This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
One evening a father and his son went out to see a film. Because the film was no good, father and son headed home early. When they reached the mouth of the lane not far from home, the father’s expression suddenly turned strange; he covered his son’s eyes with one big hand and said in a low voice, “Don’t say a word!” “Why?” The son thought his father was joking and was about to break free, when his father said coldly, “There’s a terrifying demon — let’s get out of here!”
A demon! How terrifying! The demons on TV could float, could eat people, could carry off children… The child’s hands, which had been prying hard at his father’s, went limp. His heart was full of fear and his body trembled; long after they got home he still had not recovered. When the fear had passed, the son asked his father what demon he had seen in the street. The father was silent for a while. “You mustn’t ask — once you know, you can never get rid of it!” The son went into the room uneasily and told his mother what had happened. His mother turned pale and could not speak for a long time; then she said, “Son, your father is right. You mustn’t ask — once you know, you can never get rid of it!”
From then on, every time he passed the mouth of the lane, the child would look all around to see whether there really was a demon, but the demon never appeared before him. Yet a strange change took place at home. His mother had always been pushing to divorce his father, and the two of them quarreled every single day; now his father proposed divorce himself, but his mother would not hear of it. Before long, the quarreling and fighting at home miraculously vanished; his parents suddenly became loving and affectionate, so much so that the child felt a little strange about it.
After that, more than 30 years went by, and his parents never again exchanged a cross word. His father later died at 70 in his mother’s arms, with a smile on his face. While sorting through his father’s belongings, the son happened to look through his father’s diary and read about the fright of that night at the cinema when he was a child. This is how his father described that night in the diary, and the mystery of the “demon” was at last revealed:
…Coming home with my son after the film, in the dark at the mouth of the lane I suddenly saw Yun embracing a strange man. In an instant I fell into hell; my suspicion was confirmed. I had cherished our love with all my heart, and our lovely son, but my wife had secretly betrayed me and our family. Yet such a sight would be too cruel for my son and might cast a shadow over his whole life — that his dear mother could do such a thing! I dared not imagine how my son would see his mother, nor did I know how she would face his contemptuous gaze. She wronged me, but I still remembered how good she had been to me at first, and the lovely son in my arms. So I told my son the lie of meeting a demon…
The son’s eyes grew moist. It was this one covering of his eyes that preserved his mother’s perfect image in her son’s heart; and it was also this one covering that made the mother see the father anew, and so saved their marriage.
The son silently went back to his room, gently embraced his pregnant wife, and then deleted his ex-girlfriend’s QQ and mobile number — for from his old dad’s “demon diary” he had learned how to be a good father!
