Creaking, Chen Xue heard the harsh sound of the wooden building again in the spring night. Yes, jarring. It was like a carnivore hiding in the dark and chewing bones. The crunch made her hair stand on end, and even wrapping herself in a quilt didn't help. She had to resort to lighting. When the lights came on, the voices hid. It was cold in spring, so she put on an off-white woolen sweater, with the sleeves draped over her shoulders. She subconsciously grabbed the right sleeve and looked at her small home: wooden walls, wooden doors, and wooden floors. Take a sniff and you'll smell the old pine scent. Chen Xue felt that she had turned into a mushroom spore adhering to the black wood. It seemed that when it was watered by the spring rain, it would grow into a white mushroom, which could be picked and stir-fried or stewed. It was delicious. If it weren't for the creaking sound, Chen Xue would really like this old wooden building. Maybe, life is like this, it will not make you happy, it will always create some suffering to torture you. She comforted herself like this.
When she was first assigned to this school, the principal asked her to choose between living in the old wooden building or the new building. There is no room in the new building, so if you want to live there, you have to share a dormitory with a single teacher. The wooden building is empty, but it is a dangerous building. Chen Xue looked at the principal who had just turned 40 and started to go bald in confusion. Since it was a dangerous building, how dare you let others live in it? The principal seemed to see what Chen Xue was thinking, and said mysteriously that although it was said to be a dangerous building, it was actually habitable, and there were two teachers living in it. Chen Xue opened her eyes with confusion, naively thinking that since others could live there, she could live there too. For many years, she had dreamed of an independent space where she could cry, laugh or be in a daze freely. This dream has finally come true, regardless of whether it is a dangerous building or not.
On the first night of living in the wooden building, those strange sounds came into my dream. Waking up in the middle of the night, she reflected on whether she had made the wrong choice? Living in a wooden building also has many inconveniences, such as being far away from the toilet and having to go downstairs to pick up drinking water. What makes her even more unbearable is that every weekend, the cafeteria ceases fire. She bought a box of instant noodles and put it in her dormitory, and her Sundays were filled with the smell of instant noodles. Her stomach hated instant noodles, but she was too lazy to cook a bowl of water noodles. She even regretted returning to this school.
It was Sunday again, and she stayed in bed for more than nine o'clock without thinking about it. Hungry urged her to get up. The familiar smell of instant noodles emanated from the carton on the desk. She felt nauseated and retched. Chen Xue looked at the colorful carton with disgust and wanted to throw it to the ground and step on it to crush it. The angry expression was like a warrior facing a powerful enemy, irreconcilable. The gurgling bowel sounds defeated her.
After quickly getting dressed, Chen Xue found the enamel jar for eating, tore a pack of instant noodles into it, and picked out the seasoning packet as usual. She likes to soak the instant noodles in boiling water until soft, then pour out the water, then add seasonings and mix to eat, so that it tastes like noodles. She held two bags of seasoning packets in her left hand and carried the hot water bottle in her right hand. The hot water bottle was very light, so she reluctantly lifted it and shook it twice, but she couldn't hear any sound of water.
Eat a ghost!
She put down the kettle with a little disappointment, looked at the noodles in the vat and sighed. It would be nice if Teacher Yang was here. I could go to her room with the instant noodles jar and pour boiling water. After Teacher Yang got divorced, she lived with her mentally retarded daughter Diandian in two rooms at the end of the corridor. It is said that her husband wanted to divorce her because Teacher Yang did not want to have any more children. However, she believed that the real reason for their divorce was Teacher Yang's early gray hair. Men all like flowers and willows, but who wants to face gray and frost all day long? She saw something on Teacher Yang's face that was inappropriate for her age, just like she saw something on her own face in the mirror. From the day she stepped into Teacher Yang's dormitory, she smelled home. There are two small rooms, with two beds in the inner room, and a set of things for living at home in the outer room, a small dining table, a briquette stove, pots and pans, a bucket and a pickle jar, all miscellaneous but not messy. Chen Xue likes the strong smell of kimchi in the house. If she has nothing to do, she will go to the house to watch Teacher Yang pick up a few pickled cowpeas from the kimchi jar and cut them into thin pieces, or watch her cut a piece of white fat into thin pieces and put it on the briquette stove. The oil was refining in the pot, making a sizzling sound. She heard that her old father was ill and was hospitalized, so she took Diandian to the hospital at noon yesterday.
She looked at another closed wooden door, inside which lived another resident of the wooden building, Tan Yitian, a male teacher.
