Chapter 43 Twenty-one, eternal spell

The murderers who killed Shiying were some students in his class. They were nameless and insignificant, and now they have disappeared like ants in the corners that no one knows.However, at some point in their lives, they once banded together as a hate squad, relentlessly hunting down a soul they could not identify with.Since the early days of the Cultural Revolution, this pursuit has not stopped.These people belonged to Dongfanghong, the rebel organization of the Agricultural University. According to one explanation, they punished Guo Shiying to oppose Zhou Enlai, because Zhou personally handled Guo's problems at the beginning.After Shiying's death, Zhou Enlai came to Guo's house and said such a sad and guilty sentence "Shiying died for me".I believe this is one of the important motivations, but I think the deepest motivation is not political but human.The first time I went to Agricultural University to look for Shiying, I was deeply impressed. The angry boy was a microcosm, showing how out of place Shiying fell into.I often think that despite the background of the Cultural Revolution, if Shiying had not fallen into the hands of these narrow-minded people, the tragedy might not have happened.In fact, each specific tragedy during the Cultural Revolution was brought about by specific hands, and the general background was the condition for their success, but not the reason for pardoning them.The Cultural Revolution only exposed the evil in human nature, but the existence of evil cannot be explained and defended by the Cultural Revolution itself.

Shiying told me many times about the distress caused to him by his classmates who punished him.After his death I burned all my diaries, but, as if to preserve evidence, I transcribed these conversations of his which were recorded therein before burning them.Among them, there are two most important ones. On May 2, 1967, after reporting Guo Minying's death to me, he said: "The classmates in our class wanted to punish me a while ago. There was a girl who hated me very much. She was outside all the time. After she came back, the class was against me. My attitude changed. Is there any reason? I supported the rebels in the most difficult time. Chairman Mao said that only the mind is the subject of research, and everything else is the object of research. I have a deep understanding of this. Sometimes I thought, why do you always look at me like this? In fact, you have to study all of this yourself, and you can change this situation by yourself, not by yourself, but by others? It depends on whether you have the level of Mao Zedong Thought. So, they let I wrote a review. I originally planned to write a 100,000-word "Ten Criticism Book", let them read it. Now I am not going to write anything. I said to them: 'Why, I have been a counter-revolutionary all my life?'" More than a month later, he told me again that some people in the class deliberately found trouble and punished him on minor issues.

On December 17 of the same year, Lin Mingshu returned to Beijing from another place, and I met him for the first time at Guo's house.It was originally scheduled to ask him to check and accept the compiled Lu Xun's quotations on this day. We were discussing, Shiying suddenly said: "I think today's task is to play. Let's go outside and play." He didn't look at us, but looked at us thoughtfully. Elsewhere, he continued, "I'm announcing my withdrawal from this matter, and you two can deal with it later." Lin Mingshu stood up, took a few steps, and left the room.The room was extremely quiet. Shiying looked at me and said, "Our class is going to punish me again. On Thursday afternoon, a circular was issued suddenly asking me to sign and admit that I was a traitor. Of course I can't admit it. Four more things are mentioned, why are you not allowed to talk to foreigners?" Schoolmates, they are only allowed to go home once a month, and how many days to write an inspection, etc. I signed everything, and I ran home on Friday.” I asked him what he was going to do, and he said: “I will come back tomorrow. School. What can I do? If they want to fight, let them fight. I won’t resist when they beat me. Anyway, I can’t admit the traitors, I’ve drawn conclusions before. It’s understandable for the masses to do this. I am in line with the trend. People who don’t know me can only see me in their position. I am very contradictory.” I said, “Didn’t you say you were going to leave Agricultural University?” He said, “Leave the school now , is a dead end. To be honest, I really don’t want to die like this now.” I asked: “Will they use force?” He said: “I’m not afraid of using force, I just let them fight. The taste of isolation is not good. It's mental pressure. Robinson can survive on the isolated island because he still holds the hope of returning to the mainland."

After dinner, we returned to this topic.He said: "I really don't know what to do after I go back. The development of history is always one wave after another, and every individual is not used as a clue..." After a pause, he asked me: "What do you think I should do?" I said, "This is just a wave. If there is a high tide, there will always be a low tide." He said, "There will be a high tide in the future." I said, "After the high tide, there will be a low tide." Lin Mingshu interjected: "This is temporary." I Quickly echoed: "Yes, it's temporary." We all wanted to comfort him, but the comfort was so weak.When he left his house, he escorted me to the gate of the courtyard and said to my back: "Wait for my bad news!" I turned around and saw his calm, flickering eyes.

