Chapter 8 five

Our home is at the bottom of Longjiang Street, Lane 28, Longjiang Street.Just like the barren land of Heilongjiang near the Siberian border on the Chinese map, the area around Longjiang Street is also a deserted frontier area in Taipei City.Those who came here were all poor and small families.In our alley, there are mostly dormitories for middle- and lower-level personnel of insignificant public units.There are two rows of wooden one-story houses, each of which is old and black, with mildew spots on the wooden boards, and the doors, windows, tiles and eaves are all torn, like a group of ragged beggars, with shoulders and backs, huddled together.The first building on the left is Staff Qin's house. A door was blown off by the typhoon and has not been repaired. It seems that the mouth is bald and a front tooth is missing.Staff Officer Qin liked to sit on a low stool in the opening of the gate, holding a huqin in his hand, and singing by himself. According to him, he sang the Qilin Tongqi School, and his voice was so hoarse that he was suffering from a severe cold.Last year he had a stroke, his face was disfigured and his mouth was crooked.But he still sang "Xiaoyaojin" with all his strength, and shouted in a very desolate way: bully the widow.When he opened his mouth, his jaw seemed to fall off, with a painful expression on his face.In the first building on the right, Captain Xiao and Vice Captain Huang live. Mrs. Xiao and Mrs. Huang have been arguing for more than ten years because they share a kitchen.Often in the middle of the night, there was a sound of cutting board spells coming from their kitchen.The sounds of 橐, 橐, 橐, accompanied by sharp curses, made one's hair stand on end in the cold wind.Mrs. Shaw was big and loud and always had the upper hand.Mrs. Huang was as emaciated as a shrunken cucumber, her mouth was puckered all the way, her eyes were full of tears, and her face was full of misery, as if Mrs. Xiao had been cursed so that she would never be reborn forever.Probably everyone's life is very difficult, and there are complaints from family to family.I remember that in those years, our alley never seemed to be peaceful.As soon as the crying on one side stopped, the shouting and cursing on the other side rose violently again.However, our twenty-eighth lane is a dead-end lane that is not easy to forget. It has a special smell of decay, a special kind of dilapidation and desolation.The gutters on both sides of the alley are filled with rotten vegetable heads, rags, bamboo strips, and rusty iron cans all year round. There is a ditch of thick, dirty and black stagnant water. When the sun shines, it will be steaming, and the general strong foul smell will be He rushed up and reverberated in the alley.The contents of the open trash can in the middle of the alley are even more complicated.Often, on the pile of filth, there would be a dead cat with a swollen belly lying on it, with bulging eyes and white teeth baring; it was poisoned by someone, and it was thrown there, slowly beginning to rot; It was full of red-headed flies the size of fingers, green and shiny, and when people passed by, they all flew up with a buzzing sound, and a nest of white wriggling maggots appeared on the gray-black body of the dead cat.The alley is a yellow muddy ground, a heavy rain immediately turned into a piece of mud, slippery, we walked on it with bare feet, and our feet were covered with mud, and then brought the yellow mud to the house to go.If the weather is dry for a long time and the wind blows, the whole alley will be filled with sand and rocks.As a result, on the pennies protruding from the dilapidated walls of each family, those tattered diapers, briefs, bed sheets, and pillows were turned upside down in the yellow wind and sand.

At the bottom of this cul-de-sac, the shabby, oldest, and darkest low house is our home.Typhoon Daisy passed through the country the year before last and knocked off a corner of our roof.My father and I spread a large black tarpaulin over the hole to cover it, and many red bricks were pressed on it.When it rains heavily, the house still leaks, so lead buckets, basins, and sometimes even spittoons are used to collect water everywhere.If it rains all night long, the house will ding ding dong dong until dawn.Our house is very short, the sunlight can’t come in, the cement floor inside the house is extremely damp, it seems like it’s wet and sweating all the way, the whole house is quietly, silently, moldy all year round.Green, yellow, black, a piece of mildew, from the foot of the wall, fluffy climb up, climbed to the ceiling.Our clothes always have a pungent musty smell, which cannot be washed off no matter how we wash them.

