Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

Where am I? ……at what time? ... on the way to escape?at the carpark?In a hospital morgue or in a cell?Is this the first time I have been released from the labor camp or the second time I have been released?Had he crossed the fence without permission at all? … Waking up on the bench, the instinct of a fugitive made him instantly raise his head in alertness.But before he opened his sleepy eyes, he already felt that there was no danger.He smelled a whiff of soot.He inhaled into his lungs all the soot and the stench emanating from various parts of people, and a kindness and peace filled his heart.Experience told him that the more messy the smell, the better. Only the smell in the cell is monotonous.

He smacked his lips like he was chewing on a candy bar.He didn't know how long he had slept, but from the drooling in his mouth, he knew that he already had physical strength.He just had a very strange dream.He dreamed that time went back to the day he entered the labor camp, and everything after that was another experience.He dreamed that he was already a writer and was traveling in America today.He dreamed that he was not only married, but was in love with a famous movie actor.He also dreamed that he and she had dinner in a small restaurant on the west coast of the United States, and then went to a clean saloon... He sat up.The lights overhead were dull and suffocating.The waiting room was full of people, and immediately a Mongolian man in an old sheepskin jacket filled the vacated seat next to him.Being excluded by the sheepskin board, he regretted not continuing to lie on this bench.He could have taken the place of two with his eyes open or closed.He already knew the value of a piece of cake, a straw rope, and a piece of rag.All human knowledge says that the most valuable thing is the inner life of a person, ideals, beliefs and hopes, but everything in reality tells people that the most valuable thing is what you can use at hand, for example, the wooden growth in front of you. A section of the stool.

Fortunately, Tian Ma Ma lit up.He saw a little light in the eyes of a child nestled in his mother's arms.He also saw a gleam of childish hope in that little twilight, as if he would be fed as long as it was light.He saw the wind blowing up dust outside the waiting room and waiting for an opportunity to drill into the waiting room, as if the entire station was built on a garbage dump.He also saw the people huddled in the waiting room like garbage swept by fate from all directions.This pile of tattered clothes is absolutely different from the uniform tatters of the labor camp, like a group of dried butterflies suddenly blown away by the wind.

"There is boiling water!" There was a song-like call from the door of the waiting room.He saw that the people who had been buried alive by the dust broke through the ground and began to wriggle slowly. He has neither a bag nor a mug.Looking at the slowly moving water vapor, and listening to the sound of Xixi drinking water, he swallowed a big mouthful of saliva.After going through a great hunger in the labor camp, he fully realized that the most precious thing is the secretion of the human body itself.Saliva and urine can help.If you don't poop for a long time, you will feel that there is something in your stomach, and you will think that you are a full man psychologically to avoid collapsing on the road.This is completely in line with the great philosophical principle of "spirit becomes matter".

He put his hand into the ripped padded jacket and used his sensitive fingers like a pianist to distinguish which was the hole and which was the real pocket.From his beating chest, he took out a piece of paper folded into a square and unfolded it gently. When he saw again that it was indeed a certificate of release from prison and his name was written on it, he was convinced of his existence.The people floating around him now, the gradually brightening sky, and the sirens sounding in the distance are all real, while the small restaurants and movie actors on the west coast of the United States are real and unreal.It was many years later that he really realized the magical effect of this certificate of release after serving his sentence: it is a certificate issued by the labor reform team that you can enter the society, and when the society sees it, it can once again send you away with just this piece of paper. locked up.

