With a leap, he said goodbye to the world that had made him struggle for more than twenty years. In the past, he was also full of hope and fighting spirit, looking forward to the day when he could have a bright future. But whether it is his parents, teachers or classmates, the malice brought to him was more than encouragement and comfort. On the contrary, after his death, he cared about his life as if he was acting on the spot.
Wang Mo and his father tried hard to walk into the school with their waists straight,
into the office,
Seeing Teacher Li Xiangmei grading essays,
He did not lift his head, nor paid any attention to him.
The other teachers also only glanced at this stupid standing,
And more and more restrained rickety old men.
Finally, Li Xiangmei finished her homework.
She impatiently pierced the rolls,
Pull out a stool from under your desk,
Let Wang Mo and his father sit down.
Wang Mo's father's working-class spirit has weakened by half,
I had to put my hands on my knees and lean forward unnaturally.
1
The first time I saw Wang Mo, I was tinkering with the newly purchased VCD machine at home, and the machine somehow malfunctioned, and there was no sound from the Japanese tokusatsu released.
There are three wires connected behind the butt of the VCD machine, the left channel of the red tube, the right channel of the blue tube, and the video signal of the yellow tube. My dad pointed to my pouting little buttocks, and said to Wang Mo and his father Wang Jianguo: "My son is smart when he is young, and as soon as the TV has no signal, he knows to pull the VCD thread again, like me." ”
I turned my head to look, Wang Jianguo was smiling gently, gently dusting the snowflakes on his hat, and there was a little boy as tall as me standing in front of him, with a small face and big round eyes looking intently at the picture on the TV.
My mother came out of the kitchen, stuffed Wang Mo with a box of big rolls, looked up and asked Wang Jianguo, "Where is Xiuli?" Didn't come with you? ”
Wang Jianguo waved his hand and said, "She's going to clean up her hair, it's going to take a while, let's eat first, leave her alone." ”
Wang Mo sat quietly in front of me, waiting for our father to arrange a meal. The SWAT team member in the TV was driving the plane to the place of the incident, and there was a long flame behind his buttocks, Wang Mo suddenly said to me: "Is it fast to fly when your butt is on fire?" "We were all happy.
My mother said: "This kid is very interesting to talk about, you should cultivate the founding of the country." Wang Jianguo smiled and said: "My son has a bit of a talent for being a writer, and in the future, let Yuan go to study science, Wang Mo will learn literature, one literature and one science, and build four modernizations together." ”
The three adults filled the small table in the living room with meals, two catties of pig's head meat, fat and thin, put together a cucumber, mixed it with old vinegar and oil and spicy seeds, put it in a yellow enamel basin, and put a circle of hot dishes around, all of which were quite vegetarian, and there was a bottle of 53-degree Fenjiu on the corner of the table, which was yellow-covered. While speaking, there was a sound of high heels "let's click" at the door, and when I looked at it again, Wang Mo's mother Chen Xiuli was already hunched over and taking off her high boots.
My mom said, "It's pretty stylish, we haven't seen anyone wearing boots in the mine." Chen Xiuli raised her head, pulled her hair, and squeezed out an unnatural smile. Only then did we see that she had permed a small curly hair, brown and yellow, which complemented the lipstick of the big red number, which was very foreign.
My dad said: "Ou Yo, Jianguo, your daughter-in-law has to borrow me to dance together, these are all big stars." Wang Jianguo smiled very reservedly.
A few people sat down around the small table, talking lively, giggling and laughing. Just after the Lunar New Year, the annual leave in the mine had been taken, but my father and mother, the newly married young people, were still restless, seemed to have endless enthusiasm and energy, and would continue to be so young, very different from the old and silent people I later remembered.
The monsters on the TV burst out of the mountain, the SWAT team's plane shattered in two hits, and Ultraman came out in the flash. I could see that the four adults and Wang Mo were all holding their breath and looking at each other, unconsciously feeling a little proud.
After the monster exploded, Chen Xiuli was amazed: "Little Japan's technology is still good, how did you shoot it?" Wang Jianguo said: "It should be stuffed into that kind of special clothes and shot from the bottom to the top with a smaller camera." Chen Xiuli pouted: "It's enough to show that you can, you can try to shoot one." Wang Jianguo put his hand in his thigh, with a wry smile on his face, and did not speak.
Wang Mo pointed to my VCD and said, "Mom, I also want to watch this kind of cartoon." Chen Xiuli said: "Good, let's watch the animation city at five o'clock, we don't watch this kind of thing of fighting and killing." ”
When my dad heard this, he used chopsticks to pull the pig's head meat in the enamel basin, and his face was a little ugly.
Wang Jianguo came that day, in fact, he brought Chen Xiuli to my house to ease relations. Wang Mo and I are the same age, and we have both reached the age of going to primary school. My mother thinks that it doesn't cost anything to stay in the mine to study in the children's primary school, but one of the teachers in the children's primary school said that all of them are mallets, and for the sake of the children, they have to buy a house in the city as soon as possible, settle the household registration, and send the children to school in the city.
This idea is quite right, my father and Wang Jianguo hit it off and agreed to take care of each other and help each other in the matter of their children's schooling.
