Chapter 16 Chapter fifteen

History is the stage on which all characters perform.When Hu Changsheng, the number two figure in the revolutionary rebel faction of Beiqing University, was put on the stage of the ten thousand people criticism meeting by the working group, he felt what fate was.Looking at the tens of thousands of teachers and students in the big playground, he thought that just a few days ago, he was the organizer of the criticism meeting, but a few days later he became the target of criticism. In the "anti-interference and anti-revolutionary" campaign launched by the working group, two people stood up against the working group: one was Lu Xiaolong from Beiqing Middle School, and the other was Hu Changsheng.College students are naturally more suitable to be the object of struggle than middle school students, so he was honorably escorted to the reviewing stand.The criticism meeting organized by the working group seems to be more civilized. They don't wear signs or sit in jets, but just accept the criticism with their heads bowed.There are several long tables and microphones behind him, and the leading members of the working group are there personally supervising the formation.The big banner on the stage reads: Resolutely criticize the counter-revolutionaries Hu Changsheng.It is also the passionate and impassioned criticism that jumped onto the stage one by one, and it is also the slogan that is raised and shouted.In a state of ignorance, Hu Changsheng recalled what had happened from the morning to the present: he was picked up from the bed early in the morning by several students wearing picket armbands from Beiqing University, detained for a whole morning, and was given a prisoner at noon. One steamed bun and one dish, he was pushed and shoved to the meeting place at two o'clock in the afternoon, which was similar to the way I organized a criticism meeting a few days ago.Thinking of it this way, a kind of cold wave and hot sarcasm came to my heart: I have criticized hundreds of people, and it is worth it to bear the criticism.

The criticism meeting lasted for two hours, because he was a student of the East School of Beiqing University. As soon as the criticism meeting was over, he was pushed out of the turbulent crowd in the playground by a group of people and walked towards the East School of Beiqing University. Crowds of people followed.When the team escorting him marched through the campus, passed through the Sun Moon Temple Park, and rushed into the west gate of Beiqing East School with a head start, Hu Changsheng felt that this was simply a parade in disguise.The people on the left and right also cut his arms behind him and twisted him forcibly. Along the way, people raised their arms and shouted to condemn him. The slogan "Down with the counter-revolutionaries Hu Changsheng" was deafening.The roads of the campus, the trees on both sides of the road, the river behind the trees, the lotus pond behind the river, and the buildings in the shadow of the trees behind the lotus pond all came alive under the impact of the turbulent flow of people.From time to time, someone came up from the crowd, slapped him across the face, hit him on the head, and kicked him viciously.A kick was kicked in the lower abdomen, and he bent down and squatted on the ground in pain, twisting his students to pull him up mercilessly.During the tide-like parade, Hu Changsheng was beaten more and more hard to withstand.The glasses had already been knocked off, blood flowed from the corner of the mouth, the buttons of the shirt were all pulled off, and the black and thin chest was covered with bruises.He couldn't help thinking, you are not a working group, how could there be such hatred?Of course, this is extremely naive thinking.Didn't he also beat hundreds of people viciously in the criticism meeting he organized?Circumstances determine everything.

When we arrived at a crossroad, there was a small arched stone bridge on the right, and a historically famous stone archway on the left, and a group of menacing students and two big and three rough workers appeared, scrambling to fly over with their fists and slaps.A man with a thick face looked like a standard steelworker in the propaganda posters, and he came up and shouted: "Why are you counter-revolutionary?" He grabbed his clothes with one hand and punched him with the other. stop.In the explosive pain and coma, he felt like a half-beaten wolf cub being escorted by groups of hunters. In the end, he was left in one place, and he heard someone say: "I will be quarantined here for inspection." Don't allow him to have any contact with the outside world." Afterwards, he heard noisy footsteps leaving the room, the door closed, there was the sound of iron chains rattling, and finally there was a heavy click, obviously it was a fist Oversized iron lock.The sound of footsteps seemed to be passing through the long corridor.Hearing the opening and closing of the gate, I vaguely heard the footsteps of some people walking down the steps, and then, the voices of many people scattered and disappeared in the vast space.