It would be wrong to knock on his door so early in the morning!
In addition to the non-local teachers who live in the school, the local teachers leave the school and go home on Saturdays. I heard that Tan Yitian was also a local, but he was never seen leaving school. Never mind him, mind his own stomach. There was no boiling water, so I went downstairs to get tap water, brought it up, and then used an electric kettle to boil it, which took half an hour. If you have half an hour, why not go out to a restaurant?
Chen Xue gently closed the door, fearing that the sound of closing the door would alert others. She crossed her arms and tiptoed past Tan Yitian's door. When I reached the corner of the stairs, I breathed a sigh of relief. On Sunday, she didn't want to see anyone, for fear that they would ask casually, "Teacher Chen, why didn't you go home?" She is also a local.
There is a door on the left and right under the wooden building. The door on the right leads to the outside of the school. There are two peach trees standing on both sides of the door. The peach blossoms have just bloomed and the peach leaves have not yet come out, as if they are waiting for something. On the slope outside the door, a red mud path passes through the yellow rapeseed field and winds to the river. After dinner, she likes to take her mentally retarded daughter with Teacher Yang for a walk along the red mud path to the river. The open space by the river is overgrown with weeds, and chickens can be seen under the wind-swept grass. Those were chickens raised by Teacher Yang to improve their living standards, and they caught and eaten wild grass and insects at dusk. She asked, why don't you drive the chickens home? Teacher Yang said that by letting them eat outside for a while, they can save more food. Seeing Teacher Yang's tight life, she hated the mentally retarded girl's father.
The door on the left is some distance away from the stairs. Outside is a large playground. There was no one in the empty playground. The southeast corner of the playground is the school cafeteria, which is also silent at this time. The teachers' dormitory building and junior high school classrooms in the south are as quiet as the playground. A row of low tile-roofed buildings to the west are primary school classrooms. The roofs of some classrooms are open to the sky. Students who like to be distracted like to look at the sky on the roof during class. I heard that the classroom was also declared a dilapidated building and was just waiting for approval to be demolished and rebuilt together with the dilapidated building. Chen Xue took a few more glances at those classrooms and meditated on the time she spent sitting there. Happiness or unhappiness flew like butterflies during that time.
Crossing the playground and walking out of the school gate, the door is very open. On one side is the back wall of the residence, and on the other side are bundles of sweet sugar cane. The sugar cane cut down in winter is very sweet in spring. When I saw the sugar cane, my eyes lit up and I couldn't help but stop and look at it. Before her parents divorced, there was a sugar cane field next to her house. After school, she likes to get into the sugar cane fields, peel off the old leaves underneath like her mother did, and then carefully look for insect holes. When he finds a bug eye, he screams, "Oh my God!" When her mother heard the cry, she went in with a machete. She looked carefully and saw that the sugar cane with insect holes fell down when she cut it down. Looking at the sugar cane lying on the ground, she felt distressed and regretted her fuss. Mom, why do sugar cane have bugs? My mother said that sugar cane is so sweet that bugs want to eat it. When the neighbor saw the bug-eyed sugar cane drying on the dam, he regretfully said that just spraying it with pesticides would suffice, and there was no need to cut it down. Her mother is not used to spraying medicine, but likes to chop. When she was staring at a bundle of sugar cane, the sugar cane seller thought she wanted to buy sugar cane and started to ask, "Sister, which one do you like? Please take it out for you." Chen Xue quickly shook her head and said, "No!"
I’ve been standing in front of other people’s stalls for half a day. It’s inappropriate not to buy!
Tan Yitian said standing behind her.
Why is he behind you? Chen Xue was still confused, but Tan Tiantian continued, "Boss, I want the thickest one." The middle-aged man selling sugar cane took out the thickest one, weighed it, scraped off the outer skin with a machete, chopped it into several small pieces, put them in a white convenience bag, and handed it to Chen Xue.
Chen Xue subconsciously retracted her hand and said, I didn’t buy it.
Tan Yitian took out a black wallet from his trouser pocket, took out a five-yuan note and handed it over, saying that it would be the same for anyone who bought it.
Chen Xue looked at his calm face in surprise, thinking to herself: Do we know each other very well?
Tan Yitian took out the cleanest piece and handed it to Chen Xue and said, Teacher Chen, please!
Chen Xue looked at the sugar cane overflowing with honey. It was sweet when she took one bite. However, she had not eaten sugar cane for many years. She took a step back and waved her hand and said, thank you! Don't eat.
