Gathering Wheat
Zhang Jie文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
What country girl wouldn’t know about gathering wheat stalks! Let me tell you a story of long ago when you might almost say that wheat gathering time was when girls’ imaginations were the most alive.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
In the early hours of dawn, under a waning moon and a sprinkling of stars, what would a girl with a basket on her arm be thinking of as she walked along the ridges in the fields on her way to gather wheat stalks? When a thin mist hovered over the fields and the moon rose silently again as if it had wakened from a stolen nap, what was the girl thinking of as she walked back home with a basket on her arm filled with wheat stalks? Well, what else could she think of? If you had never been part of that life, you will never know the dreams these stalks of wheat scattered in the fields could conjure up.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
She stoops and bends with no respite to pick the scattered stalks, and may muster together as much as one peck (ten litres) in one wheat-gathering season. She will sell the wheat, and save the money, and on a market day, she will go to the market and buy flowered cotton cloth and colored thread. Then she will return home and cut and sew and embroider. Nobody has seen her wear her finery, but on her wedding day, she will invariably stuff these sartorial treasures into her bridal baggage, as all the other girls do, though no one has seen them making an agreement.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
But they will soon discover as they pack away their harvest that the dreams they dreamt while gathering wheat have turned sour. In years, the girls would realize how naive they had been, how different were the men they had married to the men of their dreams as they gathered wheat and sewed and embroidered. They had let themselves be married off so docilely. As they put on their new clothes and new shoes, the thrill that had gone into the making of them had disappeared.文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
文章源自英文巴士-https://www.en84.com/12955.html
And so what! Nobody would sigh for them, or commiserate with them for their lost dreams. Even they themselves would not yield to excessive grief; at most they had lost a beautiful dream. Who would be so foolish as to hold on to a dream!
When I was old enough to be running about on my own, I would trudge behind my elder sister to pick wheat, with a basket too on my arm.
The basket was always too big for me; it would bounce against my legs or drag along the ground. Often it made me stumble. I rarely filled my basket. Either I missed the wheat stalks lying in the fields, or I was distracted by grasshoppers and butterflies. Sometimes even the stalks in my basket rambled out as I chased after butterflies.
One day, my second aunt saw the few stalks of wheat in my basket and asked me: “Oho! So our little Dayan can gather wheat,” she asked me tauntingly. “Now tell auntie, why are you gathering wheat?”
I was not at all embarrassed: “For my trousseau.”
Auntie laughed derisively and her little eyes winked at a couple of women who had gathered around us. “And whom are you going to marry?” she asked.
Yes, whom was I going to marry? I thought for a moment and suddenly remembered the old man who sold sticky candy. I said: “I’ll marry the old man who sells sticky candy.”
They all burst out laughing, sounding like a gaggle of geese. What is there to laugh at? I was angry. What’s wrong with marrying the old candy seller? Is there anything wrong with him?
How old was the candy seller? I didn’t know. The lines on his forehead gathered at the ends of his eyebrows and then crept down his cheeks on both sides to disappear into the corners of his mouth. These lines added a kindly humor to his face. As he walked on his way balancing a shoulder pole carrying his goods, his bald head shone like a gourd, and the long straggling white hair growing at the back of his head quivered with each movement of his body as he walked to the bounce of the pole balanced on his shoulder.
Very soon, my words reached his ears.
One day, he came to our village with his goods. He saw me and smiled: “And so, you want to be my bride?”
“Yes.”
He laughed, exposing his yellowing broken teeth. The few strands of white hair at the back of his gourd-like pate also quivered.
“Now why do you want to be my bride?”
“I want to eat sticky candy.”
He took out his pipe and banged it against the sole of his shoe. “Well, you are too small.”
“Wait till I grow up,” I said.
He patted me on the head and said, “Before you grow up, I’ll be in the ground.”
I was worried. If he dies, what shall I do? My eyebrows under my fuzzy brow knitted together in perplexity. My face was also screwed up like a walnut.
He put a piece of candy into my hands. Looking at the candy in my hand, I grinned and said: “Don’t go and die, wait for me to grow up.”
He smiled and said, “All right, I’ll wait for you to grow up.”
“Where do you live?”
“This shoulder pole with two baskets at either end is my home. Wherever it takes me, that is home and hearth for me.”
I began to worry: “When I grow up, where shall I find you?”
“Don’t worry, when you grow up, I’ll come for you.”
Thereafter, whenever he passed our village, he would bring me a little gift. A piece of candy, a melon, a handful of dates… “For my little bride,” he would say jokingly.
On my part, I imitated the big girls and made my mother cut out some pieces of cotton cloth for a tobacco pouch and even made her mark out a flowery pattern on it. I sewed and embroidered for days, and finally my tobacco pouch was done. My mother exploded with laughter when she saw it and said it looked more like a piece of pork liver than any tobacco pouch. However, I asked mother to keep it for me. I said I would give it to my husband when I marry.
Year by year I grew until I reached the wheat-gathering age, and realized what a fool I had made of myself with those childish words. The old peddler of sticky candy had long ago stopped making jokes about me being his little bride. But he still gave me small gifts. I knew that he was sincerely fond of me.
I don’t know why, but I became sincerely fond him too. Whenever he passed through our village, I would always see him off. As we said goodbye, I would stand at the top of a high ground and watch his receding back until it vanished among the hills.
Year by year I could see his back bend more and more under the shoulder pole, and his steps more and more shaky. Now I was really worried that he might die.
On the day before the Eighth of the Twelfth Moon Festival, I expected that my old friend would come by our village on his rounds. I stood at the end of our village beneath the bare branches of an old persimmon tree and watched the road in the valley below, waiting for him to appear.
At the very top of the old persimmon tree, there was one last fruit. Under the winter sun, it blazed out in a concentrated brilliance of redness. Probably because of the sheer height, it had not been picked. Strange, though, that it had not been blown off by the winds, nor pelted down by rain, nor crushed by snow.
Someone carrying a shoulder pole appeared on the road below. As he approached, I saw that the two baskets balanced on a shoulder pole were also filled with candy. But it was not my old candy peddler. I greeted the stranger and inquired after my old friend and learned that he was dead. I stood under the persimmon tree, looking at the lone little persimmon. Its flaming redness was a joyous sight, but I cried for the strange old candy peddler who had been so fond of me.
Later on, I wondered why. For no other reason than that I was a foolish little thing who loved sticky candy, with few to love me because of my plain face.
When I grew up, I could never forget that apart from my own mother, no one had loved me so fondly and so disinterestedly, with no expectations whatever.
I often think of him now, and have tried to find that tobacco pouch that had looked like a piece of pork liver. But I don’t know what became of it.
（朱虹 译）
