Chapter 44 6. Fire Butterfly

Kaifeng in the summer of 1948 was humid and hot.Both the Drum Tower and the Iron Tower are feverish.The fiery red clouds also crossed the Yellow River to the Central Plains to gather.Finally one day, thunder from the sky came to Kaifeng accompanied by roaring cannons.Before my brother and sister can get home from boarding school, the battle begins.The People's Liberation Army quickly entered the city and occupied the main urban area.The Kuomintang troops retreated and resisted stubbornly at the Longting stronghold.The house my family rents is not far from Longting. The house is relatively tall, and it is the commanding height of the residential area.About one squad of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army drove into the yard, stared at the ridge of my house, and then climbed up to set up two machine guns on the ridge. The machine gunners lay down on the slope and fired fiercely at Longting.

Father also built his own fortification under the slope of the house.He first asked his mother to lead his two younger brothers to hide in a hut in the corner between the two big houses.It was also supported by a long desk, under which was spread grass thatch and a summer mat, and two thick quilts were covered on the table, and a copy of "Splitting Jade" handwritten by Aunt Wan'er, a Put on the fan, and let him and I get under the table together, leaning on a table leg and sitting diagonally.My father handed me a flashlight, and asked me to learn the principle of using a searchlight, and use the flashlight to aim at the music score and launch.He started humming the score to the beat of the fan, and told me to count the beats he beat.On the roof, the fighting sides are firing fiercely, and the sound of machine gun fire is like wind.There is a kind of bullet called "air bombing", which keeps exploding in the air, making strange rattling noises, and breaking the branches in the yard.I said loudly: "Dad, I can't hear your voice!" My father said into my ear: "I didn't tell you to listen to my voice, you just watch my movements and count the time." Shells exploded behind the house.My father took a sniff and felt that the smell was unusual, so he stopped temporarily, drew a line with a pencil at the place where he stopped, and leaned into my ear and asked me loudly: "Why is this shell so fragrant?" I said: " It blew up the peanut factory behind our house.” My father nodded in relief, and asked again: “How many beats?” He got a clear and unmistakable answer, recorded the number on the music score, played the beat again, and continued to listen Humming without sound.As my father finished the work, the sound of the gunfire began to fade away.My father said: ""Splitting Jade" has twists and turns, and the tide rises and falls. The total is 480 beats. You just memorized 478 beats. There is a small mistake. It is to blame the one who has no good intentions for peanuts. Cannonball."

The cooks of the People's Liberation Army brought two baskets of hot steamed buns, and spread out a mat on the steps under the eaves, and the steamed stuffed buns were piled up on the mat.The soldiers on the roof took turns to come down to eat buns.A fifteen or sixteen-year-old soldier found a flashlight under the table, so he tilted his submachine gun under the table and shouted, "Come out!" His father poked his head out and said, "Are you calling me? "The little soldier asked: "What are you doing?" The father came out and said, "I'm reading the music score, an ancient music score." "My father said: "Oh, please wait a moment." He began to rummage through the boxes and cabinets, and finally remembered it. He hurried over to lift the quilt, and found his professor's certificate from the desk drawer under us. .

I decided that this was my father's mistake, because the professor's certificate had the signature and seal of the Minister of Education of the Kuomintang government. What's worse, there was the Kuomintang's "blue sky and white sun" mark in the middle of the top of the certificate.The father presented the certificate to the little soldier, who was probably illiterate, but fixed his eyes on "Blue Sky and White Sun", and hurriedly called the platoon leader to study his father's certificate and music score together.The platoon leader looked at the score, looked puzzled, then looked at the professor certificate, and asked, "What is a professor?" My father said, "A teacher is a professor who teaches, and a professor is a professor who teaches. I am a professor at H University. Teaching." The sound of guns and guns became more and more intense.The platoon leader wanted to stuff the professor's certificate and music score into the little soldier's meal bag, but he couldn't.The father hurriedly handed over the black leather bag and said: "It should be put here." The platoon leader adopted his father's suggestion and said to the little soldier: "You immediately submit him and these two things to the headquarters for review. The headquarters is located in the university. .”