The reign of sound is temporarily relaxed, and the majesty of smell is revealed in the darkness.There is the smell of raw and cold steel, the smell of heavy engine oil, the smell of kerosene, and the smell of iron filings whirling out when the machine tool is cutting.Hu Changsheng, who studied mechanics, had practiced in a school-run factory and was familiar with these smells. These smells permeated him with a sinister smell, and he realized that he was lying on the ground.Touch the ground with both hands, it is cold concrete, and there is thick dust on the ground.Stretching forward with his hand, he touched a piece of sticky oil stain, slowly put it in front of his nose and smelled it, it was a mixture of motor oil and kerosene.He raised his head and tried to open his eyes, and vaguely saw a dark and empty space, which seemed to be a warehouse, empty, with a few steel plates and several barrels of engine oil against the wall.

There are two tall small square windows on the wall facing the door, through which two beams of light shine in obliquely, reminding him of the beams of light from the projector when an open-air movie is shown at night in the countryside.There is also a bunk bed used in the student dormitory in the warehouse, which is also covered with thick dust.He turned around, sat up with his back against the bed rail, and glanced at the 6-7 meter high roof and the 23-meter-high windows. Isn't there a bunk bed here that would provide him with the convenience of escaping?He shook his head immediately. There were iron bars on the window, which could be regarded as a "prison" with sufficient conditions.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor, followed by the sound of unlocking the iron lock, the sound of dropping the iron chain, and the sound of opening the door. He lowered his head and remained motionless.Someone fumbled at the door and turned on the light.A dim light bulb shone down from overhead, and in front of him appeared several unfamiliar students, as well as a worker in denim overalls.They put a roll of quilt they carried on the lower bunk of the bunk bed, and there was a puff of smoke. One of them said, "This is your luggage. This is paper, and this is pen. You have to check it carefully." Confess. The food will be delivered, and you can take care of the toilet here.” Then, they walked to the corner of the house, where there was a faucet and a sink below it.The water outlet of the pool is a water leak made of steel plate, much like the grid-shaped leaky cover on the miniature road.They said, "It's just like this when you urinate. If you need to poop more, if it doesn't work, pull up the iron drain." He faced these instructions with a numb and indifferent expression.Someone put the lunch box on the upper bunk and said: "This is dinner, and the water you drink is tap water. You have no right to pick and choose at this point." The iron lock was locked again, and the sound of footsteps passed through the long corridor, leaving only a 20-watt dim light bulb lit here.

He started to wake up and struggled to his feet.His glasses were shattered, his left eye was swollen, and he had only a crippled vision, but he had to do something.He walked to the faucet, opened the iron drainboard, and saw a square hole leading to the outside obliquely. Looking along the hole, the outside was a weedy slope.Probably this wall is facing west, it is dusk, and the weeds at the entrance of the cave are shining with orange light.Is this caused by the sunset?During his two years of studying at the East School of Beiqing, he had never observed the sunset.Only when people are in such a lonely situation will they pay attention to observe the surrounding environment.In the noisy world, everyone regards nature as a distant existence that has nothing to do with them.He limped back to the bed, opened the lunch box and looked at it. There was a steamed bun and some pickles. He sneered and closed the lunch box.Pain kills appetite, leaving behind thoughts.

He unfolded the mattress, spread out the sheets, and put the pillows away, at the same time, he felt an intimacy with the familiar bedding.This set of quilts has been with him for two full years, and as soon as he opened it, it was filled with his own body odor and the smell of the student dormitory.In the space ruled by the smell of raw and cold motor oil, the quilt brought him a warm breath of life, and inside it kindly wrapped his towel, soap, toothbrush, tea mug, and the white tea mug read "Red and Special" Four red paint characters.The fragrance of toothpaste and the rotten smell from the damp towel, at this moment, melodiously depicts his connection with the world in the dim yellow prison cell.For a moment, he thought that if a person is stranded on a deserted island isolated from the world, any human-made items appearing on the island will cause the kindness and surprise of meeting an old friend.

A broken bottle or a broken rubber shoe that comes with the tide can make the desolate people feel homesick. After washing my face and arms, I realized that I was covered in scars.Thinking of what I had done, knowing that I had no right to feel sorry for myself right now, I rinsed my legs and feet under the tap and sat on the bed.Oddly enough, he subconsciously adopted the posture of a monk sitting cross-legged.He has never used this posture in college, does it have some unconscious expression? It was dark outside the small square window, he got out of bed, limped and dragged to the door, turned off the light, and the light from the two small square windows settled in the darkness.He returned to the bed and was still sitting cross-legged. There was a huge star in the sky outside a small square window.Passing through the sewer just now, he saw the sunset glow of Beijing for the first time; through this vast iron window, he also saw the starry sky of Beijing for the first time, the star twinkling beside the iron railing.Ever since he stepped into Beiqing University, he has been working hard in a vicious and furious manner. He wants to make progress in studies and politics. He is busy running like a spinning wheel, never paying attention to the sunset and the stars.