My dad and Wang Jianguo are both drivers in our coal transportation team, they ran through Liulin in Linxian County together, and they also traveled long distances together, and the coal transportation industry was quite developed in the past few years, and the income was considerable, so it was not difficult to borrow some money to buy a house in the city. But Wang Jianguo couldn't speak at home, Chen Xiuli was in charge of the financial power, Chen Xiuli had been married for a few years, and she only cared about dressing up herself, and she didn't save much savings. My dad and my mom were very embarrassed, but they also saved up enough to take 2,000 yuan and give it to Wang Jianguo. Wang Jianguo was very grateful, and he didn't want to go home with 2,000 yuan but was scolded by Chen Xiuli.
Chen Xiuli scolded very badly, first from the fact that Wang Jianguo's friends and brothers were not able to do anything, so they could only make up such a small amount of money and scolded, and then thought that Wang Jianguo himself was a wreck, and he had no ability, and he had to send his children to study in the city. In the end, the more she talked, the more angry she became, and even vetoed her marriage to Wang Jianguo, saying that she was young and beautiful, and had countless suitors, but in the end she married such a useless man, which was simply a misfortune in life.
This word reached my father's ears, and he was really depressed for a while. Wang Jianguo was sincere, saying that his wife just didn't have a doorkeeper on her lips, and her heart was not bad, so he proposed to wait for the annual leave to come to the door with his wife and children, get together, and contact his feelings. My dad smoked several cigarettes and said to him earnestly, "If you can't beat your daughter-in-law, forget it, Lao Wang." Wang Jianguo waved his hand and said, "No, no." ”
The atmosphere was nice that day. My dad and Wang Jianguo both drank too much, and in the living room they hugged each other in a way unique to men of that era and bragged about.
My dad said that in the future, when he becomes a member of the Standing Committee, he will arrange a mine manager for Jianguo, which must be right. Wang Jianguo said: "The mine manager is too far away, just give me some diesel tickets." ”
Chen Xiuli took my mother's hand and twittered to the small mirror of the blush box to teach my mother how to apply lipstick, my mother was a little embarrassed, blushing, pursing her mouth, looking at her and Chen Xiuli's young appearance in the small mirror.
Outside, you can faintly hear someone firing a cannon, either the black boss or the red spider, quite loud, mixed with the laughter of boys and girls.
In the living room, the window was condensed with a thick layer of frost, Wang Mo and I stretched our hands on it, it was cold and cold, and after a while, we could see a clear handprint, reflecting the lanterns of every house outside the window, turning the small living room into a sea of red.
2
When I entered the school, my family had already bought a bungalow in the city, there was no heating, and in the winter I had to buy my own coal stove, which was already very poor at the beginning of the new century.
On the day of the move, Wang Jianguo smoked a cigarette while sullenly putting the reconciled slime into the yard. Although I borrowed a lot of money, it was still a long way to go to buy a prefabricated house with heating and gas. Chen Xiuli cried and fussed, refusing to move to a bungalow like mine, because she was guilty of that.
But after a fuss, the house was not bought, and the borrowed money was spent by Chen Xiuli. My dad was in a complicated mood, and he went up to persuade Wang Jianguo, but if he couldn't do it, forget it, and after two or three years, he saved enough money and transferred to the city, and it was the same.
Wang Jianguo sighed and said, "I saw that loser girl wearing a coat bought in Taiyuan to play mahjong, and I wanted to kill this trigger woman with a knife." Fortunately, my son was sensible, and he painted me the day before, drawing a pig Bajie and carrying a few watermelons on his back. My father continued to give Wang Jianguo a red flag canal, saying, "No, it's more productive than my son." ”
In this way, I haven't seen Wang Mo for eight or nine years since then. My dad worked in the mines during the day and hitchhiked to town at night, occasionally bringing news of his colleagues to my mom and me.
Wang Mo showed an unusual talent for writing in elementary school, and the teachers of the mallet in the mine often came up with some inexplicable questions to test the students' IQ. When Wang Mo was in the first grade, the math teacher deliberately flattened the "0" on the blackboard, and proudly asked the children if they knew what it was. The first-graders had not yet learned all the Arabic numerals, and they all shook their heads blankly. Wang Mo stood up and said: "I know, this is an empty pot, when my mother plays mahjong and doesn't come home to cook for me, the pot at home looks like this." ”
The math teacher, who pretended to be interrupted, was rarely angry, praising Wang Mo's ability to turn abstraction into concrete imagination, while sighing for Chen Xiuli.
When he was in junior high school, Wang Mo wrote a novel that immediately shocked our children's school. Wang Mo wrote in the novel that after learning scriptures from the West, the four masters and apprentices lived a plain life, Wukong and Sha Seng died one after another, the most innocent Bajie suffered from Alzheimer's, and the master dragged the decayed body to stay in the ward to accompany him. Bajie's memory began to break day by day, he forgot the ups and downs on the road back then, and he would only leave a slimy saliva when the master was feeding. One night, the moonlight was clear, and Bajie, who was old and amnesiac, looked at the master who was sleeping soundly with his arm in front of him, and inexplicably left a line of tears. The moonlight spread on the autumn chrysanthemum on the windowsill of the ward, and the shadows that fell on the ground slowly turned into the four masters and apprentices, staggering in the silver river.