At this time, he just put it away carefully and buttoned it to tighten the hemp rope around his waist.For this meeting, he deliberately replaced the straw rope around his waist with hemp rope.He really did his best to dress himself up. He goes to the toilet first.The overflowing urine froze, very much like a sand table marking the topography of the world.He walked across the Himalayas to the innermost latrine.It doesn't stink at all because the waiting room is also filled with the same smell.He squatted down but took off a shoe without taking off his trousers.He lifted the interlayer of the sole and took out a five-dollar bill with two fingers.He was sure that there was no one in the latrine next to him, and he could stare at the banknote over and over again with kind eyes; he slowly smoothed it as if comforting a crying baby.At this time, he felt sorry for the steel worker who was holding a steel drill.He then walked out of the toilet while pretending to fasten his trouser belt.He had of course packed the only banknote before that.He has been mixed three times to check the ticket.The last time he was checked, but the ticket inspector searched all over his body and even found the release certificate, but he couldn't find the banknote he owned.He knew that if the banknotes were found, he would have to make up the bills and pay a fine.Although he was scolded by the ticket inspector and kicked off the car, he kept the money.He secretly shouted "Long live the old reform-through-labour prisoner" because the tricks taught by the old reform-through-labour prisoner were more than the tireless guidance of five professors.Facts have repeatedly proved that the realism of the labor camp is superior to the classical romanticism in the study.

So he couldn't help but miss the toilet on the train.It was his safe haven, and he burrowed into it whenever the inspectors came.That white porcelain squat pit, that exquisite washbasin, that small space is safer than his dormitory.Because he was arrested from the dormitory. He thought that the safest and warmest place in this world is the toilet.Thinking of this, he strode out of the station.However, when he passed the big wooden barrel of boiling water placed at the door of the waiting room, he found some oily smell floating on the water surface, emitting a peacock blue luster temptingly.This frustrates him and makes him ponder:

Where does the oily smell come from?Where did the oysters come from?Where did the whiskey come from? ...Although the concierge of Y City Hospital, the old man who has been wearing old clothes and jackets, blinks his eyes and tells you that she may be married, but you still have to go to see her.It's the same as that long-distance call you had to hang up on the west coast of the United States years later. The janitor with bad eyes doesn't know you anymore.But do you think his constant blinking is giving you some kind of hint: she is not married when he says she is married?You think of the "anti-rightist movement" a few years ago when you went to find her, she was clearly inside but the old man said she had gone out.The old man once told you that City Y had a city wall in the "old society", and he talked about how he boiled gunpowder in the warlord's guns and finally broke his eyes.And then you wonder with pity why such a hospital can't treat its own concierge.

Your coming to this hospital makes you want to see her all the more, married or not.On the steps, in the corridor, in the waiting room, and even under the few poplar trees in the courtyard, the medicinal fragrance of her body permeated everywhere.The few poplars have lost all their autumn leaves, but the other scenery remains the same.The doctor's white coat was also hanging on the clothesline.One by one, they froze into ice and rattled, as if a piece of the past was breaking apart. In the labor camp, you were admitted to the hospital there.As soon as you woke up from death, you thought you were throwing yourself into her arms.Everything is caused by the disinfectant.Any disinfectant will cast a white phantom before your eyes like marijuana.Your agitation is enough to damage your nerves and your heart.

So you think you can't live without her any more than you can live without yourself.For three years, you can only see her back in your thoughts.Her black braids were so black that they dazzled, and the waist folds of her white clothes were so white that they dazzled.Her shapely little legs once made you wish to be a dog.During the "night fight" in the rice fields with a scythe, you thought she was walking towards the moon, so you got cut on the back of your foot by your own scythe.The doctor who treats the reform-through-labor prisoners said that you should chop it up again, preferably by cutting off your own legs.But you don't regret it at all because you were just about to turn her around and look at her big eyes again.But at last she melted into the early frost in her white dress.

