Reading The Remnants (Wen Guan)

Winter in 1914.

The sky was too cloudy to squeeze out the water, and it was gray, and it was hard to tell whether it was fog or smoke coming out of the cage. The smell of coal in the air is too strong, and the buns don’t smell. Tu Laoyao lifted the cage and stretched his head to take a look, then shook his head: “Your face is too rough.”

The old Baozi man who had been standing on the street for 20 years sipped him and smashed the lid: “It’s too rough to paint the youngest one by you-go and go!”

Tu Laoyao smiled and moved his face back and put his hands into his sleeves: “Cheng Chengcheng, your old man’s buns are the most fragrant, or else they have been sold for 20 years! Fortune and anger.”

He curled his neck and walked forward, walked to a corner, squatted down in front of the hookah stand, tilted his body and asked, “Boss, what kind of smoke is there today?”

The owner of the cigarette stand was thin and weak, with a listless appearance. His hair was trimmed short and could not cover his neck. He looked like a dog with bangs. He was long and short, and covered with drooping eyes. On top of his head was an old-year melon hat. It’s kind of funny.

Her surname is Li, and she has always been such a boy and girl, without a name, and ranked eleventh.

“What kind of cigarettes are you doing?” Li Shiyi reluctantly took out his hand from the cotton hand and fiddled with it twice. “Spicy? Not spicy?”

Youngest Tu leaned closer: “What a cold day, the hookah is cold when you eat it. Is there any dry tobacco? Eleven sister?”

Li Shiyi lifted his eyelids and glanced at him. His eyes were clear. I’ve seen it many times, but the scar on his right cheek still bluffed the youngest Tuo. It looked like burns and ulcers. A large piece of red, red, purple and purple wrinkled rot, sticking to the cheeks like a dog’s head plaster, it was ugly and tight.

“Hanyan is a ancestral guy who eats, you can afford it.”

She stood up, straightened her melon hat, her cotton-padded coat was crumpled, and her whole body was shrouded in it.

The youngest Tu yelled twice and followed behind her.

Turning around a few alleys, there is a dilapidated courtyard in front of him, overgrown with weeds, looking like it hasn’t been repaired for a long time. Li Shiyi threw his sleeves into the dust, removed the wooden planks in the front yard, and walked inside again. Inside the bushes is a rusty warehouse, which is not too big and square and can be seen at a glance.

Li Shiyi pulled out a key from Mianzi’s inner button, opened the warehouse, bent down and got in through the small iron door.

Tu Laoyao followed up in a familiar manner, and Li Shiyi fumbled and pulled the thick hemp rope beside the wall, and the warehouse suddenly lit up.

“Hey, light up!” Tu Yaoo touched the circuit on the wall.

Li Shiyi squinted his eyes to adapt to the bright light, still leaning against the wall with his hands, and asked him: “In or out?”

Tu Laoyao’s eyes were caught by the stuff in the warehouse, and he was about to start with two “tsk tuts”.

Li Shiyi took out a box of foreign matches from his pocket and struck one with a stab: “They all came down from the ground.”

Youngest Tu was so scared that he withdrew his hands and glanced greedyly at the Tang Sancai lantern bottle whose soil had not yet dried. Li Shiyi struck another match, and the smell of sulfur pierced the youngest Tu’s nose. The youngest Tu sneezed and leaned in front of Li Shiyi, licking his face and shouted, “Sister Eleven.”

Li Shiyi rubbed his nose and looked up at him. He took out a small copper pot with a narrow mouth and wide belly from his cotton trousers and handed it to Li Shiyi. With a wrinkled face, he cried in mourning: “You have to help my brother. I.”

Li Shiyi looked at the copper pot he took out of his crotch with disgust: “Where did it come from?”

Seeing that Li Shiyi didn’t mean to stretch out his hand, Tu Laoyao went forward and gave it away: “You take a closer look?”

Li Shiyi tapped the wall of the copper pot twice through the cotton sleeve, and glanced at him: “It’s not too old, it’s copper again, it’s worthless.”

Youngest Tu took it back: “It’s not that I thought about it, so I took it home and set it aside–“

Li Shiyi frowned and interrupted him: “I told you early in the morning that I was unhappy and took it home from the ground.” After entering for a long while, it was not so cold. She stretched out her shoulders and sneered: “Why, think about it after death. Meet the peers?”

The youngest Tu’s neck shrank, and Lai smiled and said, “It’s wrong, it’s wrong, I’m the one. But this matter is also **** bad luck.”

He lowered his throat: “I took this thing home, and every night there was a whining sound, which made my mother-in-law uneasy to sleep.”

“I’m wondering whether it’s an affair, or it’s better to send it back.” Tu’s youngest peeked at Li Xi.

Li Shiyi put the match back in his pocket and sniffed: “Open the coffin and don’t go back. If you’ve fallen, you won’t be able to dig out the second time. This is the rule of the line.”

“I know I know, but I’ve only suffered this kind of thing the second time I started fighting, and I can’t help it.” The youngest Tu Yao grabbed Li Xi’s sleeve, his face wrinkled like a shrunken skin.

“Do you want me to take you?” Li Xi stared at him.