This novel was circulated by the mallet teachers, which made Wang Jianguo, who was on the verge of unemployment at the time, feel very gratified. My dad showed me a copy of the essay and asked me to learn from this little brother I hadn't seen for years. Wang Mo's words are very delicate squares, stroke by stroke, and he writes very seriously. I can imagine a teenager, living in a house that is always noisy and cold, and one night he writes this story of decay and memory under the dim lamp. Perhaps I should have been in tears over this scene like him.
Later, Wang Mo was admitted to our county No. 1 middle school. In the autumn of the year he became my classmate, Wang Jianguo finally divorced Chen Xiuli by agreement. The two have lived together for more than ten years, except for the short time when Wang Mo was not born, there was sweetness, and the rest of the time was spent in quarrels. Chen Xiuli attributed all the unhappiness and frustration in her life to her failed marriage and to marrying this failed man. Wang Jianguo was honestly silent at first, but eventually exploded in the form of a crazy rebound, turning into an irascible man who would drop all the dishes and chopsticks in one go during an argument.
After Wang Mo went to junior high school, the coal transportation industry began to become very sluggish, and Wang Jianguo had the ability to open A2 large goods but had nowhere to show it, so he couldn't sleep all night. Chen Xiuli used this as an excuse to find a more suitable man in the mahjong field openly and honestly, and continued to live her life without work. Finally, Wang Mo's high school entrance examination ended successfully, Chen Xiuli returned home with a man with a briefcase, divorced Wang Jianguo by agreement, and took away all the cash passbooks in the family.
When we met again after many years, Wang Mo and I both sighed for a while as adults, but no matter how much we recalled the intersection points in our memory, the alienation between us was irresistible. Wang Mo is no longer the cute young man with a round face, he is not tall, his face has become longer, and like his father, there is a gap between the two front teeth, which is not too wide, but it still makes people worry about whether it will leak when speaking.
The vast majority of students in the county No. 1 middle school are promoted from the junior high school in the county, and most of them are familiar with each other, even if they are not familiar with each other, at most they can climb the relationship and integrate into the new collective.
However, Wang Mo has been studying in the school in the mine since he was a child, and his life circle and used communication methods are very different from ours, and it seems very difficult for him to participate in the new life. But he still worked hard, and even tried to use me as a small intermediary to introduce me to the circle of young people in the county. Every time he saw the squad leader Cheng Er taking us out to play, he would exaggerate that kind of sneering smile and greet us with the same enthusiastic and exaggerated voice: "Second brother, go out to play?" Cheng Lao Er sniffed, waved his hand indiscriminately, and did not reply to him.
In the first year of high school, Cheng Laoer's sister Cheng Ling celebrated her birthday, Cheng Lao Er called us all to eat in the restaurant in order to put the cards, a group of people rushed back to school after eating, someone put the birthday hat used that day on my head, Wang Mo happened to ride by, he first said to Cheng Lao Er twice, and then turned his head and said to me: "Brother Yuan, your birthday today?" "I hurriedly said no, it's Cheng Ling's birthday, let's go to the restaurant on the other side of the road to eat. Wang Mo let out an "oh", and the end of the note went around several times in his throat, making a very surprised expression, he said: "The hat is very fun, borrow me to play?" ”
I saw Cheng Lao Er looking at the two of us with interest, so I buttoned my hat on Wang Mo's head.
Wang Mo, like his father, has a long face in the shape of a shoehorn, and his forehead and chin are stretched out openly, and he is born poor. His hair was stiff, and when the paper hat was buttoned up to his head, it fluttered. He looked like a down-and-out clown in a scruffy school uniform, a broken women's bicycle, and a birthday crown hat, so everyone laughed.
I saw sixteen-year-old Wang Mo smile in a way that I couldn't fully understand at the time, but it was in keeping with the atmosphere of the day, as if he was born lowly, and the only way to join us was to please us, in the form of a clown.
Later, he told me that he and Cheng Ling had a birthday one day, and that was the only time he wore a birthday hat.
Cheng Lao Er later said to me: "This kid is very happy, I can take him to play with him next time." I nodded.
He asked again: "What is your relationship with Wang Mo'er?" ”
Cheng Laoer's father is a well-known entrepreneur in our county, who started selling second-hand cars in the early years of the century, and then the second-hand car market declined, so he made the money and partnered with several coal bosses in the county to put up usury. Cheng Lao Er has the same example, he has to compete for the first place everywhere in the class, and he likes to pick up the last word when calling people's names, "Wang Moer", "Lao Yuaner", as if we are all his very kind little followers.
I lied, only saying that I met a few times when I was a child, and I didn't know each other.
Cheng Lao Er said: "Then this kid can be admitted from the junior high school in the mine, and his study is quite hard." ”
I said: "Wang Mo has always been the first in their junior high school, especially in linguistics, he reads a lot, and he writes essays every year. ”
Cheng Lao Er pursed his lips and said disdainfully: "Fan Wen on the mine? ”
I didn't speak again.
3
When I was in graduate school, I was arranged by the school to study at the radar station on the Weihai campus, and there were two main parts of the radar station, one part was on the shore, which mainly built a cage-shaped array and transmitting antennas, and there were thirty or fifty horizontal and vertical antennas, and the other part was on an isolated island a few kilometers away from the shore to receive and test the signals from the shore. The test task is a bit trivial, the island is full of wild grass, the daily work is to find a suitable place to set up an antenna, and then sit on the ground and use the 2G network to find someone to flirt, look at the circle in front of the WeChat dialog box and turn around.
