Appreciation of Hai Jin's Silent Village

A sparrow floats lightly on the flowered wall of the platform through the sparse sunshine. The cement on the flower wall is very old. The thin sparrow stood there, looked around, then lowered its head and pecked at the concrete wall twice quickly. There is nothing in wall frame. Maybe the sparrow is pecking at the tiny sand, or maybe it's just a habit, and then its feet jump forward together. Sparrows despise walking the most. Even if you land, you bounce forward with your feet together. Another sparrow landed nearby, pecked on the windowsill twice, and then they flew to the treetops outside the courtyard wall together.

Mother's eyes kept chasing the two sparrows through the window glass.

Mother seldom sits quietly on the kang like this, but now she can't go in and out all day as before. A small blood clot made her lose the ability to walk flexibly. She can only try to walk step by step and stay on the kang for a while. She said that when you get old, you should learn to walk again like a child. Mother is really old, her gray hair has not been dyed black for two or three years, and the wrinkles on her face are getting deeper and deeper.

The branches outside the yard are very quiet, and the sunshine in early winter is very weak and there is no wind. Only sparrows come occasionally, stay for a short time, sometimes two or three, sometimes a group, suddenly fly and then fly away. Sparrows are resident birds, and they are here all year round, year after year. Many people left, but the sparrow did not.

On the path in front of the yard, people are rarely seen again, and all the people who used to live on the slope have moved away. I have been to the ruins of those old houses on the slope more than once. In addition to half-broken walls, bricks and tiles, there are some discarded items, such as worn-out lanterns, broken porcelain bowls, abandoned stone pig troughs and so on. People have moved to a flat place outside the ditch, but when I was young, many people lived here.

When people left, the house was demolished, leaving only a few trees. These are some big and old trees. Their roots are here and they can't go anywhere. They are still alive and growing. Life itself is constantly growing, and when it grows, it will become an elder, and so will people.

There are only some old people left in the village. When I go back to my hometown, my father often counts his fingers. There are several people who are often at home. From the ditch to the outside, there are only a handful Only these old people are farming here, and the young people have gone to the city and will definitely not come back. In my heart, the land here no longer belongs to them and they no longer belong to this land.

Every year, my parents always plant their own land vigorously. My mother said that not many kinds of points would make people laugh. I said you can still plant now, and there will definitely be no race in the future. No, it's only a matter of time. Mom can't farm any more next year.

There are fewer and fewer old people in the village. Three people died this year alone. Liu Yuming and Liu Changling died in a car accident together. They go to other villages to work and ride motorcycles home at night. They crossed the road at the bridge head and collided with a heavy truck. Later, it was said that there was a loud crash, and the two men were thrown out like sandbags and landed heavily on the hard ground by the roadside.

Liu Yuming's family is a neighbor, and you can see my roof at a glance. I call him cousin. When I was a child, he always cut my hair. At that time, he was a high-spirited young man. He said that when he was young, he ate three kilograms of food stamps for a meal. At that time, three kilograms of food stamps could buy four and a half kilograms of oil cakes. I believe what he said is true. I guess he only ate it once. At that time, it was as easy as playing with a burden of 200 Jin on your shoulders. A few years ago, when he was the leader of the villagers' group in the village, he won a water conservancy irrigation project and put a long iron pipe on the mountain for everyone to grow chestnuts. But those iron pipes, like a dead bug, have long been rusty, but no one uses them to send water to the mountains anymore, and the chestnut trees in the village have not increased.

Later, he won the village road, and the road surface can be included in the village-to-village communication project, which will be paid by * * * *, but the roadbed will still be repaired by the villagers themselves. One day, he called me and said that there was no one in the village and no money to build roads. Can you give me some money? I said yes, but I only have a monthly salary. When I got home, I gave him two thousand yuan. When he left on a motorcycle with money, I watched his gray hair, like frosty grass, blown by the wind.

The road was built, but Liu Yuming had cancer. After leaving the hospital, his voice was completely hoarse and he became older and weaker. But every time I see him, he is still busy with his work in the field.

Although they are similar in age, according to their surnames, Liu Yuming and Liu Changling are called uncles, and Liu Changling and I are also called uncles. As long as I can remember, Liu Changling didn't like talking. It seems that he hasn't said a few words in his life. He is as kind as a cotton ball, but he works hard.

In the morning, they go out to work together. In the wind, their same gray hair fluttered. In the evening, the two never came back. They are the two most capable people in the village. In the villagers' words, their work is finished.

Later, another person who died was Wang Tian, his third uncle in the family.

His uncle has been ill for a long time, and his illness is getting worse every day. He is as thin as a bone. Once I saw him in the South Prince Cemetery, I was surprised that he could walk so far. He said that when he came out, his mouth was already big, his face was thin, and his mouth was even bigger. Nantaizi has the ancestral grave of Lao Wang's family. I wonder if his uncle will come to see his destination soon. His face is sallow, like a yellow watch paper.

In the last period of time, his uncle's life seemed to be nothing but death. As the days passed, he waited for the date of death. It is said that someone counted spring for him, and later said it was summer. His uncle finally passed away in autumn.

That day, my father suddenly called and said that Uncle Wang Tian had passed away and asked me if I had time to go back. I said go back. His uncle's funeral was very grand. When I went to the small temple to fetch my soul, I was also a junior, kowtowing in three steps. The path that I have walked countless times, the ground is very hard, kneeling on it, and every stone and sand falls under my knee, which is very painful. I don't know if my uncle's soul is following us all the way. The leading team is very long, including his two sons who came back from the city, the younger generation at home, the suona whimpering, and the white old-fashioned hunting. ...

At this moment, everything seems to have stopped in the village, only the team leading the soul is marching slowly in the village. When his uncle was alive, it seemed that there were never so many people doing the same thing for him at the same time.

Uncle Wang Tian was naturally buried in the soil of Nantaizi, and there was a new grave next to the graves of his predecessors. Everything is quiet.

My father has been a village doctor in the village for decades. He is familiar with everyone in the village and even treats everyone. He recorded countless cases. In recent years, since he bought a computer, he has been tapping the keyboard in front of the computer, inputting and sorting out his own recorded cases. My father cured many diseases in his life, but no one cured his own eye diseases.

My father has glaucoma, which should be inherited from my grandmother. Grandma went blind after she got glaucoma. At that time, someone looked at her and said that the house was built in the wrong place, and the next generation would get eye diseases. So the family tore down an old hospital with one positive compartment and one negative compartment in a panic and moved to the present residence, but my father still got an eye disease like fate. I once took my father to a big hospital in Beijing to see his eyes. The doctor said that my father had only one eye and a quarter of his vision. I once tried to block one eye and imagine what the other eye could see with a quarter angle. I don't know how my father can live like a normal person from this quarter perspective.

The medical records compiled by my father on the computer have more than 200 thousand words. I probably looked through it and recorded it in detail, including name, gender, age, symptoms, diagnosis, medication, and even the first, second and third consultations until many consultations. Some people are cured, some people are dead, and some people are cured and die. Death is always everyone's final destination. I think these medical records recorded by my father can be published as journals of rural diseases. In other words, it is more like a village's death file.

Mom and dad are old, and so is the village. In the village, you can't hear the barking of chickens and dogs, and you can't see donkeys, horses, pigs and sheep. Even the smog of three meals a day is getting worse and worse. All the newcomers in the village have already walked under another sky, only sparrows are still there. They came and flew away again and again. The sun was a little hazy, but there was still no wind.