The fourth chapter of the novel "escape"

The two men took advantage of the half-bright and half-dark sky and returned to the town through the deepening fog. The street is covered with a thin layer of milky light, and the motorcycles piled under the eaves during the day disappear with the arrival of the night. The sparse sound of mahjong and TV went through the house with the lights and fell on the wet and cold street.

My son and daughter-in-law sat at the dinner table waiting for them to come back. When Mrs. Liu heard someone talking in Jinfan's room, she made signal with the lips there, which was a problem. "Dad and Lu Wei are inside." Lu Yu said, "Let's eat first. The cooked rice soup is getting cold. " Maybe they waited too long and were hungry. Lu Yu and Yu Siyuan began to eat. Danger he also sat down. Just now, Zhao's bowl of poached eggs could not satisfy his appetite. Coupled with the consumption of climbing mountains, his stomach is empty and shriveled. Mrs. Liu went straight to her grandson's room and called her in-laws and Lu Wei's grandfather and grandson out for dinner. The answer is that they have already eaten. He sat by the bed and chatted with Mr. Lu.

"The child, you must teach him a few words, he is afraid of you, our words go in one ear and out the other. We are too weak to touch him, but we still rely on your usual words to pull him down. "

"I mean him, I can still stare at him in class at school at ordinary times, but this holiday, he will go home to uncover tiles. I've been hurt since I was a child, but I still can't remember. I don't think you can spoil him too much, or you and your in-laws will be angry in the future. "

Listening to the conversation between the two old people, Jin Fan and Lu Wei snickered. Seeing Lu Wei's smile, Jin Fan couldn't help thinking of that dream. The light that fell on Lu Wei turned into a yellow rape flower in Jin Fan's eyes at this time. He seemed to smell a fragrance and took a deep breath. Then he turned his head to the window, and it was dark outside, only to see Lu Wei's beautiful face printed on the tearful window glass. He suddenly felt that the dark night sky was a negative, and as long as there was light, everything except himself could be printed.

Jin Fan's grandmother said something meaningless again, so she let Lu Wei and Jin Fan stay in the room and helped Mr. Lu out. Children know that adults must have some secrets that they can't hear. Now, only two people in the whole room are quiet. Jin Fan asked Lu Wei to open a window, and the cool moisture robbers hijacked the orange light in an instant. There are some coughs from Nightcrawler in the street, and there are faint dog barks in the distance. Jin Fan struggled several times, but finally failed to summon up the courage to tell Lu Wei that beautiful dream. The two told some jokes, as usual, irrelevant language. Finally, Lu Wei learned from his grandfather's tone: "You, when can we save snacks, not to mention that you have to endure the pain yourself. Who will not hurt when you see it?" Jin Fan calmed the dark night sky, and the light outside the window turned into a wound in the night in Jin Fan's heart. He seemed to hear a groan between heaven and earth, low as if calling.

The negotiation at the dinner table is over, and so is Jin Fan and Lu Wei's brief two-person world.

"Jin Fan, we want to send you to master Chen for a few days. What do you think? " Father's voice is very soft. "It is quieter there. Master Chen is an educated man. You can learn Chinese calligraphy from him and ring the bell with him every morning. " Mother's words, like father's, stifled the word "temple" between the lines.

Jin Fan looked at her grandparents. They all nodded, and Jin Fan nodded silently. Living in a new place will interest children of this age, and the interest in ringing bells has been brewing for a long time.

Jin Fan looked at Lu Wei again, smiled feebly and said, "Why don't you come with me to the temple and become a nun?"

"Who wants to be with you, a young monk who can't swim?" Lu Wei also said interestingly that a room full of faint laughter floated in their jokes, like a fish swimming back and forth in the humid air.

Early the next morning, Liu Wei and his father came to see Jin Fan, left the basket with eggs and fish and left. Jin Fan was sent to the temple at the top of Xiangyang Mountain. After arranging everything, his parents accompanied him until noon. When he left, he wanted to leave a few packages of "medicine" brought back by his mother from Zhao's family, but Master Chen refused, saying that these Jianghu tricks were useless. The temple is not far from home, but the family is not worried about Jin Fan. What makes them on pins and needles is that the day when Yu Siyong and Yu Jinran go home is getting closer and closer.

