Chapter 7 seven

At night, I got into the cotton net cover with the utmost care, like putting a precious vessel into a brocade box lined with satin cushions.Because I have to be careful not to stick my toes into the hole, or snag the thread, tearing the hole bigger and bigger, and I can't open the quilt too wide, otherwise my back will be stuck directly on the straw .Then, I took out the two barnyard buns I got in the morning from the padded coat covered in the net cover, sniffed them in the quilt tube, played with them, wrapped them in a face wash towel, and buried them in the straw under the wall.At night, it is so quiet that people think the world has left them.In the Laogai farm, there were footsteps of the staff on duty in the middle of the night.

So, another side of me started to move.The fragments of the mind that had been shattered by a painful reality that I did not understand gathered together and ground me with sharp balls like shards of glass.Late at night is when I am most awake. During the day, I am driven by the instinct of survival, I flatter, please, I am jealous, I play all kinds of tricks... But at night, I am surprised by all kinds of mean and evil thoughts during the day, just like Dorenger Lay saw the bewitched portrait of the civet, saw the dust on my soul; memory unfolded its scroll silently before my eyes, and I surveyed my day with deep loathing for myself.I tremble; I curse myself.

The terrible thing is not to fall, but to be very sober when you fall. I don't think that the depravity of man is entirely due to the objective environment. If that were the case, spiritual power would be completely powerless; this world would be purely a world of matter and force, and man would be reduced to the level of beasts.Saints in the history of religion can sacrifice their lives for gods, and materialist poets regard lofty ideals as their gods.If I'm not dead, that means I'm still alive.And what is the purpose of living?Is it just for living?What's the point of living if there's nothing higher than living?

However, now I am doing everything to live, to live to live. I think of Pushkin's verse: When Apollo did not ask the poet for a solemn sacrifice, the poet was thinking about trifles and worldly cares; his sacred harp was dumb, and his soul was immersed in cold Among the urchins in the game world, maybe he has lived a more empty life than anyone else. I am more than "hollow", just rotten!But what to do? "Sacrifice" must have a clear purpose.The hazy ideals of the past were critiqued and shattered before they took shape.Although I also doubt why things that can promote people's spirituality and extraordinary lyric power are all negated, but I also have to admit that the negation of reality is more powerful than all criticisms!So, what should be the new ideal, the new purpose of life?

It is said that for people from a family like mine, the purpose of life is to transform oneself, but it is obviously unreasonable to say that "sacrifice is to transform oneself".Because that's tantamount to saying that if I don't die, I can't reform well, and reforming myself will lose its meaning. Today, I have become a free person. If accepting the punishment is to atone for my sins, then the end of the punishment can be said to have paid off the crimes of the "rightists"; It's almost done.How will you live in the future?This cannot be ignored.However, this farm does not make me feel optimistic, and it cannot bring out my cultural knowledge to test the extent of my transformation.Although I was free, I felt that I did not land on a solid ground. On the contrary, it was more like being suspended in the air with no landing on all sides... My face was facing the wall.The corners smelled of damp mustiness and rat holes, and a faint, warm smell of hay.Beside him, the old accountant was gritting his teeth tenaciously, and the rattling sound of grinding his teeth seemed to symbolize our difficult future.The cotton wool was as cold as iron, and I didn't have any heat all over my body. The exclamation of "how could I have fallen to this point" arises spontaneously.I often say this exclamation.This has become an impenetrable mystery.Sometimes, I feel that it was just a big dream before the labor reform, and sometimes, I feel that it is a nightmare now. When I wake up the next day, I will still go to class to explain Tang poetry and Song Ci to the students, or read my favorite poems at my desk. Shakespeare.But the belly gave me the most materialistic education possible.Are you not facing reality?Then let you starve?My current situation is an iron reality!

So, is this destiny?But widespread hunger is making millions of people share the same fate.The voice of the philosophy lecturer sounded in my ears again: "The destiny of the individual and the destiny of the country are linked together." I quietly touched the "Das Kapital" under my head. "Maybe you can still learn from there how we are what we are today." Now, only this book is my connection with the world of ideas, and only this book can make me re-enter the spirit I used to be familiar with Going through life made me sublimate from steamed buns, yellow radish, pickled vegetable soup and porridge, and distinguished me from hungry beasts... The cotton netting was slowly warmed by my weak body temperature.I felt warm and soft and felt my presence.

What is existence?Descartes said, I think, therefore I am.How good it is to live, and how good it is to think!So good I didn't even want to sleep...but I fell asleep anyway.