Haha, there are still people who don’t like to eat sugar cane!
Tan Yitian grinned, revealing yellowish teeth.
Chen Xue's eyes fell on his teeth. Thinking of the creaking sound of the wooden building at night, goosebumps appeared on his back.
They walked out of the cement road in front of the school gate and turned left, which was a long stone street.
On the stone street, you can still vaguely hear the footsteps of her childhood, and the voice of shouting and selling glutinous rice balls. Those sounds made her feel intimate and excited, as if time had reversed and gone back to the past. Mother held her little hand and walked on the stone street. Tangyuan, glutinous rice balls. She grabbed her mother's lapel and stopped in front of a stall selling glutinous rice balls. Bubble, bubble! An old man wearing yellow sneakers came over with a pick of bubbles and shouted, the sweet and sour smell of bubbles hit his face. Her eyes were glued to the bubble bag covered with a cage cloth. Yummy dog! Mom cursed affectionately. She wanted to eat glutinous rice balls and steamed rice cakes. She was debating whether to eat glutinous rice balls or steamed rice cakes. Her mother bought a piece of steamed rice dumplings wrapped in banana leaves and put it in a bamboo basket, then took her to sit in front of a stall selling glutinous rice balls. . She stepped carefully, fearing that she would crush the distant sound. And as soon as they stepped onto the stone street, they heard the noise of "ding-ding-ding-ding-ding". I don’t know when, the private houses on both sides of the street were transformed into workshops that can produce leather shoes. Young male workers wearing canvas aprons are hammering the soles of leather shoes under the bright light, while female workers are tying shoe uppers on sewing machines. The tinkling sound tempted those students who did not like to study and entered those workshops before graduating from junior high school. Of course, what really tempts students is the income of workshop workers, which is several times higher than that of school teachers. The ancient smell of bluestone is submerged in the strong smell of leather and rubber.
On weekends, Teacher Yang got up early in the morning to make noodles and make dumplings stuffed with eggs and chives, and invited Tan Yitian and Chen Xue to eat them. Chen Xue went early, and Teacher Yang hadn't finished making the dumplings yet. Ten-year-old Diandian sat next to her and played with a piece of dumpling wrapper. He pinched her and suddenly shouted, "Mom, daddy." Teacher Yang hurriedly dropped the dumpling wrapper in her hand and led her to the back room. Although Chen Xue knew that they had a plastic toilet with a lid placed under the bed in the back room, she still felt unclean and did not want Teacher Yang to make the remaining dumplings. She quickly washed her hands, sat down, picked up the dumpling wrappers and wrapped them. At this time, Tan Yitian came and stood at the door looking at Chen Xue's hand in surprise.
Chen Xue's hand felt uncomfortable. She put down the dumpling, raised her hand and looked left and right, but found nothing unusual.
Surprisingly, I never thought your hands could make dumplings.
Why can’t I hold dumplings with my hands?
Judging from your usual... Tan Yitian didn't say anything else before Chen Xue understood what he meant. Usually she is too lazy to do anything. Sometimes she sends her clothes to the street and pays for them to be washed. She looked at her hands that had become gentle and delicate, and it was easy to think of the small hands of the past. On that morning ten years ago, she was taken into a strange city by her father, carrying a yellow cloth schoolbag, wearing a new outfit sewn by her mother overnight, and a red scarf. She followed her father and walked into a completely unfamiliar city. 's home. The father wants her to call a beautiful hostess mom. She reluctantly called her mother, then looked down at her toes, feeling like a seedling that had just taken root and was roughly uprooted and planted in unfamiliar soil. When her parents divorced, she could stay with her mother, but her father said it was for her future, so she had to stay with him. She lived the life of a city dweller. The new mother loves to be clean and asks her to wash and mop the floor after school every day. In front of her father, the new mother kindly taught her how to do housework, euphemistically calling it training her ability to survive. After her father left, her face changed. Look at you, you are so stupid. You can't do such a simple thing well. When boiling water, I accidentally spilled boiling water on my feet and caused a blister. She didn't dare to complain about the pain, so she had to continue doing housework with her limp foot. At a young age, she learned to accept the odds.
Chen Xue pointed at Tan Yitian with a mischievous smile and said, Dad is there. Dot shook his head and said, no - yes -. Then she pulled the hem of Teacher Yang's clothes and asked, Mom, is that right?
