Literature Appreciation：鸭窠围的夜/A Night at Mallard-Nest Village资料文件与下载

A Night at Mallard-Nest Village

Shen Congwen

    Towards dusk it started snowing, but soon the snow stopped. It was bitterly cold. In that glacial atmosphere everything seemed turned to ice, the air itself as if on the point of freezing. The small boat I had hired moored after the first flurries of snow fell. This was the fifth night of my trip upstream from Taoyuan. Because it looked as if we were in for a blizzard, the boatmen had searched for a good anchorage. But apart from a suitable beach, the bank was a mass of black boulders the size of houses. Since they were so big and our boat was so small, we wanted to find some shelter from the wind in a place where we could easily go ashore. However, all the best moorings wore occupicd by local fishing-boats. The crew punted our little craft up and down, the steel tips of the punting-poles clinking melodiously on the rocks; but in the end we had to draw alongside the other vessels large and small in the regular anchorage, dropping the rock which served us as an anchor on to the sand and leaving our little craft exposed to the coming blizzard.

   This place, at a bend in a long lake, was flanked by high cliffs on the peaks of which grew small bamboos, an enchanting emerald the whole year round. Now that darkness was falling, only their silhouettes were outlined against the faintly glimmering sky. What we could make out in the dusk, though, was amazing—about three hundred feet up the cliff, high above the water, was a cluster of houses on stilts. There they hung majestically in mid air, and in the fading light we could still see the outline of these extraordinary buildings. In common with all the houses along the river, their construction was characterized by a wasteful use of timber. Why was so much timber needed for houses halfway up a hill? Yet they were built on stilts, quite needlessly. Well, timber was the main product shipped out from this river, costing less than stone; and so, though there was no danger at all of flooding, it was really not astonishing that these houses were still built on stilts. And because they were there, the boatmen who grappled year in year out with the current, their passengers nearly bored to death, and other travellers too had somewhere to rest. They could shake off their weariness and loneliness in these houses. So the place, besides being attractive, provided distractions.

    After the boats large and small had moored, all lit tiny oil lamps and fixed up mat canopies. Rice was boiled in iron cauldrons over fires in the stem, and once this was cooked the vegetables were fried in another pan of sizzling oil. When the meal was ready, everyone aboard could wolf down three or five bowls. By then it was dark. When the bowls had been cleared away, the boatmen who felt cold or tired out spread their bedding on the deck and burrowed into their stiff, clammy quilts which they had laid out like tubing. Those who wanted to drank or smoked by the lamp, and when the fire on the boat had burned to ashes or there was nothing to do, if lonely or eager for a bit of fun they would go ashore to sit by a fire and chat, taking the lantern from the mast or lighting a strip of old hawser with which they jumped unsteadily ashore to take the path through rocks to the stilt-houses halfway up the cliff, in search of an old friend or familiar house. Strangers naturally travelled along the river too, but once inside these stilt-houses, sitting on low stools by the fire, in no time they would feel not strangers but friends.

   Apart from the thirty or so boats plying up or downstream which moored here,there were also countless rafts of different sizes taking advantage of the melted snow which had raised the water level.The  smaller rafts had no canopies to provide shelter,so at each wharf the men went ashore to look for lodgings.

    The owners of large rafts had houses,boats,tiny vegetables plots,pigsties and hen-coops,and the men took their wives and children along.

  When the whole river was swallowed up by darkness, fires appeared on the rafts, lights in the windows of the stilt-houses, and torchesflickered as men made their way up the rocky cliff or down again to their boats. Voices could be heard ashore and in the boats; women sang by the dim lamps in the stit-houses, and after each song laughter and shouts rang out. Under one stilt-house a lamb was bleating persistently yet softly.The heart-rending sound set me thinking: “This lamb must have been brought from somewhere else, and its mother there must be calling it just as persistently." I reckoned that there were eleven days till New Year."Does the little creature know that it has no more than ten days left on earth?" Whether it knew or not, it had been brought here for New Year and would die here. Its soft, persistent bleating would always sound in my ears. My heart ached. The insight which this small episode seemed to give me into the world really melted my heart.

