Chapter 42 20. The deep courtyard in Qianhai

After restoring contact with Shiying, I often went to his house.This spacious and exquisite two-entry courtyard is now the Guo Moruo Memorial Hall. Whenever I step in, I will be filled with strong and complicated emotions.I am familiar with every stone and tree here. However, things are different and people are different. The harmonious and beautiful scene of family living together in the past is gone forever.For more than a year, I spent a weekend here almost every one or two weeks. I tasted the sumptuous dishes on the table that are not seen by ordinary people, and I also experienced the family that is beyond the imagination of outsiders. Special joys and sorrows.As the first literati family in red China, this place is shrouded in a noble and elegant life atmosphere.However, although Guo Moruo was protected during the Cultural Revolution, national disasters infiltrated the family in a special way, demanding sacrifices from it, and the heaviest price was the death of two sons.

On May 2, 1967, I went to Guo's house, and Shiying was cutting my younger brother's hair in the Westinghouse.When he saw me, the first thing he said was: "My brother is dead, do you know?" I was taken aback.A few days ago, it was rumored that Guo Shiying committed suicide, but I just met him, so of course I don't believe it. "I heard you committed suicide," I said. "Yeah, it's incomprehensible!" He said, "It was rumored that I was the one." Then he talked about Guo Minying's suicide. I met Guo Minying once.It was the first National Day after I went to Peking University, and Shiying invited me to his home, which lived in Xisi Courtyard Hutong at that time.When I arrived, the two brothers had just finished an oil painting, both of which were sketches of two apples, and they were competing to see who could draw better.In my impression, Minying is slightly shorter than her elder brother, with a fair complexion and big eyes full of melancholy.At that time, he was a student of the Central Conservatory of Music, learning the violin.He later dropped out of school and enlisted in the Zhejiang Navy.Later, I heard from Minying’s good friend Lin Ming that the reason for dropping out was that Minying was too late to learn the violin and felt that he had no future. It happened that Luo Ruiqing made a report and proposed to train future generals. He was very excited when he found out, so he decided to give up. Art follows martial arts.Shiying told me that after Minying joined the army, it was said that he performed very well, was trained as a special successor, and joined the party within a few months.Just as he was about to discuss his regularization, he suddenly committed suicide by hitting himself in the head with a submachine gun, and the bullet penetrated from the forehead to the back of the skull.The incident happened on April 7th. Shiying and Lin Mingshu went to arrange the funeral together.I keep a photo of Shiying, which was taken on the way home from this funeral trip. He was wearing a jacket, leaning against the mast of the ship, with a mischievous smile on his mouth. in holiday travel.

When I asked why, Shiying said: "Ideological problems, people in the army also said that they were pessimistic and world-weary. He didn't hide it at all. He talked about Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, but the army couldn't solve it at all. How to solve it. I don’t believe that he has schizophrenia. The Central Cultural Revolution is in a hurry. A few days ago, Premier Zhou, Chen Boda, Kang Sheng, and Jiang Qing all came to our house. My mother had a heart attack. I received the news of my brother's death within two days." Having said this, he smiled, and continued: "Once this incident happened, it was another class mark for us! The students in our class wanted to punish me, and now there is another reason After a while, after he finished cutting his younger brother’s hair, he discussed with me the issue of a communist society, praising Mao Zedong’s thesis that there would still be contradictions after the elimination of classes and that communism would also be eliminated. Finally, he said passionately: “Hegel Saying the present is the absolute realm, Marx saying the future is perfect, and only Chairman Mao is the most thorough dialectics!"

Minying's death didn't seem to disrupt the family's normal rhythm of life, and everything was peaceful on the surface.Except for Yu Liqun who was sometimes depressed due to neurosis, the atmosphere was still relaxed.Western music that was being criticized was played in the room, Shiying and Jianying were obsessed with taking pictures, and I often worked hard in the darkroom with them.During meal time, I often see Mr. Guo.At the dinner table, he seldom eats or speaks.However, once, it was his birthday, he said that he had cooked meals for a hundred people by himself, and he was so proud that everyone laughed.He is very careful and often motions for people to move the dishes out of my reach to me.After a meal, he personally cut a coconut, walked up to me, and first handed me a piece.Mr. Guo is very approachable.I was flipping through a Japanese pictorial in the living room, and he came over and asked me if I understood Japanese, and when I didn’t understand, he explained katakana and hiragana to me.I played recreational ball with him. It was the first time I played this kind of game, but I beat him. He praised Yu Liqun for my good play, but Yu Liqun immediately defeated me.He still often writes poems and shows them to us when they are finished, although we must be noncommittal after reading them.

