(Lin Qingxuan)
At three o'clock in the afternoon, thunder rumbled in the distance in the sky.
Experienced farmers all know that it is rainy. In a quarter of an hour, the northwest rain will cover this small town surrounded by mountains in a downpour. Experienced swallows also know that they cut their tail feathers from the wires and flew into the earth nests built under other people's eaves.
And we, standing on the empty land-my father, brother, relatives, and many fellow villagers who were drenched in rain and sun and rain, stood motionless listening to the thunder in the distance, and no one wanted to go in and hide from the northwest rain. Our heart is more dreary than a dry day, and everyone is silent, because our heart is also a rainy sky, and this heart rain is more tragic than the northwest rain, and it will rain.
The place where we stand silently is a banana garden in Xidizi. Two huge "strange hands" are running in a hurry, opening their iron claws to grab the bananas we worked so hard to grow and throw them into the truck parked next to them.
These strange hands are usually scraping sand and stones in the stream in order to build a better home for us, and they are hired by the farmers' association to step on the bananas we grow. These bananas, which are completely unwanted, will be thrown into the stream and discarded, or piled up in the ground as fertilizer. Because bananas are perishable fruits, farmers' associations are afraid that rotten bananas will pollute this clean banana garden.
Even though it is already dark, the bananas piled up in the banana garden are still crystal clear as jade. In the past harvest season, this luster was once a color that brought us joy, brighter than the rainbow after the rain; Now it has become dazzling and sad.
The regular rattle of strange hands corresponds to the coming thunder.
On the other side of the banana garden, I saw some worn-out quilts and laundry baskets discarded by farmers. The quilt was originally used to pad delicate bananas to avoid being damaged, and the laundry basket was used by farmers to harvest, which was originally filled with laughter and laughter. The quilt and laundry basket are full of dark brown juice, layer after layer. Over the years, those banana juices are like dried blood repeatedly condensed, which is a hard witness left by cultivation, sowing, irrigation and harvest. Now they are lying useless, quietly waiting for the scene at the end of the century.
Not far from the banana garden, some children opened an old laundry basket with bamboo and took out a handful of rice from it. The children hid in a corner, pulling the rope, waiting for the sparrow eager to feed before the heavy rain came.
A sparrow flew down from the roof, howled twice and jumped to the banana garden. Slowly, it found the white rice and jumped into the laundry basket step by step. As soon as the children pulled the rope, the laundry basket slammed, and the panicked sparrow flapped its wings, but it couldn't find a way out and cried sadly. The children came out of the wall cheering, and seven or eight hands scrambled to catch the sparrow. An older child tied the sparrow's leg with bamboo thread and set it free. Sparrows thought they were free and flew vigorously. It didn't know that its feet were tied, and it didn't fall to the ground until the roof was high. It didn't give up, flew up and fell down again, until it had no strength at all, squatting on the brown land, panting in despair and hissing sadly, as if calling for something, heading for an unknown distance.
I played this game of catching sparrows when I was a child, and now I can't help feeling sad when I am in a low mood. I thought that the little sparrow walked into the laundry list just to peck a few grains of white rice, but it fell into an insurmountable trap of life. Aren't all farmers like this? They work hard during the day and go swimming at night, sometimes just for three meals. Unexpectedly, their hard work also entered the laundry list of fate.
The laundry list is a common tool for working people, and it is a string of happy songs at harvest time. In the harvest season, I watched everyone walk through the field path with empty baskets at dawn. When the sun tilted to the side of the mountain, they bent down and laboriously carried many full baskets and walked across the ridge illuminated by the sunset glow. It is indeed an unspeakable beauty, which comes from the beauty of life and work and is more beautiful than all art and music.
I strongly saw the farmers' harvest and went home singing simple songs with a laundry list, so I pondered Tolstoy's artistic theory. Any great work is written with sweat. If the earth is an open manuscript paper, it is the peasants who write great poems on it with blood and tears; When sowing, it is a comma, when cultivating, it is a pause, and the laundry list of harvest is like the full stop of the last circle of a poem. There is no more touching work in the world than this poem.