Wang Mo suddenly contacted me at that time, saying that he had graduated for many years and wanted to come and see me. I told him about the boring life on the island, which actually increased his interest, and he took K1294 from Taiyuan to Yantai that day, then transferred to the bus, went to Weihai bus station, and then took a small boat to the island from the pier.
When we met, it was already dark, and I took him to a shabby dinner in the island cafeteria, with an egg per person, a bowl of noodle soup per person, and a few plates of pickles in the middle. But fortunately, before I went to the island, I secretly brought half a bottle of Honggai Fenjiu, which was just right to make a strong noise.
He was very satisfied and grateful to me for the warm hospitality that gave him a drink and noodles. Only then did I notice that he was a lot calmer, his tone and expression were not as exaggerated as they were in high school, but he didn't smile much anymore, he didn't talk much, and he always pursed his lips, which meant that the words were in his mouth and in the wine.
It was 2018, and "Paper Short Love" was playing all over the street, and the cigarette handle sang a version, and the flower porridge sang a version, and they all had to be VIP to listen to it completely. After dinner, he and I walked on the rocky beach by the sea, humming the song intermittently. The alcohol content of Honggai Fen is not high, and we are both slightly drunk and in a good mood. In this way, since I graduated in 2013, I have not met him again, and the number of WeChat contacts is only a handful, all of which are his birthday wishes during the Dragon Boat Festival.
I said, "Why do you want to come to see me?" He said: "I didn't pass the graduate school entrance examination, so I came out to relax, and then went back and waited for graduation." I lit a cigarette and handed him one, and he hesitated, but took it, holding the flame I handed over with one hand.
I said, "It's all obsessions, it's all obsessions, how about graduate school, what if you don't go to graduate school, you can't change anything." He said: "I didn't do well in the college entrance examination, I reluctantly got into 211 after repeating a year, thinking that if I can take the graduate school entrance examination, I will try to take a 985 test, otherwise it will be difficult to find a job." ”
I've never been very happy to listen to 985 and 211, and the thief was annoying, and I couldn't tell the reason, so I asked him where he applied for the exam. He said, "I have reported to your headquarters." ”
I let out an "oh" and figured out why he was coming to see me.
I said, "But the headquarters is in the Northeast, you should go to the Northeast to take a look, and you can only look at the antenna rack when you come to Weihai, which is so boring." He snorted embarrassedly twice and said, "Come and see you, come and see you." ”
I digressed and said, "Do you still write articles now?" ”
He fell silent suddenly, and in the night he could only feel that he was trying hard to pretend that he was an old smoker, and the red light of the cigarette butt flashed and extinguished, and his shoehorn face disappeared.
4
In the first semester of his sophomore year of high school, Wang Mo wrote an essay, which uncharacteristically did not use the writing method of total scores, arguments and arguments, and it read like a piece of prose that poured down, but it was not small in momentum, not lyrical at all, and completely different from his humble temperament on weekdays.
At that time, there was a popular argument in the society, called "it is difficult to produce a noble son from a poor family". Wang Mo wrote 1,500 words freely, and the composition grid on the back of the volume was full and he didn't finish it, so he attached a page of letter paper with duct tape on it.
Wang Mo tearfully complained in that article, saying that in this world, there are some privileged people who control the right to speak and the "right to ascend", so that those children who work hard but have limited family resources lose hope in life. At the end of the article, he pointed out that although the individual efforts of poor students are equally important, it is more important to eliminate those who have the right to speak and the "right to ascend the road".
I listened to that great work, in the next day's language class. A Chinese teacher in her early thirties, named Li Xiangmei, read Wang Mo's article in front of everyone. The teacher had just given birth, her breasts were huge, and it was estimated that the endocrine system had not been repaired, and her face was always covered with a layer of fat and greasy. After reading it, she slapped Wang Mo's composition paper on the lectern and almost scolded.
She said that Wang Mo is a villain with a dark heart, full of negative energy, and always delusional about opportunism. After reading a few anthologies of essays, you thought you were Lu Xun?
She was a little hysterical, and asked Wang Mo to hand over all the essays and periodicals hidden in her schoolbag, and she wanted to confiscate these things. Wang Mo stood up, and for the first time we saw his expression so calm, like a righteous martyr, that I began to wonder if this guy, who always showed a flattering expression, was a critical person with a split personality. He pulled his bag out of the table, pulled out a stack of magazines, and laid them neatly on the table, no more, no less, a total of 12 books, and carried them to the podium step by step.
We all heard Wang Mo say when he handed the book to the teacher, "Teacher Li, you entered our school, and Director Tian did it for you, right?" ”
Wang Mo's voice was not loud, and his tone did not fluctuate, but everyone broke out in a cold sweat in the sticky summer day, and we all held our breath and stared at Li Xiangmei to see how she reacted. Li Xiangmei was stunned for five or six seconds, and then angrily attacked her huge breasts, causing the two clumps to tremble violently. She almost lost her mind and threw all the magazines on Wang Mo's face, one after another. Neatly stacked magazines flew around the classroom, then smashed on Wang Mo's face, and then fell to the ground, folding the pages. Each time the bobblehead fan blew through them, the pages trembled, hula and hula, like the white wings of a dove fluttering.
