Chapter 71 chapter Ten

When he left the hospital, all he wanted was to go to Lietu Cemetery to say his last farewell before changing jobs, but when he returned to the army, his identity changed involuntarily.As the head of the army, the first thing he has to do is to receive, take care of, and comfort a large number of families of martyrs, and accompany them to the martyr cemetery to pay homage to their relatives. Among the families of the martyrs who came to the third battalion, he met the instructor Chen Guoqing's mother and his wife Yang Man, the deputy company commander of the Ninth Company Jiang Boyu's father, his mother and wife who were the governor of the county bank. They represented the relatives of the team. One type is very calm on the surface, has never cried loudly, and has never made any demands on the troops. It is also very restrained when it comes to martyrs. It gives the impression that Chen Guoqing or Jiang Boyu are still alive, and they just came here to visit .But if you look closely, you will find that their eyes are always red with a thin layer of tears, although they are never allowed to flow.Only when they arrive at the tomb of the martyrs will the tears fall down, and you still can't hear the cry at this time. They gritted their teeth, grasped the arms of their loved ones, and trembled all over. Fight tenaciously with the pain in the depths of your heart.What often happens to this type of people is the sudden fainting in front of the grave of their relatives, so they must be prepared for first aid in advance.Their tribute to their relatives is also relatively simple: Chen Guoqing's wife, Yang Man, shed tears drop by drop in front of her husband's tomb, and burned a thick stack of diaries written by herself over the past ten years from love to marriage, together with a strand of her own black hair; Jiang Boyu's father brought his whole family to his son's tomb, bowed three times, took out a bowl of wine and poured it on the ground, offered some food and cigarettes, and shouted three times: "Good son! Good son! Good son!" Do not ask to come to the tomb again.The mothers of Cen Hao, the second platoon leader of the Ninth Company, and Liu Youcai, the seventh squad leader, were another type of family members of the martyrs. They began to cry as soon as they arrived in the army, and they cried for a long time or midnight, and they basically didn't eat.When we arrived at his son's grave, the crying turned into endless moaning.Cen Hao's mother was also taken care of by his daughter-in-law, Jiang Boyu's older sister, Jiang Ping, while Liu Youcai's mother had to be accompanied by Shangguanfeng, the third platoon leader of the Ninth Company.Their rituals to pay homage to their sons were very complicated. They had to offer incense, burn paper, summon and send away the souls, and cry at the graves every day. Liu Zongkui, who was worried, had to follow him to the martyrs' cemetery every day.He had to come, and standing in front of the martyr's tomb, his guilty heart was even more painful. What he could do for the relatives of the martyr now was also a kind of comfort to himself.

A week after joining the army, Cen Hao's mother was persuaded by her in-laws—Jiang Boyu's parents—to go back; Liu Youcai's mother stayed behind to celebrate February 7 for her son, sitting in the cemetery and crying every day.Liu Zongkui was worried about her body and eyes, and just when he planned to send someone to take her back to his hometown, Shang Guanfeng, the third platoon leader of the Ninth Company, came to his tent. "Deputy head, I heard that you are looking for someone to take Liu Youcai's mother back?" "Yes," Liu Zongkui was a little surprised. He only discussed this matter with the instructor of the Ninth Company, Liang Pengfei. Before he made a decision, the hero of the 634 Heights came here.

"Deputy regiment leader, please send me to see off Mother Liu," Shangguanfeng said, with tears welling up in his eyes, "Martyr Liu Youcai left a suicide note before his death, and he only let me know. Go to my hometown to fulfill his wish... I also want to ask the regiment to prove it for me." "What suicide note?" Liu Zongkui asked, his heart tightening. Shangguanfeng took out a plastic paper bag from the pocket of his military jacket, opened it carefully, and handed Liu Zongkui a piece of paper stained with dark brown blood stains and somewhat torn inside.A few neat lines were written on the paper:

Liu Zongkui's throat was blocked.He pretended to be looking for a match to light a cigarette, trying to keep the emotional tide in his heart down.Later, he said: "Okay, I agree with you to go. ... What proof do you need? Let the Political Department of the regiment issue it to you. Go to the local area to see how the situation is. If the local government does not solve it, we will collect donations for Liu Youcai in the army!" The next morning, he personally took Liu Youcai's mother and Shangguanfeng to the train station in X city by car, and watched them board the train bound for the northwest.