Did you ever wonder if I had someone write to her telling her I was dead so I cut off the last bit of telepathy.Is it a good omen or a bad omen that she keeps turning her back to you?But you imagine if I stand in front of her alive again, she will turn her face and let me catch her rustling tears with my lips. You walk lightly onto the main road.Huang Feng is like a loyal dog, covered in sand and always following your footsteps. You smell the prairie.The hunting yellow wind was originally dyed yellow by autumn grass. You smell Siberia.You hear the deep song of the exiles beside Lake Baikal echoing in the wind.Lake Baikal, our mother! For liberty and equality, we come to you... You sang this song with her. But then you vent your joy.At that time, any song, even a song of mourning, could convey your confession of love, and you exchanged each other's lust in the singing.Singing together is making love in the same bed.Apart from singing a song together and exchanging burning eyes, you don't know any other ways to express love between men and women. "Lake Baikal, our mother..." And then you really got to a place even harsher than Lake Baikal.It's more Siberia than Siberia! There are no food stalls on the street, but there are quite a few small shops selling gas for bicycles. It seems that people can live on gas.The advantage of hunger for all is that not only you are hungry but others are also hungry and there is no temptation for food everywhere.You are light not only because you have been set free but also because your stomach is empty.It's wise that you didn't poop in the toilet just now.The large intestine and food residues provide heat to each other.Moreover, this exchange is carried out in your body, so you seem to have double the heat to complete the journey from the B city station to the B city hospital. Later you thought that food does not make people grow up, but hunger can make people mature; if hunger does not make people doubt politics, then this person is a natural slave.But then you see hundreds of millions of people fanatically throwing themselves into the "Cultural Revolution", so you almost lose confidence in human maturity. The cold road, the dusty earthen house, the tree without a single leaf, the skinny donkey and mule as frozen as the sculptures in front of the tomb... Only the clouds galloping in the sky are full of strange vitality.The morning glow is so brilliant, the sky is almost absurdly gorgeous.When the first ray of golden sunlight shines on you, your heart immediately seems to be on fire.You endured the dryness of your throat, and squeezed the sweat in your hands.You know that this phenomenon is called "rising virtual fire" in Chinese medicine books, but it is too weak and strong to overcome. The dream at night floated in front of your eyes again stubbornly, and you thought about that dream while walking.But the more you think about it, the deeper you get stuck in several dreams, and finally they are mixed together: Are you in the Champs Elysees in Paris, the Sunset Boulevard in San Francisco or a yellow dust in B City in northern China? Flappy Street? Memories, imagination, and reality will have a violent chemical reaction when they are mixed together.You have a headache because your skull is blasted open.The hallucinations caused by hunger are like Venus flying in front of your eyes, and you can't catch anything like wisps of sunshine in seven colors. Only her shadow gives you hope to keep going. At this time, the wind stopped.The gray-yellow world suddenly lands in front of you.You have never been to City B, but you are confident that you can find where she is without asking for directions.It's like the star that you can see when you look up in the dark wilderness. How many times have you knelt under that star and prayed to God on the way to escape.You don't believe in God but need God.This gives you an epiphany in the cathedral in Stockholm years later that human beings must have religious emotions. But at this time, there is only singing in your ears. Her soft voice is in the melody of Russian folk songs. Dear accordion you sing softly, Let's reminisce about our childhood... Her trembling voice leads you timidly like trembling fingers.You followed her carefully as if two people were crossing a single-plank bridge together.She led you to a place full of flowers, and you heard again: The garden flowers bloom in spring, Girls in spring are more beautiful... It was also in spring that you first met.That is not only the spring in nature, but also the "early spring weather" that intellectuals all over China are foolishly cheering for.She was dressed in pure white clothes and a pair of white masks, and the whiteness of the universe seemed to be specially made for her.Only the pair of big eyes were black and shiny.When you see those eyes, you have a premonition that your life is over. She is sitting behind the consulting table, and you walk up to her tremblingly.Her gentle fingers unbutton your shirt like tearing a wound.Your chest was so hot that her fingers trembled slightly, and you will never forget her fingers ever since. You saw her eyes flicker over your name and suddenly burst into light like a star.You know where she must have seen those three doomed words at the end of some poem.But you don't know whether you should be ashamed or proud or just pretend nothing happened.She pinched the stethoscope for a long time but couldn't find your heart. Later, you once told her that when you first met her, you showed your heart without any concealment, and she smiled