Chapter 33 Chapter Seventy-Five

Hearing that his daughter Hu Ping had hanged herself, Hu Xiang felt dizzy from a sudden blow to the head. He stopped by a tree by the side of the road.People from the cadre school rushed to the accident site like a stream, and a person stopped in front of him, grabbed him and said, "Old Hu, let's go, I will accompany you there." Hu Xiang saw a pair of eyes expressing deep sympathy, and he shook his head. Shaking his head, he slowly moved his fat body and walked towards the place where the crowd surged through the scorching sun.A thought flashed through my mind in ignorance: Why did I let my daughter come to the cadre school together?This is tantamount to sending the daughter to the nest of death.

From time to time, someone bumped into him while running, and occasionally someone stopped to greet him sympathetically, and reached out to help him, and he shook his head.At this moment, he didn't want anyone to accompany him, he staggered forward alone, like a stupid stone being driven by the tide, rolling stagnantly in the river bed.He followed the flow of people to the headquarters of the Military Propaganda Team of the Cadre School. This is a square courtyard surrounded by tall green brick walls, with a power grid stretched on the wall. It used to be a prison, but now it has become the core part of the Cadre School. The headquarters of the propaganda team is inside, various task forces are inside, and some cadre school students live inside.The yard was already full of people, Hu Xiang was like a pig that had lost his sense of smell, walking forward in a ignorance among the surging crowd, and the flow of the crowd told him where the accident happened.

He finally squeezed to the front of the crowd, and his daughter was lying on a broken door, with a severed hanging rope around her neck, which was twisted from strips of cloth torn from bed sheets.The daughter's dark-brown hair was still curving lifelikely, and her face, which was always rosy, was now terribly pale. Her eyes were wide open, with protruding eyeballs, and she stared blankly at the sky, as if she wanted to see the sky. Looking for something high in the distance, the mouth is open, the tongue sticks out halfway, and it seems that it is still panting with difficulty.She was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and gray-blue cloth pants. She was barefoot. She probably fell heavily on the ground when she was lowered from the beam. It was full of dust.She was lying at the door of a room that used to be a prison cell, and for dozens of days, it also served as a cell, imprisoning her daughter.In the sweeping sweeping campaign to investigate the "5.16" counter-revolutionaries, this cadre school with thousands of people also uncovered nearly 200 "5.16" counter-revolutionaries, and Hu Ping became one of the key targets of the investigation.As the leader of the rebel faction, Hu Changsheng is working hard at the cadre school set up by Beiqing University in Jiangxi, and there are many very good materials transferred from there.For dozens of days, Hu Ping was repeatedly interrogated and forced to confess, and she often heard her screaming in the middle of the night.I saw bruises and bruises on my daughter's bare arms, and I saw some purple scars on her chest under the open collar.

The onlookers are getting more and more crowded, like a flock of frantically hungry sheep crowding into a pile of green grass.During the arching movement, the sun's exposure in summer and the human body's hot sweat made the air in front of my eyes curl up one by one, like dense aquatic plants growing from the bottom of the water, dancing upwards with a string of rising water bubbles.Several members of the task force yelled loudly, telling people to disperse. A man with a trapezoidal face with a wide upper part and a narrower lower part stared at a pair of big black eyes. .” Five or six people struggled to push the dense crowd of onlookers outward.The matter of the dead has always been the biggest event in the world. With this event, the onlookers have the courage to not care about order. The yard is crowded with each other, and the encirclement is getting smaller and smaller .In the end, the people standing in the first row had to use their backs to resist the pressure, because if the crowd came over again, they would step on the body of the dead.Because the people behind couldn’t see, some climbed onto the shoulders of the people in front, some climbed onto the tractor trailer parked in the yard, and some leaned against the wall with a shovel, and stepped on it precariously to watch .

