Chapter 19 third chapter

Now, the father is finally back! This is not a dream, his father is sleeping next to him; this is not a dream, he himself is indeed sleeping on a soft Simmons bed.He touched the mattress under him, how different it was from the stiff wooden manger!The moonlight shines through the tulle curtains, casting diamond-shaped squares with fuzzy edges on the carpet, sofa, and bed.In the hazy moonlight the impressions of the day came back clearly now, and the general feeling he got was that he was totally out of place, unaccustomed to it all.The father came back, but it was a complete stranger.His father's return was nothing but a painful memory for him.It just broke his peace.

Although it was autumn, the room seemed to be getting hotter and hotter.He simply lifted the blanket, turned over and sat up, turned on the desk lamp, and looked around with indifferent eyes.Finally, his eyes fell on his own body.He saw the muscular arms, the calves with varicose veins, the feet with toes spread apart, and the yellow calluses on the palms and heels, and he thought of his father's conversation with him in the afternoon. In the afternoon, after drinking coffee, my father dispatched Kaimi Sisong to talk to him about the company's overseas development, the incompetence of his half-brothers, and his longing for him and his homeland. "...with you by my side, I can get a little comfort." My father said, "Thirty years ago, I felt more and more uneasy. I know that on the mainland, family backgrounds are valued and class struggles are always engaged in. Yours Life will not be easy, I even think you are gone, and I always miss you in my heart. Your appearance when you were a child often appears in my mind. Especially when you were born, your grandfather made soup cakes for you in the Overseas Chinese Guest House next to the Nanjing Ministry of Foreign Affairs On the day of the banquet, I remember the way you were in the arms of the nurse, as if it was yesterday. On that day, the Rong family of Shen Xin, the Guo family of Xianshi, the Liu family of Huafang, and the Zheng family of British American Tobacco They all came from Shanghai. You know, you are the eldest grandson of our family..."

Now, when he looked at his naked and muscular body under the light of the light green lampshade, he suddenly got an extremely novel impression.Because it was the first time he heard from his father the prehistoric period he remembered - the scene of his childhood, so the past self and the present self formed a very sharp contrast in his mind.Finally, he discovered the real reason for the estrangement between their father and son: he, the eldest grandson of the Zhongming Dingshi Family, was once wrapped in brocade clothes, and was surrounded by business tycoons from Beijing and Shanghai with them in the midst of red lights and green wine. The person whom his wife praised has become a veritable laborer!And the whole process between these two ends is ordinary labor mixed with so much pain and joy!After he was released from labor camp, because he was homeless, he was left on the farm to herd horses and became a herdsman.In the early morning, when the sun had just risen over the tops of the poplar grove, and the silver dew was still glistening on the grass, he opened the fence.Belly against belly, hip against hip, the animals scrambled to the pasture.Soil larks and croaking chickens burst out of the grass with joyful and frightened cries.They spread their wings, slanted across the horse's back, and shot towards the poplar forest like arrows.He rode on a horse and galloped on the grass that had been stamped with dark green traces by the horses, as if he had thrown himself into the embrace of nature all at once.There is a swamp in the meadow, covered with fine reeds.The cattle are scattered among the reeds, embracing the tender grass with their wide and flexible lips.Outside the swamp, they could only hear their constant snorting and splashing of water.He lay down on the slope of the mound and looked up at the sky. The snow-white and silver-white clouds were endlessly changing like life.The wind brushed the tip of the grass and the water surface of the swamp, bringing fresh moistness, the smell of horse sweat, and the breath of nature, and caressed his whole body from head to toe, giving him an extremely cordial feeling. soothe.He stretched out his arms and turned his head to his armpit. He could smell his own sweat, and he could smell the breath of his life mixed with the breath of nature.This feeling of euphoria is very wonderful.It could arouse in him a boundless reverie that he had melted into the wild wind; that he was everywhere, and yet he lost his uniqueness.His depression, his sorrow, and his feeling of grievance towards fate also disappeared, replaced by his love for life and nature.

