Chapter 40 1948 (continued)

I used to think that time and place is a kind of uniform speed thing, like a piece of transparent liquid that is evenly distributed and square.No, it is actually the time we feel physically, for example, we are born, grow, age and die step by step.But man is not a tree, let alone a stone.Perhaps, in addition to some material time, what is more meaningful to people is mental time.A person's early childhood is always long, and the time a person feels in times of turmoil, times of danger, and times of pain is always too long.Undoubtedly, length is a kind of feeling, due to people's particularly sensitive nerves, particularly clear memory, and particularly rich new knowledge.In some people who live a comfortable and monotonous life, in a life where a day is repeated by a hundred days and a year is repeated by ten years, we can see the opposite situation: time is not stretched, not magnified and increased Instead, it became more and more hasty, shortened, and finally became almost a zero, disappearing in the blink of an eye.One day, people suddenly realized that the old man in the mirror was themselves, and their eyes widened in fear.

In the same way, the time we know little about, such as the time of the ancients, such as the time of distant countries, is always blurred and almost disappears enough to be ignored, just like everything in the distance is shrunken like dust in our field of vision , is indistinguishable from nothing.I used to read American novels, and found that I was often confused about the 1920s and 1940s in that country.The eleventh and fifteenth centuries in America seem to be more of the same thing.I am secretly amazed that the life and death of a generation or several generations behind a novel that must not be confused and must not be ignored, decades or even hundreds of years, why can it quietly disappear in my place, and why it is so short that it can only be used for a short time. I flipped through the pages and even yawned?

The reason is simple: I'm too far away to see everything there. Time is only prey to perception. Human time only exists in perception. People with weak or completely lost perception, such as vegetative people in hospital beds, do not have real time.Time, a transparent liquid, never flows evenly and at a constant speed. It quietly deforms with different perceptions, and people can hardly perceive the lengthening or shortening, concentration or dispersion, protuberance or collapse. The problem is that people's perceptions are different, even a person's perception will continue to change as the situation changes.In a mass of fragments of perception, do we still have a time-reliable image of constant oneness?Is there still unity of time?When we talk about 1948, what kind of sensory 1948 are we talking about?On this rainy evening, in a small tofu shop in Hejie Folk Ge, after Guangfu cried for his father, he also said lotus root.He said that the lotus root was so sweet back then, and it was very powdery when boiled, but now he can't eat it anymore.He said that the current lotus root is chemical fertilizer lotus root, how can it be as delicious as it was back then?

I am secretly suspicious of these claims.I know that some places do use too much chemical fertilizer, which does affect the quality of crops.But after all, most of the lotus root is natural, and it is no different from the lotus root of the old man before Guangfu.I suspect that it is not the taste of lotus root that has changed, but that Guangfu's taste for him has changed - as she gets older, when he is getting closer and closer to the hungry years or after he has some liver problems.This is a common situation.We often beautify some things in the past, such as lotus root, such as a book, such as a neighbor, because we forget the specific situation that generated our good impression at that time.We even think that a painful experience in the past is wonderful, because we are called the reviewer of the cause, and we are no longer deeply involved in it.We no longer suffer but appreciate pain.

In this way, the time captured by perception will in turn modify our perception. To what extent is the 1948 that Guangfu told me unaltered and authentic?To what extent is it different from his dubious memories and dubious beliefs about lotus root? Guangfu talked about the government's recent redress and screening of the "Advisory Council", saying that the Communist Party is still not easy in the end. It is really not easy to correct its own mistakes and lick its own phlegm.Speaking of this, he found that the cigarette case was empty, and asked his son to buy cigarettes, and brought two bottles of soda to entertain the guests.His son was about twelve or thirteen years old, his eyes lit up when he heard about soda, and he ran out the door with bare feet.Not only bought cigarettes and soda, but also hurriedly pried off the cap of the soda bottle with chopsticks.Boom—he froze for a moment, searched back and forth, left and right for a while, crawled under the dark bed to search, his sharp butt raised high.Probably a tin bottle cap flew to nowhere.

