|
发表于 2016-7-11 17:50:28
|
显示全部楼层
An Ugly Stone
Jia Pingwa
I used to feel sorry for that ugly black piece of stone lying like an ox in
front of our door; none knew when it was left there and none paid any attention
to it, except at the time when wheat was harvested and my grandma, seeing the
grains of wheat spread all over the ground in the front yard of the house, would
grumble: “This ugly stone takes so much space. Move it away someday.
Thus my uncle had wanted to use it for the gable when he was building a
house, but he was troubled to find it of very irregular shape, with no edges nor
corners, nor a flat plane on it. And he wouldn’t bother to break it in half with
a chisel because the river bank was nearby, where he could have easily fetched a
much better stone instead. Even when my uncle was busy with the flight of steps
leading to the new house he didn’t take a fancy to the ugly stone. One year when
a mason came by, we asked him to make us a stone mill with it. As my grandma put
it: “Why not take this one, so you won’t have to fetch one from afar.” But the
mason took a look and shook his head: he wouldn’t take it for it was of too fine
a quality.
It was not like a fine piece of white marble on which words or flowers
could be carved, nor like a smooth big bluish stone people used to wash their
clothes on. The stone just lay there in silence, enjoying no shading from the
pagoda trees by the yard, nor flowers growing around it. As a result weeds
multiplied and stretched all over it, their stems and tendrils gradually covered
with dark green spots of moss. We children began to dislike the stone too, and
would have taken it away if we had been strong enough; all we could do for the
present was to leave it alone, despite our disgust or even curses.
The only thing that had interested us in the ugly stone was a little pit on
top of it, which was filled with water on rainy days. Three days after a
rainfall, usually, when the ground had become dry, there was still water in the
pit, where chickens went to drink. And every month when it came to the evening
of the 15th of lunar calendar, we would climb onto the stone, looking up at the
sky, hoping to see the full moon come out from far away. And Granny would give
us a scolding, afraid lest we should fall down and sure enough, I fell down once
to have my knee broken. So everybody condemned the stone: an ugly stone, as ugly
as it could be.
Then one day an astronomer came to the village. He looked the stone square
in the eye the moment he came across it. He didn’t take his leave but decided to
stay in our village. Quite a number of people came afterwards, saying the stone
was a piece of aerolite which had fallen down from the sky two or three hundred
years ago what a wonder indeed! Pretty soon a truck came, and carried it away
carefully.
It gave us a great surprise! We had never expected that such a strange and
ugly stone should have come from the sky! So it had once mended the sky, given
out its heat and light there, and our ancestors should have looked up at it. It
had given them light, brought them hopes and expectations, and then it had
fallen down to the earth, in the mud and among the weeds, lying there for
hundreds of years!
My grandma said: “I never expected it should be so great! But why can’t
people build a wall or pave steps with it?”
‘It’s too ugly,” the astronomer said.
“Sure, it’s really so ugly.”
“But that’s just where its beauty lies!” the astronomer said, “its beauty
comes from its ugliness.”
“Beauty from ugliness?”
“Yes. When something becomes the ugliest, it turns out the most beautiful
indeed. The stone is not an ordinary piece of insensate stone, it shouldn’t be
used to build wall or pave the steps, to carve words or flowers or to wash
clothes on. It’s not the material for those petty common things, and no wonder
it’s ridiculed often by people with petty common views.”
My grandma became blushed, and so did I.
I feel shame while I feel the greatness of the ugly stone; I have even
complained about it having pocketed silently all it had experienced for so many
years, but again I am struck by the greatness that lies in its lonely unyielding
existence of being misunderstood by people.
|
|