Chapter 41 Section 41

Mind went blank.Outside the car window, the gray and desolate Great Plains, the bare tree branches on the side of the road flashed by.He didn't sleep all night and was very tired, but he didn't feel sleepy at all!Kai stared out the window, still in disbelief that he had escaped just like that.The train passed the Yellow River Bridge, and the fields were a little gray and green, and the wheat that had passed for a long time began to turn green.After another two or three hours, I stopped for a few stops, the passing branches turned gray, and a bare tree had a little green leaves, and then I saw the moist new leaves of poplar trembling in the wind, bringing early spring news.You are saved, the words welled up in his mind.

After crossing the Yangtze River, the fields were verdant and green, and the gaps between the seedlings in the paddy fields reflected the shiny blue sky. This world was so real, and he was relieved, and fell asleep. After changing trains!Then I took a long-distance bus and bumped on the rugged mountain road. The dilapidated car was shaking like it was about to fall apart.Outside the car window, there were green hills and clusters of water-red rhododendron blooming everywhere in the bushes on the hillside. He was so excited. In the small county town in the mountainous area, at the end of an old street with bluestone pavement, he found Rong's home, an earthen house with a straw roof.Rong, a foreigner, did not do well here, but his own family, with a vegetable garden surrounded by green bamboos in front of the door, was enough for him to envy.Rong's wife is a local who works as a salesperson in a grocery store. They have a young son who is only a few months old and sleeps in a cradle in the main room.The sun was shining in the yard outside the house, and he was moved by a hen leading a brood of yellow-haired chicks to peck on the ground.

Rong's wife cooked for them in the cage house, and Rong asked about things in the capital and his situation, and he told some.Rong said, "What are you fighting for? Here the sky is high and the emperor is far away. The cadres in the county have also fought for a while, and it's none of the common people's business." "Rong, do you remember? We used to correspond to discuss philosophy, and we even got to the bottom of it, looking for the ultimate meaning of life?" He wanted to tease. "Don't talk about philosophy, it's all a lie," Rong dismissed with a flat sentence. "Isn't it just to support the family, the thatched roof will leak when it rains heavily, and this year it will have to be replaced with new grass every day, and the tile-roofed house can't be built."

Rong's peace and indifference made him come back to life.He thought, he should live a real life like Rong, so he said! "I'll just go to the mountains and find a village to settle down!" But Rong said: "You have to think about it. You can go in that kind of mountain, but you can't get out. You are always dreaming, so be realistic!" Rong also helped him plan to go to a village with electric lights and a direct bus. If he had an emergency, he could be sent to the county hospital on the same day. "If you want to take root, you have to build a good relationship with the rural cadres and those bosses. Beijing is so bad! When you report to the county, don't talk to those cadres!" Rong warned.

"I know, I don't have delusions anymore," he said, "This is for refuge, and I will find another girl from the countryside to have children!" "I'm afraid you can't do it," Rong smiled. Rong's wife asked him: "Really? I'll tell you one, it's easy!!" But Rong turned to his wife and said, "Hey, listen to him!" He took a fancy to a mud house adjacent to different families next to the primary school in this small rural town. The production team had just built it. The rafters and tiles were added by genius, and the partitions were filled with earth and stone walls. Touch lime.The ceiling on the roof was not installed, and rain stars fell from the cracks in the roof tiles when it rained.No one has ever lived in this house, so he filled the airy gaps between the earthen walls and the wooden frames of the doors and windows with lime mortar, pasted white paper inside the window panes, and set up a plank as a bed.Put bricks on the dirt floor, put a few bookcases, cover with a piece of plastic sheeting, put bowls and chopsticks and daily necessities, put a pottery water tank in the house, and order a desk at the woodworking shop in the small town, it is very easy. Satisfied.