He came out with a spider's web on his head, said he didn't see it, clapped his hands, took a bottle of soda and went outside to drink, humming an out-of-key pop song. Guangfu asked angrily: "Let's forget it? Huh?" "I've searched all over, haven't you seen it?" "It has wings? Can it run to the sky?" I don't know why Guangfu attaches great importance to such a tin bottle cap.Maybe, that little bottle cap can be exchanged for money?Or was he just annoyed at the baby's sloppy attitude? He forced the young man to look for it again, stopped talking with me, and helped move away a pile of charcoal in the corner, moved tools such as wooden barrels and hoes, made a rattling sound, and looked at the suspicious dark place. After checking them one by one, he threatened the bottle cap time and time again: "You mother hide! You hide! I see where you are running to?"

Of course, he couldn't do without reprimanding the young man: "You bastard, look for it! Look for it! Are you a young master now? Let me tell you, if the Communist Party hadn't rehabilitated your grandfather, would you still want to drink soda? Would you still want to wear sandals? Want to put on a fountain pen and go to high school? When your father was in a labor camp, he almost died, and he was so hungry that he even picked out the weeds from the cow dung to eat..." The teenager pouted and kicked a piece of charcoal hard. "Pig, you kick!" The physical education teacher knocked a dick on his head.

The boy raised his arms to parry, perhaps with a little more force, pushing his father back two steps, almost falling. "You still dare to fight back? How dare you fight back, you beast?" He snatched the soda bottle from the boy's hand, "I'll dig you to death!" The young man ran out of the door angrily and cursed: "Old bastard! Old bandit! You old counter-revolutionary! You beat people at every turn, what kind of teacher are you?" He yelled, "Do you think this is still the old society? Is it humiliating and humiliating the country?" He used two very literal words. "You deserve it! You deserve it! You deserve it! You go to jail and I'll be better off. I'm going to be president in the future, and I'm going to engage in sports! I won't rehabilitate your fake! I'll tell you!..."

"Old man, old man, old man—" Every time Guangfu yelled at his throat, even though he was a physical education teacher, he still couldn't catch up with his son. He was so angry that he was shaking all over. Thanks to my support, he returned home and sat down firmly.I'm amazed by the teenager's attitude towards him.Of course, the boy's words are words in a fit of anger, so don't take them too seriously.But he pokes his father's sore spot in this way, at least it shows that he has no personal pain for the past, and the wrong case is not wrong, and it will not be more important than a bottle of soda.At this time, I once again feel the ambiguity of time.Guangfu, like many people, thought that his suffering experience could be sympathized by anyone.Everything shaped by time can last forever like the cultural relics in the museum, which is universally recognized.Based on this, he is like my father Huo many predecessors. When teaching future generations, he always looks back to the past and talks about prison, hunger, cow dung or 1948.

He didn't realize that time was not a cultural relic, nor did he and his son have a unified time to coexist and share.The government returned his father's innocence in 1948, and included his son at the same time.The boy kicked the charcoal hard just now, showing that he has no interest in or even disgust with the past including 1948. This doesn't seem to make sense.He has not experienced the past, but at least he can be curious about the bizarre past, like a child can relish ancient legends, without the need to kick hard.Here, a reasonable explanation can only be: it is not hatred of the past, but hatred of the present past, that is, hatred of the past in the dark arms of his father, full of scolding, harshness, and self-righteousness, the one that took away half a bottle of soda from him. past.

Guangfu was so angry that he shed tears.This reminds me of a policy that once wronged his whole family. That policy stipulated that all personnel above the rank of Rico and major in the old government after 1947 were historical counter-revolutionaries.The implication of this time limit applied to anyone is that people all live at the same time and no exceptions are allowed.Many years later, people finally realized that this policy was too simple, and Guangfu himself suffered a lot because of the cancellation of this policy.But on the other hand, Guangfu strives to make himself and his son still live in the same time, and no exceptions are allowed.He is nothing more than creating a new timetable. He hates the past, and his son must also hate it; he cherishes today, and his son must also cherish it.The vast and deep 1948 in his heart must also have the same size and weight in his son's heart.He didn't expect that the son's life was completely outside the father's time-a small tin bottle cap could make the son draw another conclusion: "You deserve to go to jail!" "I'm better off sitting in jail!" Perhaps, starting from this evening, in this small tofu shop, their past, including 1948, has been categorically divided, and it is difficult to bridge it.