Chapter 5 Section 5

"He returned to the house in Beijing somehow, but he couldn't find the key in his pocket, and couldn't open the door. He was so anxious that people upstairs and downstairs would recognize him. When he heard the footsteps coming down the stairs, he turned around quickly. Pretending to go downstairs. The person who came down from the upper floor passed him at the corner of the stairs, turned his head and glanced, recognized him, and asked, "Why are you back?" "This person turned out to be Lao Liu, his boss and director when he was an editor many years ago. His beard was unshaven, just like when he was scolded during the Cultural Revolution. He had protected this old cadre back then, and he must still miss the old cadre, so he told him I couldn't find the key to the door. Lao Liu pondered for a moment and said, "Your room has been assigned to someone else. "It was only then that he remembered that his room had already been sealed off." Can you find me a place to hide? He asked. Old Liu looked distressed, thought for a while and said, "I have to go through the housing management department. It's not easy. Why did you come back so casually?" "He said he bought a round-trip ticket, but he didn't expect... But he should have thought, why he was so rash, and because he had forgotten his difficulties in China after many years abroad. Someone came down the stairs again, and Lao Liu hurried downstairs, pretending Tuo didn't know him, so he went out through the building door. He also hurried out, so that no one would recognize him again. He rushed to the downstairs door, but Lao Liu was nowhere to be seen. He didn't know whether it was spring or autumn. He was dressed thinly and felt a little cold. Then he suddenly realized that this old Liu had already fallen to his death in the office building. He had to run away quickly, trying to hail a taxi on the street to go to the airport, but Thinking of the documents he held would be checked out immediately at the customs, he was a recognized enemy, but he was at a loss as to how to become an enemy, and what was even more at a loss was that he had nowhere to go to the city where he had lived for half his life. Then he arrived In a commune on the outskirts of the city, he wanted to rent a house in the village. A farmer with a shovel led him into a shed covered with plastic film, and pointed to a row of cement pits inside with the shovel, which must be the soil where Chinese cabbage was stored for a day. Damn, after putting cement on it, there is always some progress, he thought. He didn’t sleep on the floor before going to the farm for reconstruction, and he slept in the Datong. The pit is wide, one for each person, much larger than the cement grid in the cemetery where his parents' ashes were buried together, so what is there to complain about? Then he found out that there is another layer of pit under the steps, and he would rather choose to rent it. The lower floor is more soundproof. He said his wife was going to sing, God knows, and brought a woman... Woke up, it was a nightmare.

"He hasn't had this kind of nightmare for a long time. Even if he dreams now, it has nothing to do with China. When he meets some people from China overseas, he always tells him to go back and have a look. Beijing has changed so much that you can't even recognize it. Come out, there are more five-star hotels than Paris! He believes this. If someone says that you can make a fortune in China now, he wants to ask if he has made a fortune? If he asks you again, don’t you miss China? He will say his parents Both died. What about nostalgia? He has also been buried. He has been away from this country for ten years, and he does not want to recall the past, and he thinks it has been cut off.

"Now, he is a free bird. This kind of freedom of heart and mind is free from worries, like clouds and wind. This freedom is not bestowed by God. Only he knows how much it costs and how precious it is. .He doesn't tie himself to a woman any more. Family and children are too heavy a burden for him. "When you close your eyes, you start wandering, and only when you close your eyes can you not feel the gaze and supervision of others. When you close your eyes, freedom comes, and you can wander in the woman's cave, that wonderful place. He went to Passing through a well-preserved karst cave in the central plateau of France, tourists file in by cable car and lie on the iron railings. The orange lights from left, right, up and down illuminate the big cave. Countless mastoids are all dripping wet, bit by bit, this natural cavity is like a huge uterus, deep and unfathomable. He is as small as a sperm in this dark cave on the mountain pass, and it is an infertile The sperm are only satisfied with swimming in it, and the mountain pass is freed from desire again.

"Before his childhood sexual desire was awakened, he traveled on a goose from the fairy tales his mother bought him, or like the homeless child in Andersen's pen who hugged a copper pig and rode on the back of this copper pig. Visiting the Ducal Palace of Florence at night. But he can still remember that the first warmth that women gave him did not come from his mother, but the maid at home called Li Ma, who always bathed him. He was naked in the bathtub, and Li Ma grabbed him She hugged her warm chest to the bed, scratched him, and put him to sleep. This young rural woman didn’t shy away from washing in front of him as a child! He remembered the pair of big white breasts hanging like pears and the The shiny black hair around the waist had to be straightened out with a bone-made comb and tied into a big bun, with a net inside and then coiled on the head. His mother always went to the barber shop to perm her hair, and combing her hair didn’t seem to be so important. Trouble. The cruelest thing he saw when he was a child was Li Ma being beaten. Her man came and tried to drag her away, but Li Ma clung to the foot of the table tightly. The man grabbed her hair in a bun and went to Hitting the ground, the sound of blood on his forehead spread to shattered earth, and his intelligence could not be restrained. Only then did he know that Li Ma couldn't stand the man from the pool walking an inch away. Spoon,... a printed blue cloth bag Some silver coins and silver bracelets accumulated in Liyi, and several years' wages were all given to the man; he couldn't redeem himself.