However, my father said that we were lucky to be able to get such a house.In the thirty-eighth year of the Republic of China, my father's regiment fought against the Eighth Route Army in the Dabie Mountains, and was besieged for more than a week. The rescuers could not arrive, and my father was captured.Later, he escaped and came to Taiwan, where he lost his military registration.Fortunately, Huang Ziwei, Director Huang, an old comrade-in-arms of my father, sold a favor to let my father temporarily live in this small and dilapidated dormitory.Almost every Sunday, my father would go to the house of Uncle Huang Ziwei in the 26th Lane next door. When he went, he always carried a bottle of red wine and a bag of salted and crispy peanuts; Bottled wine, you poured me a bowl, the peanuts in my mouth were so chewy.My father was originally a resolute, dull and inarticulate person, but after drinking, he was speechless.He sat there silently, his face was swollen and his eyes were red, until the sun went down and the room was dark, then his father stood up, coughed dryly, and said:

uh, it's getting late Let's eat here, Uncle Huang also stood up. Come back another day. Father didn't wait for Uncle Huang to reply, and walked away boldly in his strictly trained soldier's footsteps.His chest was exaggerated, his head was raised ridiculously high, and a pair of old leather boots, which were worn open, stepped on the ground, making a hollow sound. It is said that my father made great achievements in beating the Japanese in the past. This is what he told us himself.When he talked about the great victory in Changsha, he would suddenly become eloquent, speaking in his thick Sichuan dialect, spit out a lot of words that we half didn't understand.At that moment, his black face, which was worn gray and full of wrinkles, would suddenly flash with a proud radiance.My father said that after that battle, the river in the suburbs of Changsha was dyed red, and his saber was beheaded by the Japanese so that the blade curled up.On the desk in his room is a photo of a full-body military uniform, tied with a diagonal belt, wearing long riding boots, holding a Japanese military helmet with several bullet holes in his hand, and his face is triumphant.That photo was taken on a field battlefield in Changsha, where the ground was strewn with dead soldiers.At that time, my father had just been promoted to the head of the regiment, and he was also honored.There was a small mahogany box next to the father's bed, which was locked with a copper lock, and his father's second-class Baoding Medal was treasured in the box.In the year when I was admitted to Yude Middle School, one day, my father called me into his room, solemnly took the small red wooden box next to his bed to the desk, and carefully opened the box. There is a gold-plated copper medal in the shape of a pentagram, with a blue and white enamel tripod inlaid in the middle.The gilding has turned black, and a little bit of patina has appeared in the places where the gold surface has peeled off in the seams of the pattern.The red, blue and white ribbon tied at the top corner was also yellowed.Father pointed to the old medal and said to me:

Ah Qing, I want you to keep in mind: your father was honored. I thought the medal was beautiful, so I reached out to take it. My father blocked my hand, frowned and said: Stand up!Stand up! After I stood at attention and put my hands on the seams of my trousers, my father picked up the medal and pinned it to the skirt of my student uniform. Then he also stood at attention and shouted with a password: salute! Involuntarily, I quickly raised my hand to my forehead and saluted my father.I almost laughed out loud, but when I saw my father's serious face, I tried my best to hold it back.My father said that when I graduated from high school, he would officially award me the Boding Medal.He wholeheartedly hoped that when I graduated, I would be recommended to the Fengshan Military Academy to inherit his wish.

My father had been a soldier all his life, and he had no other skills other than charging into battle, so it was very difficult to find work.It was again because of Uncle Huang's face that he was able to squeeze into a public-private joint credit union, and was hired as a consultant with a monthly salary of 3,000 Taiwan dollars.In the office, he didn't even have a desk, so he didn't need to go to work every day.But my father still wore his only decent navy blue serge tunic suit every day, and under his arm was a black business leather bag with a zipper that was worn white and could only be closed halfway. He ran in and out, stepping on his stiff Soldiers pace, travel-stained to catch the bus.My father cut off all contact with his former colleagues.Once, two old subordinates of my father came to visit him at our house. My father hid in the toilet in his underwear, and whispered to me through the door:

Go tell them you're not home! In our sweltering, humid, moldy living room, my father was sitting tenaciously on his polished bamboo armchair, shirtless, sweating, and wearing presbyopic glasses. Under the dim light, day after day, year after year, I was reading his "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" published by Shanghai Guangyi Book Company.There was an earthquake in Taipei one year, and several bricks and tiles from our roof were shaken off. We were all scared and ran into the alley.When we returned home, we found that my father was still sitting on the bamboo chair in the living room, holding his "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" in his hand, and the chandelier on his head was shaking like a pendulum, swinging back and forth.