Wang Mo said: "Do you remember when Li Xiangmei dropped all the books? ”
I had already finished smoking a cigarette and was considering whether to get another one, and when I saw that he took the initiative to start talking, I continued another one. I handed him a cigarette, along with the one I had lit. He smiled, reminded me of his father, and took a few hard puffs of my cigarette.
"You don't know about Aunt Smoke?" He asked me. I said, "Do we have an aunt?" Stupid. Then we both laughed.
I said, "Everyone in the county knows that Mr. Li is Director Tian's lover, what are you doing with this stubble at that time?" ”
Wang Mo shook his head and said, "You don't know, you don't know." ”
I asked, "What do I not know?" ”
Wang Mo said, I mean, you don't know why I wrote that essay.
Wang Mo said that Li Xiangmei had called his father several times. For the first time, she said: "Your child is quite talented in literature, and he must cultivate it well." ”
Wang Mo's father received a call from the teacher for the first time, but he didn't understand what the teacher was saying, so he just praised Wang Mo, and scrambled two eggs for Wang Mo that night.
The second time she said: "Your child's literary path is a little crooked, but you can't often read anthologies of essays, you have to correct them, and read more classics of truth, kindness and beauty." Wang Mo's father was stupid, and asked Li Xiangmei: "Then teacher, what do you think children should read?" I went to the bookstore for my children to buy it. Li Xiangmei said angrily that she was busy and had time to bring her children to her house for counseling.
Putting aside the phone, the more Wang Mo and his father thought about it, the more angry he became, his own children have always been the first in the primary and junior high schools in the mine, although most of the teachers in the children's schools don't want to take care of things, but when it comes to their sons, they are all praise and compliments, how did they work hard to get admitted to the county No. 1 middle school, and they actually have to suffer from the filth of this young teacher?
Wang Mo and his father called Wang Mo over and scolded him involuntarily, asking Wang Mo to reflect on whether he had said something he shouldn't have said or done something he shouldn't have done at school. Wang Mo is also stubborn with his father. He sarcastically said: "Poor people have to be bullied everywhere, I'm not wrong." ”
Wang Mo's father gave him a mouth with a flick of his hand, and let Wang Mo circle around the dining table twice. Wang Mo said: "Your cock boss is not a small person, can't you hear that Li Xiangmei is going to ask you to order something to send?" Hitting me here is your mother's thing! ”
Wang Mo's father was shocked for the first time when he saw his weak son so hard, and then the fragile dignity of the middle-aged man was deeply stung, so he shook his hand and slapped him again. He said: "Lao Tzu just doesn't mess with them, Lao Tzu is so hard, Lao Tzu doesn't mess with them to live the same life, if you are more capable than you Lao Tzu, you don't mess with others, get ahead and show you Lao Tzu, maybe you are not as good as your Lao Tzu!" ”
Li Xiangmei waited for half a month, seeing that Wang Mo and his father still didn't respond, and remembered that Wang Mo deliberately showed her a disgusted and stinky face when he was in class, and was a little annoyed and angry, so he casually found an excuse to ask Wang Mo and his father to go to school.
Wang Mo said that his father walked into the school with his waist straight, entered the office, and saw Li Xiangmei grading essays, without raising his head, ignoring him.
The teachers came and went in the office, and they just glanced at the old man who was standing stupidly and became more and more restrained, and they sat at their workstations. Finally, Li Xiangmei finished her homework. She impatiently pulled out a stool from under the desk and asked Wang Mo and his father to sit down. Wang Mo's father's working-class spirit had weakened by half, so he had to put his hands on his knees and lean forward unnaturally.
Li Xiangmei got straight to the point and said, "Your son has a bit of a talent for writing, but so what? Relying on that level, you want to change your life against the sky? Amusing. ”
Wang Mo's father said: "The child has always worked hard to study, maybe he is a little uncomfortable when he arrives in the city. ”
Li Xiangmei blew the broken tea leaves in the teacup and said, "Study hard? I don't know, your children may not love to study much, and if they love to study, they won't show me in class. What's wrong with loving to study, just your child's temper, mention a few words and be angry with me, and ask me to say that he can become successful in the future, and I will gouge out my eyes for you. ”
I said, "Oh, that's what happened, so you wrote 'It's hard to get a noble son from a poor family', satirizing Mr. Li?" ”
Wang Mo said: "No, now that I think about it, I feel a little stupid." ”
I said, "Secondary 2, it's like that." ”
Wang Mo said: "After this matter was over, Cheng Wu also talked to me. ”
I cushioned: "Cheng Er?" ”
He said: "Yes, Cheng Lao Er, he came to talk to me." He said that I can't be so straight, I have to be softer, and if I say a few beautiful words, Li Xiangmei will be soft. ”
I said lightly: "Cheng Lao Er is so interesting." ”
Wang Mo said: "The second brother likes to be the boss, but sometimes he is a good person. ”
I said, "What's wrong with you, you should be willing to be a little brother to others?" ”
Wang Mo was stunned for a while and said, "I didn't think about it that much. ”
I didn't speak. I think the man in front of me is so naïve that I can't believe it: "Cheng Lao Er said two beautiful words when someone buys it, do you say that is useful?" I don't look at how many pounds and taels I have. ”
Wang Mo said: "Do you have a photo of your second brother now?" We haven't seen each other since I graduated. "I took out my mobile phone, which saved a photo of Cheng Ling's birthday after going to college, Cheng Ling was admitted to an art college, learning dance, the photo is like a flower surrounded by her, and Cheng Wu is sitting in front of her. I noticed that Wang Mo stared at Cheng Ling and said, "How tall is the second brother now, look at the photo of 183, right?" ”
I said, "Almost, there is no shortage of girls around people, they are handsome and tall, and the family conditions are good." Wang Mo continued to ask: "What about usury in his family?" I said, "No." The wave of usury market has passed, this thing is more or less black, the province has checked a wave, caught a few leaders, Cheng Wu's father has a bright head, and he has landed smoothly, and now he has a few buildings in our county, selling some of them, renting some of them, and becoming a landlord. ”
Wang Mo looked at the tall and handsome Cheng Wu, and the petite and charming Cheng Ling in front of him, and asked again: "What about Li Xiangmei, she has to be forty years younger now, right?" ”
I said, "I heard that he is now the deputy head of a certain grade in the county No. 1 middle school?" ”
The wind was blowing on the island, and the waves were crashing against the stones on the shore, wave after wave, like soldiers in white robes making a senseless charge. We both smoked cigarettes and didn't speak again.
