Chapter 9 Section 9

In the middle of the night, when the struggle meeting in the office was over, he returned to his room. His colleague Lao Tan, who shared the same room with him, had already been locked up by the Red Guards in the conference room of the office building, and he could not come back for quarantine inspection.He locked the door, opened a corner of the curtain, and saw that all the lights in the neighbor's house in the yard were turned off; he lowered the curtain, and then carefully checked the window for any gaps before turning on the coal stove.Put a bucket next to him, and started to burn his stacks of manuscripts, as well as work pile diaries and notes, since he went to college, there are dozens of volumes, large and small.The hearth is very small, and several pages have to be dismantled, and the scorched paper pieces are burnt through and turned into white ash, and then shoveled into the bucket and mixed into mud, so that no unburnt black paper scraps can be left outside.

There was an old photo of him with his parents as a child that fell out of the diary.His father wore a suit and tie, and his mother wore a cheongsam.When his mother was still alive, he had seen this velvet cheongsam with orange flowers and dark blue background when he was emptying the suitcase to dry clothes. The coloring in the photo had faded very lightly.The parents smiled at each other, and the thin child in the middle had small arms and round eyes, as if waiting for a bird to fly out of the camera case.He stuffed it into the furnace without hesitation, and the edge of the photo burst into flames. His parents curled up before thinking of picking it up. It was too late, and he saw the photo rolled up and opened again, and the images of his parents turned into black and white ashes. , the lean child in the middle is starting to brown...

Based on the clothes his parents were wearing, he might be regarded as a capitalist or a comprador of a foreign company. He burned everything that could be destroyed, cut off everything from the past as much as possible, and erased the memory. Even the memory of that time became a heavy burden. Before he burned his son's manuscripts and diaries, he witnessed a group of Red Guards beating old women to death in broad daylight by the side of the stadium in downtown Xidan.During the lunch break, there were many people coming and going on the street, and he rode by on his bicycle.A dozen or so boys and a few girls, all wearing old military uniforms and red armbands with black letters, were middle school students aged fifteen or sixteen. They beat an old woman crawling on the ground with military belts, and hung a wire tie around their necks. on the board, it is written

"Reactionary Wang Po" couldn't move anymore, but was still howling.Pedestrians were separated by a distance, watching quietly, no one stepped forward to stop.A policeman in a large cap waving his white gloves passed by the road, as if turning a blind eye.One of the girls, with short hair tied into two small brushes, and a light-colored spectacle frame, made her look even more delicate, and she even wore a belt.The brass head of the leather belt hit a clump of gray and messy hair, and with a bang, the old woman put her head in her hands and rolled to the ground, blood dripped from her fingers, and she couldn't make a sound.

"Long live the Red Terror!" The Red Guard picket team rode brand-new, Yongjiu bicycles as they paraded through Chang'an Avenue, shouting this slogan all the way. He also encountered their interrogation, and it was only around ten o'clock at night.He rode past the gate of the Diaoyutai National Treasure Museum guarded by armed guards. Several motorcycles with buckets were parked under the shining mercury lamppost in front of him. Youths with armbands of the "Joint Action Committee of the Capital Red Guards" blocked the road. "Come down!" He squeezed the brake so hard that he almost fell off the car.

"What origin?" "staff." "What are you doing?" He named the agency where he worked. "Do you have a work permit?" Luckily he took it with him and took it out to show them. Another young man was pulled over from his bicycle. He had a crew-shaven head, and at that time had the protruding mark of "pussy". "Stay at home honestly tonight!" They let him go.As soon as he got on the bike, he heard the young man with the crew cut behind him squeak and yell, but he didn't dare to look back. For several days in a row, from late night to almost dawn, he faced the fire, his eyes were red from the heat, and he had to work hard during the day to deal with the crises that might arise every day.After burning the last stack of notebooks, stirring the plaster until there is no trace, and then pouring out a plate of leftovers and half a bowl of noodles, he was exhausted, his eyelids could not be opened, and he was lying on the bed with all his clothes on but he could not fall asleep. .He remembered that there was an old photo at home that might be misleading. It was a group photo of his mother wearing a military uniform when she was young and participating in the Anti-Japanese War and National Salvation Theater Troupe of the YMCA. The military uniform must have been given to the actors when condolences to the anti-Japanese soldiers—on the military cap. There is a hat badge with the Kuomintang logo. If this photo is confiscated, there will definitely be problems, even if his mother has died long ago.He didn't know if his father had processed these photos, but it was inconvenient to send a letter to remind him.