Zhuyin, the wife of Lin Hongsheng, the first platoon leader of the Ninth Company, is a special member of the team's family.Due to the complicated relationship between her and Lin Hongsheng before the war, it took half a month for the Political Department to issue the martyr notice.One evening, after getting off the car in County S, she found the third battalion of C regiment on foot. The first and second battalions of the regiment also withdrew from the battlefield. There were only three days left for the whole regiment to return to the barracks. Hearing that Lin Hongsheng's wife had come, Liu Zongkui hurried out of the tent.He realized that when this 30-year-old woman with filial piety, pale face and dull eyes saw him, she was shocked, her pupils dilated immediately, and a horrified expression appeared between her brows.

"I am Liu Zongkui, the deputy head of the regiment. On behalf of the whole regiment and platoon leader Lin's former comrade-in-arms, I welcome you to the army!" Suppressing the surprise in his heart, he walked forward and shook her hand. Say. The terrified expression on Zhuyin's face disappeared.Liu Zongkui felt that she suddenly appeared extremely disappointed. Many family members with fragile personalities tend to burst into tears at this moment.They finally came to the army all the way, but what they saw was not their son and husband; it seemed that they really believed that their relatives were gone after arriving here!They couldn't help crying, because the people who greeted them seemed to be their own relatives!

Zhuyin is not like this.After listening to Liu Zongkui's self-introduction, her eyes were red.People around thought she was going to cry, but she didn't, she just lowered her head, her throat twitched a few times with difficulty, and after the most difficult minute, she raised her head again, with a look of perseverance in her eyes. Liu Zongkui's high hanging heart fell.He thought that what he met today was a woman who was soft on the outside and strong on the inside.He doesn't have to worry about such family members.He asked someone from Jiulian to pick up Zhuyin, make proper arrangements for board and lodging, and then went on to do other things.

Lying on the bed in the dead of night, he suddenly thought of his late wife Xu Chunlan.He knows why.The family member of the martyr, who just arrived at dusk, was frail, with a pretty melon-seed face, a pair of foggy, slightly nervous, beautiful big eyes that seemed to hide infinite resentment, looked a little bit Like his wife who died before the war. Liu Zongkui felt hot and uncomfortable.Before the war, he had felt that Xu Chunlan was the first martyr to die in the Gongmushan War, and now this feeling was more real and stronger.She has another layer of regret: Xu Chunlan is a martyr but cannot be buried in the martyr's cemetery and enjoy people's sacrifice and admiration.Before dawn, he finally made up his mind: After the troops returned to the barracks, no matter whether the transfer of jobs could be settled soon, he would first ask for leave to go back to his hometown to visit his wife's grave.

The next day, after breakfast, he went to the regiment headquarters for a meeting, but he had already forgotten the bamboo sound.It was only after I came back at noon that I heard that as soon as Zhuyin arrived at the cemetery in the morning, she saw her husband's tomb, she fainted without crying out, her teeth were closed tightly, her limbs were cold, and she was foaming at the mouth. Only then did she wake up.Afterwards, she threw herself on her husband's tomb and cried, and passed out three times in the morning. In the end, she had to be sent back on a stretcher and received an injection in the health center of the battalion headquarters.

Liu Zongkui asked people to buy fruit and canned food, and hurried to see her.Zhuyin was lying on a camp bed with needles stuck in the crook of his arm, and a bottle of liquid medicine hanging in front of the bed hadn't been finished yet.She half-opened her eyes, her mind was muddled, and when she saw Liu Zongkui, her eyes immediately cleared up miraculously.Then, the eye sockets slowly filled with tears. "Comrade Zhuyin, I'm Liu Zongkui, I'm here to see you, how are you?" He went up to greet her. "Hmm..." She agreed vaguely, turning her face to one side.He felt as if he had let her down again, but he didn't understand why.

