virus

Chapter 36 February 24
The sky is still so gloomy, I understand that I am in a race against time.I walked alone into the alley crowded in the middle of the business buildings, pushed open the door of the Shikumen house, and walked up the steep stairs.I knocked on the door, and Huang Yun's mother opened the door for me.

"why you?"

"I'm sorry, Auntie, I want to ask you something."

"Come in." I walked into the room, Huang Yun's black and white photo was hanging, and she was still smiling at me.Then, I saw the picture of the young man on the dressing table, that melancholy and thin handsome face, unique, it was definitely him——Huang Donghai, I will not admit it wrong.

"Huang Yun has been gone for a whole month, are you here to offer incense?" She asked calmly.

a month?Yes, Huang Yun died after the New Year's Eve, and it has been a full month today.It was only a month since she left this world, and I almost forgot about her, I didn't dare to look at her picture anymore, I just lowered my head and offered her a stick of incense in a hurry.Then I turned my head to look at Huang Yun's mother, and I could see that when she was young, she should have been as beautiful as Huang Yun, graceful and graceful, but in the end she had cheated on her. Now, she looks much older.

"Auntie, I'm actually here for other reasons. I know these questions may be very sensitive to you, and it's not convenient to answer them, but they are very important questions. I want to know, is Huang Yun's biological father called Huang Yun?" East China Sea?"

"Yes, how do you know?" She looked surprised.In fact, I also feel that I am lucky. I originally thought that Huang Donghai should change his name after he disappeared, but it seems that he did not do so.

"Auntie, I don't want to probe into other people's privacy, but I can tell you that Huang Yun's death is probably related to him."

"He killed his own daughter?"

"No, but there is an indirect relationship. Please believe me. I can't explain it clearly for a while. Maybe I will explain it to you later. I just want to know about Huang Donghai's situation, the whole situation, how much do you know? , just tell me how much."

"Do you want to tell everything?"

I know there are some things she won't tell me, I'm old enough to be her son, and it's not appropriate to ask about the facts of her flirtatiousness when she was young, so I can only make some concessions: "Auntie, I understand that you are in trouble, then Well, you don’t need to talk about things that you think are purely personal privacy, but please tell me about Huang Donghai. Please.” I almost said in a low voice.

She was beyond my expectation, and said lightly: "It's all about the past, it doesn't matter if I tell you." She looked at the portrait of her daughter, smiled at Huang Yun in the photo, and then said the same thing to me. She smiled, very naturally, as if Huang Yun was still in front of her, I think she is really an extraordinary woman.

Then, she slowly said: "It was 1976, my parents were labeled as rightists and went to the mainland to receive re-education, and I lived alone at home. I didn't work as a worker in a factory either. As soon as I graduated from junior high school, I joined the production team in the street. You were not born at that time, and you didn't know what a production team was.

"At that time, it was nothing more than stuffing matchboxes and binding paper. It was very hard work. One day, a young guy came to the production team. He was Huang Donghai. No one knew where he came from, because he was a production No one has ever asked about a place like this. He seldom talks to others, but he is willing to do any work. Most of the production teams are lesbians, and we are happy to leave the heavy and dirty work to him.

"He slept in the small warehouse of the production team every night. It was a small room with air leakage, facing the road, damp and cold. It was winter, and if he stayed there overnight, he would be frozen to death. So I felt sorry for him and just Let him move to live in my house. In those days, I lived alone in the whole Shikumen building. He lived in my house for a few days while no one was paying attention. He always carried a metal box with him. , locked with an iron lock, and never let me touch this box. Suddenly one night, it was very cold, he carried the box and went out quietly, I was very surprised, so I ran to the window, look, this is the window , looking down from this window is the courtyard of Shikumen.”

I went to the window and looked down, and sure enough, except for the aisle in the middle, the courtyard was surrounded by mud, and many ordinary flowers and plants were planted.

Huang Yun's mother continued: "That night, I looked down from this window and saw a man in the courtyard digging a hole in the mud with something like a shovel. I was very surprised, the moonlight that night It was very bright. The man looked up and looked around. I saw his face. Under the clear moonlight, I could see it clearly. It was Huang Donghai's face. Beside him was the iron box that he regarded as a treasure. .

"I held my breath and watched secretly from the window. He didn't seem to notice me, and he was still digging hard. After several hours of digging, he dug a deep, deep hole, about as deep as a person, and finally , He buried the tin box in the pit, and then covered all the dug out soil, making it so tight that no trace of digging could be seen. Then, he walked out of the gate, I thought He just went out for a walk, but he never thought that he would never come back. Nine months later, Huang Yun was born. More than 9 years have passed, and I have never seen him again, and there is no news about him .”

I understand that she omitted a lot of plots in the middle, such as the matter between her and Huang Donghai, did he just let him live here because of pity for him?Maybe only she can understand, I looked at the photo of Huang Donghai on the dressing table again, he is indeed very attractive to women, especially his melancholy, maybe women can indeed sympathize with him.Of course, let her bury those ambiguous and sensitive things in her heart. I don't need to know these things. For me, I already know the most important content.

I leaned my head against the window again, and from here I could see the gleaming glass curtain walls of several high-end commercial buildings not far away. I pointed to the patio below and said, "Auntie, hasn't anyone moved in the patio below?"

"No one has touched it. In the [-]s, the people downstairs planted a lot of flowers on the muddy ground. You see, these are the ones in the courtyard. In summer, the bottom is all green. Huang Donghai buried the box in detail. The location, if I remember correctly, is under the largest and tallest camellia tree, and look, it is the one that is blooming."