When my father was taken away by the little soldier, he was wearing a white blouse and pajama pants, as if he had been picked up from the bed by someone, and was ordered by the little soldier to carry his leather bag away, with a nondescript look.The mother ran out of the hut and said to the father: "This must be a misunderstanding, you will come back safely, yes!" The father said: "Very well, I am going to Xiyizhai to get some books and newspapers back." As soon as my father walked out of the yard, there was intensive machine gun fire on the street.I ran to my father and said, "Dad, I'll go with you." My father said, "Very good!" He patted my head and said, "You have to protect this thing." "Chirp" passed over the head, the bullet hit the brick wall, and the wall was "pounding" with green smoke, and pits appeared one after another.The little soldier ate the buns in big mouthfuls, and issued orders behind him from time to time: bend down!sideways!Slip along the wall!The most appalling thing is: lie down!My father and I followed suit one by one.

I am very envious of the brave and fearless appearance of this little soldier.He kept his face tense and kept a few steps away from us.As soon as he heard the sound of the plane, he would get excited, gritted his teeth, and aimed his gun at the plane, as if expecting the plane to fly over to compete with him, and cursed: "Damn things!" I remembered the refugee children's shelter Yang Suo, I think Yang Suo looks like this in military uniform. Father was taken into Building No. 7 on the campus of H University.The little soldier handed over his father and the black leather bag to the officer in Building No. 7.The officer handed his father over to a chief who was busy on the phone.The chief looked at the professor's certificate and said in surprise, "Professor Zhang, the bombardment is raging, why did you come here?" The father said, "It's not that I want to come, it's your subordinates who sent me here!" The chief said "Playing the piano randomly!" He glanced at the title of the music score, and said with a smile, "Good guy! The ancient music of the Ming Dynasty is the quintessence of the country! Haha, our soldiers insisted on using it as a secret code!" He combined the professor's certificate and Put the score back into the leather bag, handed it to his father, and said: "Professor Zhang, our soldiers have no time to learn culture, and we need to strengthen education in the future. Please go!"

The officer took my father out of Building Seven.My father said: "My study is in Xiyizhai. I'll go to my study." The officer said, "I'm sorry, but now this is an important military area. Teachers and students are all evacuated, so you can't come in and out at will." The officer led his father to the At a small gate in the northeast corner of the school, the sound of intensive shelling was thundering over the Longting Pavilion.A shell roared and landed on the playground, and the mud kicked up by the shell splashed on our faces and bodies.The officer said: "Please go, I'll see you off soon!" The father shook off the dirt on his body, smiled at the officer's back and said, "Can you give me a gun?"

