The Moon of Childhood
Text | Li Yucong
一
One day in the autumn of last year, I accompanied my father on a trip to my hometown. Speaking of my hometown, it’s actually not far away. Due to the construction and smoothness of the roads, it takes about ten minutes to drive from Yuyao and about 40 minutes to take the high-speed train from Hangzhou to Yuyao. For contemporary people who endure congestion during the rush hour all year round, this amount of time is not enough. It's nothing. The strange thing is that I think about it every time, but I don’t go there often. Every time I go, I treat it as a big deal.
In my memory, a trip to Yuyao when I was a child required a long walk on a field path and crossing two bridges. I was mostly lying on my mother's back. The feeling was warm, as if I was close to the earth. My mother has been away for more than eight years, and I will know my destiny, but the warmth has never disappeared.
The house that used to be tall in my eyes has now become low and narrow. It looks a bit dilapidated because it has not been lived in for many years. My father was a little sad. This ancestral home was like his birthmark in the dark. It was the same for me. When a person is alone, it appears and reminds us where we came from.
The ancestral house is located in the corner of the east wing and belongs to a Jiangnan courtyard. Across the street from it is the village's ancestral hall, which is now a local cultural heritage building. Every time I stand under the eaves of this courtyard, the idea written by Lu Xun in the novel appears in my heart. It turns out that my ancestors were once rich. At that time, the people living in this compound were blood relatives who were no more than five years old. Now, except for a few old people, most of them have moved outside. The specific relationship between the people living in the compound is quite entangled, and I have never been able to figure it out. However, the clues can be gleaned from the ranking of the names. By my son's generation, these clues have also been erased. If you meet someone in a different place, you may need to find many keys to open the door to your homeland.
The wooden stairs have faded over the years. Now, whenever you lift your legs, they will make a creaking sound, like the echo of aging coming from afar. The eaves can still block the wind and rain, and the tiles still light up the window we pushed open, but the stairs have creaked in decadence. This window is the only way to open up the thoughts of childhood travels: there are stars, there are floating clouds, There is grandma’s doting and the stories she tells.
Whether it is people or things, this kind of aging may be unavoidable. The relatives I am familiar with either live in buildings in the city, or they have been approved to build houses in other areas of the village, which look like small villas. Even the elderly with limited abilities live in multi-story buildings under the unified planning of new rural construction. This compound is more or less like the cicada left after the cicada sheds its shell, although it is still tightly clinging to the tree trunk. But the soul has been released.
I have always wondered what the ancestors who allocated the houses thought. For example, the east wing belongs to my grandfather and my little grandfather, and then the south and north of the east wing belong to my grandfather, and the middle part belongs to my grandfather’s family (my grandfather has three sons. ), the aisles are public. One result of this today is that the ownership of houses in the entire compound is intertwined. If you want to renovate, you have to seek the consent of multiple families. The complexity of people's hearts often makes these ideas disappear in the blink of an eye.
family. Perhaps in the minds of our ancestors, they did it intentionally. Living in this state allows people of the same clan to have closer ties, and unity is strength.
二
When my son was a child, I once told him the story that my grandma told me. Being born in the age of computers and animation, he is not interested. Out of respect for his father, he will listen soothingly for a moment, and then decisively change the topic, which always makes me frustrated. How come those ghost stories and those silly sons-in-law have lost their appeal? Strong?
My initial imagination was opened by these stories, but now, in the place where these stories are told, I have also become a stranger, illuminated by the dim light: "ancestral hall, river, weeping willows, barking dogs, The crowing of cocks...these rural settings, the voices of Jiangnan, the beauty of peeling off a piece of frog skin" (selected from the humble poem "Old Residence").
Behind the colorful and moist mask of frog skin, maybe we can face the real fields, just like after leaving for many years, we discovered that the springs that nourished me are still flowing underground. Having an interesting childhood is like entering a well-stocked warehouse, and from time to time there will be some surprising discoveries.
My grandma was an illiterate country woman. Later, I recalled that the stories she told me were full of shadows of talented people, beautiful women, monsters, and ghosts, as well as the concept that good and evil will be rewarded in the end. My mother was somewhat literate. Sometimes he would also tell me about the outside world. At that time, my father was working in Hangzhou after graduating from college, and my mother was an educated youth who had not had time to return to the city after going to the countryside. Memories of poor life and material deprivation are usually smoothed over by time, but during this careful smoothing process, a road suddenly forked, allowing me to find more fun in the future.