I looked at the courtyard, and there was indeed a tall and big camellia. My father had planted a similarly tall camellia in the past.At this time, I saw a middle-aged man walking into the courtyard and watering the flowers.When I was young, my family lived on the ground floor, and I also built a mud jar in the courtyard to grow grapes. It was not too deep, and it only needed to dig a few tens of centimeters into the ground.Just now Huang Yun's mother said that the hole Huang Donghai dug below that night was as deep as a person. If the people downstairs planted flowers, they should not have dug so deep, and they would not have found the iron sheet that Huang Donghai buried deep underground. box.I thought for a while, leaning against the window, staring blankly at the patio below.

"What's wrong with you?" Huang Yun's mother called me.

"Oh, nothing."

"I've said all I can say, you can go back."

I hummed, said goodbye, took one last look at Huang Yun's portrait, and slowly moved to the door. Just as I was about to step out, Huang Yun's mother said behind me: "The gate of the courtyard below is closed every night. It’s unlocked, and the family planting flowers downstairs goes to bed after about 10:[-].”

I smiled back at her and walked down the steep stairs.She is such a smart woman, she has already understood my thoughts, the door below is not locked at night, which means I can come in at night, the people who grow flowers downstairs go to bed after 10:10, that is to say, it is best not to go before [-]:[-] Come dig up the box buried in the mud so no one can find it.I said thank you to her in my heart.

It's 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm wandering outside, thinking about the tin box buried under the patio.God knows what's in it, maybe it's a large sum of money, but the money at that time probably isn't much today, maybe it's gold, maybe it's some confidential document, maybe it's the queen's head.

Maybe nothing.

If what Huang Yun's mother said is true, then this box has been placed in the ground for more than 20 years. Who can guarantee that no one has touched the land in the past 20 years?To be honest, it is already a miracle that the Shikumen alley can be preserved in the cracks of high-rise buildings. If...if the box really contained the queen's head, then that place was not razed to the ground to build high-rise buildings like the surrounding ones The building must be extremely lucky.

I ate dinner outside, then ran to a nearby construction site and bought a shovel from a migrant worker for 20 yuan.Then, I waited quietly in a small corner for several hours, until the hands of my watch pointed to 10:[-] in the evening.

I walked into the dark alley with a shovel in my hand, looking very strange, giving the impression of a construction worker or a small worker of a decoration team. After 10:[-], the alley seemed very depressed, and there were no people there. I walked to the stone storehouse door, gently pushed open the half-hidden door, and stepped into the courtyard.The lights on the ground floor were all off, and the upstairs lights were also off. I don't know if Huang Yun's mother is watching me, I can't control that much.I found the camellia tree in full bloom. Although the day was gloomy today, the moon was shining brightly at night. I looked at the camellia tree in full bloom, also called datura flower. because of a woman's head.

Sorry, beautiful camellia, I picked up the shovel and planed the soil under the flowering branches.I didn't dare to push too hard lest the people on the ground floor who were asleep would hear me, but I had to take a risk, who knew if they were asleep or not.I dug a few times, and quickly dug out the roots of the camellia. The beautiful flowers were shaking violently, and the red petals flew down. Finally, along with the broken flower branches, they fell into the soil together, like The remains of a beautiful woman.I sighed softly, stepped on the petals and continued digging.I've never done this kind of thing before, I didn't move well, and I didn't dare to make too much noise, so I was already sweating in a short while.

In the silver moonlight, I continued to swing the shovel, like a true grave robber digging an ancient tomb.I had that hunch that I was getting closer and closer to her.I was a little scared, but the sweat on my back temporarily relieved the fear and anxiety caused by my fear. My shovel sank deeply into the underground soil. The black soil was very soft, so I dug faster and faster. Soon, maybe this is because this piece of soil was dug by Huang Donghai.I imagined the scene of Huang Donghai digging pits and burying boxes here more than 20 years ago, and now I want to dig out his buried things again, his unique melancholy face appeared in front of me again, my hands Gradually some trembling.

I don't know how long it took, but I finally dug to a depth that can accommodate a person. Fortunately, I didn't see groundwater. In Shanghai, there is usually groundwater at this depth.I jumped into the hole I dug and had the feeling of being buried alive in a grave because I can now feel something in the dirt under my feet.I bent down and dug with my hands in the small space.I touched it, I felt a piece of metal in the soil, it was iron sheet, I continued to dig or dig with my fingers, until my fingers were almost numb, I finally dug out a box, a cold iron box.

I gripped the box tightly, as if it had grabbed my life, the cold iron skin calmed my feverish body.I lifted the box over my head, lowered it to the ground, and crawled out of the hole.I touched the box dug out from the ground, and the earthy breath brought out from the ground rushed into my nostrils, and then wrapped around my body.If I were a grave robber, this would be the treasure I'd steal, if there really was something I needed in it.I see an iron lock on the lid of the box, and I know it can't be opened just yet.

The moonlight was still bright, and I looked up at the upstairs window, maybe she was looking at me, whether she saw it or not, I bowed to the upstairs window.Then I dropped the shovel, picked up the tin box, pushed open the door, and went out.Tomorrow morning, the people who grow flowers downstairs will be surprised to find that there is a big hole in the ground, and the beautiful camellia has been destroyed. They may think that some mental illness did it.

When I walked out of the alley, I realized that my body was covered in mud and I was holding a tin box. If a patrolman took me to the police station and opened the box and found a real human head, then I would be finished.I went home on a deserted path, not daring to hail a taxi, the turbulent night and the bright moonlight accompanied my frightened face.

(End of this chapter)