Walking on the streets on winter nights, wandering by the deserted station, this ominous sentence kept echoing in my ears.Put yourself in his shoes, the mistakes he made at the age of twenty were like a spell attached to him, and this spell could only be lifted when he died, how could he not despair.I also thought of the ruthless pursuit of him by the mass movement he so enthusiastically praised, and I felt extremely absurd.I hate myself for seeing him on the brink of ruin but being unable to hold him back. No one in the world can help him. My heart weeps for my own insignificance. Many years later, I read a letter he wrote to Lin Mingshu, dated exactly the second day after the above-mentioned conversation, and he wrote it on the day he returned to school at Lin's request.He told Lin that what he encountered after returning to school was an unexpected calm.He talked about his deep helplessness: "It's funny to say, for a few days, the idea of ​​existential incompetence has always been in my mind, and the positive initiative of reforming my own thoughts has no meaning. I always run behind things. to seek its inevitability." Still, he was trying to get the inevitability of things right.Lin's mother called those who punished him a "reactionary line," which was the most serious crime during the Cultural Revolution. He asked Lin to persuade Lin's mother not to think so, emphasizing that the masses punished him as "a small defect in the great revolutionary storm." "It's not the mainstream, it's not the countercurrent, it's the tributary."However, he also stated that he must not only trust the masses, but also uphold the truth, and cannot accept the charge of violating the facts, because not upholding the truth is the biggest distrust of the masses.It seemed that he felt that he had already figured out the attitude to adopt, that is, he would never resist, and he would never confess his guilt against his will.Boycotting would put him on the opposite side of the mass movement, which he didn't want, and in fact those people would definitely punish him even more viciously.Pleading guilty against one's will would also give the gang a reason to punish him: "I know very well that as soon as cowardice gets the better of me, I can lose my basic rights in one fell swoop, and that's just because of cowardice, so it doesn't make sense." In this analysis, he overlooked one point: as long as he does not plead guilty, in the eyes of those people, it is boycott.He had to ignore it, because his real situation was that even if he pleaded guilty or not, he would not be able to escape the hunt. He had been cornered and had nowhere to go.

During this period of time, there was another incident that aggravated the shadow cast on him by history, and that was the appearance of Cao Qiuchi.At that time, Cao took advantage of the opportunity of being released on medical parole to rehabilitate and asked Guo Shiying to assist him.When he came to look for Guo, I happened to be at the Agricultural University, and I saw Guo's expression was indifferent.However, he still agreed to accompany Cao to the Ministry of Public Security, and he did.He told me that counting Cao as the main member of x does not conform to the facts, and since he was found, he should help clarify.I asked about the details of their activities at the Ministry of Public Security. He was silent for a long time, his face was very bad, and finally he just said: "I don't want to talk about it now. This time I was fooled again, but I am also on guard." No matter what happened in detail, this incident It obviously made him unhappy, not only brought him back to the past, and he was being punished for this past, but also, if the person who punished him found out that he was in contact with Cao, it would be a current crime, and it would be an unforgivable crime.

After the Agricultural University group issued the order, they suddenly had nothing to say, and the unexpected calm remained for four months.Later I learned that the reason was that they went to the Ministry of Public Security to search for files on X, but were rejected. The Ministry of Public Security told them clearly that Guo's problem was handled by the "Proletarian Headquarters" and they were not allowed to intervene.Shiying temporarily avoided this evil wave, and gradually became more cheerful. By April 1968, it could almost be said that the sun was shining brightly.In those days, besides discussing the ideological trend of the Cultural Revolution, he was also passionate about two things, one was photography, and the other was Go.In a letter to me on April 1, 1968, he boasted naively: "I found an excellent photography method, which for the first time reproduced the facial lines and textures of people so realistically. , the traces of eyebrows, pores, and even goosebumps are fully exposed. Great, the peak of headshot photography has arrived.” He learned Go from me, a stinky player who has just learned a few days, Soon he was evenly matched with me, but still lost to me by one or two.In the same letter, he argued with me: "Zhou, you are too disrespectful, where did you get the nonsensical Go winning and losing rules? I accidentally flipped through the book, and only then did I realize that I have accepted you." Liar! You must admit that you lost to me in front of the selfless Go law." I don't remember how we settled this dispute, anyway, he still didn't win afterwards.At the end of the last round, he was extremely excited, and gritted his teeth and spit out a sentence: "I tell you, I will play with you again!" However, we would never have thought that there would be no next round, and he would die a few days later.