Chapter 24 Chapter Eighteen

It was raining heavily.Li Xiangnan pushed the car out of the county party committee compound, and met Xiaoli who was wearing a raincoat.Seeing him, Xiao Li smiled happily and asked, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to Chen Village." For some reason, Xiao Li looked him up like that: "What are you going to do?" "Go and see the rest place." Li Xiangnan replied. "Shall I go with you?" "It's raining so hard, what are you going to do?" Li Xiangnan said. Xiao Li glanced at him again, but said nothing. Li Xiangnan smiled and raised his hand: "Then I'm leaving." He got on the bike and rode away.

The streets of the county town in the heavy rain were empty, with water flowing like a river.The wind and the rain violently swept the water surface, stirring up patches of white mist. As soon as I left the county, I felt suddenly enlightened.A tree-lined road goes downhill and bends and stretches forward. In the distance, on the shadows of villages, the west mountain is like a cloud, and the shadows of the mountains in the south and north are also faint.The heavy rain covered dozens of miles of Sichuan with great momentum.The gravel road rustled softly under the wheels.The wind whipped the rain and whipped my face, which hurt numbly.The poplar trees on the side of the road passed by one by one, and the trapezoidal wheat fields on both sides also flashed quickly.After going down a slope and crossing a stone bridge, the chaotic river was making noise under the bridge, and after turning a corner, it turned around and ran forward side by side with the road.What used to be a pebbled beach is now full of rapids.In the rain and fog, the gray village is Chencun.In the distance, he saw the shadow of the old locust tree, like an old man building an arbor with his hands.A feeling of unearthly tenderness welled up in him.He was born in Guling, lived in Chencun, and went to Beijing when he was six years old.The old locust tree is a vivid image in his childhood memory.

Now, Chencun Middle School is there, and Lin Hong is in Chencun Middle School. All of this impacted him in a complicated way. On the dusk of the weekend, Li Xiangnan and Lin Hong took a walk on the boulevard by the lakeside of Beijing Park, talking about the ideals that young people of that era were most willing to talk about. They talked about Max's answers to his daughter's questions. What is your understanding of happiness? Marx: Struggle. What is your favorite saying? Marx: I have what man has. ………… "Then what is your favorite color?" Lin Hong asked. "Red." Li Xiangnan replied, and then asked, "What about you?"

"I like red and white." He frowned strangely: "Why?" "I have liked these two colors since I was a child. White is pure and red is burning, isn't it?" He then noticed that she was wearing a red skirt and a white shirt. The contrast was sharp and coordinated.He also thought of a Chinese painting she painted: "Wrapped in Red, Extraordinarily Enchanting", in which a red sun hangs over the vast snow field. "What is your ideal?" Lin Hong asked. "Reform society." "And what's your favorite motto?" "indomitable."

She was lost in thought. "You don't like it?" he asked. "No, I'm very moved." He stopped, looking at her; she stopped too, and turned to meet his gaze. The water of the lake, dyed red by the sunset glow, glistened beside her. Under a few elm trees on the side of the road, a small house with white and gray walls flashed past. In the open window, a young man was leading a little boy to work on a sewing machine.This is a small tailor shop run by two brothers.They looked up and saw Li Xiangnan, recognized him as the secretary of the county party committee, and waved to him warmly.

When we arrived in Chencun, the rain had subsided, and the sky was still covered with haze. A few streams of clouds filled the top of our head like smoke, and there were still very thin raindrops.The road is very muddy.He pushed the car to Chencun Middle School.Walking through rows of classrooms, there is a row of gray brick bungalows at the end near the playground.After asking, the one on the far side is Lin Hong's dormitory.The car leaned against the eaves, and the raincoat was taken off and put on it.He took out his handkerchief to wipe off the rain on his face, wiped the mud off his feet on the steps, and walked up the steps to knock on the door.For some reason, he was a little nervous.

There was no sound in the room.The door was ajar, he hesitated for a moment, looked back at the empty playground, opened the door and walked in. The house is very clean.There is a white gauze curtain hanging on the single bed, a white tablecloth is spread on the two-drawer table by the window, malted milk is brewed in the glass on the table, and a stainless steel spoon is inserted in the glass, which is still slightly steaming. Think she just went out.There was a faint fragrance in the room. When a mature unmarried man stepped into a young woman's room, he would inevitably feel a little strange.He stood waiting for a while, then calmed down and surveyed the room.

There is a violin hanging on the wall, and there is a piano case, which is a lute.There is a desk next to the bookshelf, on which there are brushes and ink, and rice paper, which is a Chinese painting being drawn.He looked around and found that the first characteristic of the room was that it was white everywhere: the mosquito net was white, the sheets were white, the curtains rolled up to one side were white, the tablecloth was white, and even the bookshelves covered the dust. The curtain and the cloth cover on the outside of the violin case are also white.She also likes white as much as ever.But what about red?There is only a little bit, a plastic doll in red clothes standing on the corner of the table by the window sill.He walked pensively to the desk covered with rice paper. He was painting the distant view of the Seven Bodhi Peaks in the rain. Lines, as if the painter's gaze suddenly becomes irritable when he moves from the distant view to the close view.

