The Cricket
Wu Guangzhong

Grey-templedas I'm, I still always keep myself occupied. Everyday I bustle about townhaving little time to indulge in pleasant reminiscences of how I used to catchcrickets in my childhood. One day, however, my wife and I were pleasantlysurprised by the sudden chirping of a cricket in our apartment. How did it getinto this tall building? As the sound seemed to come from a corner of ourkitchen, I guessed it had probably come with the vegetables my wife bought fromthe food market.

On Sunday,when over youngest granddaughter Xiao Qu was with us, the cricket startedchirping again at supper time with a rising clear and loud sound like in aperformance. Xiao Qu was overjoyed and stopped eating as she was eager to catchthe insect. Torch in hand, I found my way to a corner of the kitchen by tracingthe sound and then cleared away everything in the way, like brooms, discardedouter leaves of vegetables, leftovers, waster paper, used empty bottles, etc.until my eyes fell on a big cricket on the damp cement floor near a water pipe.It stayed still as I lit it up with the torch. So I got it easily. The wholefamily was wild with joy. I put into an empty colour-tube cardboard box andhanded it to my granddaughter. But she said she wanted to have it kept in a transparentcontainer so that she could see it chirp. Then she found a plastic bottle andhappily watched the pitiable little captive therein moving about in panic. Hergrandma, however, fearing that the cricket might suffocate, punctured a fewholes in the plastic bottle with a pair of scissors.

Xiao Quleft for home with the cricket.

That nighta complete silence reigned in our house. Our children had already gone to bedbehind the closed door. My wife and I felt unusually lonesome in our bedroom.She blamed it on my having got rid of the cricket.

Late atnight, we heard the chirping of a cricket again. Ah, that must be another one!My wife and I were too excited to sleep. We were lost in memories of our childlife in our rural home with the starry sky outside the antique window, theglowing of fireflies, the warbling of nightingales, the ever-presentaccompaniment of crickets' chirrups... We chatted on and on recalling elders athome, fellow villagers, kids in the neighbourhood, and so on and so forth. Allthe while, we were transported by nostalgia to our old home remote fromBeijing. May the cricket settle down permanently under our roof!