Severe yelling suddenly sounded from the periphery of the crowd, and the people retreated and parted ways like a flock of sheep being whipped.The head of the military propaganda team, Political Commissar Ji, was dressed in a military uniform and walked majestically into the middle of the crowd surrounded by several people.He calmly glanced at Hu Ping lying on the ground with his hands behind his back, then glanced majestically at the people in the first row of the encirclement, raised his hand and pointed at them one by one, and they backed away forcefully with some trepidation.The Disciplinary Political Commissar raised his oblong face with a big chin, squinted his eyes, and pointed at the people in the second row across the first row without saying a word, and the people in the second row also started to shrink back.

He pointed to some faces in the crowd that were still moving forward, and the crowded crowd began to retreat one after another, exiting a larger open space.The Political Commissioner for Discipline glanced around with his hands behind his back, looked at Hu Xiang and said, "Where's your wife?" Before Hu Xiang could answer, a person squeezed over from the crowd and said, "Commissioner for Discipline, I'm here." His wife, Lin Xiuqin, with disheveled hair, squeezed into the crowd panting.The Disciplinary Committee pointed to Hu Ping lying on the ground, and said solemnly to the couple: "Hu Ping committed suicide in fear of crime, she is a typical '5.16' activist, you must have a correct understanding and draw a clear line with her. Hu Xiang felt as if two big toads had been stuffed into his ears, and he could no longer hear the following words clearly. He only knew that the discipline and political commissar was standing there tall and big, with one hand behind his back and the other pointing at the crowd. It seemed that the company commanders of each company were calling their own teams, and there seemed to be various shouts from the crowd, and people began to retreat in a disturbed manner.

His wife, Lin Xiuqin, was also considered an activist in the cadre school. In front of the platoon leader, at this moment, she bumped into each other, was yelled at, and retreated with the crowd.Before leaving, he stared at his daughter several times in a daze, dragged his eyes and mixed in the crowd and left the courtyard.Hu Xiang felt like an upright roller, standing there clumsily, listening to the discipline and political committee's instructions, and watching the people in the task force rushing around.When the daughter was carried back to the dark cell, she heard a faint clang of the door panel, and she was placed on the brick kang.Probably out of humanitarian considerations, the Commissioner for Discipline and Political Affairs waved his hand, and two more people entered with an unclean white sheet to cover his daughter's body.The two toads stuck in his ears came and went, and he heard intermittently: the corpse needs to be photographed, the photographs must be archived, and then cremated, and the cremation factory must be contacted in advance.Hearing the calm and decisive voice of the Political Commissioner for Disciplinary Affairs: "We must launch a major criticism of Hu Ping, a stubborn '5.16' member who committed suicide in fear of crime, in all companies of the cadre school. Firepower." Finally, the discipline and political commissar waved his hand, raised his folded fat chin, stared at a pair of piercing tiger eyes, and said: "Vice Chairman Lin said that if the campaign to investigate the '5.16' elements is not carried out to the end, it will be too late. If we don’t give up, there will also be a typhoon of category 12.”

Hu Xiang finally moved himself, just like the stone roller of Lijiu made circular marks in the mud, he felt that he also left a pair of deep footprints here.When he walked out of the prison gate, he felt like a heavy sack being moved clumsily. He drank again, with a group of people from the Institute of History and the Institute of Literature. The wine was bought at a small store in a nearby village. The snacks were a few handfuls of peanuts.The cadre school occupied a large area loosely by the Dasha River in Hebei.In this land, in addition to the abandoned prison as the school building for the cadre school, a row of earthen houses were also built.The earthen houses are earthen walls rammed by dry beating, with tiles on the roof, and thousands of men and women from the cadre school live in rows of earthen houses.Several mud houses have become a place for cadre school students to drink and chat secretly. In their words, they are "black dimples".The weather was very hot, and the sun had already soaked through the earthen house. The earthen walls on all sides were scorching hot, and the house was like an oven.