5
By the time the employment situation started to get tough, I was tired of not being able to find a meaningful graduate life. I even feel like my life is at the end of my life. Born in a family that is not wealthy, he studies and then studies, but in the end he can only find a job that completely shatters his expectations and has no future, and ends his youth, and falls into a greasy middle-aged life that can only be lived by a little glory of his student days.
When I received a call from my father, I did not hesitate to go ashore and rushed home from Yantai on K1292. My dad said on the phone: "You are small, Wang Jianguo and his son, Wang Mo, it's gone, commit suicide, come back and take a look if you have time, support the field." ”
As soon as I got off Taiyuan Station, Wang Jianguo called me and greeted me for a while, saying that Wang Mo's college classmates were also in Taiyuan Station now, and asked me to take him to Wang Mo's funeral.
The pick-up went smoothly, and we could tell each other almost at a glance in the crowd, the same temperament, the same clothes, and the same eyes. Most of the time, we will go against our will to the dinner of people with very different temperaments, and try to make ourselves like them, but in the face of funerals, only the same kind will travel thousands of miles just to pay respects.
He said: "My name is Chen Ce, Wang Mo's college classmate. I joked: "The names we come here are quite interesting, my name is Yuan Qu, Ben Go, your name is Chen Ce, the strategy of strategy, at first glance it sounds extraordinary, what are you doing, but in fact, they are all down-and-out young people." After saying that, the two of us laughed tacitly.
Sitting on the bus from Taiyuan to our county, Chen Ce told me the story of Wang Mo. It was already dark, and the bus was full of the smell of men's sweat, and I listened to Chen Ce's story and couldn't help but think of the silver river in the story of Bajie's Alzheimer's disease.
6
Wang Mo's second college entrance examination filled in an engineering major against his will, just to make it easier to find a job in the future. He excelled in liberal arts, but his science was really average, and he still didn't know much calculus when he entered college, and his grades were at the bottom for a while. Disappointed, he joined a literary club at school, hoping to find a little self-confidence there, and met Chen Ce, the only college classmate who came to the funeral.
The men and women in the literary club have a sense of superiority, they like to drink coffee with bells and whistles, they like to give themselves half-literated old names, they like to openly say that they have incurable depression, and they like to read a series of foreign writers and communicate with each other in a tone that can only be found in Japanese literature. This made Wang Mo, who could only buy Yu Hua Mo Yan in a small county town, very cramped and uneasy.
The president of the club loves Japanese literature and everything in Japan, which makes Wang Mo have some narrow-minded disgust in his heart, which is scandalized under the aggressive aristocratic temperament of the other party, causing a big disaster.
One day, the president posted a photo of a box of Japanese natto on Moments, with the caption: "Then again, the taste of this natto is fascinating." The discussion in the comment area was very lively, and some girls in the club noisily asked the president to introduce Japanese food culture in detail, and the president half pushed it and half agreed, and finally set to apply for a classroom on the weekend, open a Japanese food salon for everyone, and discuss and learn together.
Wang Mo heard that at the salon, the president would prepare a box of natto for each participant to taste together, so he happily went there with the mentality of not eating for nothing.
At that time, there were about 10 or 20 people, some men and women, sitting in the classroom, some wearing Hanfu and small fans, shaking around, some wearing oversize sweatshirts and sweatpants, apologizing to everyone, saying that their band had just finished rehearsing, and it was undignified to dress like this. Chen Ce and Wang Mo were wearing crumpled shirts and glasses that always slipped down, and they had no grace, thinking about whether to get up and apologize too.
When a box of natto was handed out in his hand, Wang Mo carefully tore open the package, and then glanced at Chen Ce. They had never been exposed to this kind of food before, so they were startled by the smell of natto's stinky socks. But the men and women in the classroom were silent, and they nervously watched how everyone operated.
The other men and women, apparently prepared, gently lifted the lid and then gracefully removed the plastic wrap from the natto with chopsticks. Chen Ce and Wang Mo watched the yellow natto in the box being pulled out of the sticky silks, and they were a little sick to their stomachs.