The Cultural Revolution began, and he rushed out of the cage like a wild animal that had been imprisoned for a long time, more like a tiger domesticated by a circus and returned to the forest.If those metaphors haven't conveyed how he feels about himself, he feels more like a little carnivorous beast.He had seen a color documentary in which a beast called lightning attacked the grass and poisonous snakes crawling on the trees.As soon as the poisonous snake sticks out its head in the grass, or swims down from the tree, it will shoot out like an arrow, bite the snake's head, and let it struggle until it is put to death.If he is smaller, he feels more like a wolf, running in the boundless wilderness, searching for prey, and always ready to fight desperately.It will drive the wild boar to the cliff, and when the wild boar rushes madly, it will jump up and bite the wild boar's neck.The wild boar violently threw it off the ground, and once again pounced on it. It would flexibly jump and dodge, waiting for an opportunity to attack until the wild boar was dead, even if it was bruised.

Growing up in the countryside, he saw a kind horse with a kind face, a stupid pig with a stupid face, a tame dog with a docile face, and a cruel wolf with a cruel face. Seeing people in this way, he often He thinks people who look like horses are kind, people who look like pigs are stupid, and people who look like wolves are cruel.His appearance is like a wolf, like a fox, like all aggressive predators, he is a aggressive wolf.Recalling his childhood, apart from grinning his teeth and fighting with children from neighboring villages several times, his more aggressive emotions were only manifested in stubborn silence.What really made him hostile was the father who seemed kind to everyone but very cruel in his eyes. When he was a child, he was often beaten by his father. He hardly ate a full meal, and he never wore a pair of warm shoes. He walked seven or eight miles to school in winter, and a pair of rag shoes with open toes gave him a rotten foot. frostbite.Every day he walks home from school on pus and blood, like walking a road full of sharp knives.But his father often knocked him to the ground with his fist because he didn't come back in time to collect firewood and feed the pigs.Since then, he has lost hearing in one ear.One day, he went to the cotton field to pick up wild vegetables. He wrote his father's name on the cotton leaves with a pencil, and then wrote the word "da" in front of it.Although the handwriting was illegible, once he wrote it, he vented his hatred once. He wrote his hatred for his father on countless cotton leaves.Now, when he leads thousands of people in a great revolution, it is like charging into battle with a torch in the dark.He opposes whoever oppresses him.He wants to overthrow all those who oppress him!The confrontation with the working group is an outlet for long-repressed anti-oppression emotions, and no matter what kind of cage he is in, he will charge in all directions like a ferocious beast.When he was subjected to a storm of criticism at the meeting of ten thousand people, he lowered his head, feeling both nervous and thrilled to fight to the death.The wolf is caught by the hunter's iron clip, and it will definitely try to bite the iron clip with all its strength, even if it bites its teeth, it will fight to the death. Flickering memories flashed through my mind, and my body was still sitting cross-legged like a monk in a temple deep in the mountains.He is politically calm and resourceful enough to never crash and die in this cell.At the moment, what he is most concerned about is the political situation in Beiqing University and the political situation in China.He wants to be a brave and resourceful carnivore, and once he succeeds, he will also imprison those who imprisoned him. The starry sky outside became brighter, and the huge star disappeared.The earth is rotating, and the stars are moving relative to each other in the sky.A few dim stars appeared in the two bars.Judging by the brightness of the dark blue sky, there is probably a moon tonight. Suddenly, he heard a strange sound, and all the nerves in his body became sensitive.He calmed down and listened carefully with his right ear, as if someone was knocking on the wall outside.He listened for a while longer, and recognized the rhythm of the beating as a call for searching, which reminded him of the secret communication method of the Communists in the Kuomintang prisons.He got out of the bed immediately, his legs were numb due to the long-term crossing, and he could hardly walk. He supported the bed and moved his feet gently, waiting for the numbness that was difficult to touch the ground to gradually pass.The tapping sound moved, stopped for a while, and tapped again on the other wall, and the rhythm slowed down, showing the disappointment of searching.Hu Changsheng couldn't care about anything at the moment, he staggered forward, the numbness of his legs gave him a sharp pain like an electric shock, and he fell to the corner of the wall.He pounded hard on the wall with his fist, but the wall was too thick for any response to his blows.The knocking sound meandered to the corner of the wall, as if he was about to leave, he rolled to the bedside, picked up the tea mug by the bed, rolled back to the