Mao Zedong's poems were popular at that time, and I listened to Mr. Guo explain them twice.One was a special session for me, I asked for advice, and the whole family listened.What I asked was "Qing Ping Le · Hui Chang", and asked him how to understand the "jun" in the sentence "Mo Dao Jun Xing Zao", whether it has any metaphor.He replied: "I can't see it." I said: "However, there is a saying that 'Jun' refers to Western imperialism." He said: "That is far-fetched." He saw that it was he himself who had made the statement.Immediately he laughed merrily, and so did the whole company.Another time, Pingying brought a group of students from the School of International Relations, some of whom had the arrogance of rebels, and put on a posture of debate to Mr. Guo, but Mr. Guo didn't mind, and always patiently explained himself the opinion of.A student mentioned Mao's poem "Don't tell me that the pond in Kunming is shallow, watching fish is better than Fuchun River", and asked Mr. Guo if it was true that Liu Yazi asked Mao for the Summer Palace after he got this poem.Guo Lao shook his head again and again, and Yu Liqun also interjected that they knew Liu Yazi's character, so it was impossible to make such a request.I remember that Liu later indeed had a sentence "If you send me a famous garden director, Gong Gengyuan will not love Wujiang", whispered to Shiying, Shiying also remembered, immediately went to find this poem, and asked me to pass it to Mr. Guo, Mr. Guo I laughed when I saw it, and said I really didn't think of it.

Around June and July of 1967, Shiying proposed to me to compile Lu Xun's quotations together.He said that a student of the Conservatory of Music asked him to compile it, and he promised that it would be printed after compilation.He described the student in this way: "As long as this person wants to do something, he can always do it." Not long after, I met this capable person. He was Minying's friend Lin Mingshu who went to Zhejiang with Shiying to take care of the funeral.Shiying was very devoted to this work. I was a little sloppy at first, but under his inspiration, I became serious.Each of us read through the complete works of Lu Xun, excerpted the cards in detail, and then put the two cards together, selected and classified them, and drew up a catalog.We often disagree about the choice and classification of a quotation, and ridicule each other.Once, when the catalog had been decided, he started over again, proposed an ingenious new plan, and said excitedly: "If you don't agree with this plan, you are not a human being!" I retorted: "It seems that you are only now becoming a human being." That’s it.” In the deep courtyard on Qianhaixi Street, our happy and fierce quarrels sounded from time to time.Between work, he would chat about his views on various issues.Once talking about his mother's illness, he said: "Actually, what's wrong with her? It's just that life is too comfortable and easy, so all kinds of illnesses come." The set of complete works he used was his father's collection, with Guo Moruo Marks drawn while reading.Sometimes, he would point to a place marked with a question mark and say with a smile, "Look, it's all about finding fault." He also told me some anecdotes, one of which was that he heard from his father that Lu Xun's famous poem The theme of "Self-inscribed Portrait" is not about patriotism as usually explained, but about Lu Xun's own history of love.Towards the end of the year, our work has been completed and transcribed by Shiying’s fiancée Xiao Xiao. There is a thick stack, much larger than the versions compiled by people at that time, and I believe the thinking is more unique.However, the capable Lin Mingshu never got it printed, and the large stack of manuscripts disappeared.Lin later told me that his real purpose was to give Shiying something to do so that she would not be too lonely.After getting acquainted with Lin, I also think he is very capable.He is not tall, full of energy, he does everything with great interest, and can talk and laugh freely on any occasion.What I admire the most is his photography. I was fascinated by his works, so I borrowed a camera from Shiying.Guo’s cameras are very high-end. Since I was a beginner, Shiying lent Lin a Leica, and I used Lin’s domestic 58-2 to play photography.

After entering 1968, Lin Mingshu came up with a new idea and proposed that we study the ideological trend of the Cultural Revolution together.In March of that year, we held four discussions at Lin's home and in the classrooms of the Conservatory of Music. Besides me, Guo, Lin, and Fang Xiaozao were the participants.Shiying is very devoted again, every time she writes to me, she has to talk about this matter.He is also very serious when discussing.We stipulated that each person should write a paper. He said that he planned to write about the Cultural Revolution with the attitude towards the masses as the main line: "The achievements of the Cultural Revolution were implemented by the masses. The purpose of overthrowing the capitalist roaders was to educate the masses. The Revolutionary Committee was to let the masses directly participate in the political power." ..." We all disagreed and believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat should be the main line.He argued with us fiercely, repeatedly arguing that the issue of the masses is the most fundamental issue, and that the issue of dictatorship is restricted by the issue of the masses. At the end of his speech, he declared loudly: "Therefore, the third article is the highest, the pinnacle of proletarian humanitarianism, as high as The old three can’t be higher!” The old three are three short essays by Mao Zedong, namely, “The Foolish Old Man Moves Mountains” and “In Memory of Bethune”, and many people at that time could recite the whole text.Later, we all wrote the first draft of the thesis, his theme was the masses, mine was the continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and Lin’s was Jiang Qing’s literary revolution.I forgot Fang's topic, and my impression was that his views were relatively neutral.These manuscripts were gathered in Shiying's hands, and before they could be circulated, he was killed.

At that time, all we wrote were positive articles, and the motivation for our guidance was to try to understand the inevitability of the Cultural Revolution. Looking at it now, of course, the level is very low.However, Shiying's mentality is more complicated than ours.On the surface, he had a romantic passion for the Cultural Revolution, and his praise was much higher than ours.However, this may be precisely because, deep down, he had a premonition that the blind force unleashed by the Cultural Revolution might destroy him and his family, so he convinced himself by defending it in extreme ways.During a discussion, he suddenly appeared absent-minded, squinted and looked somewhere outside the window, remained silent for a while, and burst out a sentence: "Guo Moruo will be finished sooner or later!"