While my father was sitting alone in the living room studying the principle that the world must be divided for a long time, and the long-term combination must be divided, the mother was alone in the patio outside the living room, squatting on the ground, bending over, scrubbing the endless piles of sheets and clothes.To support the family, my mother went to buy a lot of sheets and clothes from other people's homes every day and came back to wash them.She was buried in the pile of dirty clothes all year round, with her back arched, rubbing and washing vigorously, her hands were soaked in soapy water, and the whole path was soaked red.She squatted on the ground, picked up her skirt, revealing a pair of blue and white calves, her long black hair was tied into a big ponytail and dragged behind her.Sometimes, while my mother was scrubbing, she hummed a Taiwanese tune alone. While rubbing, she would suddenly raise her face, frown, and sing aloud:

Ah, the lonely small city abandoned by people, the moon is dark Her voice was shrill, sharp, trembling, and it was creepy to hear. It was even more poignant than the Taiwanese-language sad white warbler in "City of Sadness". The mother's life experience and origin are very ambiguous.It is said that she is the adopted daughter of a duck-raising family in the Taoyuan countryside. Her adoptive father was a drunkard and abused her in every possible way. Fortunately, her adoptive mother loved her and saved her from suffering a lot.But one day, her adoptive father flew over with a sickle and cut off a piece of skin on her forehead, so she escaped and went to Zhongli, where she worked as a waitress in a low-class teahouse near the First Army barracks.During those days, my mother probably didn't behave very well, and often caused incidents with those soldiers from the First Legion.Once, two second lieutenant officers were jealous of her rivalry and resorted to violence, which almost resulted in a murder case.Things got serious, and my mother couldn't stand in Zhongli, so she came to Taipei to help others as a daughter-in-law.When Aunt Huang was pregnant, she asked her mother to help her temporarily, and just like that, she hitched up with her father.That year my father was forty-five and my mother was only nineteen.When Aunt Huang mentioned this, she always covered her mouth and laughed:

I asked your mother to send the red egg, but your father left the red egg, and even left behind! When my mother was young, probably she was indeed a very charming woman.She has a delicate figure, a slender waist, and a head of rich long hair, which drapes over her back like a piece of black satin.Her snow-white baby face, a pinch of mouth, the corners of her mouth turned up, and her face full of childishness, she looks like a little girl who will never grow up.But her big, sunken eyes, a pair of bright black pupils, shone like two frightened fawns, hiding here and there, full of hesitation and fear.Sometimes, she would suddenly frown, and her big eyes would burn like two balls of black fire, as if all the resentment in her heart had been ignited.