There was not much entertainment at that time, but we had our own way of creating fun. On hot days, we found a ditch, built two mud walls to block both ends, then scooped out the water and turned over the mud, and we could get a lot of slippery water. There are loaches scurrying around at the bottom of the ditch, and if you are lucky, there are also eels. The standard little surprise is the water snake . In the soil of the ditch, there was an insect named mole cricket that looked similar to a mantis. When I grabbed it, it struggled feebly in the child's hand. At that time, I was probably a little proud, but if there was a leech biting my calf, and it was so swollen that I could see the blood it was eating, I would be somewhat disappointed.
Compared with fishing for shrimps, fishing for frogs is one of the fun things for children. Frogs are much easier to catch than fish and shrimps. Unlike their colorful appearance, frogs are very stupid. Just find a bamboo pole, tie it with a rope, and tie snail or cicada meat, or similar meat to the rope. Stretch the pole between the grass and shake the pole at a small frequency. The frog will think that the rope is tied to a living creature, and will pop out its tongue to swallow it, and then it can be put into the bag. Even the bait is still tied to the rope. Against the natural background of the fields, this small piece of meat is shocking. It was probably at this time that I understood the reason why birds die for food. Although I was ignorant, I felt sad, both for the frogs and for these creatures who were blindly looking for food.
Many years later, I sometimes walked among the fields. If it was summer and autumn, I could still hear the croaking of frogs, but it seemed different from the frogs in my childhood: if I walked in the grass, I would be startled by the sound. The frogs were escaping in all directions, but none seemed to be as big as the ones I had seen when I was a child. Maybe the species of frogs had mutated.
There are many stupid things you did when you were young. In the eyes of doting people, they become evidence of your extraordinary talent. When my grandma was alive, she would often say that when I was three or four years old, I once squatted in the corner behind the house and talked to a snake. How good I was. I didn’t touch the snake with my hands, but just talked to it. It spoke, while the snake coiled its body, raised its head, and spit out its pointed snake tongue. At that time, the grandmother who came over was so frightened that her back was covered with sweat, but she did not dare to shout loudly for fear that the snake would be frightened and attack. The snake might feel the sound of someone approaching, and it would meander and quickly crawl into the gap between the rocks.
I still don’t know whether this snake is poisonous or not. Maybe it’s just a straw rope. Maybe it’s just a shadow of my grandma’s love for me.
is like the black cat I raised in my childhood. It was really a black elf. I often imagined it as a tiger, or the tiger’s master in the story. I stubbornly thought that it had such a talent, and this A cat, many years later, is still lurking in my body, talking to me, and communicating with me in places that life cannot reach.
Now, after many things have changed, the cat hole where the black cat lurked is still there. When I was a child, I would lie on the ground to admire the cat cave, as if it was unfathomable, but in fact it was just a wall. The worlds on both sides were familiar to me, but this passage brought the breath of the two worlds together.
As long as I stare at the hole, the cat will meow and appear.
三
I was in a trance for a moment that day. The laughter and noise of my childhood were like an undercurrent. At that time, I was sensitive, irritable, frail and sick, but in this small house in the east wing, I had endless fun. And it supported my initial view of the world: life is a discovery, and writing is also a discovery.
"...I can even recognize the moss in the corner of the wall. If the half-open window lattice makes the wind blowing in appear stronger, the moss flowers will bloom or wither in the wind." I wrote these few words in my hand. The feeling of this poem is real. Many years later, maybe I can still read such details in the comics of Feng Zikai and others, like the spring breeze swaying. This is probably the imprint brought to me by the hometown of Jiangnan: a group of people Sitting in the patio enjoying the cool air, shaking the cattail leaf fan, chatting about the family's shortcomings, and sometimes talking about "big head Tianhua" (dialect, generally referring to stories and legends) with eight feet in the air.
For children, the happiest time of the year is probably when it is their turn to kill the pig in front of the family compound. It is a customary welfare to kill the pig when it is its turn, and the pig will be left in the house where it left the venue. Children are not only excited because they can eat meat. During the process of killing pigs, pig urine and pig feet are also objects that can be played with. The former can be blown up to be as transparent as a balloon, and what we like most is destruction: when a person inflates the pig urine bigger and bigger, he sneaks up and slaps it, and there is always the expected explosion sound. Or the blower's astonishment.
also saw a cow being killed once, not in the hall of his house, but on the village playground. The cow was very honest, and its empty eyes were full of tears. When the butcher knife stabbed it, I don’t know why. I felt a little uncomfortable, but the beef for dinner still made people salivate.