The president said, "After uncovering the protective film, we poured the soy sauce and wasabi from the box on top of it, and then stirred them together with chopsticks. "Everybody does. The president began to give some tips on stirring, saying, "When stirring with chopsticks, be sure to mix in as much air as possible, and this is what the best natto state should be" - the president held up the box in his hand, and the natto inside was buried in a disgusting yellow bubble of - "and you can eat bibimbap." ”
Wang Mo and Chen Ce put the stirred natto in their mouths, although they didn't smell as bad as they tasted, they were bitter when they chewed, and there was no delicious ingredient. Wang Mo thought about humor and said, "Isn't this just a handful of stinky beans fermented?" It's the same as the soybean sauce made by the people of the Northeast! ”
He thought that everyone would laugh kindly, but everyone looked at Wang Mo with strange eyes. The president was calm and steady, and said to Wang Mo gently: "If you don't want to eat, you can go out, no one begs you to come." ”
Under everyone's gaze, Wang Mo was very embarrassed for a while and couldn't speak. The president cleared his throat, held up an egg, and said, "This is a sterile egg from Japan, which can be eaten raw and has a sweet taste, and the egg yolk is mixed in natto for a more delicious taste." ”
Wang Mo reacted and replied: "Why doesn't anyone have an egg?" The president turned his head, stared at Wang Mo and said, "Because some people don't deserve to eat Japanese sterile eggs." ”
Wang Mo stood up, Chen Ce didn't hold it, he said: "Sterile your mother's trigger, whose dick wants to eat these shit-like things with you, go to you on the Japanese." ”
Without exception, Wang Mo was ostracized by everyone, no one seriously discussed whether natto smelled of shit, everyone accused Wang Mo of being a dick, he didn't understand fart, and he pretended to be forced. Wang Mo did not change his life, and endured and endured it as when Li Xiangmei beat his father, thinking that he would become a blockbuster in the club essay contest held a few days later.
Wang Mo was in love with Shuangxuetao and Vegeta the tanker at the time, so he imitated their writing style and wrote a novella recalling his high school story, the story starts with a teenager who is submissive, but is forced to be anxious and emotionally out of control, writes about the rich second-generation squad leader, and his beautiful sister who is secretly in love with the protagonist, writes about the classmate who is only willing to be a small follower to the class leader, writes about the father who sells pancakes and buns to make a living after losing his job, and the ugly Chinese teacher.
The novel is compiled and distributed in the club's public communication group, and the heads of the senior students in the club form a jury to determine who will win the prize. Wang Mo secretly read everyone's works, all of them were illogical sad prose and ancient novels, thinking that he had the chance to win.
On the day of the results, the first place was a Japanese travelogue written by the president, the second place was a single feeling written by a Hanfu girl who was constantly in suitors, and the third place was an ancient style poem that was not very familiar with literature and science.
Wang Mo couldn't tell whether he was aggrieved or angry, but he felt bored, sullen at the award ceremony, and looked through the download records of his works in the public exchange group. The number of downloads of his work is only "1".
Wang Mo asked Chen Ce in front of him: "Have you read the novel I posted in the group?" Chen Ce nodded cautiously and said, "It's really well written, better than those three." ”
Wang Mo stood up at that time and asked the president why the judges had never seen his entries. The president was speechless for a while, stayed there, and immediately someone stood up and scolded Wang Mo for not understanding the rules and disrupting the order of the venue.
Chen Ce told me that Wang Mo's novel was very well written, and he couldn't tell how good it was, he was not a professional, but it was better than those ancient poems that were blind and obscene.
As a result, the judges re-selected, the list of winners remained unchanged, and the judges unanimously commented that Wang Mo's novel was exaggerated, dark and reactionary, without aesthetics, and without literary brilliance, and secretly mobilized other members of the club to cooperate with them to denounce the novel in the exchange group, and incidentally denied everything about Wang Mo. As for the awards, everyone pretended that nothing had happened, and no one had ever come forward to apologize to Wang Mo.
7
Chen Ce said that since then, Wang Mo has retired from the club and has never written anything again. Later, the employment form of undergraduates was severe, Wang Mo and he were preparing for the postgraduate entrance examination together, the mathematics of that year was very difficult, Wang Mo did not pass the single subject of mathematics, and after graduation, he went home to World War II, and when he received the news again, he was gone.
After listening to this story intermittently, Chen Ce and I were already standing in front of Wang Mo's funeral shed, and my friend, my little boy, who had put his hand on the ice window, was lying in the coffin, quietly waiting for himself to be buried that afternoon.
I put a stick of incense on Wang Mo, and suddenly remembered that on the day I graduated from high school, Wang Mo invited me to the small restaurant at the school gate to drink TISCO soda, which was chilled and orange-flavored. He smiled and said to me, "The future is bright, Brother Yuan." ”
I was sincerely grateful for his kindness and sincerity, and doubted that if I had had the same experience as him, I would have been as comfortable as him. Thinking of this, I couldn't help but shed tears, regretting that I didn't invite him to eat two catties of pig's head meat on the island.
At mealtime, Cheng Wu came here in a white Toyota cruiser, and Cheng Ling, who was dressed exquisitely and had eyebrows, jumped out of the car. Cheng Wu and I briefly chatted for a while, saying that they were also classmates to give Wang Mo'er incense. He gave me one and the world, and I reasoned that I would not smoke and quit.