Because of people's worship of God, before Jin Fan was born, these temples with red columns, white walls and black tiles built along the mountain stood on the sunny mountain. They are hidden in the lush shade of cypress, and the different colors in the emerald green are the brilliance of orchid chrysanthemums; No matter how tough it is, it is a century-old cactus. If you catch up with the flowers, you can appreciate the soft and even secluded artistic conception in the middle. The stone steps in the temple are covered with cordate telosma with lush foliage and tiny petals, but it holds up an unspeakable beauty. Perhaps this is what Buddhism says: a flower is the world and a tree is bodhi.

Although the temple is open to the outside world, except for a few days in a year, it is called "temple fair". At ordinary times, only Master Chen stays quietly. Of course, playful children like Jin Fan will occasionally patronize those cigarettes and set off firecrackers.

There are a group of lay people in the temple, who enter the temple to practice at the appointed time. The main contents of practice are chanting, meditation, releasing, and burning candles and incense for the donors who come to worship Buddha. Often, under the leadership of Master Chen, when the laymen recite the scriptures, the extremely sweet voice that people can't understand will reverberate in the mountains. Their beauty makes people suspect that there are gods helping them. They play between the eyebrows of every long tree and the armpits of every bud, like a small stream flowing through every inch of adobe, like a cantata sliding across every roof.

Master Chen arranged a room for Jin Fan, which is located behind Guanyin Hall, followed by Daxiong Hall. Encouraged by a group of children, Master Chen was extremely angry when he wrote a sentence on the outer wall of Daxiong Hall: "Buddha is the sun//Buddha is a thief who steals light", because this sentence was severely beaten by his grandfather, and later he went to the temple to repaint the wall with lime. Let Jin Fan's favorite giant clock hang outside the Ursa Major Hall. The room faces west, and there are no curtains or a piece of glass on the wooden frame window. Fog, wind, all sounds and the smell of cigarettes on the top of the mountain can come and go freely between the windows. Looking through the window lattice, and then through the black tiles of Kannonji below, you can see the whole street and the people coming and going in the street. Half of the two valleys behind the house on the street are also within Jin Fan's sight. Jin Fan likes living in such a place.

Jin Fan followed Master Chen around the temple and walked slowly. Or watch Master Chen clean the temple, refuel the oil lamp in front of the Buddha statue and wipe the straw mat. In the evening, Master Chen locked all the doors of the temple and went to Jin Fan's room to treat him. First of all, he made some strange movements around the bed, muttering something; Then give Jin Fan a bowl of sweet spring water, you must drink it all, not a drop left; Finally, let Jin Fan read some verses with him, then cover Jin Fan with a quilt, take the door behind him and go back to the house to rest.

Jin Fan always found it difficult to sleep in the temple, not because of the cold on the top of the mountain, but because of the unpredictable sound of the night wind. He always felt nervous when he thought of the Guanyin Buddha statue he saw during the day and some ugly bodhisattva faces that could not be named, as if he had seen God during the day and turned into a ghost in front of him at night. Trembling, he tried to pull his thoughts into the sun, but he remembered the scene of accompanying his grandfather to the grave on Halloween.

There is a huge cemetery in Sanxi village, which is appropriately called "grave forest". The grave forest is at the junction of a dry land and Xiangyang Mountain, and most of them are buried by people with a long history. Because no one cleans up all the year round, the grave forest is covered with cypresses and thorns. On July 30th, people will bring steamed bread or cooked meat, firecrackers, paper money and incense sticks, and take their children to their ancestors' graves. Jin Fan doesn't want to go. The graves are deliberately put together, and the wind blows in the graves. Thick smoke and scattered paper ash seem to tell Jin Fan that ghosts are wandering around. Brocade always shivers under the scorching sun in July. Grandpa will burn some scattered paper money on the roadside outside the grave after going to the ancestral grave, saying that it is to send away the lonely ghosts who have no children, so as not to cause trouble to them and their families. Jin Fan has always wondered how people in the village can worship gods and ghosts to eliminate disasters. He thinks this is superstition among superstitions. There are really ghosts and gods. Isn't it enough to worship God? Grandpa once said to himself, "Unless you are a ghost, sacrifice." So the people in Sanxi Village are not all a bunch of flattery farmers? Jin Fan told Grandpa what was in the book. The old man always listens to his grandson's superstition quietly, and then answers with a smile, "Jin Fan, if grandpa doesn't believe in these things, what else can he believe?" Grandpa hasn't read a book, so he can't have knowledge in his head like you, but he can't be empty. "Jin Fan can't fully understand these words, just as he can't know what the adults are thinking. Isn't that what he was sent to the temple to keep company with the gods?

