The cart struggled over the creaking arched wooden bridge and arrived at the farm where we came to work.Under the wooden bridge is a channel that has dried up in winter.On both sides of the canal dam stood the yellow ice grass, motionless, and a few lizards, which were startled by the cart, crawled rustlingly in the grass.The wooden bridge is shabby, and the loess paved on the bridge deck has been crushed into fine powder by passing vehicles.Under the loess, the two ends of the reed handles used as the substrate are uneven, almost drooping to the bottom of the canal covered with mud, so that it seems that the bridge deck is much wider than the actual width.However, the handlebar still did not get off the carriage. Although the three horses were wheezing and staggering, rolling their begging white eyes, and puffing out clouds of cloudy white air from their thick nostrils, he still sat upright on the shaft of the carriage, knocking on the horses. With knees bent tightly clamping the chassis of the car, he skillfully and steadily drove the car across the trap-like bridge deck.The cattle are no stronger than I am.I'm already thin enough to look at, I'm 1.78 meters tall and only weigh 44 kilograms, which can be said to be skinny.The correctional doctor smacked his lips as I stepped off the scales and complimented me like this: "Not bad! You survived." He thought it was a miracle that I survived; he had a right to share my pride.But no one cared about these animals.The large, bony head rests on a clublike neck, with deep sockets above the eyes.When they are struggling, the yellow teeth that are worn and incomplete can be seen from the grinning mouth.The lip of a bay red horse was cut by the bridle, and a stream of bright red blood dripped from the wound, dripping along the road, which was very conspicuous on the yellow dust.

But the handlebar still sat on the shaft of the car, looking at the endless distance with indifferent and slightly melancholy eyes.Sometimes, mechanically shake the whip in his hand.Every time he shook, the skinny horses would shake their ears nervously. Especially the bay horse with the cracked lip was more nervous, although the handlebars didn't want to whip him.I understand handlebar indifference and indifference: are you hungry?Hungry miles!Are you starving?Well, that's not yet.No, well, then you have to work! Hunger, far worse than the whip in his hand, has driven pity and sympathy from people's hearts.However, I finally couldn't bear it any longer, and while looking at a few animals that were thinner than me, I asked him in the most kind tone that a person in the famine era could show: "Master Hai, is the field still far away?"

He evidently heard me, but he did not answer me, not even the slightest contempt on his face, and that was the most contemptuous expression.He was wearing a half-new black cotton trousers jacket. The clothes had very dense loops, about a dozen, in a neat row from top to bottom, very similar to the pectorals on European aristocratic clothing in the 18th century.Although he was drawn by three poor lean horses, he had an air of majesty and might. Of course I was ashamed of myself.I'm used to contempt, and I don't feel contempt for me anymore.I'm still intrigued.Today is the first day I started a new life after leaving the labor reform team. According to the correctional cadres, I have become a "self-supporting laborer".Nothing can put me off!

To be precise, this is only to the limit of the farm where we come to work, and it is still far away from the inhabited settlements.At least not a single house was visible as far as the eye could see.There is only a canal between this farm and the labor reform farm, but the carriage started here at nine o'clock in the morning.Look at the sun in the south, the time is probably past noon.The fields here are the same as those on the other side of the canal, and the sky here is even more the same as that on the other side of the canal, but that canal is the boundary between freedom and non-freedom.