There are dozens of drawings in the iron clips on the wall.He took them down and looked at them one by one, and they were all drawn by her.There was a painting that he stopped when he saw it.This is Lin Hong's self-portrait, with a melancholy and indifferent expression.Another picture is the ancient tomb snow scene.Mountains and rivers, fields, distant forests, and nearby villages are all covered in snow, a piece of white with a few dark lines to set off the whiteness.He remembered her painting "Wrapped in Red, Extraordinarily Enchanting" in the past, and he found that the red that Lin Hong liked had disappeared from her painting.

He suddenly felt melancholy.Ten years have passed.The changes that life has brought to her must have been enormous.Looking further down, there are several snow scenes again, all confused and desolate.Then there were several pictures of strange rocks, again with that kind of messy and strong lines. He noticed one of the small paintings, a seven or eight-year-old girl with her innocent eyes wide open. On her face, she finally saw a rare Red. He stood for a while, then went back to the table and sat down.The layout of the room and the color tone in the drawing made him enter Lin Hong's world.What kind of state of mind she is at the moment has roughly emerged.He found that several pieces of glass on the window were broken, pasted with white rice paper.

The winter of 1966 flashed before his eyes. The Siberian cold current is hitting the city of Beijing.In the howling northwest wind, the large-character newspapers on the walls on both sides of the streets of Beijing rattled.Lin Hong appeared in front of him silently like a shadow. "Where have you been for so long? I can't find you." He asked angrily. He hadn't seen Lin Hong for several months.She lowered her head and put her hands in the pockets of her cotton coat, silent. "How is Uncle Lin?" "he died……" A torn large-character newspaper was swept by the northwest wind and quickly rolled past his feet. "Where's Auntie?" After a while, he asked again. "Dead too..." He couldn't speak a word.It was only then that Lin Hong became thin and haggard. "Can you have me?" she asked in a low voice. Li Xiangnan had a sore nose: "Come on." He was organizing a team of less than 20 people and was preparing to walk to Yan'an. Since then, Lin Hong has become taciturn.All the way to Yan'an, she walked eighty or ninety miles a day like the boys in high school, her feet were covered with blood blisters and she didn't make a sound.Every time Li Xiangnan wanted to help her carry the backpack, she would silently grab the strap of the backpack and not let go.When she saw the Pagoda Mountain from a distance and everyone cheered and ran together, she also smiled.On the way back, some 20 of them stayed in a mountain village with only 30 households, where they worked for ten months. A year has passed. In the autumn of 1968, Li Xiangnan had just left his study class after being quarantined by the Workers Propaganda Team for four months because of his skeptical remarks about the "Cultural Revolution."At night, he walks alone on the school's weedy playground.The moonlight is cold.Lin Hong appeared from the dark shadow of the building. "Why are you here? The Worker Propaganda Team will pay attention to you," he said. "I've been coming a long time ago," she turned her head to look at him, "I won't disbelieve you." The two walked slowly side by side, silent for a long time. "I've signed up..." she said with her head down.Graduation assignments have already begun, and all junior high school students go to the Inner Mongolia Corps. "It's good to go to the Corps. They are all students from Beijing, and the conditions are more stable in all aspects." He said. "No, I... want to jump the queue with you." She said hurriedly, turning her head to look at Li Xiangnan. "You don't want to be with me." "why?" "I don't know what will happen to me in the future." Li Xiangnan was silent for a while, "In this case, I can't protect you, and may even cause you trouble." "I'm not afraid." "That's not good. After I take root in the village, the situation will get better. If you want to come, then transfer, okay?" She walked slowly with her head down, without speaking. "What are you thinking?" Li Xiangnan asked. "I'm thinking about your favorite motto." After a while, she said. "indomitable?" "Will you be discouraged later?" "No. There are four more words to be added after perseverance: the more frustrated, the more vigorous." She raised her head and turned to him: "I also think you will never lose heart." "Yes. A person's knowledge and experience can be increased. Once the enthusiasm is lost, it will be difficult to obtain it again." "A man's life is reflected in his struggle." "Moreover, struggle is not abstract. Without striving for an ideal society, struggle loses its greatest meaning." Li Xiangnan said. She was silent for a long time, then looked at him and asked, "But what is the current social ideal?" He was silent, and after a while, he said: "We will have an ideal society." "Through our struggle, yes?" In the moonlight, their eyes met. Why didn't he take her to jump in line?For years he had regretted it.He didn't expect to see each other again as soon as he went to the countryside, and even the audio was cut off.Now, Lin Hong has been found, but more than ten years have passed. The door opened, and it was the old man in the school reception room: "Mr. Lin is not here? Her letter." "Do you know where she went?" "You look for her behind the school, under the old locust tree by the river." The old messenger left.Li Xiangnan pulled the door out of the room. As soon as I left the back door of the school, I saw a rushing river.Because of the rain, the water was swelled, and the yellow and turbid water surface drifted with branches and grass leaves.After turning a few turns on the gravel road, we came to the big locust tree.Lin Hong was sitting on a bluestone by the water with a plastic bag on her back, staring at the turbulent river water in a trance.The muddy water washed against the shore, rolling small waves at her feet.A cloud of smoke hangs down from the locust tree, lingering above her head. He walked towards her.