Mistaken Home

 

It was soon midnight and I have allocated this time to be spent on reading novels, especially

so for those that I have to complete, those I am reading for schoolwork. My brother was 

asleep and so were my parents and sister sounds in their dreams. I did not want to disturb 

them and thus I had to grope around in the darkness of my room for my novel. Yes, the one 

by Italo Calvino If on a winter's night a traveler. I felt it finally and brought it out of the room to 

be read in the spaciousness of the living room.

 

I turn to the page indicated by the bookmark, anxious to start not because I was particularly

interested in the book or because I had reached the climax point in one of the story but

because I wanted to turn in as soon as possible joining the rest in the pursue of my own 

dreams. 

 

Wait! How could this be? The first sentence read "After the Wedding, Grandma returned

to her parents' home to spend three days before heading back to her in laws'!"

 

I started to skim through a few sentences and found myself on the next page.

 

Grandma just laughed.

 

Great-Granddad slapped her. 

 

This isn't Calvino's book, it's Mo Yan's novel; I have taken the wrong book. This 

familiar scene when Grandma Dai, the narrator's grandma that is, when she was back home

after her marriage to Shan Bianlang quarreled with her parents who cares more for the 

mule--a gift from the Shans--than for her. I guessed I'll read on from here.