Chapter 735: Douzi's Life Story
The cold wind blew the broken snow across the cracks in the adobe wall, forming furry icicles on the door frame of the main room.
Wang Jianguo stomped off the dust on his cotton shoes, stretched out his hand and pulled Yang Huaixi and Douzi to the stove:
"Come and warm yourself by the fire. This weather is so nasty it can freeze your bones."
He turned on the kettle and poured a cup of hot water for each of the three people.
"Drink some hot water first. The meal will be ready soon. After dinner, take a good rest. I will take you to the commune to see Director Song in the afternoon to finalize the foundation of the clinic. When the work points are recorded, your names must not be left out."
He looked up as if he suddenly remembered something.
"By the way, Douzi, what's your full name? I'll need it for registration later."
Douzi, who was squatting beside the stove, had his cheeks flushed by the firelight. His fingers holding the teacup twisted awkwardly, and his ears had an unnatural blush under his messy hay-like hair.
"I...I don't know. I've been called Douzi since I was a kid."
The voice that changed during adolescence was hoarse and dry, as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper.
“Everyone calls me that. No one has ever called me a big name.”
Wang Jianguo's hand holding the water was suspended in mid-air. He turned his head to look at Yang Huaixi, only to see that this usually taciturn man was staring at the hot steam in the bowl in a daze. His rough palms unconsciously rubbed the edge of the bowl, making a rustling sound on the clay surface.
"Brother Jianguo, please don't be offended."
Yang Huaixi swallowed a mouthful of cold tea with his Adam's apple rolling, and the sound seemed to be squeezed out from deep in his chest.
"Douzi had a miserable life. His mother died of hemorrhage when giving birth to him, and his father could not survive the famine. He left him at the dilapidated temple at the entrance of the village when he was only six months old and never came back."
His eyes fell on Douzi's thin shoulders. The boy was munching on a steamed bun, his eyelashes casting tiny shadows under his eyes.
"That winter was very cold. I ran into an old beggar begging for food at the City God Temple. The old beggar told me his name was Douzi."
The main room fell into deathly silence, with only the occasional crackling of firewood to be heard.
Wang Jianguo suddenly remembered that during the journey, Yang Huaixi always stuffed the cakes into Douzi's arms and chewed the hard steamed bread himself.
At night, he always covered Douzi with a thick quilt and endured the cold without saying a word.
He stared at the two men's cotton trousers with similar patches on top of each other, and suddenly felt that there were heavy stories hidden in those stitches.
"What? You are not brothers?" Wang Jianguo regretted his words as soon as they came out of his mouth, but Yang Huaixi just smiled and shook his head.
Yang Huaixi lowered his eyes and looked at the tea bowl in his hand which had already gone cold. His fingertips repeatedly rubbed the gap on the rim of the bowl, as if he wanted to carve the traces of the past into the lines of his palm.
The firewood in the stove crackled and sparks flew. He suddenly smiled, but that smile was even colder than the cold wind outside:
"We are not brothers. To be honest, my fate with Douzi started from a dilapidated temple."
His voice gradually became distant, as if falling into a dusty snowy night.
In the late winter of that year, Yang Huaixi carried a bamboo basket to the back mountain to collect herbs. The dark clouds were very low, and by the time he realized something was wrong, heavy snow had blocked the way down the mountain.
The strong wind blew the snow particles into his neck. When he rolled and crawled into the dilapidated temple halfway up the mountain, the ice on his cotton jacket made a rustling sound.
"It was so dark in the temple that one could not see one's hand in front of one's face. The smell of mold and rotten wood made it hard to breathe."
Yang Huaixi's Adam's apple rolled and his voice suddenly became hoarse.
"But in that pitch black darkness, I heard someone crying - soft and thin, like the meow of a kitten."
"I took out a tinderbox and lit it, and I saw a child curled up in a ragged quilt in the corner, his face purple from the cold, and an old beggar sitting crookedly next to him."
In the flickering firelight, the old beggar's cloudy eyes suddenly lit up. He was an old man so thin that only bones were left. There were icicles on his patched clothes and blood scabs on his gray beard.
He trembled as he stuffed the swaddling clothes into Yang Huaixi's arms. His dry lips moved for a long time before he squeezed out a hoarse voice:
"Good Samaritans... this kid has no parents... I can't do it anymore..."
Recalling this, Yang Huaixi clenched his knees tightly with his hands, and his knuckles turned blue and white.
He said that the old beggar spoke a lot of things in a disjointed manner that night.
It turned out that Douzi was an abandoned baby, and his umbilical cord had not fallen off when he was thrown at the gate of the City God Temple.
An old beggar was passing by begging for food and saw the child crying pitifully, so he fed him mouthful by mouthful of rice soup he begged for.
But the old man was already seriously ill, and coupled with the snowstorm, he didn't make it until dawn.
"When it was almost dawn, he grabbed my hand and forced me to promise to take care of the baby."
Yang Huaixi suddenly turned his head away, and a suppressed sob came from his throat.
"He said Douzi was a companion gifted by God to him, and begged me not to let him die of cold and starvation like him... Before he could finish his words, his hands were completely cold."
It was noon the next day when the snow stopped. Yang Huaixi took off his cotton jacket, wrapped Douzi in it, and dug a shallow pit behind the temple.
There was not a single intact wooden board to be found in the dilapidated temple, so he used the broken branches and straw he picked up to build a simple coffin for the old beggar.
When the new grave was built, Douzi suddenly started crying. Her pink little face faced the rising sun, reminding Yang Huaixi of the bean sprouts that popped up on the edge of the fields in spring.
"Since then, I have been making a living with him."
Yang Huaixi wiped his face with his hand, and when he looked up again, his eyes were red.
Yang Huaixi dug his fingers deep into his palms, his Adam's apple rolled twice with difficulty, and the sound seemed to float up from the bottom of the frozen river:
"After I buried the old beggar, I stood at the entrance of the village holding the beans, with no place to stay."
He looked out the window at the bare branches swaying in the cold wind, as if he saw himself again, at a loss as he was back then.
"I also lost my parents when I was young, and grew up with my brother and sister-in-law. I thought I would bring Douzi back to have a hot meal, but I didn't know..."
The floodgates of memory burst open. That evening, he pushed open the broken door of his brother and sister-in-law's house in the snow and wind. Beside him was Douzi, wrapped in a ragged quilt left by an old beggar.
My sister-in-law's shrill voice instantly pierced the twilight:
"You can't even eat enough, and yet you bring a burden back with you? Are you trying to bankrupt our family?"
My brother squatted on the doorstep, puffing on his pipe, keeping his head down and saying nothing.
The iron pot on the stove was empty, with only half a ladle of cornmeal, which my sister-in-law held tightly behind her.
"I knelt in the snow and begged all night long."
Yang Huaixi's voice suddenly trembled, and his knuckles turned white from the force.
"My knees were so frozen that I lost all feeling, but my sister-in-law didn't even open the door. Douzi was hungry and cried until his voice became hoarse. I touched his cold little hands and realized that it is better to rely on yourself than to rely on others."
He grabbed the coarse porcelain bowl on the table and took a big gulp of the herbal tea, but he couldn't suppress the bitterness that was surging in his heart.
Just like that, before daybreak, he set out on a long journey carrying the beans on his back.
The cold wind blew snow into the collar, but Douzi gradually calmed down.
When passing by the black market in the county town, he saw a vendor selling sugar water and an old man hawking his wares for sale. He suddenly clenched his fists - since God had not given him a way to make a living, he would have to find one for himself.