Cheng Ling posted a video on station B a few months ago, wearing the clothes of the female Red Army, dancing in Fanghuali, with the title saying to celebrate the National Day, the popularity is compelling, making her the number one goddess in the school. I said to Cheng Ling: "Congratulations, you have become a big star." ”
Cheng Ling seemed to be accustomed to this kind of unnutritious compliment, and she didn't even squeeze out a suitable smile, she said: "I'm almost annoyed, the county TV station wants to interview me, I refuse, I don't want to go." "I didn't speak.
After receiving Cheng Wu, I had a whim, thinking that I might not meet many old acquaintances today. Sure enough, Li Xiangmei also came in a car. With some tears in her eyes, she intervened and talked to Wang Jianguo. Wang Jianguo's face is ugly, he has aged a lot in the past few days, and the straight back of the working class has completely collapsed, just like my father. Li Xiangmei has lost weight, is well maintained, and has not seen much age, I heard her say that she has always insisted on yoga and fitness, and asked Wang Jianguo to learn from her after the funeral. Wang Jianguo thanked Mr. Li again and again for taking care of Wang Mo in those years. I ignored Li Xiangmei.
When the funeral was about to leave, a crying woman came, bloated, wrapped in a black fur coat and wearing long boots, thinking that it should be Chen Xiuli, everyone present had been waiting for her for a long time. She knelt in front of her son's spirit, weeping silently, and the flesh on her stomach flowed on her thighs, without the grace of the past. After crying for a while, maybe she felt that this posture made it difficult for her to breathe, so she sat down cross-legged and looked at Wang Mo's photo in a daze.
I asked the adults in front of me, how has Chen Xiuli been in the past few years, and is she still playing mahjong? said to the predecessors: "I also played, opened a mahjong parlor, the business is good, and I live better than Wang Jianguo." "I didn't speak. The man said, "It seems that he is a friend with the man who is married in the city, and all the money he earns is spent on the man and the man's son, probably trying to win over others." ”
I waved my hand, not wanting to hear it anymore.
8
Wang Mo has not tasted love and being loved in his short life, and he can't be buried in the ancestral grave alone, Wang Jianguo buried him in the cornfield of a family in the mountains, waiting for the right time, finding a female skeleton with a yin marriage, and then burying them together. Just after the Gregorian New Year, the cornfields were full of straw that no one had cleaned up, lying on the ground like a garbage heap.
Everything was done, and there were only two generations of men left in the cemetery, my father and Wang Jianguo were counted as one generation, four or five looks, all of them were silent and sad middle-aged men, and they didn't see any flashes in the years they had experienced.
Wang Jianguo walked up to Chen Ce and me to express his gratitude for the thousands of miles he had traveled, and he smiled gently and shyly, as if we had first met many years ago. He said: "After Wang Mo finished World War II, he estimated his scores, but he still didn't pass the line in mathematics, and he couldn't find a suitable job, so he jumped off the building without thinking about it." Then, like all fathers who have lost their children, he began to babble about the night his son jumped to his death.
He said that his son seemed to be in a good mood that night, and came out of the door to say thank you, Dad. He didn't think that his son was saying goodbye to him, and he borrowed a pair of river beds with great interest, preparing to eat noodle soup with his son that night. As soon as the pot was opened, I heard a loud noise in my son's bedroom, and when I opened the door, there was no one in the room, and the window was wide open. He started running downstairs.
His old and broken child was on the sixth floor, and that running made him feel that he had passed through a time tunnel, in which his son's appearance changed from an adult to a teenager, and finally to a little boy who smiled at him, shining.
He ran to the bottom of the building, his only son fell to the ground, still breathing, he held his son, and saw that his son had his eyes open, but his eyes were full of emptiness and darkness, and he said to him, "Dad, it hurts so much, my eyes can't see, my eyes can't see." He rubbed his son's body to see if he was complete, why couldn't he see with his good eyes? After rubbing for a while, the son in his arms was no longer breathing.
Recalling this, Wang Jianguo's tears and snot had already dripped on the brown ground in front of him, and he squatted on the ground, hugging him in a ball, thin and weak, as if the wind in the graveyard would fall apart as soon as it blew, and then he cried as if no one was around.
The men present were silent, everyone was exhausted, and no one stepped forward to pull Wang Jianguo to help. I saw my father, the aging man who was also unemployed and pushing a cart to sell skewers in front of the school, holding a shovel and wiping his tears with his head down.
They are all old, and they are no longer the fierce men I remember eating pig's head meat, drinking Fenjiu, and boasting. Half a lifetime has been experienced, and everything it has experienced seems to be just a complete tragedy.
My vision began to blur, and I suddenly realized that I was actually the same as Wang Mo lying three or four meters below my feet, but in a different way, I existed in this world.
I feel a little cold, maybe after going down the mountain, I should spend 300 yuan to buy a bottle of blue and white Fen, and drink any side dishes slowly to warm my body. After all, many things can only be slowly clarified when you are drunk.
Title Picture | Image from All About Lily Week
Picture | The pictures in the article are all from the Internet
(Text/Erjing workers, this article is the exclusive first release of "Human Story Shop", enjoying exclusive copyright authorization, and no third party shall reprint it without authorization, and violators will be held accountable in accordance with the law.) ）