The youngest member Tu nodded hurriedly. Seeing that Li Shiyi had no response, he turned his eyesight, immediately squatted down, held her ankle, and pleaded: “Eleven sister, Boss Li, Guanyin Bodhisattva, my elder Qingtian! He wailed and hammered Li Shiyi’s ankle: “My mother-in-law’s belly is eight or nine months old, and she is about to give birth. At this time, it has caused trouble, and that is to make my old Tujia endure!”

Li Shiyi struggled twice, but couldn’t get away. He bowed his head and reprimanded, “Tu Sanping.”

Youngest Tu raised his head and looked at her with tears in his eyes: “Sister Eleven, I was the one you brought into the trip. Although I only dared to dig out the small tomb, it also inherited your mantle and ate your ancestral meal.”

Li Shiyi’s mouth twitched: “You used to guard the tomb for a living, and you ran into me when you pee at night, and you peeked behind me, then turned around and took a shovel to excavate, also called to bear my mantle?”

The youngest Tuo didn’t care, holding her leg.

Li Shiyi sighed, “Which one is in the tomb?”

Tu Laoyao was taken aback for a moment, ignoring the tears from his eyes, and flattened Li Shiyi’s trouser legs with joy: “It’s on the east side, it’s on the east side.”

It is logical to start work at two o’clock in the morning and finish work at five o’clock in the morning. In the afternoon, Li took the stall early in the afternoon and went home to pack his tools. Youngest Tu’s followed her all the way back, and saw her look like a clean, small wooden house with four walls, only a bed covered with blue cloth, and a table soaked in oil. It hadn’t been fired for several days. , The stove was also dusty.

Youngest Tuo looked at her cotton-padded jacket and melon leather hat: “That is a priceless treasure in your warehouse. Now that you have installed electric lights, why is it so shabby?”

Li Shibai glanced at him: “Wealth does not reveal wealth, especially the dead wealth.”

The youngest Tu also thought about it. In these turbulent times, the seeds of the head are tied to the belt of the pants.

Li Shiyi dragged out a bright leather suitcase from under the bed board, picked up a few sturdy shovels, pickaxes, Luoyang shovel, and axe from it, and squeezed them into the cloth pocket on the bedside, and found a few more. The palm-length little white oil candle went to the threshold and picked up a few wooden sticks, wrapped them with cotton cloth and poured kerosene, and tied them in twos to form a torch. Finally, they tied a bunch of hemp rope to the bulging cloth pocket and tied it firmly. Back to back.

She poured another bowl of leftover cooked glutinous rice from the table, wrapped it in oil paper, and then a few black donkey hoofs from the kang hole, blowing firewood ashes into her pocket, and taking out a few more on the stove The small hip flask had black dog blood stained at the mouth of the flask. She shook it, not to her waist, and rinsed another empty gourd from the pot water, pinched it in her hand and walked out.

Youngest Tuo saw her go out with a bag in front of her and a parcel in her back. He turned over the fence in the backyard, picked a few spicy garlics, and fed them to the fat cow’s mouth. He squatted in front of her, with the gourd mouth facing the cow. Chin.

After receiving a half of the gourd bull’s tears, Li Shiyi collected the gourd and it was complete.

Tu Laoyao looked at her, and then at the old cow who was crying with tears, and squeezed the lone wooden shovel in his hand.

As soon as it was dark, the youngest Tu took Li Shiyi to the cemetery that he said during the day. Li Shiyi looked around, and more than ten piers were lined up from the northwest to the southeast. She asked the youngest Tu: “Which?”

Youngest Tu pointed to the southeast corner: “The biggest one.”

Li Shiyi glanced at him, not courageous, and his appetite was not small.

Youngest Tu followed Li Shiyi to the tomb. Seeing her, he was not in a hurry to go down. He broke two thick branches, sat one by himself, and put the other one next to him. Youngest Tu pulled over and was next to her. Sitting down, seeing Li Shiyi staring at the tomb in a daze, she couldn’t help asking her: “Eleven sister, what are you looking at?”

Li Shiyi took a pocket watch out of his gray cotton-padded jacket, opened it, and said, “The ground will be broken at 11 o’clock.”

Tu Laoyao curled his neck and looked at her watch eagerly, rubbing his hands and smiling, “Pure gold, hey?”

Li Shiyi ignored him, took out a candle from his cloth pocket, lighted it on the southeast corner of the tombstone, took out the pipe, stuffed the tobacco in, lit a foreign match, and took a deep breath. In his mouth, he vomited again, and then handed it to the youngest Tu: “With two mouthfuls.”

The youngest Tu’s frankly took a sigh of relief, and said with satisfaction: “No wonder you say this is the guy who eats.”

“It’s fine if there is a smell of smoke in your mouth.” Li Shixi frowned and stared at the extinguished candlelight, and the remaining smoke from his mouth came out when he spoke.

The youngest Tu Yao looked at her, her ugly face was a little weird in the tobacco.

Li Shiyi blinked, seeing the candle teetering in the wind, and finally blown out with a snap, she stood up and took out the dry smoke from Tu’s mouth.

“This tomb can’t be moved, let’s go.”