At noon, the horses waded out of the reeds one by one, with round bellies, mane shaking, and tails flicking away horseflies and gadflies.They clustered around him trustingly and affectionately, looking at their shepherd with big, kind eyes.Sometimes the white piebald number seven would slip past the emaciated animals and saunter up to the lame one hundred, teasing and teasing him with his sparsely bearded lips.No. 100 did not show any weakness, adjusted his buttocks, and bounced back vigorously with his lame leg that had not touched the ground.Horse No. 7 dodged quickly, held its head high, and turned around among the horses like a naughty child playing a game of throwing a handkerchief, splashing silvery water.At this time, he would pick up the long whip and sternly yell a few times.As a result, all the horses would prick up their ears and cast reproachful glances at number seven.Horse No. 7 also calmed down, standing in the knee-deep swamp like a schoolboy who had been scolded, raised his lips, and boredly filed his long front teeth.At this time, he will feel that he is not living among a group of animals, but like a prince in a fairy tale, surrounded by a group of psychic gods.

Under the noon sun, in the distance, cloud shadows moved slowly at the foot of the mountain; in the swamp, a water bird called "buffalo" also felt the heat, and began to coo at the reed root with its beak.Here, there is not only the vastness of cattle and sheep seen under the wind and grass, but also the beauty of green mountains and green waters.The motherland, such an abstract concept, will be concentrated in this limited space, showing all her magnificent shapes.He felt satisfied: life, after all, is beautiful!Nature and labor gave him many things that he could not get in the classroom.Sometimes, the shower will rush to the grassland, it first hangs down the transparent rain feet like a curtain woven of black gauze on the hillside, turning the bright sunlight into a pleasing golden yellow, and sprinkles it on the vast grassland.Then, the rain feet slowly moved down the hillside with the wind.After a while, the big raindrops shot down obliquely, and the whole grassland was like a white mist.Before that, he had to drive the grazing horses into the forest belt.Riding on a horse, holding a long whip, and opening his clothes like wings, he gallops around the group of horses against the rain and wind, yelling at and directing the stray horses.Then, he will feel that his body is full of hot power, he is not small and useless; in the fight against the wind, the rain, and the gathered gnats, he gradually regains his confidence in himself.

The grazing staff of each team can only gather together at this time, and the shacks set up for them to shelter from the rain are moored on the grass and poplars like a boat in the white rain and fog.The shack was cool and damp, filled with the smoke of poor-quality tobacco.He listened to the witty conversations and rough jokes of the herdsmen, and was amazed that they didn't have his complex feelings and new sensitive experiences of labor and life.It turns out that they are simple and simple; although life is hard, they always hold happy satisfaction.He began to envy them. Once, an old herdsman in his sixties asked him, "People say you are a rightist. What do you mean by a rightist?" He lowered his head in shame, and said dully, "A rightist...a rightist is someone who has made mistakes." "The rightists are the ones who told the truth in 1957." The herdsman of the seventh team said, "That year, they were all scholars." Call him "Guo Yuzi".

"What do you call 'making mistakes' when you tell the truth? If you don't tell the truth, the world will be in chaos." The old herdsman said thoughtfully, smoking a pipe, "After all, it's better to work instead of being a cadre. People in their seventies don't lose their eyesight, deafness, or waist, and eat fried beans crunchy..." "So you have to work in your next life!" "Guo Yuzi" interrupted him with a smile. "What's so bad about working in the next life?" The old herdsman said solemnly, "Without working, no one can live, be an official, or study..."

Such short, unadorned, intermittent words would often, like a rainbow after a shower, arouse in him a beautiful feeling, making him yearn to return to the ordinary simplicity, to gain the same as they did. a pleasant satisfaction. In the long-term physical labor, in the continuous material transformation of man and nature, he gradually acquired a fixed living habit.Habit doggedly molded him in its own mold.Over time, everything in the past receded into a vague dream, as if it was a story about someone else read in a book.His memory was also broken by this fixed living habit and a completely different way of life from before.That life in the big city has become unreal, and only now is it real.In the end, he becomes a man fit to live on the land, and only on the land: he becomes a real herdsman!By the year when the "Cultural Revolution" began, people had long forgotten his past, and it was only at the frenzy stage that some people remembered that he was still a rightist and needed to be pulled out to show the public.However, at this time, several teams of herders gathered in the shack and after some discussion, they insisted that the grass condition at the bottom of the slope was not good, so they greeted the field department and drove the animals to the hillside with a huff.Of course he had to follow, because none of the revolutionary masses were willing to give up the revolution to replace him who couldn't go home for several months.The grazing staff helped him put the simple luggage on the horse's back, got on the horse, and left the noisy place with a wobble.On the main road, the herdsmen shouted happily: "Go! Let's go up the mountain, whoever their mother will marry!" Clouds of yellow dust rose from the road.In the distance, there is a hillside pasture that glistens like emerald... On this day, he will always regard it as a very special kind of warmth, which is so deeply etched in his memory.

