The story of a snowy night (translated by An Weibang)
On the snowy field, the sun sets.
The distant horizon changed from a vague rose color to lavender, and a star was shining directly above the fir tree. The stars blinked like trembling eyes, looking down at the endless white field.
It was a cold night with no wind. Although new stars appear in the sky one after another, the biggest, brightest, and most beautiful ones are still the first stars to appear. However, no one looked up at the stars, because there was not a single person or house in the wilderness.
Late at night, a truck passed a road in this wilderness. The truck ran past with a gray hood and tire chains squeaking.
"Hoo--it's so cold!"
The male driver wearing a fur hat exhaled white breath.
"Try harder!"
The man at the assistant's seat raised his voice as if to encourage him. The cigarette was burning, bright red.
At this moment, the truck swayed with a roar, and taking advantage of the force, an apple rolled down from the gray hood.
The truck just ran towards the distant town.
In a snowy field, a red apple looked motionless at the sky. It thought: What a cold and empty place it has fallen into.
At this time.
"Apple."
Suddenly, someone called. A very loud and clear sound, like a small silver bell.
"Apple, are you really lonely?"
The voice said again.
"Well, it's loneliness."
After Apple answered, he thought: Who is calling him? Suddenly, the stars above the fir tree flashed in a circle. Apple noticed it immediately and said happily:
"Hey, it's a star!"
Then, it used A loud voice shouted:
"I know you!"
Apple seemed to have met an acquaintance from the past, and she was so happy that she started talking.
"I have known you a long time ago. That was when I was still growing on my mother's tree. Well, before that, when I was still a white flower, I would look at you every night."
"Then I'm so happy!"
After Xingxing said this, he continued:
"However, there are many orchards here and there. , and there are many apple trees. I'm sorry, I don't know which apple tree you grew up in."
"I am not an apple in the orchard."
< p>"Hmm. Then, where do you come from?""A house on the hill...here, can you see it from your place? In the north, the eaves are low, old and A dirty house. Is there an amazingly beautiful apple tree in that yard?”
Xingxing nodded.
"That's the tree I grew up on. It's such a good tree that can't be found in any farm or orchard in this area. That tree can produce a lot of sweet and beautiful apples. But , The owner of this tree is extremely poor. He can only live on porridge every day, and he only has one thing to wear, and he only has a little firewood to heat the room."
"It was a very hard life."
"Well. There were five children and an old woman living in the small house. The children's father had passed away and their mother was very old. She worked in a distant place and didn't often receive money. Therefore, my grandma started a side job to help her children eat porridge. Even so, life was too hard. One day, she decided to sell the apple trees in her yard to a nearby farmer. Orchard."
Xingxing nodded. Then, he looked at the small houses on the hills across the field. The house seemed about to collapse due to the weight of the snow. On the apple trees in the yard, the snow almost bent the branches.
“If you ask the owner of the orchard how he buys apples, he sets the price based on how much a tree costs. In other words, he pays the same amount in good harvest years and poor harvest years. . As for disinfecting the apple trees, bagging the apples, and packing the apples, it is all done by the orchardists, but not a single apple is left on the trees, and all belong to the stingy orchard owner. , often told grandma and children:
Don’t pick any apples in the yard, because the tree no longer belongs to you.
The children look sad. La. Some children pouted and some cried. Seeing this, we said in unison:
Wind, wind, shake us!
——Wind, wind, shake us away!
Then, the wind blows from the distant mountains and shakes the tree as hard as it can. Many apples fell in a row, so we sang on the tree:
Whose are the falling apples?
Whose are the falling apples?
Hearing the singing, the old lady came to the yard, straightened up a little, looked at the road below, and after making sure that the truck from the apple orchard was not coming, she picked up the fallen apples. They hid them quietly in the kitchen and gave them to the children at night. If they were good apples, they would be eaten raw. If they were rotten apples, they would be boiled. The old woman would cook them and pray that more apples would fall.