The sound of frogs

Frogs chirping under the window of the village where I settled in the countryside, pulling their voices and ringing ten gongs.

"A watchman, to rise at night or to rebel, do not want to stay in the river bank of the good land?" I foolishly thought.

The frog's spittle came from a previous life, so abundant, so passionate, the sound of frogs, ten miles of wild fields drunk, but the dormancy of a pre-teen girl intercepted. I could not sleep, so I began to hate the four feet to the ground guys endlessly, sometimes solo, sometimes chorus suddenly appeared a particularly loud leader, so that the tired day I could not sleep peacefully.

When I was working in the field during the day, I talked to people about the sound of frogs, and I couldn't help but feel a little emotional. The old farmers in the village said that the frogs chirped most happily in the summer after heavy rains, when dozens or even hundreds of frogs' sound sacs started collectively and "croaked" endlessly, which could be heard for miles. The young production captain said, "Frogs are good, they are good at catching bugs, don't be afraid of being disturbed, just get used to it".

That night, when sleep was driven away by the sound of frogs, my eyes looked to the sky, as if the stars outside the window were getting more and more emaciated, leaving only a skeleton of despair. Every night I hear the sound of bones on the bed board like fried shortbread, if the thin sleeping bed can talk, it may point to the nose and scold me, saying that I do not lie flat in this hundred-odd pound skeleton, the sound of bones spilling out to torture the bed board, so that the bed sleepless night, I foolishly thought. Not until the middle of the night, when the sky is dark, eaten and drunk in the stomach of those things seem to have disappeared, first, the ear canal stuffed with cotton wool, it does not work; then simply shut the window, not leaving a gap, frogs are happy or sad are not related to me, I foolishly thought. I had to give up that ridiculous idea when I couldn't afford to keep a fan.

I don't know if the frog was tired or I was tired, I fell asleep in the sound of sleepless frogs until the captain's whistle sounded.

"Let's go to work, let's go to work!" Someone tugged me through the thin quilt, tearing my dream that I had half traveled to childhood into two pieces, and I sat on the wooden bed rubbing my sleepy eyes, thinking whether I should eat pickled rice with half a salted duck egg or a white steamed bun with a doughnut for breakfast, not realizing for a moment that I was no longer the darling of the city.

Gradually, I became less disgusted with the frogs' dense vocalizations. Since they can't leave the river and the fields behind, and I live in the middle of the fields, let's have a peaceful coexistence between humans and frogs. At night, the frogs lie beside my bed, modifying their voices, but their unison singing fills my ears. The frogs told me about their past and their agreement with the acreage, and their chirping for the baby at the tip of their hearts. The frogs said they were once shy too, swimming around silently with only one tail, in the small glass jars of children, not knowing where to end up.

I looked out the window with a pair of calm eyes. The stars are no longer haggard, the moon is shy I stare at her, the moonlight is soft and clear like ice shadows reflecting the ripples, the circumference emits a velvety luster. I think of my great-grandfather's old house in the city, during my childhood years out of school, at night, as quiet as a wine urn, silent, not a vat of water, a frog lively, sealing the altar of yellow clay blocked the dignity of the wine opening, I foolishly thought.

Later, I returned to the city from the countryside and lived in the center of the city for twenty years, without the sound of frogs in my ears, but I encountered them in my dreams for decades - the green sky of the village, the old folks bending over to dig the ground, the dazzling rape flowers, and the old yellow cows shaking their noses at me, as well as the rows of flowering ducks lined up at the door, and the streams of peach blossoms floating on the river, the sound of earthworms loosening the soil. The sound of earthworms loosening the soil, and the frogs that are always interested in the night. Where did all those quacking frogs live and work, and how are their children and grandchildren living? After I woke up from my dream, I foolishly thought ......

I was fortunate enough to live near the water and heard the familiar chirping of the frogs again. This spring and summer, from the bustling city back to the shore island, and vegetable farmers chatting about the current countryside, dressed more than me in glamorous man told me, now the rural frogs are rare. He carried a scale and asked me, "Sister, have you ever been a farmer?"

"Yes, for many years." The middle-aged woman buying vegetables aside took a look at me, her mind I can see: bully what, an old farmer, and not what that, that, that ...... I told her with my eyes: you do not understand, you have not heard the sound of a hundred acres of frogs.

Carrying a pocket of vegetables home, purposely go around the creek for a while, the frog's movement no more, passing a neighbor who lives near the river, so I asked her is my ears back or the frogs migrate. She smiled and said, "Your ears are fine, the frogs have moved to other places, so you can't hear them now. Yes, yes, I remember when we first moved here, in early summer, three or two frogs chirped, and the frogs in the river chirped even more vigorously at night, but now they are not happy in the river. Looking at the green river, I rambled on and on.

I can't imagine that tonight, the frogs' rising and falling calls are raging in my ears again, the imaginary frog calls and the figurative frog calls. When I say they are imaginary, the frog calls are not voiced in space and time; when I say they are figurative, from tadpoles to frogs, they really jump out of the documentary camera and swim towards me. The documentary cloud: Xu Beihong's disciple, born in Suzhou Zhujia Bridge, the painter Wu Zuoren, the clan passed down a song, the rhythm is simple, but humming vivid and clear, especially with the Suzhou-Shanghai accent singing more and more good white phase. Wu Zuoren finally could not recite poems and paintings in his later years, but whenever he heard the song, he knew that the visitor was his clan, and the old painter was so happy that his eyes were full of smiles and joy. Following the documentary, I learned to sing a few lines, and actually quickly memorized the lyrics: A small frog is very strange, first born in the freshwater river, a small black dot like a chess piece, dragging a tail behind. A few four feet were born together, tail and body since the separation, a new set of clothes, green really beautiful.

Perhaps what Mr. Wu Zuoren heard in the song was not only the sound of frogs, but also his longing for southern Jiangsu, his hometown and Zhujiaqiao when he was in the north. Such a French government Ministry of Culture "the highest order of art and literature" and the Kingdom of Belgium "crown of honor" of the world's leading painter, his chest of thoughts so impoverished, but so grounded, warm and moist to hear his story of people.