    But this was no way to dismiss the long night. From the song sung in a clear yet husky voice my thoughts turned to the woman singer. I fancied I saw a bed with a mat on it, and spread on the mat a stiff, dirty quilt made of canvas or some other old material. In the middle of the bedding an oblong tray held a small teapot, a small casket of opium, an opium pipe, a flint and a lamp. Beside this a man lay smoking. The singer might be standing with folded arms in front of him, or leaning against the bed-post facing her client and preparing opium for him. The front of the room opened on to the street at ground level, the back on to the river below the stilts. As one window overlooked the river, the inmates could call down to the men in the boats. When travellers had smoked enough or fooled about enough, back they went to their boats. Then if the woman still had some commission or other message, the man with the flaring torch would stop among the rocks while she leaned out of her window."Mind you come again on your way downstream, Elder Brother." "Right, I'll remember." “When you see Shunshun tell him: Hui's gone; Little Ox's foot is better. Bring three catties of vermicelli and three of crystal sugar or granulated sugar." "I won't forget, missus. Don't worry. When I see Master Shunshun I'm to tell him: Hui's gone, Little Ox is better. You want three catties of vermicelli and crystal sugar." "My name is Yang,Yang!Forty-seven cash, don't get that wrong." "All right, don't worry. Forty-seven cash it is.Who'd overcharge you on New Year's Eve? Just remember for yourself!" 1 could hear all these exchanges, as well as the lamb bleating in the dark. I gahered that these men coming back to the boats had gone ashore to smoke opium and have fun with women.

   I also deduced that some, instead of smoking opium, just went ashore to toast themselves by a fire, and up in the village most of them just went into the shop on the street. By now it was so cold, the gates must be closed and a small oil lamp might be lit in one corner of the room, which would have a hearth hollowed out in the earthen floor in which to burn firewood. The flames flickered and every so often burst out crackling in away defying description. The people from the boats and rafts, as well as friends who lived on the opposite bank, sat on low stools round the fire.There were also old women in their seventies, who although given up by Heaven had not given up, and squatted hunched up with closed eyes by the fire, surreptitiously fumbling in their big sleeves for a scrap of dried sweet potato or a red jujube to stuff in their mouths and munch. Puny children in dirty clothes, rubbing their eyes, cuddled against their mothers by the fire and dozed. The owner of the house might be a demobilized veteran, an old boatman whose boat had unluckily capsized, or a widow living alone. By the light of the fire and the lamp you could make out the furnishings in the room: on one of the three wooden walls there was bound to be a shrine for ancestral worship. On the space below or stuck to another wall would be red and white visiting-cards of different sizes. If inquisitive visitors held up the little oil lamp to examine them carefully, they could discover some intriguing titles:vice company commander,sergeant, first-class private, manager of a firm, commander of some local corps, ward headman,tax-collector, boat-owner whose name was usually Teng, timber merchant fon Hongjiang, as well as members of every kind of profession. These were the cards of a small fraction of those who had passed this way in the last ten or twenty years. These men from different walks of life had dropped in here to sit by the fire or on the bed, and after a bief stay had left to go on living in another world; but apart from their relations with their own circles and others in the same sphere, they seemed to have no other relations to speak of. They might be long since dead-drowned, shot or poisoned with arsenic by a mistress---yet their cards would still be carefully preserved here. Some might have grown rich or famous, become small local warlords, but they were still designated their cards as a tax-collector or sergeant...  Was there anything in the room more noteworthy than these cards? A saw, a small ladle, a cigarette poster, a sackful of chestnuts ...

   Thoughts such as these are most disturbing. 1 went to the prow to look round. The river was quiet, the fires on the rafts were going out, and the lamps on the boats had been turned down. The glimmer of light on the water revealed only the rough outline of the scene. A woman was singing in a stilt-house, where lamplight flickered and drinkers noisily played finger-guessing games. At least I guessed that the light and the singing came from the same house, where either some raft owners were enjoying themselves or some boatmen and tradesmen were drinking. The woman might be wearing a gilded ring brought her by one of the boatmen from Changde. As she sang she smoothed her hair---what a picture that made! I could enter into all their griefs and joys. Could see that each passing day brought its tears and smiles, and although so remote from me they were also near.It was like reading a moving tale about village life in Siberia, so that you closed the book with unspeakable sadness.I am simply imagining the surface of these people's lives, but drawing on my own experience to relate to their innermost feelings.