Among the piles of manuscripts that were destroyed was a novel that he had read to a famous old writer. He had hoped to recommend it, at least to be recognized, but the old man was unmoved, without a word of encouragement for the younger generation, and he actually looked down. He warned him sternly: "Think twice about the words you shoot! Don't submit casually, you don't understand the risks of words." He didn't understand it right away.In June of that early summer—the Cultural Revolution had just started. In the evening, he went to the old man’s place to inquire about the news of the movement. As soon as he entered the door, the old man quickly covered his face, stared at him in a low voice and asked:

"Did anyone see you come in?" "There's no one in the yard," he said. Although the old man is not like those old cadres who usually teach the young people, he keeps talking about our party and our country, but he is still a celebrity with some revolutionary experience, and his speech is full of air, orderly, and unambiguous. The shivering voice is pressed in the throat: "I'm already a gangster, don't come to me anymore. You're young, don't get in trouble, you haven't been through the party" The old man didn't allow him to finish his greetings. He was so nervous that he opened a crack in the door, looked around, and said:

"I'll talk about it later, after a while—I'll talk about it later, you don't know about the Yan'an rectification movement!" "What about the Yan'an rectification movement?" He asked stupidly. "I'll tell you later, let's go, let's go!" It took less than a minute before and after.A minute ago, he thought that this intra-party struggle was far away, but he didn't expect it to be here. Ten years later, he heard that the old man was released from prison, and he finally returned to Beijing from the countryside to visit the old man.The old man was so thin that only a skeleton frame of a leather bag remained, with a broken leg, leaning on the recliner, holding a big long-haired black cat in his hand, and a cane on the armrest of the chair.

"Cats still live better than people." The old man grinned in a half-smile, showing the few remaining front teeth. While stroking the old cat, the wide-open eyeballs in the deep-set eye sockets also gave off a strange light like a cat's eyes.The old man did not tell him a word about what happened to him in prison. It was not until shortly before his death, when he visited him in the hospital, that he told him the truth, saying that the biggest regret in his life was that he should not have joined the party. At that time, when he came out of the old man's house, he thought that his own manuscripts, even though they had nothing to do with the party, would bring him disaster.But at that time, he was still undecided, so he was heartbroken, so he carried a large schoolbag and hid it at the home of his friend Da Lu, whom he once had dysentery and was admitted to the hospital.Da Lu is tall, a native of Beijing, who teaches geography in a middle school, and is courting a petite woman, and he has been asked to write all the love letters.When Da Lu's newlywed wife found out that he had helped to cheat and the rice had become cooked, he would have a little friendship with the couple.Da Lu lives with his parents, and his family has a small courtyard, so it is not difficult to hide a bag of things.