wall, and knocked on the ground with the tea mug. The walls come.Knock three times, knock three more times, knock three more times, when I heard the sound outside, I searched and moved over.Finally, there was an echo from inside and outside: he knocked twice, the other party knocked twice; he knocked three times, the other party knocked three times.He yelled, "Here I am." There was no response to his yell, apparently out of hearing. As he crawled towards the pool in the corner, he knocked on the wall, guiding him with the sound of knocking.The knocking sound outside also moved to the corner of the wall synchronously.He turned on the faucet, opened the iron drain, and let the tap water flow out.The faucet is turned to the maximum, and through one side of the water hole, you can see the water flowing along the 45-degree slope to the moonlit exit.The room was very dark, but the exit was shining brightly. The water poured out like a small waterfall, washing the weeds and soil at the exit. Finally, seeing a hand swinging at the exit, he turned off the faucet and heard a voice: "Are you Hu Changsheng?" That voice set off the openness of the moonlight world.He immediately replied: "It's me." The other party said: "Is it just you?" He said: "It's just me." The other party said: "I am Hu Ping." A freshman girl at Tsingdong University, with naturally curving dark brown hair and watery eyes, she looks a bit like a woman in a movie in the 1930s. Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, she has followed Hu Changsheng everywhere.In the past ten or twenty days, he didn't pay much attention to this girl, but now listening to her voice, he really felt a little "like hearing fairy music".He heard the other party say: "Wait a minute." He saw a pair of hands digging the soil and pulling out the weeds at the exit illuminated by the moonlight, and these hands picked up a broken tile, like primitive people using it. Like stone tools, she accelerated her transformation of the environment.After a while, the dirt and weeds at the exit disappeared. A face appeared in the square hole illuminated by the moonlight. bright eyes.He said, "I saw you, Hu Ping." Hu Ping said, "It's a pity I can't see you." Hu Changsheng wanted to turn on the light, but after thinking about it, such a dim light would be useless even if it shone from the top of his head, so he said, "How is the situation?" Hu Ping said, "I I went to Wu Keqin, and Wu Keqin said that everyone is responsible for their own actions, and it seems that she doesn't want to interfere with your business. Ma Shengli and others pushed the denunciation meeting on your head, saying that they were carrying out your instructions." Huo Changsheng asked: "What else is going on?" Hu Ping couldn't see the other person, so he could only look in without focus: "There is nothing else, do you have food?" Hu Changsheng said: "Yes, steamed buns and pickles. Hu Ping said: "Wait a minute." The face disappeared at the entrance of the cave, and the sound of breaking branches was heard not far away, and the sound was heard again. After a while, that delicate face appeared at the entrance of the cave again, and she said, "There is something to eat here, I'll poke it up for you." An aluminum lunch box was tied to a branch and dragged up reluctantly.Hu Changsheng felt the warmth of the lunch box in the dark, and a pair of shoelaces tied the lunch box and branches together.He put the lunch box and branches aside, and said, "Thank you, go back quickly, don't let them find out." Hu Ping sighed slightly, and said, "Okay, then I'm leaving. There is still something for you in the lunch box A small gift, I will come again tomorrow night." The pair of big eyes left the hole illuminated by the moonlight, heard footsteps, and heard three farewell knocks on the wall, Hu Changsheng sat by the pool, looking at the moonlight outside the hole of the sewer, his eyes couldn't help feeling a little bit wet.He seldom shed tears since he was a child, but now he feels a little bit like crying.The light from the side of the hole came in, and the dark sewer was dimly lit. The darkness inside the house and the light outside communicated through this small hole.He turned on the light, opened the lunch box, and there were roasted tofu and white rice with minced meat.He is from Jiangsu and loves to eat rice, which Hu Ping probably already knows.There was also an envelope wrapped in cellophane in the lunch box.Opening the envelope, there is a folded letter paper inside, and inside the letter paper is a picture of herself, which she took for him that day in the central area of ​​the big-character poster of Beiqing University: he stood with his hands on his hips and smiled happily in front of the big-character poster. with.Hu Changsheng looked at it for a while, then stuffed the photo into the seam of the mattress.Then I ate, cleaned the lunch box, tied the lunch box to the one-meter-long branch with shoelaces, and hid them behind a few thick steel plates standing obliquely in the corner.His first thought at the moment was that he couldn't use this spout as a toilet. He would fight for the right to use the toilet tomorrow. He lay on the bed, looking up at the starry sky outside the window for a long time.For the first time, he discovered that there is such a beautiful starry sky in the world.