On both sides of the road are rice fields.The stubble was left high.The stubble is fluffy, and it can be seen that it was harvested with a blunt sickle. Are the farm workers as lazy as we are, and don't even sharpen their sickles?But my regret is not this, it is a pity that there are no cornfields on both sides of the road.If it's a cornfield, maybe a few small corns that were lost can be found in the field.Pity!There are no cornfields here. The sun is warm.At the foot of the West Mountain, as in good weather in the past, a mist rose up, painting the jagged mountains with an unusually soft milky white.There was no cloud in the sky, and the blue vault covered the endless fields.And the blue of the sky is very layered. Starting from the top of the head, it gradually fades, and when it reaches the part where the sky borders the horizon, it becomes a faint blue smoke.Under the sun, the bare fields were a dazzling yellow.At this time, I felt itchy all over my body.The lice sensed the heat and began to crawl happily out of the seams.The louse is a lovely animal when it is not biting, and it makes me feel less alone and poor—and something alive touches me!I still have something on me!The cart turned a corner at the T-junction and walked onto another north-south rutted dirt road.Only then did I realize that the other people didn't follow the cart blankly like me, and they all disappeared.Looking back, they were looking for something in a field behind the rice fields with their heads down, as if they were struggling to memorize an incomprehensible ancient text.Oops!My nearsightedness always makes me very slow.They must have found something to eat.I separated the withered reeds, crossed a canal, a ditch, and when I hurried over with my best strength, the "director of the sales department" was holding a yellow radish, scraping the mud with the knife he carried, and squinting at him. I moaned complacently: "Ancestors have spirits—" "Ancestors have spirits" are the idiomatic expressions when encountering luck in the labor camp farm.For example, there is a piece of unmelted gnocchi in the rice meal; the barnyard buns I received are slightly larger than others; I am assigned to a relatively easy job where I can get some wild food; or I am in a good mood when I meet a doctor. , issued a full-time or part-time leave... People would shake their heads and hum: "Ancestors have spirits——" The word "ah" must be very long, with endless charm, similar to the Russian "Ula" .

I glanced at it: the yellow radish in his hand is not small!The guy is always lucky. The "director of the sales department" is also a "rightist", but listening to him tell his case, I feel that he should not be classified as a "rightist", it seems that he should be classified as a "corrupt element" or "degenerate element".He himself felt wronged, and privately said that the department store used him to make up the numbers in order to complete the "anti-rightist" task.At the "life review meeting", he learned that my great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather, and maternal grandfather were all famous people in modern and modern official and unofficial history, and that my father was a capitalist who had opened a factory. Said to me in an envious tone: "Like you, you are the real 'bourgeois rightist'! You have spent time in the world, eaten delicious food and drank spicy food! Like me, I have been begging for food since I was a child, and later became a soldier. Became a 'bourgeois rightist'! Bear! Even if you allow me to live a bourgeois life for a day, it would not be wrong to call me a 'rightist' again..."

However, he didn't treat me any better since then. On the contrary, he always mocked me with a kind of deep-seated jealousy, to show that after all, he has something superior to me.He was much older and weaker than I was, with a thin, dirty yellow beard and two clear snots from his nostrils.He didn't dare to fight me, but he showed off his foreign aid and good luck in front of me to arouse my appetite and salivation.He knew that this was the most effective form of torture.I also have an intuitive dislike for him, and I always want to get rid of him but can't get rid of him.Because they are all "rightists", the total score of the group is together.When he was released this time, he was dismissed from public office because his family was in the city, and he was assigned to work on this farm with me.

This is a yellow radish field.Unlike the green radish fields, there are no furrows in the yellow radish fields. When sowing, they are scattered all over the field like weed seeds.The yellow radish grows small where it is sown densely, and it is inevitable to miss it when digging.But this field has been searched for countless times, and the ground was frozen hard, so I squatted on the ground and picked many places with seedlings with my fingers, but I couldn't find any. The "director of the sales department" finished scraping the mud, stood not far from me, and chewed the radish like rock sugar, intentionally rendering the crisp, juicy, and sweet of the radish vividly with a loud voice.

"This radish is good! It's not bran..." He praised it while swallowing a mouthful. This kind of radish can only be picked out from the cracks in the fields that have been cracked by the cold.I am experienced.I searched carefully along the crack again, but still couldn't find it.It must be that there is exactly a yellow radish in the crack, that is to say, there is exactly one missing radish growing in the crack. It is conceivable that the probability of this is very, very small. The good luck of the "sales department director" is reflected here! Yet today I am not offended.I stood up straight, walked past him generously with a forced smile, and took a slanting shortcut to catch up with the cart containing our luggage.