"Freedom is not a natural human right, and the freedom of dreams is not born with it, it is also a kind of ability, a kind of consciousness that needs to be maintained, and it is also disturbed by nightmares. "I remind comrades that they want to restore capitalism. I'm talking about up and down, from the central government to the local government. Those ghosts and monsters—there are those in the central government. We must mercilessly find them out. We must maintain the purity of the party. , do not allow the glory of our party to be tarnished! Are there any of you here? You can’t guarantee this risk, aha, there are thousands of you, and this venue is so clean? There is no fishing in troubled waters, Up and down? Enterprises want to confuse our class front, I advise comrades to be vigilant, keep your eyes open, whoever opposes Chairman Mao, whoever opposes the Party Central Committee, and whoever opposes socialism, all of them will be caught!"

"As soon as the leader in the grass-green military uniform on the rostrum finished speaking, the audience continued to shout slogans: "Sweep all ghosts and monsters!" "Sworn to defend Chairman Mao to the death—." "Sworn to defend the Party Central Committee—." "If the enemy does not surrender, let him perish!" "At this time, there were people in front of and behind him who were leading the shout, and he had to shout loudly so that everyone around him could hear him, not just raising his fist as a signal. He knew that no matter who was in this meeting, any behavior different from others would be important. Being noticed—feeling the sharp gaze on his back, sweating? For the first time, he felt that he might very well be the enemy, possibly perish.

"He probably belonged to the class that should perish, but what class did his dead parents belong to? His great-grandfather wanted to be an official. He donated all his family property and went crazy without buying a black hat. He got up at night. Set fire, and set fire to the house left for the U family to live in. It was still the Qing Empire, and his father hadn't been born yet. His grandma had pawned off the property left by his grandfather, and he couldn't wait until his mother came to lose Neither of his parents has been involved in politics. Only his second uncle withheld a sum of money from the bank to escape to Taiwan for the new regime. He made a contribution and won the title of a democrat. Seven or eight years. They all lived on their wages, but they were not short of food or clothing, and they lived well but were afraid of losing their jobs. They all welcomed a new China, thinking that the new country was always better than the old one.

"That was after "Liberation", the "Communist bandits" were later called the "Communist Army", and later called the "Liberation Army", and the official name was "People's Liberation Army". When the army entered the city, his parents felt liberated. Constant war , the bombing, the fleeing and the fear of looting seem to be gone forever. "His father didn't like the old government either. He was a branch director of the National Bank at that time. In his father's words, he didn't understand nepotism. He lost his job and worked as a tabloid reporter for a while. Then the newspaper closed, and he had to sell it to make ends meet. He remembered that the shoe box under the chest of drawers contained less and less silver, and the gold bracelet on his mother's hand disappeared. The shoes under the chest of drawers In the box, there was also a copy of New Democracy printed on rough-edged paper secretly brought by Brother Hu, a mysterious friend of my father. It was the earliest version of Mao Zedong's works he had seen, and was hidden with the silver coins.

"This big brother Hu teaches in a middle school. As soon as he comes, the children have to be chased away. But they secretly look forward to the discussion of "liberation". He deliberately went in and out of his parents' room and heard a few words. The fat landlord The postmaster said that the Communists were Communists and their wives. His parents didn’t believe that the Communists were communists and their wives. His parents didn’t believe it. At that time, his father smiled and said to his mother, “Your old cousin, that is, my father’s cousin,” is the Communists. , with a pockmarked face, if he is still alive..."

"His cousin, who joined the underground party when he was studying at Shanghai University in his early years, ran away from home and went to Jiangxi to join the revolution. After more than 20 years, he was still alive. He finally saw his uncle, who had smallpox. The pockmarked face left behind is not only not terrible, but it turns red when drinking alcohol, and it looks more bold. Hehe laughs loudly, but he has some asthma. It is said that he could not get cigarettes in those years when he was fighting guerrillas, and he often dried it with wild vegetable leaves When the tobacco leaves fell off. His uncle went to the city with the army, searched for him in the newspaper, and found out the whereabouts of his cousin through relatives in his hometown. Their meeting was also quite dramatic. His uncle was afraid of meeting He couldn’t recognize him, but the letter agreed that he would recognize him when he saw a bamboo pole with a white towel tied on the platform of the train station. His orderly was a foolish boy from the countryside, with a head full of dysentery and scars, and no matter how hot the weather was, he was always sweating when he hugged the brim of his hat A worn-out military cap, swinging a long bamboo pole above the noisy heads.