The window is open, and a small floral cloth curtain is hung, and the door is open, and a small white cloth curtain is hung to cover people's eyes and ears.There are two beds on the left wall, two beds on the right wall, and a broken wooden table in the middle. Six or seven people drink with rice bowls and large enamel tanks for drinking water. flooded the bottom.Peanuts are spread out on the table, you pick one, I pick one, put them in your mouth and chew, pick up bowls or enamel jars to touch each other, and take a sip.The door is not big, the window is not big, the outside is bright, and the room is dark. Hu Xiang felt a wave of wine heat spread evenly from his throat, esophagus, and appetite to his whole body, and then from his back, back of neck, top of his head, forehead and It came out of the face and turned into a hot sweat, and then came out from the chest, and turned into a hot sweat here.Six or seven people were sweating, and evaporated in the small earthen room, brewing together with the smell of wine, it became an inextricable smell of wine and sweat.

When Hu Xiang was drinking, he felt that his eyes were straight and slowly turning with his head like two parallel metal rods.His face is black and fat hanging in the air, his short cut-length hair honestly smells like pomade, his thick neck supports his head numbly, and his shoulders are already a little hunched in less than two years of life in the cadre school. , a few people around comforted him while drinking.A deputy director of the Institute of History is from Cantonese, with sharp eyes but ugly mouth. At this time, he babbled from left to right: "Let's think about everything." He couldn't say any more powerful words of comfort. However, Hu Xiang couldn't listen to more powerful words of comfort. He knew that if you put things in your heart, you let them go.It's like throwing a few multi-edged and angular boulders in a pool of water. The pool can't drown them, and they can't melt them. We can only let them stand tall and tall in it. I don't know how many years have passed. It was gradually eroded, lost its edges and corners, and became stable under the water.The deputy director of the Literary Research Institute, whose face was as dark as a blacksmith, put down his wine bowl, sat cross-legged on the bed, leaning on the pillow, and dreamed of something farther away. He said: "When you return to Beijing, you should take The remaining batch of books are also sold as waste paper, and at least seven or eight catties of liquor can be exchanged." He patted his thigh with a little regret and said: "It should have been sold long ago, and at the end, it may be worth a penny." out of my own hands."