Unfortunately, when farmers write poems praising the earth, there will inevitably be exclamation marks, question marks and sometimes semicolons leading to the unknowable! I've seen fishermen who can't go out to sea in strong winds and seen laundry lists. I have seen the salt field flooded by seawater and kicked over a laundry list of salt people at home; The farmers sighed with empty baskets after seeing the cracked land during the drought. Such a simple sense of confusion is even more worrying than a poet who can't write without a few beards; At this time, farmers are people who have no theme in Chekhov's works. Without the dependence of land, even the best farmers become shallow, insignificant, tragic, funny and have no future. He is no longer a poet of the earth!
It's sad that we can't harvest because of the weather. If we harvest too much and have to give up our efforts, it's the biggest blow. This time, my fellow villagers were going to destroy tens of millions of kilograms of bananas because of excessive harvest, and everyone's heart was stained with several blood stains. In those years when they left, they only knew the truth of "no pains, no gains" and never heard of "excessive gains". No wonder several villagers with white beards lamented: It's really unreasonable!
I heard that bananas in my hometown could not be produced or sold, so I took the train at dawn and went back to my hometown. The train ran across the field, and it was raining in Mao Mao. Farmers in hats are bending over to tidy up farmland, and some farmland is being ploughed. The farmers put the plough rope on the shoulders of the cows and pushed the plough behind them. Ploughed soil blooms on the land like spring flowers. Occasionally, I also see green shoots growing in the newly sorted fields. Those buds are very small, only showing a little bud tip, shaking in the rain. That green color vividly tells us that there is a kind of vitality buried in the deepest place in this gray land. Farmers in Taiwan Province Province are the most diligent farmers in the world. They always plow like this, and they don't give up day and night. Our plain is also the most fertile land in the world, and new green shoots will always emerge from the soil.
Looking at the rapidly retreating farmland, I remembered my father working in a banana field with a hat. He has cultivated the land for 50 years. Together with the land, he gave birth to us, and he has formed a deep-rooted feeling with the land. His daily joys and sorrows follow the joys and sorrows of the land. Sometimes the harvest is not good, and the biggest harm to him is not material, but emotion. On a small piece of cultivated land we own, every foot has his father's footprint, and every inch has his blood and sweat. And this year's harvest is so good, but also to accept the blow of excessive harvest, for my father, I don't know what a sad thing it is!
When I got home, my father took bananas to the banana garden. I sat in front of the court, waiting for his tall figure. I saw my father coming from a distance with two rickety empty baskets. Next to him is my brother who graduated from college. He made up his mind to go back to his hometown to help his father farm. Because my brother is tall and straight, I found my father's back a little bent in recent years.
The long sunset cast a longer shadow on the laundry list he picked.
I remember when I was a child, the gentle sunrise always reached out and pushed it into my door and yard, all the way to the sacred case in the hall, making the four fruits on the case flickering as if they were alive. The vast sunshine is really intoxicating and warm. On that sunny day, the morning breeze blew up the earth, and I, love stand, stood by the window and watched my father wear clothes covered with banana juice and with some bamboo leaves on the top. Wearing a hat, carrying a pair of rickety baskets, went across the yard to work in the fields; Dad's tall figure is particularly majestic and strong in the sun. Sometimes, in addition to the laundry list, he will bring a hoe and a broom, and every tool looks heavy and powerful. At that time, I always leaned against the window and thought, How happy I am to be a farmer!
When I was a little older, my father often took us to the banana plantation. He picked us with a laundry list, my brother sat in the front and I sat in the back. Sometimes we play with knives in the laundry list, and sometimes we hit Ku Ling with an air gun made of bamboo tubes, and the laundry list is dangling, and my father is not angry. This really upset him, so he grabbed the paper on the laundry list and spun around in the same place until we were all upset, and then he heard his hearty laughter ringing one after another.
