Liang Zili's "Lights under the Sunset"

Lights under the setting sun

More than thirty years ago, at that time, the smoke was not dead yet.

I haven’t grown up either. Every day when I see my brothers returning from school carrying their schoolbags, smoke is already rising from the roof tiles of every house. The ducks jumped out of the water, dragging their tired bodies, and walked into the sunset. Donye put away the light of the day and quietly waited for the dusk. The air was filled with a little melancholy of returning home. While waiting for the last wisp of cooking smoke to blend into the dusk, and the lights lingering in the slightly cold old house, the first night came one after another.

The bat is like a ghost in the dark night, crawling out of the eaves of the old house and escaping into the night sky. My father took out a lamp and lit it, and brought it to Grandpa's well house. Watching beside him was Grandpa sitting on the door stone smoking fireworks. A round moon rises quietly in the sky, reflecting the green night. When looking back, it looks like an ink painting hanging in the sky.

I quietly hid in front of the well house and asked my grandfather: "Where did the moon rise and where did the sun go?"

Grandpa was silent for a while. , and said: "The moon is the sun that has just lost its heat. Look! It is sleeping with its pillow on the stars."

I was silent and looked at Grandpa, who was playing with the corduroy: "Grandpa, why do we light up the lights that night?"

"Just wait for the sun tomorrow!" Grandpa said.

I don’t know if grandpa is lying to me. For a long time, I slept soundly in the light of grandpa’s candle. When I woke up, I could see the new scenery. A round of sun.

The sun is still rising day by day, and we are growing up day by day, but grandpa is getting older day by day.

At that time, during the spring planting season, I was sitting in front of my grandfather’s well house, following my grandfather, waiting for my parents. When the sun was setting, the sound of my parents' returning oxcarts had not yet been heard outside the village entrance, so I came to the village entrance alone, waiting anxiously for my parents. When night fell and the lights in the distance were lit, I heard my grandfather calling home in the alley in the first night. When my grandfather looked for me, raindrops began to fall sparsely from the sky.

When I returned to my second grandma’s hut, the sound of spinning could be heard, accompanied by the flickering lights in the dim room. I asked my grandfather who was holding me on the rainy night. ,

"It's dark, and the second grandma is still spinning,"

"She's catching up with the sunset!" Grandpa murmured to himself.

When I looked up, the rain outside the eaves was getting heavier and heavier. It was pounding on the earth, and the sky and the earth were vast. At this time, my father's shouts came intermittently from outside the village. Mother popped out of nowhere, walking in the rain, and walked toward us. Behind her, the wild fields were vast, the night was green, and shepherd's purse flowers were blooming in the spring rain fields.

Later, whenever our parents came home late, we would leave a light in my grandfather’s well house. Guarding Grandpa, guarding this vast night.

Sometimes, I asked my grandpa where the lights in this house came from. Grandpa did not answer immediately, but just told me that before the sun goes down, he shakes out the residual heat from his body and turns it into Thousands of lights are on.

At that time, during festivals and temple fairs, when night fell, there would be tribesmen wearing scary masks, singing and dancing around the fire. Later I found out that this was A kind of Nuo dance. Sometimes when people are sick and exorcising evil spirits, the wizards also dance and chant. Most of the Nuo masks hide a memory of the ancestors. Grandpa said that Nuo can communicate with the gods. Our ancestors originated from that ancient oriental nation.

When I asked my father about it, he couldn’t remember it. He just told me that it was an ever-burning lamp they lit for my grandfather.

On a rainy night that year, my father and I went to a distant field to look for a plant to surround the yard. On the way back, we encountered heavy rain. When we returned to the village entrance, it was already midnight, and the lights in the well house were still on. The bullock cart was about to drive near the door of the house. At this moment, the lights in the wing suddenly turned on. Through the hazy raindrops, we could faintly see the shadows of people in the house flickering. On this Lingnan night, my mother was waiting under the window sill. Return with us.

Later, when I came back at night, I could no longer see the ever-burning lamp in front of the Shuijing House. Grandpa had already passed away. But every night when I return home, I have to look at the edge of my grandfather's well house twice more, as if the light is still there, and so is my grandfather.

Thirty years passed in the blink of an eye. When I went back to see my parents, they were also old. When it was about to get dark, I followed my mother and brought up the past incident of the ever-burning lantern. My mother kept mumbling something and looked like she didn't answer the question, but my father sat aside blankly and looked at me blankly. His elderly parents already suffered from Alzheimer's disease. .

At night, my father fell asleep, but my mother hid in the corner, shivering in a corner. I asked my mother again. My mother was stunned for a moment and did not answer me. She pointed to the air in front of her and said that everyone was still asleep. I asked my mother if she had seen grandpa. My mother said that everyone was there.

I said no more, walked to the window sill, picked up the kerosene lamp that had been prepared, and lit it. The light flickered in the cold night, reflecting into the darkness of the night. , tightly wrapped by the night, quickly disappeared into the vastness of the night and became nowhere to be found. Mother went to bed, curled up into a ball, and gradually fell asleep under the protection of the night.

I just kept guarding that light. There were many nights when my mother stayed by my side like this, guarding me. A gust of breeze blew by, and I shivered. When I raised my head and looked out the window, the night outside the window was getting darker. Suddenly, I felt like a weak light was shining over me. I closed my eyes in a daze, and suddenly, my grandfather was sitting on the old steps of Shuijing House, guarding the light. . . .

Attached is "Recalling Spring"

The cuckoos are chirping in the fields

The light flying catkins are reflected

March The mist of apricot blossoms

Carrying the plow

The fields in the distance

Not far away

Holding the old ox

Father on the muddy country road

Returning to farming

In the distance

The night is green