A person suddenly appeared outside the sunny white door curtain. He couldn't see his face, but he saw a pair of feet wearing women's buckle cloth shoes under the door curtain. The trouser legs were short, and a pale ankle was exposed, followed by a harsh sound. Asked: "Is Hu Xiang here?" Hu Xiang sighed silently and put down the wine bowl. It was Lin Xiuqin's voice.Several people in the room looked at him, and said to the door: "Not here." Lin Xiuqin said from outside the curtain: "I can smell the smell of wine." The people in the room looked at each other, and someone replied: "We are drinking, Hu Xiang didn't come over." Lin Xiuqin shouted loudly outside the door: "Hu Xiang." The people in the room looked at each other, lost their minds.I heard Lin Xiuqin say again: "You guys get dressed, I'm coming in." The door curtain was lifted, and Lin Xiuqin came in with a roll of big-character newspaper in one hand and an enamel jar that was stained black inside and out with ink in the other. Insert a brush. Hu Xiang had already drank the wine in the bowl in one gulp, put the bowl on the window sill, and was lying there at this moment, holding peanuts one by one.Lin Xiuqin scolded with a wrinkled face: "You've got into the black dimple again to drink." Everyone was holding the wine in their hands, the table was empty, and six or seven mouths said at the same time: "Old Hu didn't drink today." " Lin Xiuqin glanced at her husband and said, "Look at his face, it's as red as a pig's liver, I've already confessed." Hu Xiang lowered his eyes and ate peanuts, Lin Xiuqin wrote the big-character newspaper Putting it on the table, he stretched out the enamel jar filled with ink to Hu Xiang, and said, "Write a big-character poster, announcing to draw a clear line with Hu Ping." Hu Xiang narrowed his eyes and glanced sideways at his wife, looking coldly Staring at the eyes, without saying a word. Lin Xiuqin pushed the ink pot on the table again, and said, "Let's write, in the name of both of us." The men in the room put their wine bowls on their laps, looked at Lin Xiuqin, then at Hu Xiang, Hu Xiang still said nothing. Not sent.Lin Xiuqin said, "Do you want to write or not?" Hu Xiang couldn't hold back any longer, he slapped the table angrily, and said with his eyes wide open, "No." Reaching out to sweep the peanuts into the palm of her hand, Lin Xiuqin said: "Okay, if you don't write, I will write alone." She picked up the big-character newspaper and the ink pot, turned around and left, stopped at the door, turned around and looked at the Hu Xiang said, "The Discipline and Political Commissioner said that if you don't express your opinion today, you will hold a departmental meeting tomorrow and expel you from the party."Lin Xiuqin asked: "Hu Xiang, do you want to write or not?" Hu Xiang's eyes were hazy and he didn't say a word.Lin Xiuqin came over, put the large-character newspaper and the ink tank on the table again, turned around and walked to the door, stopped and looked at Hu Xiang and said: "I still have a brush here, I will write on my own behalf first, whether you can write or not. Think for yourself." She lifted the curtain and left. In the afternoon, each company of the cadre school was ordered by the military propaganda team to hold a meeting to criticize the stubborn counter-revolutionary "5.16" element Hu Ping. Hu Xiang said that he had high blood pressure and dizziness, so he did not go to the meeting.He sat alone for a long time, spread out the large-character newspaper, picked up a brush and wrote the "Statement to Draw a Clear Line with Hu Ping".He was recognized as a calligrapher by his work unit. At this time, when he took a brush and wrote these characters one by one, he felt that the words of the ancients were really good: "Knife and pen official", the pen is the knife, and the daughter died, let him be the father's knife and knife dismembered her daughter's body.At the end of the statement, of course, is the slogan "carry on the great proletarian cultural revolution to the end".After signing Hu Xiang's name, he threw the brush into the ink tank, and the ink splashed out, reminding him of the words "throwing a brush and joining the army".What can he get from "throwing a pen" now?Nothing ever. It was estimated that the meeting was about to end, so he waded through the hot air and came to the Dasha River in the evening sun.The wide beach of the Dasha River meanders towards the place where the setting sun sinks. On both sides of the river beach are mud, sand, and pebbles. In the middle is a stream of water that is neither wide nor narrow. It is covered on a wide and gently rolling land.He found a crooked willow tree and sat down on a big bluestone under the shade of the tree.The bluestone was still exposed to the sun, and it was a little hot on the buttocks, so it sat still.Watching the sun sinking to the horizon little by little, the corn field behind me was more than a foot high, dangling in the barren land with very thin green.The sun sinks deeper, the sky in the west is no longer dazzling, and the yellow, yellow and green crops on both sides of the Dasha River appear a little quiet.Quietly, the sky darkened, and he leaned against the big willow tree, becoming a part of the black trunk. When the sun's legacy in the sky was exhausted, darkness fell over the earth like dark clouds.In the darkness, the golden wheat and green cornfields turned into different shades of black-gray, only the water of the Dasha River shimmered. There was the sound of light footsteps on rolling stones behind them, and a man and a woman were dimly seen walking by. They looked back and forth, and then walked down the slowly descending river beach.After walking a few steps, they stopped again, and their backs became a silhouette in the sky. I heard the woman say: "Do we still need to cross the