Chapter 16 Chapter Sixteen

Comrade Wang’s apartment in the Guandi Temple is a gloomy place, but in Gu Gang’s eyes, compared with the peasants’ homes he lived in, it is far different, somewhat bookish. It's like going back to your own home.It was a bit like the accountant's bedroom in his memory, where he liked to play when he was a child.This room is very large and very long. It used to be a shrine for offering sacrifices.The idols and shrines have long since been removed, but the dust and cobwebs that have accumulated over the years have remained intact.The oil lamp only illuminated a small corner, and in the entire empty room, there was only one corner where there was a bed, a table, and a mess of pens, inkstones, books, books, and other things, as well as a few chairs. Together with the bench, it constitutes a bedroom and office space.The little place was filled with a smell that the country people called "old man's head," caused by loneliness and filth.On that bitterly cold night, the smell seemed to be stronger.

Gu Gang sat on the edge of the bed, very restless, and kept pulling out the stubble on his face with two fingers, gradually pulling it from the middle of the man to the cheek.In the main hall outside they were torturing those who had been arrested for grabbing food. "Ah! Ai yo!" A rhythmic moan came in. "Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The voice gradually weakened and became inaudible, and then suddenly turned into a howling of a powerful and abnormal animal, screaming straight out of its throat. That can't be true, Gu Gang thought to himself.It's like those ghost stories in the past, a traveler fell asleep in an ancient temple, sleeping on the porch, and was suddenly awakened by the sound of torture in the middle of the night. The Shinto in this temple was sitting in the hall, interrogating the dead.The protagonist in that story peeped in secretly, the hall was brightly lit, and he suddenly recognized a long-dead relative among the prisoners, who was suffering the cruelest punishment.He couldn't help screaming wildly.Immediately, the vision went dark, and all images and sounds disappeared.

Cry out, maybe all of this will disappear without a trace at once.In the city, I have always heard that "the Communist Party never uses torture." Sometimes I also heard stories of some landlords and state agents being tortured, which were rumors spread by the enemy's spies. If they were really landlords or spies, that would be another matter, but these people sitting on the tiger stools were obviously ordinary farmers.He knew that Comrade Wang really knew that they were not the minions of the secret agents.Of course, it's nicer to say this, and Comrade Chun Wang can save a little bit of face when the report goes up.Did Comrade Wang frame them just for this reason?If this person is really so bad, Gu Gang feels that his own life may be ruined in his hands sooner or later.

"Stop thinking about it," he said to himself.He felt an urgent need, bordering on despair, to believe in Comrade Wang and everything he stood for.He has told himself a thousand times since the Communists came. "Trust them. For your own good, you should have faith." If "religion is the opium of the people," then this faith is now the opium of the intellectuals, who can make them suffer with joy and make people happy. Disturbed thoughts and feelings are paralyzed, and there is no reproach from the conscience. Gu Gang told himself that he was facing a serious test.He needs to get over his petty bourgeois sentimentalism.Of course, this peasant uprising was nothing more than an accident, an isolated phenomenon, which had no place in the overall situation.If this tragedy is faithfully reflected, it will affect the prestige of the government; if the prestige of the government is affected, it will eventually affect the welfare of the people.Therefore, for the sake of the people themselves, they should be convinced that the incident was created by the enemy's secret agents.

It was really not easy for Comrade Wang to carry out this task. He had to squeeze out a story from these rioting masses, temper it, and make their confessions roughly the same before they were sent to the district court for trial.He had no choice but to use corporal punishment. Gu Gang thought this way, trying to convince himself, but when he thought of Yuexiang, he couldn't feel relieved.He couldn't help worrying about her, not knowing what kind of fate she would encounter.If she had been arrested, howling under torture, he doubted he would be able to keep his cool. A door at the far end of the room creaked open.The light doesn't shine that far.Gu Gang raised his head and looked into the darkness. He vaguely felt that maybe the fragrance of the moon had come. As usual, before going to bed, he brought him a basket with full feet—that basket, which brought him warmth every day. It humiliated him at the same time.

It was Comrade Xiao Zhang, the militiaman, who came to fetch cigarettes for Comrade Wang.He found a pack of cigarettes under Comrade Wang's pillow. "No one needs to sleep tonight," he grumbled, yawning. "Comrade Wang is really working hard, and he doesn't stop." "He really should rest," Gu Gang said with a smile, "he was injured again today." "Isn't it? In fact, he just went to rest and hang them upside down for one night, and tell the truth if he dares to lie to them tomorrow." Gu Gang asked in a very casual tone if Tan Jingen and his wife were caught.Comrade Xiao Zhang replied that he hadn't heard it.

It was probably late at night when Comrade Wang went back to his room to sleep.Gu Gang fell into a sleepless sleep, as if he heard the creaking of the planks on the bed and the sound of spitting.The lights were blown out.Then the snoring woke him up entirely.It sounded as if the man was drinking—drinking down the thick night, pausing now and then to let out a short sigh of contentment. Gu Gang himself didn't know, probably he fell asleep again in the end.Because he suddenly woke up again.There was a burst of dense gunshots, crackling and clapping.Then he found Comrade Xiao Zhang standing in front of the bed, holding an oil lamp in his hand.

