the last priest

When Zha Wenbin thought of this incident, he had to mention one person, and that was my grandfather Xu Luban.

My grandfather was born in the 30s, an era that Chinese people would never forget for the rest of their lives: Hunger, natural disasters, military chaos, Japanese invaders, these somewhat dark words all appeared in my grandfather’s memory.

Grandpa's ancestral home is Jinhua, Zhejiang, and he is a native of Pujiang, a small county below Jinhua.

Grandpa was born on the way to escape famine in northwest Zhejiang. When he was born, he was carried by his parents in a pair of rice baskets. He walked hundreds of miles and fled to northwest Zhejiang, which was still relatively closed at that time.Because it is located in a mountainous area, there are still a lot of undeveloped wasteland and mountains. If farmers have land, they can have food.With food, there is the capital of survival, and it is possible to stay here. Since then, the company has taken root in a place called Hongcun in northwest Zhejiang.

The name Xu Luban comes from one of his crafts: carpenter.

My great-grandmother was a very far-sighted woman. She believed that her son would have to have a skill to support the family in the future.Many people in Hong Village escaped from Jinhua, and a group of them learned a unique skill in Jinhua: Dongyang woodcarving. His grandmother also planned to send him to learn woodcarving. Not interested, but fell in love with the more cumbersome planes and axes.

In this way, grandpa became a carpenter through the delicate work of wood carving.Because he has learned wood carving, the furniture he makes is much finer than that of ordinary carpenters, and he also has some knife skills, so he has become a well-known local carpenter.

In the days before the Cultural Revolution, the number of people breaking furniture decreased day by day. On the contrary, a large number of people starved to death due to natural disasters in three years, and many people were buried with straw mats.During that period of time, the furniture business was not available, but people came to order coffins one after another. The coffins made by my grandfather were thick and dignified. He was proficient in carving dragons, phoenixes, gold-plated paintings and fairy paintings. Over time, more and more people came to him to order coffins. , he simply became a coffin-making craftsman.

Grandpa is an honest man, and he married a woman who also fled from Jinhua. The husband and wife run the only coffin shop in a hundred miles around, and their lives are hard but solid.

My grandmother gave birth to two boys and four girls, and the youngest daughter was born ten years after she had her abortion, so she is very precious to this daughter. She is my aunt, and the story begins with her.

Because the business that grandpa does is dead people's business, he has always believed in that set of things. For example, the word "death" is never mentioned in their family, and they have to go to the village entrance to burn some paper money on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar new year.Because of this, during the Cultural Revolution, he was labeled as a superstitious feudalist, paraded through the streets to criticize him, and almost died at the hands of the Red Guards.

He got acquainted with Cha Wenbin because of Ma Zhenren, that is, Cha Wenbin's master. At that time, Cha Wenbin was just a farmer who was farming at home. He had some skills in his own hands but never used them.Because he saved his aunt that time, his reputation began to spread, and more and more people came to him, but Cha Wenbin had a good thing, he only did things for his conscience and didn't take any money.

Many years later, Cha Wenbin found his grandfather alone one night, and he proposed to order a coffin for himself. He said that only the coffin made by Xu Luban could make him sleep comfortably.At that time, my grandfather hadn't made coffins for many years, but when Cha Wenbin asked, he naturally wouldn't refuse.

That night, grandpa asked grandma to stir-fry some side dishes, and he and Cha Wenbin got very drunk.These two are people who are used to seeing life and death, but that night at the wine table they both cried like hell.No one knows what they talked about, because I also asked about this conversation, but my grandfather still kept it secret, and he brought this secret into the coffin like this.

My grandfather's father died at the age of 73. In the past, my grandfather was often drunk and often said that he could only live to be 73 years old.

This year, my grandfather was 73 years old, and he left as expected. Of course, this is a later story.

He's been working with coffins all his life, so he's had a lot of weird stuff, and I used to sit on his lap as a kid and listen to him tell me those stories.