In my childhood eyes, compared with the bloody and gut-wrenching experience of killing pigs and cows, the more magical thing is capons, which is a magical craft. The chicken is placed on a special wooden stand. It will twitch feebly a few times and struggle symbolically. The skilled chef will tie a rope to the chicken ribs, pluck out the chicken feathers, and use a scalpel-like object to cut the chicken. Make a small hole in the body, open it, use tweezers with thread to poke in, and take out a small chicken egg , and then take out another one. This egg is covered with bloodshot eyes and is delicate. Like gems, the chef will put them in a dish on the side, then treat the wounds of the chickens, and put them down from the shelf. Some chickens may wilt for a while, but they will soon become active again, and some chickens will become active again. As soon as I put it down, I could walk with my head held high. I even remember pecking cleanly the eggs that were cut out of my body.
What the chicken doesn't know is that its fate has been determined between this take and release: the line chicken. This is a common name. In the following stages, it grows with the expectations of gourmets. Its pecking is the catalyst for delicious food. When the New Year comes, it is the end of its life. I didn't have such feelings at the time, I just felt that the master's craftsmanship was magical, his movements were smooth and smooth, and he had the elegance of being immersed in a certain work. "Nothing but familiarity". Later, when I read this sentence when I was studying, I occasionally thought It reminds me of those hands flying up and down like butterflies, but mastering this skill requires concentration and skill that comes from practice. When I was a child, I had a sense of awe towards such craftsmanship, especially when the adults around you looked at your crotch with malicious intent, it seemed like the door to the adult world could be opened with just a push.
But in fact we just ran away. When they said in a joking tone that they wanted the master to cut off ours too, we ran away with the fear of authority and the fear of the unknown, and those bloody The eggs are steamed in a rice pot and become a starter for adults to accompany wine. When they use chopsticks to pick up the eggs, a look of understanding appears on their faces.
四
As a child, the yearning for the distance is more of the yearning for time, that is, growing up, but physical growth feels slow for children.My longing for distant places did not come from my father who was in Hangzhou, although Hangzhou was also far away at that time, but from a storyteller: thin, with the appearance of a scholar, he seemed to be able to sing, and he wore simple makeup every time he performed.
Later I thought that this person must have continued the tradition of "Duban" in our hometown. This storyteller was probably a good-looking man. The girl was kidnapped and ran away. This girl was very charming and was already engaged, but she followed the storyteller without hesitation.
During that time, there was a legend in the village that this storyteller could drug him, and the girl in the village was drugged and became intoxicated before running away. In the child's heart, he actually has a vague admiration for such storytellers, but does not take seriously the warnings that adults scare children not to talk to strangers.
About a year later, the girl came back with an infant child in her arms. She also had an aura that was different from the people in the village, which is what we saw in the storyteller. A few days later, the storyteller also appeared, still looking polite and polite. Those words that said he had Ecstasy suddenly disappeared, and people greeted him with some alienation but also affection.
Storyteller is like a mirror, reflecting the hustle and bustle of the world outside.
The wind blew here and there, but the mirror remained calm. The reason why I remember the storyteller is because he taught me a way to make an origami boat. It can be folded easily, and the boat can bring me imagination of distant places. When I was a child, I had to do my best to do something. I was very stubborn, so I folded a lot of paper boats, big and small, and kept them in the cupboard at home. Later, when I had a son, I watched him play with dinosaurs and The little soldiers are actually the same.
Once I came home from being outdoors and patrolled my "port" as usual, but several of the largest ships were nowhere to be seen. I quickly asked my grandma and said that my cousin had probably taken them to play with, and he happened to come over to see my grandparents. .
On the wide river behind the house, I saw my boat, loaded with stones, floating on the water...
It was a huge loss. For me, it was a farewell. I began to know loss. But fortunately, children's happiness and troubles are easier to come by than adults. In the summer of this year, I became obsessed with digging out the cicadas that had not yet shelled, found a cardboard box to raise them, and placed them When it's time for them to shed their shells, they will climb up the branches. I see their weak bodies emerging from the earth-colored shell. When the shell cracks, it seems to wake up from a dream underground. Little did I know at the time that it had a years-long underground preparation period.
It is like a dream. When it grows up a little, one or two days after it sheds its shell, its skin becomes solid. If it is a male, I scratch the two plates on its abdomen with my hands, and it Being able to scream is instinctive, but it is under my control.
The light from the skylight in the east wing can still shine down, like a chimney of light. Because of the sunlight, it seems that there are a lot of dust dancing. In this dance, I can see the games I once played, which is my understanding of this world. The initial exploration?
is selected from the 8th issue of 2021 "Prose Overseas Edition"
