Father Xu suddenly pinched his daughter's fingers, and drew a five-pointed star on her palm with his skinny fingertips.
Xu Yao's nose felt sore as she recalled the time when her father held her hand and pressed his red fingerprint on her application to join the Communist Youth League when she was fourteen.
Before leaving, Xue Han placed a bag of candied dates wrapped in lotus leaves on the windowsill.
As Xu's mother fumbled to open it, the tip of her cane suddenly stopped at a certain angle: "Comrade Xue, there is a swallow's nest in the southwest corner." The old woman's clouded eyes turned to the spring swallows that were building a nest, "Four chicks were just hatched yesterday."
The nurse who was making rounds late at night discovered that the barefoot doctor's manual on Mr. Xu's bedside had been turned to the page about tangerine peel.
A piece of dried orange peel was sandwiched between the yellowed pages. The moonlight shone on it through the window lattice, and a blurry fingerprint could be vaguely seen - as if someone had pressed it with medicine.
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