After returning from the moraine grass in the water field, I washed the mud on my legs and feet in the pond covered with duckweed, made a "cup of green tea", sat down on a small bamboo chair with a backrest, and looked at the mountains on the opposite side in the dew and rain. Under the eastern fence of the chrysanthemum, I can see Nanshan leisurely", he thought of Tao Yuanming's poems, but he was not as leisurely as a scholar-bureaucrat.Every day, at dawn, I heard the village broadcasting speakers singing "Dongfanghong, the sun is rising, China has a hair...", and I went to the paddy fields with the farmers to plant rice seedlings.However, there is no need to pretend to recite Mao's quotations any more.After a tiring day, without the supervision of others, it is enough to have a cup of tea, lean on the back of the bamboo chair, and stretch your legs.Lying alone on this wide plank bunk at night, you don't have to be wary of talking in your sleep, it's a real happiness.

It's nothing more than being a farmer from now on, earning food with strength.He has to learn all the farm work, plowing fields, planting seedlings, cutting rice, digging manure, and carrying loads. He doesn't expect that salary to last for a long time.He had to blend in with the villagers, so that no one would think he was suspicious, settled down here, and maybe died of old age here, and found a hometown for himself. After a few months, he could almost keep up with the work speed of the villagers, unlike the decentralized cadres who came from the county and went back to the county every three days to find an excuse.The local cadres are considered masters in the eyes of the peasants, and Shimoda is only putting on a show, but he has received unanimous word of mouth, thinking that he has won the trust of the peasants and township cadres, so he opened the nailed book boxes.

Tolstoy's "Dark Forces" play is on the surface of the bookcase, and the water seeping through the cracks in the wood makes the old man's beard yellow on the cover.This script was written about a farmer killing infants. He was shocked by the dark and tense psychology, which was completely different from the aristocratic spirit of Toshi's early years of "War and Peace".He didn't look through it again, for fear of affecting the peace he had just gained in his heart.He wanted to read some books far away from this environment, some very distant stories, pure imagination, something inexplicable, like "The Wild Duck" in "Ibsen's Plays".As for the first volume of Hegel's Aesthetics, he has bought it for many years and has not read it. Reading a little book can also help to mediate physical fatigue.He always put a few books of Marx and Lenin on the table, and before going to bed at night, he took out the books he wanted to read from the bookcase, and leaned on the bed with the light on to browse casually.The light bulb hangs from the beams of the house, and if there is no lampshade, it will illuminate the windows. The farmhouses near and far are dark at night, and they are reluctant to use electricity. Maybe it's even more suspicious, he thought.

He didn't read carefully, but fancied while flipping through the pages. He couldn't figure out the characters in the wild duck. The old man Hegel created something out of nothing, turning his aesthetic feelings into endless speculation. They all lived in another non-existent land. , and his real world is also incomprehensible to them, and it is impossible to believe it.He was lying under the tile roof listening to the sound of the rain. The rainy season was drenching everywhere. The weeds on the roadside and the seedlings planted in the paddy fields were growing wildly at night. Life is consumed in rice fields that are grown and cut down year after year.Life from generation to generation is like straw, and humans are like plants. Wouldn’t it be more natural not to have brains? The so-called culture accumulated by all human efforts is actually in vain.

Where is the new life?He remembered what Luo said. His classmate understood it earlier than him.Maybe he should find a rural girl and have children, which is his destination. There are a few days of free time before the early rice harvest, and the men in the village go to the mountains to collect firewood.He also stuck a machete in his trouser waist and followed into the mountain.He goes to the county once a month to collect his salary in the office where the cadres are in charge.Buying a load of charcoal is enough to burn for several months. Going up the mountain to cut firewood is nothing more than getting to know the environment of the four townships.