Here is his pain, but also his joy, and his experience of all aspects of life, and his joy will become eclipsed and worthless without the comparison with pain.Last spring, he was suddenly called back to the field department from the pasture on the mountain.Holding a straw hat, he walked anxiously into the office with the sign of "Political Office".Deputy Director Dong read a document to him, and then told him that he was wrongly classified as a rightist in the past, and now he has corrected it, and he will be arranged to teach in a farm school.Deputy Director Dong's face was solemn and expressionless. An early fly buzzed around the office, landing on the wall for a while, and for a while on the filing cabinet.Deputy Director Dong followed it with his eyes.Holding a magazine in his hand, he is eager to try.

"You go, go to the next room to get the transfer order from Director Pan, and report to the school tomorrow." The fly finally landed on the desk, and the magazine "snapped", but the fly flew away cunningly, and Deputy Director Dong was disappointed again. sitting on the chair. "We must work hard in the future, and we must not make mistakes again. □!" He was so shaken by this sudden event that he was in a half-delirious state as if he had received an electric shock.Cognitively, he could not fully understand the significance of this correction in the political life of the country and the fundamental change in his own life; he had never even dared to imagine such a day in the past.But intuitively, his sense of happiness is constantly growing.A pure joyful mood, like alcohol in the veins, began to transform the stupor into a dizziness of excitement.First his throat was dry, then his whole body trembled slightly, and finally the tears poured out uncontrollably, and a deep cry echoed in the valley from his chest.This scene moved the solemn and expressionless Deputy Director Dong, who even reached out his hand to him.He held Deputy Director Dong's hand in both hands, and only then did he begin to have a dim hope for the future.

From then on, he put on a blue cloth uniform, carried textbooks, and walked into the classroom with chalk, reliving the beautiful dream of twenty-two years ago.The farm workers are not rich, and most of the children are dressed in rags, and the classroom smells of sweat, dust and dry sunlight.The children stared at him in amazement with wide-eyed innocent eyes behind their crude desks, and they never thought that a cattle herder would become their teacher.Before long, however, he convinced the children.He didn't make any special contributions; he didn't even dare to imagine that he was serving socialism and the "four modernizations", which he thought was the performance of heroes.He just did his job conscientiously in his own position.However, just like that, he was also respected by the children.On the morning when he arrived in Beijing, he saw a group of children standing on the path to school looking at his carriage.Probably they also heard that he found his father in a foreign country, and he was going to go abroad with his rich father.All of them suppressed the urge to bid farewell, and with dejected expressions, they silently watched his carriage cross the Junken Bridge, past the poplar forest, and disappear into the wasteland... Sometimes, the herdsmen would come from a dozen or so Come and see him.The old stockman is now in his early eighties, and his legs are still strong.He was sitting on the kang, holding Lingjun's "Modern Chinese Dictionary" and rubbing it: "It is still a learned person who can read such a thick book. It may take a lifetime!" "This is a dictionary, which is used to look up characters "" "Guo Yuzi" told him, "You are so confused!" The members lamented that in this new era, there is a need for culture. "You have to be educated in everything you do. Last time I got medicine for the animals, I almost fed the external use to the animals." "Guo Tunzi" said: "'Old You', you came out of our group. We people are finished. Our children can be entrusted to you..." "Yes," said the old herdsman, "if you teach my little grandson to read such thick books, it will be worthy of our poor buddies who rolled out on the pasture. friendship……" These useless words vividly illustrate the meaning of his work and make his hope for the future more clear.He smelled horse sweat, juicy grass, and the strong smell of nature; they brought him such a familiar and intimate feeling, completely with his father and Miss Song. It was quite different from the oppressive feeling I had at the time. He saw his worth in their eyes, in the eyes of the students, and in the eyes of the comrades who worked with him.What can be more precious and happier than seeing your own worth in the eyes of others?