The mother stood beside the father, reaching only to his shoulders.The two walked on the street, the father held his head high, as if he was in a military parade, striding forward, and the mother followed behind him, chasing after him, looking around constantly.Such an old and gray man with white hair standing on end, but behind him is a baby-faced, frightened little girl. The two of them are an extremely inappropriate pair in our alley, and it is ridiculous to walk together. Old husband and young wife. However, the father probably once loved his mother, but the way he expressed it was very violent.Once, my mother was teasing a young man who sold vegetables at the door. She took a carrot and hit the naked chest of the middle-aged man, and the young man took the opportunity to squeeze his mother's arm.My father happened to meet him, and after returning home, without saying a word, he quickly pulled out a cane whip from behind the door, and slapped my mother's back three times, swish, swish, and swish.The mother fell to the ground, her small body curled up into a ball, her shoulders twitched violently, and her blue and white legs kept kicking.The way she was lying on the ground reminded me of a little hen we slaughtered during Chinese New Year, her throat was cut off, she was lying on the ground, her two paws were kicking and kicking convulsively, she was struggling to die, her whole body was white. His feathers were spattered with spots of bright red blood.The mother was lying on the ground, neither weeping nor shouting, her face was pale and her mouth was tightly shut.Her big eyes looked at her father, as if she was about to jump out.The next day, my mother didn't get up.When the father came home, he put a box wrapped in floral paper on the bedside of the mother, turned around hastily and walked out.Inside the box was a brand-new fine linen dress with pea-green base and large clusters of red peonies.Mother climbed out of bed, put on new clothes, stood in front of the mirror and looked around.But on her exposed back, there were two finger-thick welts, which slanted there, green and red, swollen, like two snakes, crawling on her snow-white back. When I was eight years old, my mother suddenly disappeared one day.She took all her clothes and the floral dress her father bought her.She eloped with a small trumpet player in the Xiaodongbao Song and Dance Troupe.She also participated in their song and dance troupe and went on a tour around the island.The dormitory of the Xiaodongbao Song and Dance Troupe was originally stationed on Changchun Road, and my mother often went to get the clothes of the troupe members back to wash.Once, I passed their dormitory and saw my mother was mixing with the members and singing.The little trumpet player was a young man in his twenties, wearing a crimson uniform with two rows of golden brass buttons on the chest and two wide gold rims on the sleeves. He was wearing a white gold-rimmed hat askew, revealing With two pieces of black and shiny hair on the temples.He held a twinkling brass trumpet in both hands, leaned back, and played it very aggressively.The mother was caught in the middle of a group of female troupe members, all smiling and singing "Looking for the Spring Breeze".She also wore a white gold-rimmed man's hat askew on her head. I've never seen her smile so happily. On the night my mother left, my father held the self-defense pistol he used to be the regiment leader on the mainland, waved it threateningly, and ran out, claiming to kill the couple.But when he came back in the middle of the night, he was so drunk that he couldn't even walk steadily.He called my younger brother and me over, and babbled a lot of words that we didn't understand. After talking, he burst into tears himself. His wrinkled, gray and old face was full of tears. It was the scariest and saddest face I had ever seen.Brother Frog cried out in fright, but I felt the hairs all over my body spread out, and I was chilled. I didn't seem to feel particularly sorry for my mother's departure.Probably because my mother hated me since I was a child, so I have only fear of her and no attachment to her.When my mother gave birth to me, the first child was dystocia, the uterus collapsed, and she almost lost her life. Therefore, she insisted that I was the wrongdoing of her previous life, and came to reincarnate to beg for her life.She often rubbed my forehead with her thumb and said to me, Hei Zi, don't frown, children have wrinkles on their foreheads, it's bad, it's vicious. My mother called me Hei Zai and my younger brother Bai Zai.I look like my father, tall and dark, but my younger brother has lost his shape with his mother.He is all white, has a baby face, and his big black eyes seem to have been borrowed from his mother, but they don't have the resentment in his mother's eyes. He blinks and blinks like a silly smile.The mother said that when she was pregnant with her younger brother, she dreamed of Avalokitesvara who gave her a son. The younger brother was specially given to her by the goddess Avalokitesvara, so she looked like her.She personally sewed a set of fiery red silk clothes for her brother, and put a silver-plated cupronickel collar on his neck, with bells of the twelve zodiac signs hanging on the collar. The rabbit's bell jingled, and the mother was overjoyed. She hugged the younger brother into her arms and kissed him from the top of his head to his chubby legs. Dediwa tied her arms and legs, giggling and giggling non-stop. One day, the mother took a bath for the younger brother in the courtyard. She used her own piece of sandalwood soap to wipe the soap