From the time she came to the army to the time when the C regiment returned to the barracks, she went to the martyrs cemetery three times in three days, and was carried back on a stretcher every time, and spent almost all the rest of the time on the hospital bed.Liu Zongkui did not dare to be negligent about this family member of the martyr who suffered an extra layer of mental pain.Lin Hongsheng's wife left a deep impression on him and his subordinates: she is a woman who strives to maintain her pride and decency in front of others, and a woman who has lost her confidence in life because of losing her husband, and her life is too fragile. Strike level woman.In the past he had heard the story between Zhuyin and Lin Hongsheng, and he neither approved of Lin Hongsheng's self-abandonment, but also despised his wife's betrayal of her husband. In her eyes, more things came to mind: First, she is an unfortunate woman. She married a soldier, but he died in the war; second, she is a woman who loves her husband with all her heart. Her performance also shows that that page has passed, and her final confession may be hidden in her painful thoughts about her husband.He no longer despised her, but felt that she deserved more sympathy and respect than other martyrs' families! Considering Zhuyin's physical and mental condition, and the city where her home was located was on the way back to the barracks, Liu Zongkui decided to take her along.At first, he planned to put her in the ambulance of the regiment health team, but because the ambulance couldn't fit, he let her get into his jeep together with the medical assistants from the battalion headquarters. The convoy traveled day and night for four days.Slowly, Liu Zongkui realized that Zhuyin seemed to wake up from a deep and sad nightmare.Before she set off, there was only despair and death in her heart, but now, the consciousness of life and some related illusions revived and grew in her eyes. At noon that day, the convoy entered the outskirts of the city where Zhuyin's family lived.Liu Zongkui asked the driver to drive the car into the city, drove her all the way home, and helped her carry her things upstairs.All of a sudden, he felt that the weakness that had persisted in her for many days had completely disappeared, and she had become a fully recovered person. They stopped at a door at the corner of the stairs on the sixth floor.She found out the key first, opened the door skillfully, did not let them in, turned around and knocked on the opposite door.A little girl about four years old jumped out, shouting "Mom—" and threw herself into Zhuyin's arms.Zhuyin knelt down to hug her, and without speaking to the old lady next door, she turned her daughter's face to Liu Zongkui and asked: "Yaya, who do you think this is?" The girl fluttered her big eyes with long eyelashes, thought for a while, and said sweetly and shyly: "He's dad!" Then it jumped over.Liu Zongkui didn't know whether Zhuyin pushed his daughter.She turned around and stood up, beckoning the driver and the doctor to enter the house, leaving only him and the girl outside the door.Liu Zongkui thought she was embarrassed because her daughter misidentified her father, so she picked up Yaya and entered the door.Seeing the big photo of Lin Hongsheng in the glass frame on the wall head on, he was startled: No wonder Zhuyin was shocked when he saw him for the first time, and there would always be some strange emotion in his eyes after seeing him. The sacrificed husband is somewhat similar to himself! Not a partial or detailed similarity, but an overall similarity, especially in spirit and temperament. He and Lin Hongsheng are both the kind of soldiers with thick bones and ugly appearance, and they are both the kind of men who are upright in nature, loyal and hot-tempered, and both are unfortunate people who have suffered serious mental trauma.The reason why their lives lead to tragedy is not because they are humble but because they are kind. Although the skin on their faces is rough, they all have a delicate heart. No wonder Lin Hongsheng's daughter recognized him as her father! They sat down in the hall.Zhuyin came in and out to make tea and smoke for them.The strangeness of the girl quickly disappeared, and she crawled on her knees, unwilling to leave his embrace.Liu Zongkui's heart warmed up, because Yaya was calling him "Dad" loudly in his ears! "Dad, why don't you come home all the time?" "Dad, when will you take me to the department store to buy toys?" He picked up Yaya, sat on his knees, and changed the subject: "Yaya, how old are you this year?" "Four and a half. How did Dad forget?" Zhuyin hurried out from the back room, took Yaya to another room, walked among them alone, picked up a thermos bottle to refill their teacups, looked away, and whispered eagerly to Liu Zongkui: "Don't tell the truth!...I don't want the child to know that her father died!" She left, and Yaya ran back again, bringing back the picture she drew in kindergarten. "Dad, look!" There are