shyly. Her smile is always like a swallow flying low over the pond, and after a flash, you will smell the wetness before the rain.Her big eyes are often full of resentment.You gradually find that her black and bright pupils are two deep wells of coolness. Except in the pictures of ancient ladies, you can no longer find the same pair in this materialistic world. She used to tell you in whispers how she was an orphan, raised by her mother's friends.You vaguely guess that there is a vague love affair between her mother and the man.But when she just graduated from medical school, "organizationally" discovered that her guardian turned out to be a "historical counter-revolutionary", and he hanged himself before she could repay her favor.It was because of her "organizational" relationship that she was assigned from Shanghai to the remote Northwest where no one wanted to come.She said the word "organizational" with a sense of dread that ruined her life.She also said that the last thing she saw of him was not his face but his straight feet sticking out of the door.Her murmurs seemed to come from a white ghost.At that time, you never imagined that a few years later, you would see countless pairs of such feet sticking out of the wooden or mat container that could not hold the corpse, as if every dead person was unwilling to step out of this place that made him full. Tormented world.At that time, you just held her hand silently, trying to inject sympathy and strength into her slender body.The sunset shines on the weeds in the outskirts, and the dense and fat pampas grass whispers summer poems in the lake and pond.As you wade arm in arm through a quiet cemetery, she whispers her wish: that you will "never bully" her in the future.You didn't understand for a moment that this was her promise to entrust her life to you.You thought she was warning you not to touch her anywhere except to hold her hand. Who, when and where taught you to fall? Then you wondered countless times why you always meet in the cemetery.Of course, it is true that City Y is too small to accommodate a park, but why didn't she choose another place?Although the cemetery in midsummer is also very beautiful, the weeds and flowers bloom especially richly and densely on the carrion.The setting sun, the cemetery, the broken stone tablet, the ashes of paper money and the smoke from the distant village... After you were labeled as a "rightist", you realized that you were destined to perform a tragedy from the very beginning.You don't want to change your destiny b this voice is with you all your life. However, it is still a Russian folk song. A surname is curved, thin and long All the way to the misty distance... You walk slowly towards a slope.Such a bright sun can't make the hungry world and the dirty city B colorful.The criss-crossing streets are like wrinkles on the face of a dying old man.But when you see that street sign, it's like seeing her guiding you.The letter she gave you has already been burned in the sick room.Looking at the powerless flames in the kang cave, you feel your powerlessness painfully.But it's too late, I can only use the paper ashes to pay homage to your dead happiness.Although love can be repeated many times in a lifetime, the happiness in that cemetery can only be once in a lifetime. Only after leaving her did you realize that her blood was burning like fire.You always thought that her voice was like raindrops falling from the tile eaves in the south of the Yangtze River. After entering the labor camp, you were amazed at her pouring out her love for you like the sound of surging waves.She wrote: "I think I am so small, you love me all at once, and you are so big, I can never stop loving you." But you no longer have a lot of tears to repay her.The river that fell from the sky entered the vast desert.You know that you are getting closer to her step by step, one step closer to her every step forward, but you are still at a loss as to what you are going to do.Everything about you, ideal career knowledge, and of course love, died with you for a year. Why did you scare her the first time you crawled out of the grave? But you can't control your feet, the Russian songs are constantly calling your soul.Nine hundred miles away, you climbed up and down on the train for three days, but what was weak was only your body.You think that the flesh can be torn into pieces, and the flying flesh and blood will definitely fly towards her in the strong wind. On the train you have thought that your greatest wealth is death, that you can pay death once and for all like a cheque.You are better than anyone at this. It turns out that after you received her last letter saying that the hospital in City Y transferred her to City B because she was still disconnected from you, you have been here all the time, in City B.She also said that the "organizational" reason for her transfer was high-sounding-"to support the steel base".You can also see that her hands are shaking when she wrote the three words "organizational".But she went on to say that city B is bigger than city Y after all, and it also has a park. Yes, there is a park, she wrote.Is this her implying that you don't have to go to the cemetery anymore?Does this indicate that your love will have a turning point from now on?But you don't see the park.The slope is getting steeper and steeper and you think you are climbing to the sky.You also sneakily think that there seems to be an emperor shooting a white deer in this ghost place.The white deer fell on the top of the hill.But this romantic