bubbles all over the younger brother's body. Wan stretched out to her knees, she scooped up her hands, and poured water on her younger brother's chubby body, humming "June Jasmine" softly.The younger brother laughed, and the mother laughed too. The clear and joyful laughter of the mother and son echoed under the golden sunlight.When my mother walked into the house to get a towel, I walked over and stood by the wooden basin. Just as my younger brother smiled and stretched out his hand to me, I grabbed his arm and put it on his white and tender baby flesh. , Biting off eight blue and red tooth marks fiercely.My mother rushed out, raised the poker and beat my knee black and blue, and I was limping for several days.I looked at the bruised knee, bleeding pus and blood, and felt a burst of revenge in my heart. I didn't cry, and I didn't ask for mercy.After that time, my mother added a bit of disgust to me, saying that I must have been born of five ghosts. However, as soon as my mother left, my brother and I suddenly became dependent on each other.The younger brother has always slept with his mother, but on the night when my mother left, he ran into my room, climbed onto my bed, and squeezed into my arms desperately, probably because he was afraid.I was also very tired that night, so I hugged him, patted his back like my mother did, and fell asleep together. After my mother left home, I saw her only once.That was the fourth year she had left, and I had just entered junior high school.The Little Dongbao Song and Dance Troupe returned to Taipei and performed at the Miramar Theater in Sanchong Town.I secretly took my younger brother and took a bus across the Taipei Bridge to Sanchong Town.Meilihua used to perform Gezai Opera. At the entrance of an alley on Zhongxin Road, the theater was just a big shed surrounded by plywood. At the entrance of the gate, there were two calico curtains, and the walls were covered with colorful advertising posters: The youthful dance of Xiaodongbao Song and Dance Troupe.It is printed with many dancing girls showing their thighs.A man wearing a floral paper hat stood at the entrance, holding a microphone, and shouted: Miss Peugeot!Brilliant performance!I bought two tickets with my younger brother and squeezed into the theater. There were so many people in the theater that it was almost full and it was noisy.The playhouse is a concrete floor, and the ground is covered with fruit peels, melon seed shells, cigarette butts, and soda bottles.The seats are long benches without backrests, packed tightly together.The audience was almost entirely men, many shirtless, their upper bodies exposed with sweat.Most of the people were wearing clogs, and when they sat down, they kicked off the clogs and curled up a bare foot on the stool.The air inside was turbid, and there was a warm smell of sweaty feet.My brother and I squeezed to the farthest stool on the left side of the stage and sat down.An old tea-red curtain hung on the stage, and a row of reflective seat lamps on the stage illuminated the stage brightly.On the right side of the stage sat the band of the song and dance troupe. There were five of them, all wearing their uniforms with crimson red copper buckles and gold trim.I found that the little trumpet player who eloped with his mother was sitting in the second seat in the front row of the band.He raised his head, puffed his cheeks, his eyes were wide open, and he seemed to be playing very proudly, and the trumpet in his hand shone like gold.He didn't wear a hat, and he combed a very sharp jet hair, which was smooth and sleek.The master of ceremonies on the stage came out with a microphone in hand to announce the curtain, and said a few rumors. There was a burst of whistles from the audience, and suddenly, six dancers ran out from behind the scenes.They were all wearing short pink skirts, with their white thighs completely exposed. Each of them wore a circle of shiny golden locks around their heads, and their wrists were also covered with glittering bracelets.After they came out, they stood shoulder to shoulder in a row, and when the band changed a song, they all threw out a hand, pointed down the stage, and sang together in a high-pitched voice: Baodao girls are so beautiful The audience in the audience became more excited and shouted: "Jump!"Jump!Jump!The band beat more and more eagerly, so the dancers on the stage hooked up with each other, lined up, kicked their thighs, and danced.They kicked and sang, their hands clanking.The men in the audience clapped their hands and applauded.The master of ceremonies held on to the microphone and shouted loudly: Hi!Hi!Hi!It seems to be cheering for those dancing girls. My brother and I sat far away, so we couldn't see clearly.I stood up, looked around for a long time, and suddenly realized that the first dancer on the left side of the stage was my mother.The six of them all had big lumps of red rouge on their faces, their eyebrows and eyes were painted blue and purple, and their facial makeup was exactly the same, so it was not easy to tell them apart.My mother is already in her early thirties, but she is petite and dressed like that, she looks like a girl of eighteen or nineteen years old.She was shorter than the other dancers, and she kicked her legs slower than them.She grinned her red-painted mouth and showed her white teeth, making a smile.But her big eyes kept blinking eagerly, as if she was struggling in a hurry.I told my brother that my mother was also dancing on it. My brother quickly climbed onto the stool and searched for it for a while. Suddenly, he called out: Grandma stood on the stool and began to cry.