sky, clouds, sun, hills, trees, grass, houses, rivers in children's paintings. A whole world. Just no dad. He realized it was time for them to go. Sitting down again, he couldn't hold back his tears. "Zhuyin, it's getting late, we have to hurry!" He stood up, and just as he said goodbye to the hostess who was about to carry the basket out, the girl hugged her legs tightly, and the pictures were scattered all over the floor. "I won't let daddy go!" Yaya looked terrified, and then she burst into tears, "I won't let you go!...Everyone else has a daddy, so I want to have a daddy too!..." Zhuyin's eye circles were red, and her face was as white as a piece of paper.She looked directly into Liu Zongkui's eyes and whispered: "You stay for dinner. . . . Let the child believe that she has a father!" The medical assistant and driver who came with him looked at Liu Zongkui pleadingly, then simply sat down and turned their faces away to prevent the child from seeing the tears in their eyes. Liu Zongkui also turned his face out of the window.He couldn't cry, even if he was allowed to play Lin Hongsheng for a while today, he would feel sorry for the dead martyr who was so similar to him!But for Lin Hongsheng's daughter, he finally compromised, sat down, and wiped away the tears from Yaya's face one by one with his thick fingers. "Okay, let's not go," he said softly and with a hoarse voice, "let's have dinner with Yaya!" They stayed for lunch.When going out, the medical assistant and the driver took Yaya downstairs early.Inside and outside the door, suddenly only he and Zhuyin were left.Zhuyin's eyes were red, and she boldly said: "Deputy head Liu, maybe it's wrong for me to do this. But... I don't want the child to have no father. I know about your situation, Yaya and I are waiting for you to come back!" She hurried downstairs without leaving him time to speak.In front of the jeep downstairs, Liu Zongkui wanted to say a few words to her alone: ​​Lin Hongsheng is his comrade in arms, and asking him to do what Zhuyin wanted was contrary to his own life principles.But after gazing for a moment into her tearful and mournful eyes, his heart softened again.It is extremely cruel to say those words now, her life is already fragile, and his words may just bring her the final fatal blow! Half a month later, he asked for leave and returned to his hometown. On a desolate hill, he saw his wife's tomb without a tombstone.After the sacrifice, he wept silently, then sat down on the grass in front of the tomb, took out a cigarette from his pocket and smoked, and planned to think about Xu Chunlan, but instead thought of Zhuyin and her daughter. It was the pain caused by the feeling of guilt for the dead wife that disappeared, and my heart became more open, and I was able to think about the future more freely and calmly.Looking at the sky in the north, which was as high as the sky in the south, he thought that deep down in his heart, he was not surprised by what happened to Zhuyin's house.Zhuyin's feelings for him are not love, her already weak life needs a person who can replace Lin Hongsheng, who is very similar or the same as her husband in terms of appearance, temperament and occupation.Zhuyin's emotional transfer is obviously based on such a morbid phantom - if he walks into her family, everything she lost will be found, and her psychological trauma of being ashamed and loving her husband will also be lost. Healed and healed.Of course, what Zhuyin entrusted to him was not only her own feelings, but also her life, family and daughter.He himself was full of despair about life before the war, and he will still be accompanied by despair after the war.But if he and Zhuyin could combine the two incomplete lives, they and Yaya might be able to have a complete and happy new life. He thought of Lin Hongsheng again, but his thoughts were different from that noon.Today, not only does he feel that this comrade-in-arms will not object to this matter, on the contrary, he seems to be looking at him with affectionate and expectant eyes in the dark, hoping that it will become a reality.He could think of why: as long as Lin Hongsheng loved his wife and daughters—this was natural—he would hope that after death, there would be a trustworthy person to take care of their lives instead of him.And before he made up his mind to walk into Zhuyin's house, the first thing he felt was this heavy responsibility. He still hasn't decided whether to take this step, just as he hasn't decided whether to stay in the army.But on the way back to the army after the vacation, he went to that city again by a strange coincidence, and knocked on the door of Zhuyin's house in the evening. She opens the door.His feeling is that she and Yaya have been waiting for him since he left here last time.His arrival did not surprise the mother and daughter, but added joy to the originally deserted room. "Dad! Daddy is back!" Yaya saw him at a glance, dropped the toy in her hand, smiled happily, shouted, opened her arms, and threw herself into his arms. His heart