After a night of trembling, Jin Fan fell asleep at dawn. The bell came from outside the Hall of the Great Hero, and the flood broke through the window. Jin Fan lifted the quilt, put on his clothes and ran out. The morning mist forced people, the lights under the eaves were like stars, the brocade sails hurried up the stone steps, and a vague figure appeared in front of the temple. With a gentle step, Master Chen's back is as steady as Mount Tai. An iron bar with a round bowl mouth was placed in front of him, and two thick straw ropes hanging from the beam were tied at both ends of the iron bar, just like a simple swing. With Master Chen's arm pulled back and forth, the iron bar and the clock kissed regularly. Under the impact of the two, the bell is rich and full of corn, as if thousands of sailboats were floating in the morning mist transpiration sky. It's like knocking the sky awake, the bell stopped, and the eastern sky is like lips, gradually revealing white teeth.

Master Chen took all the food offered to the Bodhisattva to Jin Fan's room and told him that eating what the Bodhisattva had tasted would be blessed by God. Jin Fan secretly rejoiced in his heart, asking for nothing but a sumptuous snack. After breakfast, Master Chen will go for a walk in the town, and Jin Fan will stay at home to study. He probably doesn't know traditional Chinese characters, but he still learns to shake his head when the layman recites the scriptures. After a nap, Master Chen spent more than an hour teaching calligraphy and learning China traditional calligraphy, and gradually fell in love with Mo Xiang like Lu Wei.

It was noon and the sun was unusually hot. Jin Fan had lunch and walked in the temple. Liu Wei and Lu Wei came to the temple together, and the three of them sat casually on the stone steps in front of Jinfan's house, sharing the offerings of the Bodhisattva. When they talked about the coming Spring Festival, they remembered that a large number of people who had gone out were returning to the village, and they seemed to hear a lot of lively laughter everywhere. The sound of mahjong coming from a crowded teahouse in the town, the bargaining of buying new year's goods, the hawking of vendors, the laughter of children wearing new clothes, the sound of firecrackers and the bell of praying in the temple are enough to make people feel full of the flavor of the year. The three children remembered that they were going out of the village, out of the town and out of the messy county. Their hearts were full of excitement, and sweet saliva came out and swallowed back. They think they will come back here in the excitement of a Spring Festival, with dust and achievements. At that time, curious children would stare at them, look at their fashionable clothes and see the shadow of the city in their pupils.

Jin Fan asked Liu Wei and Lu Wei whether they would really come back if they went out. The tone of Liu Wei's answer is very dull, because he has deviated from his original hometown with his grandmother's divination. He doesn't know if it will become his real root. Lu Wei looked at the sky, his chin in his hand, and began his own unique thinking. As usual, her eyes are full of clouds and sunshine, her eyelashes are flashing and her eyes are getting blurred. After all, she is a girl, and her roots depend on her future husband's feet.

Jin Fan suddenly remembered and said, "A new person will come back to our home soon. No, I should say there are two, my uncle and his daughter. According to grandma, their name is Jin Ran, and she will stay here to go to school with us. " The other two were skeptical. They have never heard that Jin Fan has such an uncle. Jin Fan said that believe it or not these days. Say that finish, his eyes flashed a trace of joy, and that joy was immediately shattered by unknown life. He doesn't know what kind of person my uncle is, and neither does Jin Ran. Whether she will be willing to stay here and bid farewell to the city's traffic and high-rise buildings is still a question. However, Jin Fan knows that this sister, who only exists in her mind now, will come back, and her uncle, who has been away from home for more than ten years, will also return to his hometown, even if they just pass by in a hurry.

The coolness of the stone steps gradually penetrated into the three people's bodies as time passed. They stood up, stood in the sun, looked at the distance, crossed the streets of the town, and lost themselves in the dark green forest with their farsightedness. Some people go to dark green, and some people come out from the depths of dark green.

Three people at the foot of the Kannonji came the voice of knocking wooden fish. Soon, firecrackers sounded. When I ran to the front of the temple, I found someone had gone home to pray. Master Chen sat on the straw mat, banging on the wooden fish, his eyes closed, his voice humming and talking.