More than twenty days later, the Seventh Noble Concubine returned with seven little chicken babies. Teacher Yang was particularly surprised. He grabbed a handful of broken rice and sprinkled it on the ground in front of the building. He scolded the Seventh Imperial Concubine, the elf ghost, for sneaking into the nest, why did she come back?
Chen Xue looked at the fluffy chicken babies, which were very cute, but she didn’t understand why the seventh noble concubine wanted to go to the nest secretly. This world terrifies her, and she has no choice but to hide and hatch her offspring, Teacher Yang said, looking at the chicks.
The seventh noble concubine led the little chickens and just clucked around in front of the wooden building, gathering around people asking for food. Teacher Yang had to go to work and pick up his mentally retarded daughter from a nearby farmer's relative's home after school. He had no time to take care of the Seventh Imperial Concubine and the little chicken baby, so he kept them in an empty room in the wooden building and sprinkled some broken rice on them. on the ground. The concubine Qi, who was used to being wild, became unhappy after eating broken rice for a few days. She threw herself against the glass window and wanted to go out. Teacher Yang said it wanted to eat bugs. Tan Yitian said that eating bugs was easy, so after school he took an empty ink bottle and went to the grass by the river to catch bugs. Chen Xue felt that the raised breasts were funny.
Why are you so nice to the Seventh Imperial Concubine? It seems like those chicks are yours. After Chen Xue finished speaking, she covered her mouth and laughed.
Tan Yitian poked his head out of the grass nest and said, what do you know? It is our matchmaker and our teacher.
Matchmaker, barely qualified. Where does the teacher start? Chen Xue was puzzled.
It lays eggs and nests without telling Teacher Yang, and we also hide it from Teacher Yang. After he finished speaking, he closed one eye and smiled ambiguously with the other eye. Looking into his eyes, Chen Xue naturally thought of the crazy time they spent hiding in the wooden building when Teacher Yang took her daughter back to her hometown. They don't seem to need any food, just enjoying each other.
In Chen Xue’s heart, the wooden building has become her Noah’s Ark. If possible, she would like to live like this for the rest of her life, without fighting against the world and living in peace. One day, the principal came to the wooden building, and Chen Xue happened to come down from it.
What's the point of visiting a dangerous building, Mr. Principal?
Teacher Chen, there is a single room available over there in the dormitory building. The conditions are better over there, so move there.
The principal looked at Chen Xue's expression and spoke carefully.
Chen Xue was stunned, wondering why there was suddenly an empty room in the dormitory over there. Her sensitive nerves suddenly trembled, and she understood.
Let me think about it.
Chen Xue also looked at the principal's expression, wanting to see more from his face. What she didn't see in the principal, she saw in the other teachers' faces. After class, they gathered in the office and chatted. As soon as Chen Xue passed by, they all shut their mouths. She didn't hear their words clearly, but she saw what they said from their eyes. At this moment, she deeply understood Sartre’s meaning of “Hell is other people”. She tried to look calm and composed, walked to her desk, put down her textbook, picked up the tea that was cooling on the table, took a sip, and looked over coldly as she felt curious eyes still clinging to her body.
After school in the afternoon, she met Teacher Yang at the stairs. She gave her a sharp look first, then sniffed and said, "What's the smell? It smells so bad?"
Chen Xue raised her arms in turn and smelled it. There was no smell. She knew in her heart that it was the smell of perfume sprayed on her body. She didn't use perfume in the past, but now she likes perfume. Does it smell that bad? No matter what, it's not for her to smell. He turned sideways to go out.
Don’t leave in a hurry. Come to my room and tell you something.
They climbed up the wooden building one after another. Teacher Yang held the textbook in one hand and picked up the key in the other to open the wooden door. The room was in a mess, and Diandian was nowhere to be found. She was busy cleaning up the toys, spatulas and dishes on the floor, and seemed to have forgotten what she wanted to tell Chen Xue. Chen Xue coughed and said, "You should be busy, I have something to do when I go out." Teacher Yang stopped, looked at Chen Xue and said, why are you reluctant to move away?
Chen Xue understood without thinking that it was the principal who asked her to be the lobbyist.
I am used to the smell of wooden buildings, and I am afraid that I will not be able to sleep if I move there.
What Chen Xue said was true. She had trouble sleeping.
Teacher Yang looked into Chen Xue’s eyes and said, you didn’t tell the truth. The principal said that Teacher Tan didn't want to move either. Could it be that you really have a shady secret?
Chen Xue lowered her eyelids, not having enough confidence to speak out anyway, what does it have to do with them?