My father and I were on the open ground between the school wall and the city wall. We had to pass a distance of about one thousand meters from north to south before turning west into the urban area.There was no one around, only my father and I were walking south.I suddenly felt the loneliness of me and my father, and I became someone who neither side in combat had time to take care of nor was interested in.But a plane came from the sky in the south.The sound of shooting into the sky sounded from the ground.I felt that the plane was flying towards my father.Father's white shirt and white trousers were set against the brown open ground, and the black leather bag in his hand shone brightly. Looking from the sky, it must be very dazzling.My father also seemed to notice that the plane was staring at him, so he covered my head with the leather bag, and said to the plane, "Take a good look, you don't want to vent your hatred to an obvious non-military target!" As soon as it landed, the plane swooped down with a frightening roar. My father hugged me and hugged me tightly on the ground. A huge shadow carried countless birds and flew overhead. Wisps of soil smoke splashed in front of and behind me.My father and I were lifted up by the violent air waves and fell to the ground.The plane flew north.My father found that we were all still intact, pulled me up and said, "Come on, this is a big joke!" We continued south.I felt the roar of the plane again on the back of my head.The plane turned back from the north and plowed against the scalp like a hard plowshare.There are straight walls on both sides, and we have no place to hide ourselves.Father raised his face and stared directly at the roaring plane.Then he trembled violently, raised his right hand, and dropped the purse abruptly, blood gushing out from his wrist like waves.My father pinched his right wrist tightly with his left hand and asked me, "Are you okay? Don't be afraid, let's go!" The plane turned back from the south again.The father showed an angry and desperate expression. It was the expression that the sky was about to fall and he had to hold his head against it. The father said: "Son, we have nowhere to hide, nowhere to hide, so let's go straight up!" Father walked leisurely, even with a radiant face.I was picking up the purse my father had left behind when the plane swooped down again.The father still pinched his right wrist with his left hand and walked straight forward, blood was sprinkled on the road.A huge shadow flew over the head with a terrifying thunderbolt, and my father jumped up as if dancing, blood splashed like flower petals, rolled softly in the air, and fell heavily on the ground.I lost my purse and ran over, hugging my father tightly.Blood was gurgling from my father's neck and chest, staining his white tunic bright red.My father looked at me, "gurgled" in his throat, and called out: "Son!..." Leaving a self-deprecating wry smile, he closed his eyes forever.

At the southern end of the open field, the little warrior escorting his father was fighting the plane.With a submachine gun in his hand, he circled an empty bunker that was riddled with holes.The plane was coming from the south, and he turned to the north side of the bunker to shoot at the plane.The plane turned back from the north, and he turned to the south of the bunker.He stared at the plane with contemptuous and even provocative eyes, hopping and jumping under the bunker that was bursting with flames and gunpowder smoke, aiming at the moment when the plane was diving down and fiercely shooting at it, as if he was playing tricks on an emergency A black old raven with a strange brain.When the plane flew away with a whimper, he climbed up the bunker, urinated in the direction the plane was going away, and then sat cross-legged on the top of the bunker, just like sitting on a stack of straw at home, and continued on. I ate the buns.His expression tells me that he has become the master of this world.This scene will always remain in the folds of my memory, corresponding to my father's fragility and helplessness.My father was only nudged by a war that excluded him, like a sheep with its throat cut, and fell into a pool of bubbling blood, life lost in an instant.I also lost my father's purse in the narrow passage between the two walls, and I cannot forgive myself.

My father was forty-three years old, and he only had 20 years to study, and more than 8 years were shrouded in the flames of war.Including "Guzi Quyan" published by Nanjing Zhengzhong Book Company after his death, his writings in his life only amounted to more than 2 million words. My mother buried my father on a "random graveyard" in the eastern suburbs of Kaifeng, a green grass field belonging to lonely ghosts.The cousin, wearing an octagonal hat and military uniform, also appeared at his father's cemetery.When the mother led her five children and burned a sacrificial letter to their father with tears, the uncle comforted the mother: "Their father will leave before dawn, and you must stand up to welcome the dawn." Thirty-four years later, The mother experienced many hardships that were not expected after dawn, and passed away without complaint or regret, at the age of seventy-three.At that time, I was wandering around the foot of Songshan Mountain with a small bag that was wet in the autumn rain, and I didn't get the telegram that my mother was critically ill in time.The elder sister and younger brother cremated their father's remains, and buried them together with their mother's ashes in Kaifeng Xijiao Cemetery.

When my father was buried on the "unknown grave", someone saw a pale woman holding a black umbrella and came to visit my father's grave.It was the evening of Ching Ming Festival, and the grave-sweepers had already left the cemetery.She stood alone by the tomb, only the silent drizzle accompanied her silent weeping.She burned a thick stack of writing paper in front of the tomb, and the fire butterflies fluttered lightly, with broken musical notes hanging from their wings, falling one after another in the drizzle.She didn't know that my mother was watching her in the small hut where the farmers took care of the crops. There was no jealousy, only compassion with tears. 2002 Spring Festival first draft, revised in August