"His cousin, like his father, is also good at wine. Every time he comes, he brings a bottle of sorghum noodles, opens a large lotus leaf and wraps all kinds of stewed appetizers, such as chicken wings, foie gras, or duck gizzards and duck feet. , Pork tongue strips, spread out a table, took the servant Qiu away, and often chatted with his father until late at night, and the young man would come to pick him up and go back to the military compound. There are many stories about his uncle—from the downfall of the old-fashioned big family in the early years The experience of switching to guerrilla warfare made him unable to lift his eyelids while listening to ", and his mother refused to go to sleep after telling him several times. "Those stories were a completely different world from the fairy tales he read, so he turned from fairy tales to worshiping revolutionary myths. His uncle also trained him to write and took him to live with him for several months There is no children's book in his family, but there is a set of Lu Xun's complete works. The only education his uncle gave him was to read "one Lu Xun's novel every day, and ask him to retell it after he came back from business. He didn't understand it at all. What does the old novel want to say, the interest at that time was catching crickets among the grass at the foot of the wall and among the rubble.His cousin handed him back to his mother, laughed and admitted that his education had failed. "His mother is actually young! She is not yet 30 years old, and she no longer wants to take care of her children as a housewife, and she is determined to devote herself to a new life. She has no time to take care of him after working. He has no difficulty in studying and immediately became a good student in the class. Wearing a red scarf! Some boys in the class said that he would not participate in girls’ dirty words and pranks. On June 1st, Children’s Day, he was selected by the school to participate in the city’s celebration activities, and presented flowers to the city’s model workers. His parents also successively He became the leader of his respective work unit, and won the prize. One is an enamel tea mug, and the other is a notebook, both of which are written or printed with the name of the winner comrade XX. For him, it was also a happy age. The Children's Palace often has singing and dancing performances, and he hopes to perform on stage one day. "He heard a story meeting, where a female teacher recited a novel by the Soviet writer Korolenko."It is about a snowy night, the jeep I was driving, the protagonist of the novel, broke down on the mountain road, and there were still lights on the rocks, and I finally found this house, only an old woman.The mountain wind howled in the middle of the night, and I couldn't sleep with this protagonist!Listening carefully to the sound of the wind, it seemed that someone was sighing from time to time, and he simply got up.I saw the old woman sitting alone in the room with a lonely lamp, facing the door that was ringing.So I asked the old lady why she didn't go to bed?Are you waiting for someone?She said she was waiting for her son.Then I said that I could watch the night for her, and then the old woman said that her son was dead, and she was the one who pushed him down the rock.Of course I couldn't help but inquire about this, the old woman sighed a long time, saying that her son had escaped from the war and slipped back to his hometown, and she couldn't let a son who was a deserter enter this house.The story somehow touched him deeply, and made him feel incomprehensible in the adult world.Now he is not just a deserter, but just relying on some thoughts that have been turning in his little head!It is destined that he will become an enemy in the future, and he will never return to the arms of the motherland. "He still remembers that the first time he thought about it was when he was about eight years old. Judging from the location, shortly after he wrote his first diary, he was lying on the window of his hut upstairs. The ball in his hand fell and bounced. After jumping a few times, he rolled into the grass under an oleander tree. He begged his uncle, who was reading in the yard downstairs, to give him the ball back. His uncle said, slob, you throw it yourself and come downstairs to pick it up. He said that his mother stipulated that he was not allowed to go downstairs to play until he had finished writing the diary of the previous day. His uncle said, "I picked it up for you and you threw it away? He said he didn't throw it, and the ball fell by itself. His uncle was very reluctant. , but still threw him the ball upstairs. He was still lying on the window, and asked his uncle: "Why can't the ball bounce back after falling? No matter how high it falls, it can bounce back as high, so don't bother you to pick it." "His uncle said:" As far as you can tell, this is a physics problem. " "He asked again:" What is a physics problem? " "This involves a fundamental theory, and you don't even understand it." "His uncle was a high school student at the time, and he admired him very much, especially when it came to physics and some fundamental theories. He memorized these two words anyway, and felt that everything in this world seemed ordinary, but it was inscrutable. . "Afterwards, his mother bought him a set of children's books One Hundred Thousand Whys? He read every book without leaving any impression. Only his initial questions about this world have been hidden in his heart. . "The distant childhood is like mist and smoke. Only a few bright points emerge in the memory, and when I raise my head; the memories submerged by time gradually emerge, like a net of water, intertwined with each other, and it is boundless. The more it is involved, the more threads are involved. They are all looming, and once you bring up one end, you will be involved again. Different things in different ages are emerging at the same time, making you unable to start! You can’t find a clue, track it down, clean it up, and you can’t make it clear. This life is a life. Zhang Wang, if you want to untie it one by one, it will only make a mess, and you will not be able to settle the messy account of life.