Explore Chapter 13 of '呐喊' with the original Chinese text, English translation, detailed Chinese vocabulary explanations, and audio of the Chinese original. Listen and improve your reading skills.
"Loneliness, oh loneliness! A loneliness as vast as the desert!"
This must have been true for him, but I had never felt it. Having lived here long, I was like one who, "having entered a room of orchids, stays long enough to no longer smell their fragrance"-I simply thought it was all hustle and bustle. Yet what I called hustle and bustle might well have been what he called loneliness.
As for me, I felt as if there were no spring or autumn in Beijing. Old-timers said the earth's energy had shifted northward, that it had not been so warm here before. Still, I always believed there was no spring or autumn; the end of winter simply dovetailed with the beginning of summer, and no sooner had summer departed than winter began again.
It was on just such a day between winter's end and summer's beginning, and at night, that I found myself with a moment of leisure and went to visit Mr. Eroshenko. He had been staying at Mr. Zhongmi's house. By then, the whole family was asleep, and the world was profoundly quiet. He sat alone on his couch, his high brow slightly furrowed beneath his golden hair, lost in thought of his old travels in Burma, of Burmese summer nights.
"On such nights," he said, "in Burma, music fills the land. In the rooms, in the grass, in the trees-insects sing and hum. All the voices join in a harmonious chorus, truly wondrous. And now and then, mingled with them, comes the hiss of a snake: 'Ssss!' Yet it too blends with the insect songs..." He grew pensive, as if striving to summon that scene from memory.
I found I could not speak. I had certainly never heard such marvelous music in Beijing, so however patriotic I might be, I had no defense to offer. For though his eyes saw nothing, his ears were far from deaf.
A few days later, my words were proven true, for Mr. Eroshenko had bought over a dozen tadpoles. He placed them at once in the small pond in the center of the courtyard outside his window. The pond, three feet long and two feet wide, had been dug by Zhongmi for cultivating lotus flowers. While never a single lotus had graced its water, it proved an eminently suitable place for raising frogs.
Yet breeding these pond musicians was just one of Mr. Eroshenko's projects. He was a steadfast advocate of self-reliance, often saying that women could tend livestock, and men should till the land. So whenever he met a good friend, he would urge them to plant cabbages right in their own courtyards. He also gave repeated advice to Mrs. Zhongmi: she should keep bees, chickens, pigs, cows, even camels. Later, the Zhongmi household did indeed acquire many chicks that scampered all over the courtyard, pecking clean the tender leaves of the ground cover. This was likely the fruit of his counsel.
From then on, the village folk who sold chicks came often, and each time they came, a few more were bought. For chicks were prone to indigestion and sunstroke, and rarely lived long. Moreover, one of them became the protagonist of Mr. Eroshenko's only novel written in Beijing, The Tragedy of the Chicks. One morning, the villager unexpectedly brought along some ducklings, cheeping noisily. But Mrs. Zhongmi said she didn't want them. Mr. Eroshenko hurried out, and they placed one in his hands, where it cheeped away. He thought them quite endearing, and so felt obliged to buy them. He bought four in all, for eighty wen each.
The ducklings were indeed adorable, their down a soft yellow all over. Placed on the ground, they waddled unsteadily, calling to one another, always staying together. Everyone praised them, saying they should buy some loaches to feed them the next day. Mr. Eroshenko said he would cover the cost.
Then he left for his teaching, and the others dispersed. Not long after, when Mrs. Zhongmi brought cold rice to feed them, she heard splashing from afar. Running to look, she found all four ducklings bathing in the lotus pond-tumbling about and nibbling at things. By the time she managed to herd them ashore, the whole pond was a muddy swirl. Only after half a day did the water clear, revealing a few slender lotus roots in the mud. Not a single tadpole-legs or no legs-could be found.
"Mr. Eroshenko, they're gone, the frog's children," piped up the youngest child as soon as he returned that evening.
By the time frogs were croaking everywhere, the ducklings had grown. Two were white, two were speckled, and they no longer cheeped but quacked "quack, quack." The lotus pond could no longer contain their wanderings. Fortunately, the Zhongmi residence was low-lying, and with the summer rains, the courtyard flooded. They reveled in it-swimming, diving, flapping their wings, quacking "quack, quack."