historical legend only whets your appetite.You swallowed mouthful and imagined the taste of roasted deer.Of course, the most realistic thing is that she will make a big lunch as soon as she sees you, and you will eat it with big mouthfuls, and she will sit quietly and watch you. But why did you write that letter? Why did you write that letter?You ask the prisoner who sleeps next to you to write to her that you are dead, and half-truthfully say that you starved to death, as if blaming her for not sending enough mail.After that, she really didn't send any more mail packages or write letters. Then you really died.The reform-through-labour prisoner who wrote the letter for you, China's leading expert on potato degenerative diseases, died of poisoning after eating sprouted potato seeds.He is really dead and you feel guilty about it: he reported not your death but his own!You remember him saying this while writing: "You are right to do this. Now that we have no hope, don't let people outside have unrealistic hopes." It's over!Now that you are dead, why did you come here after going through the danger of being found without a ticket and the pain of bumps? Although you didn't really die, you were just a "slipping through the net", just like the so-called "slipping through the net of rightists", "slipping through the net of counter-revolutionaries", and "slipping through the net of bad elements". You are a "dead man who slipped through the net"! But the singing is irresistible.One surname is winding, thin and long, All the way to the misty distance... She whispers in your ear that she is going to sing to you one last time.But that day you secretly hoped that she would leave earlier, so that you could enjoy the eggs and bread she brought earlier. It takes years to recall how romantic that scene was.Summer willow shade covers the gurgling canal water, and grasshoppers jump around you.A green dragonfly stands firmly on the tip of a swaying reed, and the sunlight passes through its long transparent tail.The breeze blowing against the surface of the water blew her long white skirt, as if a white swan on the shore was eagerly flapping its wings.At that time, she took the initiative to put her slender hand into your palm that has been honed by labor.Although you have held it many times, now you are surprised that human beings have such hands: so cold, soft and smooth.You hold these hands without eliminating the distance but feel that she is getting farther and farther away from you.She said she pretended to be your fiancée, the captain of the labor camp, who allowed you to meet her.Her tone changed suddenly, with courage that she had never had before. At the same time her big eyes are resolutely looking for her hope in your face. And you stared at the bag she brought to estimate how much dry food was in it. Twenty-five years later you can't help feeling sad when critics say you are a "realist writer".One night at the revolving restaurant on the top floor of the Hehe Center in Hong Kong, a group of literary friends used a Japanese method to test your psychological quality, and concluded that you had a "realistic attitude" towards life, which made you sad.You looked at the countless lights below and tears welled up in your eyes.Only you know how much good things are spoiled by your "realism"; you can never weigh the weight of feelings without weight. Drunken and fragrant, all the past is irreversible! However, every time you pass through that channel after work, you have to look up at the small piece of land that you once sat side by side.There are only two places with big butts on the whole earth that you love the most.In addition to it, even if the entire earth explodes, you will not hesitate.Every time you want to climb up that canal slope, and every time you can hear the "government" yelling "Stop!" and the sound of "organization" pulling the bolt in your ears.Soon after, the autumn grass withers and yellows, the dragonflies die, and you have nothing to look forward to but the changing clouds.A heavy snowfall in the second winter finally smoothed out the last bit of outline there, and then you decided to flee with just this memory. However, all you remember is the back view of her leaving you. She pushed that familiar women's bicycle and walked alone on a rough road in the wilderness.It was the Vladimir Avenue, which was often used by exiles between Petersburg and Siberia.Fifty miles ahead of her, the city of Y, which had lost its city wall, was hidden in the misty summer.Behind her are only the singing and the water is like a trembling streamer.You saw her tiny and helpless for a moment and wanted to rush over to hug her, but the last remaining shyness held you back.You flicked two drops of clear tears into the air and hurriedly untied the bag she brought. You watch her shrink as you chew the bread.You filled your stomach but lost her gaze on you. In this way, she will always only have her back to you. One surname is winding, thin and long, All the way to the misty distance... You must look for it along this line.If you lose the memory of her eyes, you are like a lifeless meteorite that accidentally fell on this earth from outside.She is your connection to the world. (Just as you used her eyes as a connection between the two hemispheres at the Oakland airport. My God!) The world is filthy but with her eyes there is a brilliance, and you still have interest in living.You are wrapped in a body of wind and sand and poured her medicinal fragrance, and you have to tell her that you later saw her eyes.