Teacher Yang glanced at her, stood up and closed the door, then leaned against the door panel and whispered, "Sister-in-law, are the rumors outside true?" He is a married man, how can you mess around?
Seeing Teacher Yang's expression change from surprise to contempt, Chen Xue became tough and said coldly that his marriage was in name only and they had no feelings at all.
Tan Yitian talked about his marriage. His father died when he was young, and his mother worked hard to support him in school. When he was about to graduate from high school, his mother suffered a stroke and became paralyzed. He originally planned to drop out of school and go home to serve his mother, so he brought back all the books and daily necessities from school. When he got home, he found a strange girl wiping his mother's body while his aunt stood nearby and watched. Auntie pulled him outside and whispered, "You all saw it." How can you, a young man, serve your mother? We discussed it and asked the matchmaker to find a wife for you first, and then we can consummate the marriage after you stop studying. Although the girl didn't have much education, she took good care of her mother. Later, his mother died, but he still married her.
What nonsense! Without feelings, where did the baby come from? His sister is five or six years old.
Teacher Yang raised his head and raised his voice, as if he was preparing to have a big quarrel with her. Chen Xue didn't want to quarrel with her, thinking that you haven't figured out your own affairs yet.
She felt that all the teachers in the school looked at her differently. Only Diandian and the chickens remained the same when they saw her. She couldn't ignore other people's opinions and didn't dare to interact with Tan Yiyi anymore, but she didn't want to move out of the wooden building. She stopped hanging out after school and went straight back to her den. There is a newly bought dual-card tape recorder on the desk, and a stack of tapes next to it. I picked up a box of Luo Dayou's tapes and put it in, and Luo Dayou's soulful singing came out. She then found Stendhal's "The Red and the Black" and leaned on the bed. She turned to Chapter 45, which she read last time, and tried to calm down. She finished reading the first sentence: "I don't want to play tricks on poor Abbé Chasseurner," and then began to lose focus on the second sentence. The principal's eyes, Teacher Yang's eyes, and her colleagues' eyes were all squeezed into a strange big face, all glaring at her fiercely. It seems that you can hear their silent yelling, get out! She picked up the book and covered her face, but she couldn't stand it! She hid under the book and took a nap. When she woke up, she heard the giggles of two little girls.
Fish - fish!
Dot and Dot stood in front of the bucket next to the door, pointing inside.
Not a fish!
A strange girl in a yellow gauze skirt, about the same age as Diandian, started arguing with her. Chen Xue sat up and saw that the tapes beside the tape recorder were gone. When she walked over, the tapes were all soaked in water. During her lonely time, the tape recorder and tapes were her companions and her treasures. Now her baby was soaked in the water and died, and she was heartbroken.
Dian Dian is mentally retarded, it’s useless to beat her and scold her. She picked up a box of dripping tapes and naturally turned her anger towards the strange girl.
Who let you in?
Chen Xue screamed at the top of her lungs, scaring the strange girl so much that she stepped back, tripped over the washbasin under her feet and fell to the ground, crying. Her cry attracted Tan Yitian, who bent down to pick up the girl on the ground, raised his head, his face turned dark. The air in the room became tense, and Diandian was still shouting silly, "Fish!" fish! fish!
How can you do this at such a young age?
Tan Yitian suppressed his anger and said.
Chen Xue met his angry eyes, her heart felt cold, and she said coldly that she tripped herself and no one did anything.
If you trip over yourself, you think everyone is as easy to deceive as Diandian!
Chen Xue didn't want to argue with him anymore, so she picked up all the tapes from the bucket and burst into tears.
On the morning of the third day, Chen Xue opened the door and found a paper bag containing a dozen brand-new tapes. When she poured the tapes out of the paper bag, she thought it was time to leave the wooden building. Before leaving the wooden building, she went to her hometown, Kara Village.
Three white-walled and black-tiled houses are located on a small hill. The bamboo forest on the left side of the house is still lush and green, while the sugar cane field on the right side is covered with luxuriant grass. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried, her father remarried, and their house became empty. It was first given to a lonely old man, and after the old man passed away, the door was locked. In her dreams, she always wandered in front of the door carrying a heavy bag. She wanted to unload the bag and put it into the house, but she did not have the courage to push the door open. Pushing the door open became her wish.
The door is broken and the lock is rusty, but her childhood is imprisoned inside, and her soul has never left. Those who left with my father that year were just zombies, living in vain for so many years.
She found a stone and hit the iron lock hard. It seemed that as soon as the door was opened, the little person would come out and return to her, and they would grow up together again.