warmed up, and he hugged Yaya.The strange thing is that he also has that feeling at this moment: he has been wandering outside for a long time, and today he finally returned home and was reunited with his relatives. We had dinner together.After that, the mother and daughter took him to the train station.The mood is already very peaceful... Another unresolved matter was also decided: staying in the army.Since there's always going to be soldiers to fight, let's stay.He never thought that there would be a deep contradiction between his decision and the responsibility he had just assumed. "It's very easy to live alone," he thought with emotion. "Once a person who is desperate at first has a wife, a daughter, and a home, he suddenly has everything in Yaya's painting. The sky, the white clouds, the sun, the mountains, the rivers, the trees, the grass... So he has the desire and courage to continue living..." Back in the army, he took Xiao Bin, the commander of the third battalion, Cao Maoran, the deputy commander of the battalion, Hu Zhigao, the commander of the seventh company, and several other people who asked to change jobs to his room. He laid out wine, vegetables and cigarettes, and said: "I have decided to stay in the army. I am not going to go to Regiment A. If I want to be the commander of the regiment, I will be in Regiment C. I hope you will stay too, but let's make it clear that it is definitely possible to fight if you stay ...I don't force you, those who are willing to stay, we will continue to work together, and those who insist on leaving, I also respect your opinions!" Cao Maoran and the three platoon leaders decided to leave.Xiao Bin, Hu Zhigao and others stayed on, but the condition was that they must work under his command. No matter when he changed jobs, they would follow him. He also made arrangements for Cheng Ming, the company commander of the Ninth Company, and Liang Pengfei, the instructor, and suggested that the regiment party committee should ask the division party committee to provide them with positions, so that Cheng Ming's wife could join the army from the countryside, and Liang Pengfei's lover would be eligible to queue up for room allocation in the factory. .At the end of the year, he arranged for them to change jobs. However, when the higher authorities asked him to make a decision on the fate of Shangguanfeng, the third platoon commander of the Ninth Company (he was promoted to deputy company commander after the war), he hesitated.After the Battle of Gongmu Mountain, Shangguanfeng became a nationally famous battle hero. The Army Academy he attended then remembered that he was asked to return to school to do military theory research. The hero gets it back.The troops were unwilling to let their heroes go, and they had to follow the instructions of the military region. Someone came up with an idea to ask Liu Zongkui to hint to Shangguanfeng that he would never go to the Army Academy to do some research.As long as you don't report for duty for a long time, the enthusiasm over the Army Academy will pass, and the hero will stay. Liu Zongkui thought about it all night and felt that he couldn't do that.First of all, he disapproved of the promotion of Shangguan Peak in the newspapers, as if the latter was born to be a legendary person, full of courage, and not afraid of death at all. He led five other people to attack the main peak of the 634 highland in the middle of the night, as it should be and as expected.Looking at this kind of propaganda from the perspective of a veteran soldier who has experienced two wars, he not only thinks it is untrue, it is ignorance or depreciation of the heavy and suffering soldiers endured in the war, and he is very concerned about Shangguanfeng's military career in the future. Second, even though Shangguanfeng has become a hero today, he still can't forget the impression left by this seventeen-year-old boy on the way to Heifengjian in the middle of the night before the war, that such a person is only worthy of going to college. Eating a book, sitting in a laboratory and exploring the mysteries of atoms, instead of being a soldier whose career is war.He himself couldn't explain why, after the Battle of 634 Heights, not only did his impression of Shangguan Peak not change, but it was strengthened on the contrary.If he had to make a choice for Shangguanfeng, he would rather let the young man return to the Army Academy to work.But today's him is no longer what he used to be. He feels that Shangguanfeng should have the same rights as Xiao Bin and Cao Maoran when it comes to such a big issue that determines people's fate.That is to say, it is up to him to decide.So he dealt with the matter in the simplest and perhaps the most correct way: together with the content of the transfer order of the general area and the meaning of the army's reluctance to let him go, he asked someone to tell Shangguan Feng, who was participating in the lecture tour along the railway, to let him know. He makes his own choices for the future.