The coffin shop of my grandfather's house has no storefront, but two small bungalows were built on the side of the road next to the house.There are two doors in the bungalow, one is for business, and the other is for opening in the back.The door that opens in is usually locked. I have sneaked in once or twice. Inside this door is a large warehouse, which stores semi-finished coffins or finished products ordered by others. In fact, it is a warehouse where coffins are parked.

This warehouse leads directly to the big house inside, and there is also a door. Outside this door is a small incense niche, which is sprinkled with incense ash and other sundries all the year round.On the first and fifteenth day of the lunar new year, grandma would prepare some cooked chicken and duck tributes and put them on it.

The place next to that door is gloomy all year round, no matter how high the outside temperature is, it will be chilly here, so in summer, I especially like to go to that corner to play cards with my cousins.There are regulations on the time for playing cards: after four o'clock in the evening, grandma will come to disperse us children, and we are not allowed to go on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar calendar every month.

I asked my grandfather, who are these things for.Grandpa said it was for those who came to choose the coffin, but I have never seen those tributes moved by anyone.When I was young, I was very mischievous, and my children were greedy. They thought it was delicious when they saw the cooked chicken and duck, and the cake made from glutinous rice was delicious.

Not only I wanted to eat this tribute, but my cousin also wanted to eat it, but I knew that if I ate it, I might be beaten, so I tricked him into stealing it.My cousin is only one year older than me. When he was a child, he was stuck together all day long. He was very courageous, but he was a bit naive. In rural dialect, he was stunned.

At first, we were greedy for the roasted chicken, but chickens have wings and legs, and they can be found as long as they move. What should we do?Naturally, we have a brilliant idea. The chest of the chicken is cut open, and the meat inside the belly of the chicken is torn by hand without touching the visible outside. Anyway, these tributes will be taken by grandma and poured into the river in the end.

In the beginning, I tore off the cool meat to satisfy my cravings, but once this thing started to move the first mouth, I wanted to eat the second mouth. A chicken was quickly eaten by the two of us, leaving only a shell.The two children's mouths were full of greasy food, and finally they turned their attention to the pair of chicken wings. This felt like a huge temptation, move or not?

In the face of the temptation of delicious food, we did not stand firm and insisted that we would move. By the time we found the bones all over the place, the chicken had only a buttock and a head left.

It's too late to regret it, and it's impossible to restore the bones spit out from the eaten chicken.If this is discovered, there is a high possibility of being beaten. The two children became anxious and tried to think of a way. Finally, I thought of a trick that was not a trick: use paper!

The color of this kind of roast chicken is very close to the yellow paper used for the dead. I think the light in this place is dark, and grandma should not be able to find it so quickly. My cousin and I were thinking about it. Boil for a while counts for a while.

It is to use yellow paper to attach the chicken frame with only bones left, and make a pair of wings just like the shape.After finishing all this, the two of us sneaked away, and the adults didn't say anything until dinner.Tomorrow morning, grandma will throw away the tribute. Her eyesight is not very good and she wakes up early. As long as she gets past this time, she will be fine.

When it was dawn the next day, grandma really moved all the tributes to the river and dumped them. The matter of the chicken was not mentioned. I don't know if she didn't notice it or didn't mention it on purpose.

With the first time, there will be a second time. We follow the same pattern to eliminate a new chicken, and feel complacent about our "smart" approach.

One night, in the middle of the night, I was urgent to urinate, and I fumbled to go to the toilet in a daze.When I went there, I walked through the main room and found that there seemed to be a person squatting in the corner, but I didn't pay attention because I was holding back my urine so much.After urinating, the person was more than half awake. When I went back, I looked again, and the person in that corner had disappeared. I thought it was because I was delusional.

My cousin and I shared the same bed, and I remembered that his side was empty when I got out of bed just now, and he was there again when I came back, so what did my cousin do just now?I pushed his body, he was sleeping very soundly, seeing that he didn't wake up, I fell asleep too.

The next night, when I was sleeping in a daze, I felt the person next to the bed move suddenly, and then the moonlight outside the window, I saw my cousin sitting up, then he opened the door barefoot and went out without any clothes on.I thought he was going to the toilet at night, so I called out, "Brother, why are you going?"

The only response to me was the creaking sound of the wooden door.