In the valley before entering the mountain, the most remote production team in the commune, a small village with only a few households, he saw an old man wearing copper-rimmed glasses sitting in the sun at the door of his house, holding a moth-eaten book in both hands. The thread-bound book, squinting his eyes, stretched his arms long, and the book was quite far away. "Old man, do you still read?" He asked. The old man took off his glasses, glanced at him, recognized that he was not a local farmer, and put the book on his lap with a huff. "Can I read your book?" he asked. "Medical books." The old man explained immediately. "What medical book?" He asked again. "Treatise on febrile disease, do you understand?" The old man's voice revealed contempt. "The old man is a Chinese medicine doctor?" He changed his tone to show respect. Only then did the old man let him take the book.This ancient medical book without punctuation is printed on grayish-yellow smooth bamboo paper. It must be the Qing version. The red pen circles between the moth-eaten holes and the small script annotations are still cinnabar, not to mention the ancestors. Probably the handwriting left by the old man himself in his early years.He carefully returned the precious book with both hands. Perhaps his respectful attitude moved the old man, so he called out to the woman in the house: "Move a stool for this comrade and pour a bowl of tea!" The voice of the old man is still loud. Because of years of labor, he may understand Chinese medicine and be good at maintenance. "You're welcome." He sat down on the wood stump. An elderly but strong woman, I don't know if it is the old man's daughter-in-law or Xu Xian's wife, came out of the main room, brought him a stool, and took a big clay pot, poured a bowl full of big leaves floating in it. of hot tea.He thanked him, took the bowl and held it in his hand, the opposite side was full of green hills, and the tops of fir trees swayed silently in the wind. "Where is this comrade from?" "From the town, from the commune," he replied. "Is it the devolution of cadres?" He nodded and asked with a smile, "I can tell." "After all, they are not locals, are they from the province or the region?" the old man asked further. "It was originally in Beijing." He simply explained. This time the old man nodded and stopped asking. "Don't leave, just settle down here!" He used a joking tone, which is usually used by farmers when they asked about him during field breaks, so as not to need to explain more, at most he could add a sentence of beautiful mountains and rivers, what a place!Needless to say with the obviously learned old man. "Is the old man a local?" he asked. "For so many generations, no matter how prosperous the world is, it is better than the land of my hometown," the old man said with emotion, "I have also been to Beijing." He wasn't surprised by this, he casually asked, "What year?" "Ah, it's been a long time. It's still the Republic of China. I studied in Beijing in the university in the 17th year of the Republic of China." "That's not true." He calculated, and according to the Gregorian calendar, it would have been more than forty years ago. "At that time, the professor dressed in a fashionable suit, a top hat, carried a civilized stick, and came to class in a rickshaw!" Now the professor is either sweeping the street or cleaning the toilet, but he didn't say that. The old man said that he was a government-funded student who was admitted to study in Japan, and he also had a graduation certificate from Tokyo Imperial University, and he had no doubts about it.What he wanted to know was how did the old man come back to this mountain?But it was inconvenient to ask directly, so I turned a corner: "The old man studied medicine?" The old man didn't answer, squinting his eyes and looking up at the opposite woods swaying in the mountain wind, he seemed to be basking in the sun.He thought this was his destination, learning some traditional Chinese medicine, so that he could see a doctor for the villagers, a way of survival.Marry another village girl and have children, and when I grow old, I will also have a caregiver. When I can't do farm work anymore, I will bask in the sun and read medical books as a pastime. At night, he wrote a letter to Qian, telling her that she had settled down in the countryside, which can also be said to be the whereabouts of Shui Jiu, and that she had an earthen house.If she agreed to live with him, they would immediately have a nest of their own.He still receives his salary at present, besides, she also has a salary after graduating from university. Together, the two of them are very well off in this village, and they can live a life of superiors with peace of mind. Full.He hoped that she would think about it carefully and give a definite answer.He also wrote that the elementary school in this rural area is going to resume classes, and plans to change it to a middle school. After a few years of suspension, these children will be of middle school age, and there must be one or two teachers who can teach middle school. She can come Teaching, the school still has to do.The only thing that Xinshanren didn't talk about is love, but when he wrote these, he was full of sense and saw hope again. This hope only needs Qian's consent, and this hope is so realistic that the two of them can realize it.He's even excited!In this troubled world, she can still find a place to live, as long as she is willing to share it with him.