   The lamb persisted in bleating.Somewhere in the distance gonging and drumming sounded as some family sacrificed to the God of the Earth to repay a favour granted. There was bound to be firelight there rivalling the brilliance of big candles! And in this light an old wizard in a red turban would be whirling alone in a dance.Yellow paper coins would be stuck on the lintel, and a peck measure full of rice would stand on the ground. Newly slaughtered pigs and sheep would lie on trestles, small motley-coloured paper flags stuck on their heads. A cock, destined to have its head bitten by the wizard, would have flopped down helplessly by the earthen altar,its legs tied, its wings pinioned. The host by the stove would be heating a panful of gruel mixed with pigs' blood, and the fire in the stove would be blazing.

   The crew on a Alargeboat near by were already sleeping, except for one man still smoking, who rapped his pipe from time to time on the bulwark. He too seemed to be listening to the sounds from the stilt-houses which aroused associations, for on a sudden uncontrollable impulse he swore softly, struck a flint to light a rotten hawser, and jumped ashore to make his way up the cliff. As he climbed up through the rocks, his torch-light shone into my cabin through gaps in the canopy. Another boat, plying upstream with a cargo of padded uniforms, had moored by the same cliff. The boatmen sprawled on the bundles of uniforms found the night too long, so some of them were squatting on the deck gambling by the light of a small oil lamp; others, who could not sleep, threw on padded army overcoats and went ashore empty-handed. By the faint light reflected from the snow which had not yet melted between the rocks, they made their way up to where there were lamps on the cliff. The street then was empty except for the threads of lamplight which fell in a long line through cracks in the doors. They had hoped to find some peanuts stacked on stalls, small dried tangerines packed into cigarette cartons, little cubes of sugar, and women with plucked eyebrows minding the stalls in the lamplight(when at a loose end they might do some needlework) -but there was nothing here now. Not daring to barge into a stanger’s house, they had to go back to the boat. But when climbing up towards the cluster of lights they could not lose thir way, whereas going back they might blunder round and round the rocks and stones, yelling out until they finally neared their own boat. Once astride the bulwark, their feet covered with mud, before they had time to take off their shoes and go into the cabin, someone in a quilt would shout, "Take off your shoes, mates!" Having done this, they did not turn in immediately but squeezed in to watch the men who went on gambling till midnight.My experiences of fifteen years ago, reviewed in this context, made me marvel at fate. I understood why that man had suddenly huried ashore alone!

   When presently the man on the boat next to ours failed to come back, I knew that he must have fared better than me. 1 wanted to hear, when he did come, if a woman called to him from the window of a stilt-house, as had happened to some men on other boats. A number of men returmed one after another, but our neighbour was not among them. I remembered the one called “Bozi". Though we were all travelling by boat, one fellow went ashore cheerfully while another followed later all on his own, so he could not expect the same treatment ---that was obvious.

Because I was listening for the sound of my neighbour raising the canopy to come aboard, I decided not to sleep until all sounds were hushed. I was still waiting, listening, round about midnight when another sound broke the silence of the river. It was reminiscent of gongs or drums,or of a motor-boat, and it approached slowly, then just as slowly receded. Like an indescribably simple incantation it was reiterated monotonously,making anyone within earshot search for words to capture it, to capture the psychology of the men on that lake at midnight who were bewitched by the sound- --a futile attempt, actually. This sound drew me out of the cabin door, which had a sheet stuck over its cracks, to stand in the prow and look round. There was a red light on the river, and that was where the strange sound was coming from, difting over the water. Some small fishing boats, concealed below the cliff in the daytime, had quiely cast their nets after darkness fell. At midnight, blazing fires of oil and faggots were lit in tins on their prows jutting out above the water, while batons were beaten rhythmically on the bulwarks and the boats driíted to and fro. The fish in the river, dazzled by those bright lights and alarmed by the din, fled helter-skelter into the fishermen's nets.

   By this time all light was shrouded by the dark night, all sounds were hushed, with the exception of those red lighs and rub-a-dub on the river. For years this river had been the scene of this din and glaring light in the battle for survival between the fish in the water and the fishermen in the boats, and it would be repeated on each night to come. No longer mystified I reentered the cabin, where I went on listening quietly to that monotonous sound. What I had seen seemed like a fight between primitive men and Nature. That sound and firelight resembling the battle of primitive men carried me back four or five thousand years to the past.

   Some time later, just when I didn't know, it began to snow heavily. I heard the boatmen whispering together and thought: Tomorrow I’m bound to see that man coming back to the next boat, leaving his footprints in the snow on the shore. In fact, I never saw those lonely footprints, because by the time I woke the next day our boat had left that mooring far behind.