In the midsummer of August, when the Red Guards rose up, Da Lu's wife suddenly called his office and made an appointment to meet at noon at a shop that sells Western-style pastries that drink milk.He thought there was another quarrel between the husband and wife, so he drove to the pastry shop by bicycle.The old sign has been removed!put a new tagline "Serve the workers, peasants and soldiers".On the wall above the seats in the shop, there is a large slogan written crookedly in ink: "Fuck off, bourgeois bastards!" Red Guards from middle school "Destroying the Four Olds" seemed like a child's nonsense at first, and the great leader wrote an open letter to them, praising "Rebellion is justified," and youth violence was thus instigated.After all, he is not a smelly person, and when he goes in, the milk is still sold.Before he found a seat to sit down, Da Lu's wife came in, took his arm like his girlfriend, and said: "I'm not hungry right now, you go for a walk with me on the street first, I want to buy something." They left the pastry shop, and when they reached the street, she whispered that Da Lu was so frightened by the school's Red Guards that he shaved his head first, because his family owned real estate, and he was not considered a capitalist but also a small business owner. Hurry up and take away the package stuffed in the coal shed in their yard. It was Lin who saved him.Not long after he went to work in the morning, Lin passed by the corridor a few times—his desk was facing the corridor. He noticed that Lin was gesturing to him, so he came out of the office and followed Lin to the corner of the stairs at the end of the corridor. Seeing that no one was coming, the two stopped .Lin hurriedly told him to go home and get ready. The Red Guards of the agency set out immediately to search the belongings of Lao Tan, his roommate.He hurried downstairs, cycled hard, drove back sweating, and piled all his things on the ground beside his bed.I hurriedly rummaged through the drawer of the old study desk, and saw an old photo of Lao Tan wearing a student uniform when he was in college before liberation. The group of students who took the photo had the KMT's twelve-pointed white sun logo cap badge on their hats.He held it in his hand and made a paper ball, went out and threw it into the deep pit of the public toilet on the street outside the courtyard, turned around and returned to the courtyard, and the agency's car arrived. Four Red Guards from his agency entered the house, and Lin was among them.Lin knew that he was writing, but hadn't read his manuscripts. He was in love with him and didn't care what he wrote.Of course, she didn't come here for his manuscript. What is worrying is that he took a lot of photos of her. They are not very naked, but they are quite eye-catching. At a glance, it can be concluded that the two have long surpassed the relationship between colleagues and even revolutionary comrades.Lin is the youngest daughter of a vice minister. She is married. Her husband is a soldier. She also comes from an old revolutionary family. She works in a military research institute and develops nothing more than rockets or new weapons.He has no interest in national defense secrets, but is obsessed with this beauty. Lin is more active and fiery than him. Lin deliberately looked very relaxed, and shouted loudly: "Your room is so small! There is nowhere to sit." She clearly came here, of course, when Lao Tan was away. The dress she wore at that time had a very low neckline, and the zipper on the back could be opened to kiss her breasts, unlike changing it now She was dressed in a military uniform, and her long braids were loosely cut into two brushes and tied with rubber bands. The standard hair style for female soldiers in the army—it is also the style of the Red Guards today. "Get some tea, I'm dying of thirst!" Lin also deliberately opened the door, stood on the threshold, took out a small handkerchief and stuck it in, apparently to let the neighbors who were watching from behind the window in the courtyard understand that he was not the one they came to search, and made the search as lively as visiting. . He hurriedly made tea for everyone.Those few people said no, no, but it has already spoiled the strict atmosphere of this investigation.Besides, we usually know each other. Before wearing a red armband, we can't see the boundaries of family background. We seem to be equal to each other.The leader of the Red Guards, Danian, was a chubby boy who usually played table tennis and ball games with him during lunch breaks, and they got to know each other quite well.Danian's father is the political commissar of the army division, and he wears his father's old military cap, which has been washed light yellow and white, and is tied with an old belt that active soldiers don't use, which shows the revolutionary successor style of blood. When the Red Guards were first established, he and some non- Young people from the "five categories of red" were also invited to attend the meeting.This New Year's Eve came to prominence, sat at one end of the long table, and said to the young people who were not qualified to join the Red Guards: "Those who came to our Red Guard meeting today are all fellow travelers of our revolutionary team!" He also pointed out his name and said to him, "Of course you do too!"But he has read the History of the Communist Party of China and knows What does "fellow traveler" mean in the end.If this sudden attack hadn't been reported by Lin Feng and his manuscripts were found, he would have been ruined by this kid. I haven't pulled my face down on New Year's Eve; I just said: "We're here to check Tan Xinren's reactionary evidence. It has nothing to do with you. What are your things? Separate them." He also made a smiling face and cursed: "Things are falling apart, what else can I do to help?" And they all said: "It's none of your business, it's none of your business, where is his desk?" "That one, the drawer is not locked." He pointed them out and stood aside. This was the only defense he could make against his roommate, Lao Tan, and at the same time drew a line.He only found out afterwards that just as he was riding his bicycle downstairs, an order from Hongwei Qiuyi was posted in the front hall of the office building: "Find the historical counter-revolutionary Tan Xinren!" Lao Tan was isolated in the government building and lost his personal freedom. They dug out Tan's notebooks, translations, letters, photos and English books.Tan Yueyu translated some English novels, which were also quite revolutionary works by Asian and African writers.But there was an English novel with a half-naked foreign woman on the cover, so the book was put aside.Under the old newspaper at the bottom of the drawer; I also turned out a white envelope, and when I opened it, there were several condoms. "This old thing still does this kind of thing!" Danian took out one and shook it, everyone laughed. It wasn't that the parties involved were happy and relaxed. Everyone showed their innocence. He and Lin also laughed, but avoided eye contact. Later, at the mass meeting to criticize Lao Tan, it was found that there were The woman with the "improper sexual relationship" was suspected to be a spy network. Tan had no choice but to tell the widow that the Red Guards at the woman's workplace ransacked her home.Tan's drawer" Some sentimental old-style poems, perhaps addressed to the woman, have become "Nostalgic for the lost paradise, anti-Party and anti-socialism" is an ironclad proof. The Red Guards saw two loose bricks on the brick floor of the house and pried them up. "Shall I borrow a shovel from my neighbor?" He purposely asked Da Nian, so as not to be in the embarrassing situation of being censored, and at the same time, he wanted to play a prank, why not dig three feet into the ground for archaeological excavation, the fear came from after the incident happened.He went to the retired old worker's house next door to borrow an iron pick—they really dug it up, making the house full of mud and broken bricks with nowhere to go, so the pick was thrown away, and no one did it again. He later found out that the security office of the agency had received a report from the street residents' committee that there was a radio transmitter in the house, and it must have been the old worker surnamed Huang from the neighbor next door.He and Tan went to work. The old man who retired at home heard the noise from the radio that was off in the locked door, and assumed that he was sending a secret telegram. loyalty.After the search, he met the old guy face to face in the yard, and the old man's face was still full of wrinkles.Disaster just passed him by.The Red Guards left. He looked at the bricks and earth that had been dug up in a room, and thought that it would be too late when the disaster happened to him, so he made up his mind to burn those manuscripts and diaries; finally buried It describes his poetry, childhood memories, adolescent narcissism, fantasy and dream of being a writer.