The memory of my childhood banana garden is the beginning of my happiness. Banana trees cover many fruits with their broad leaves. That scene is like parents holding their young children to burn incense, and it also contains piety to life. The sweat dripping on the ground when farmers irrigate, the shouts of picking up laundry baskets when harvesting, and the laughter when going to the banana garden for customs clearance will always interweave into a colorful and audible picture.
There must be a river bank at the end of our banana garden, in front of which is the Qiwei River running day and night. That stream provides irrigation for our land. My brother and I often touch clams, catch shrimps, fish and play with water in the stream. In my childhood, I don't know why I am grateful for the richness of the land. On the ground, it allows us to have a happy harvest after hard work and sowing; In water, it produces a harvest message that will never lack patches.
Tired of playing, we climbed the levee and looked back at the endless plantain garden. Because banana leaves are too lush, we can't see the people working in them. The sound of their labor is like running water leaking from the depths of the earth's core, which is a symphony to the earth and often fascinates me.
It was not until my father couldn't fit us in the laundry list to go to the banana garden that my brother and I left our hometown to study abroad. What my father said when he sent us to study abroad still echoes in my heart: "It doesn't matter if a scholar is poor, he can be as poor as a backbone, but a farmer can't be poor, and he will kneel when he is poor."
In the next ten years, whenever I encounter any hardships, I will think of my father's words and the back of his vigorous planting in the banana garden with a laundry list. The longer the years go by, the more vivid my father's laundry list magic becomes.
At the moment, I saw my father coming from a distance, carrying an empty laundry list in his hand. He was inevitably a little depressed when he saw me. He piled the laundry list casually in front of the court and said nothing. I couldn't help asking him, "Has the situation improved?"
Father blushed: "A mother! They said that farmers should not expand their farming area. We didn't sign an agreement with Qingguo Society, and the banana processing factory should have been developed long ago. How do we know so much? " My father took off his coat with banana juice and hung it in front of the court. His coat was soaked with sweat. Although my father knew that there was no hope of banana harvest this year, he still worked hard in the banana field today.
My brother said to me softly, "They are going to throw away bananas tomorrow. You should go and see them. " My father heard it. Facing the sunset, I saw the misty tears in his eyes.
Our family sat around and had a silent and tasteless dinner. Only my mother whispered, "Don't be so angry. Next year will come soon. Let's plant something else. " When we finished our dinner, the sun had sunk into the mountains, and only insects were left on the dark earth. On this cool and happy summer night in the past, my son came back from a distant place, only to smell a desolate and lonely smell, and the stars were far away.
Two strange trucks were quickly piled up with goods.
As expected, the northwest rain poured down relentlessly, drenching everyone standing around. Everyone was still in the heavy rain, watching bananas piled up on the bus, as if it were a solemn farewell ceremony. I feel big raindrops falling into my heart all the way, raising a little coolness. I think even the best dancer has moments of confusion and ecstasy, and even the best singer seems to be out of tune, but even the best earth poet-farmer-can't make a sentence. Who smashed this written poem all over the floor with mud? Is it raining?
In the heavy rain, the truck took our bananas away and threw them away, leaving only two traces and talking in the rain.
All the children who catch sparrows hide in the banana garden to avoid the rain. The sparrow that was alive and kicking a quarter of an hour ago died. The youngest child cried for the sparrow's death, and the oldest child comforted him: "Never mind, go home and bake it for you."
We stood until all the bananas were cleaned up and the northwest rain stopped whistling, so we didn't leave. The children have jumped out, and the youngest child forgot the little sadness of the dead sparrow and smiled happily. They walked past the laundry list and gave it a mischievous kick to lie on the ground. Now they don't catch sparrows, because they know that wax flies will fly everywhere after the rain.
I looked at the laundry list turned over in the mud, which was the end of our harvest this year.
Swallows are flying briskly and the sky is full of sunshine.
Clouds fluttered in the sky like a market.
A group of sparrows are talking under the eaves.
Our heart is rain, the sky wet by rain.
1982 1 1 26th of the month