"It's on fire, the warehouse is on fire. Comrade Wang!" Xiao Zhang shouted. Comrade Wang sat up, struggled to put on his cotton uniform, and shouted, "Blow out the lamp!" But Xiao Zhang has never fought in battle, so he doesn't understand the meaning of this order.Thought he must have heard wrong.In the chaos, Gu Gang remembered that he saw Comrade Wang's sleepy, swollen face reflected in the flickering lights, his bright orange face, and his forehead wrapped in a white bandage.He felt as if he saw a light in Comrade Wang's eyes, almost joyful.He must have felt a little more comfortable in his conscience—now that this matter was indeed persuaded by the Kuomintang guerrillas behind the scenes.

When Comrade Wang rushed to the outdoors, the gunfire stopped for some reason.All I could hear was the dogs in the village barking and the militiamen running around, beating gongs frantically, from the front of the village to the back of the village, calling the fire alarm.The shouts of "Fire! Come to fight the fire!" can be heard from a distance. On the ridge of the warehouse stood a row of tongues of fire, flapping and rolling in their own wind.The gunfire remained silent.People began to appear, huddled together here and there, squinting in wonder at the firelight, with their usual expression, half frowning, half smiling.

Comrade Wang's head was wrapped in a bandage, and he ran around shouting until his throat became hoarse. "Fellows! Let's put out the fire! Save the warehouse! It's the people's property! Let's defend the people's property!" But the crowd still flinched and did not dare to go forward, because the gunshots just now were so violent.Then suddenly a person shouted, "Hey, that's the firecracker in the warehouse! The firecracker is on fire!" Everyone passed it on one by one, and this sentence spread immediately, and finally even Gu Gang in the Guandi Temple heard it, so he also became more courageous and came out to participate in the fire fighting work with all his strength.

Everyone rushed to the stream with buckets and various containers.There are also people who are working diligently and seriously.The rice in the storehouse was the fruit of their labour, and their love for that grain was unselfish and unthinking; and it pained them more than any miser to see such a rich treasure go up in flames.But there are also some people secretly cheering that so many people died while robbing food during the day, but unexpectedly the warehouse caught fire that night, avenging their own people.But they also pretended to be enthusiastic on the surface, pretending to be very similar, just shouting "firefighting" to others, and on the other hand, they rushed to the bank of the stream to fetch water. part. The water that was splashed on the ground immediately froze and made the ground very slippery.Gu Gang was walking over with a bucket of water, when he slipped suddenly and poured the whole bucket of ice water on himself, the pain was equivalent to a very heavy blow.His chin was resting against something, which was covered with a layer of cloth and padded with cotton inside, but the thing itself was hard.For a moment of utter horror he thought it was his leg. ──I broke my leg!Then he found that he was throwing himself on a dead body, and there were many dead bodies lying here and there in this area.It was indeed a leg, but not his own.While he was struggling to get up, he quickly touched his face with one hand, and the glasses on his face were still intact.In this kind of country place, if you accidentally break your glasses, it's all over, it's unimaginable.He could not help but feel palpitations, and since then lost his courage, he immediately withdrew from the firefighting group, stood far away, and acted as a person who stood by and watched.His cotton uniform was getting soaked, making him shiver all over. Still beating the gong desperately there.The incessant "choke choke choke" awakened an ancient horror, as if the village was being besieged by bandits.The open land in front of the village was bathed in the dancing red light, and the militiamen rushed through the red light waving their red-tasseled guns.One of the militiamen inside insisted that when the fire first started, he had seen a woman running in the shadows and was chased by him until he drove her into the fire. Gu Gang stood by and watched, the regal sound of the gong and the monstrous flames made him feel a kind of primitive ecstasy. "Isn't this what I was looking for?" he thought excitedly. "A powerful and heart-pounding scene, which serves as the climax of my film. It is no problem just to move the story back a few years, recalling how in the past, under the rule of the reactionary government, the peasants were starved, rioted, looted Grain burning warehouse." Then he remembered that the "Literary News" and "People's Literature" had very clear instructions on the selection of materials for literary works.Writers should not always linger on the ugly past, expose the dark side of the old society to the fullest, work very hard, and then drag a short bright tail.This is actually a feeling of nostalgia for the past.The past should be put aside and devoted to writing new and constructive aspects.Now there is no need to curse the darkness, but to sing praises to the light! But Gu Gang still cursed in his heart.He stared wistfully at the gradually lowering flames.The warehouse has been swallowed up, leaving only a skeleton.The wooden frame stands in the entire golden flame, which can be seen clearly.Huge black ash rested on the roof beams like birds.They are called "magpies and ravens," and they are quite rightly so.These wicked birds stood in a row, looking left and right, turning their heads one way and the other, in eerie silence in the fading golden light.