river?" And I heard the man say: "Of course we have to cross, it's not safe here." The woman looked around and said: "No one will come here." The man Said: "Why don't people come? There are dozens of pairs like us in the cadre school!" The woman said: "What if I bump into them?" The man said: "Let's hide from each other." Seeing the man Leading the girl to step on the stones and walk down.As they get closer to the water, there are more pebbles and the sound of rolling stones. I saw them bend over to take off their shoes, pull up their trousers to their thighs, and wading across the water hand in hand towards the other side of the river.A faint moon in the sky shone on the two black figures. From a distance, the two figures were seen bending over, probably putting on their shoes, and they were vaguely seen walking along the uphill slope of the river beach, occasionally stepping on rolling stones. The sound comes, allowing you to discern the distance between this shore and the other shore.The two figures landed on the shore, and heard the sound of wading wheat waves in the distance. On a touch of dark gray wheat waves, there were two extremely thin black shadows faintly beating.Finally, the sound of the wading wheat was lost, and the beating shadow disappeared. Hu Xiang sat numbly in the dark, the man and the woman were not husband and wife, but each had a husband and wife.The man's name is Zhao Ben, and the woman's name is Li Yanmei. Both of them are my neighbors in the cadre school.Seeing this scene of cheating, he felt sad for himself.His daughter died, and he grieved, but the living people were still looking for their own happiness.A few shrill screams came from far behind him, he listened attentively, and looked there, the lights were flickering at what time, it was in the direction of the small prison, who would be raided tonight? In a cadre school, one or two hundred people were locked up for isolation and inspection, and the rest still cared about rolling wheat fields.He couldn't help shaking his head, but he didn't understand the meaning of his shaking his head.My daughter is dead, but I am still living by the river, and I still have to use a pen to dismember her daughter. What can people say when they live to this extent? It was very late that he returned to the place of residence.The first time Lin Xiuqin saw him, she said, "I thought you had cut yourself off from the people too. If you don't come back, I will report to the military propaganda team." Hu Xiang didn't say anything, picked up the washbasin and went to find water to wash .When he came back from washing, he had nothing to do but sleep.This is a large isolated house, which used to be a temporary warehouse in the village, with white gray walls and blue tile roof. Now there are three families living in the cadre school.The straw mat wall is only as high as one person, and there is still a long distance from the "herringbone"-shaped roof, so it only separates the vision, not the hearing.The three families live in the house, and for more than a year, they have been unable to achieve "family ugliness". Sometimes when they meet together, they will laugh and tease each other: "Our three families are a hodgepodge, and they are mixed together." Each family has a lamp. Its own lamp, each with its own door. When Hu Xiang returned to his room, the first thing he saw was that his daughter's bed was empty.The left side of the room against the back wall is his own bed, the right side against the back wall is his wife's bed, and the right side near the door is his daughter's bed. From then on, the daughter's bed has only a symbolic meaning.He lay down and turned off the light.Lin Xiuqin asked in the dark: "Where have you been so late?" Looking at the shared roof, the room in the middle is also a little bright, and the straw mat wall is also shining with light, and the two neighbors on the left and right can be heard talking in low voices.The woman on the right is asking, "Where did you go tonight? I can't find you anywhere." Hearing Zhao Shan who had just crossed the river in the dark, he hesitated and replied, "I went to talk to the Disciplinary Committee." The woman Ask: "The Disciplinary and Political Committee is talking to you so late?" Zhao Shan said: "If you don't believe me, ask him tomorrow." The woman said: "I ate too much." She slammed the light out.In the room on the left, the man asked, "Where did you go tonight?" The woman asked, "Where did you go?" The man said: "I came here to play cards at Xiao Chen's house." Hearing Li Yanmei who was wading across the river and rolling the wheat fields just now, she said fiercely: "I searched everywhere for you but you couldn't find it, why are you asking me where I went?" It was the man who salivated and said, "Okay, okay, even if I asked too much." Then, with a snap, the lamp was also turned off.In the darkness, the six members of three families were all breathing the air under the same roof. Hu Xiang lay on the bed tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. His wife, Lin Xiuqin, snored like a flute. The snoring made it even more difficult for him to fall asleep. He simply sat up cross-legged on the bed.A bit of moonlight came in from outside the window, illuminating the snorer. A pale wrinkled face was lying there with uncomfortably hard work under the tousle of hair, and he was breathing with his mouth open ugly, snoring intermittently.The snoring was also very hard, often like a mouthful of phlegm stuck in her throat, panting with difficulty, followed by a sharp flute sound, she must have spoken passionately and impassionedly at today's criticism meeting.Thinking of this, Hu Xiang couldn't help feeling extremely contemptuous and disgusted, and even thought of wishing his wife would die.He knew that he shouldn't have such hatred, so he put on his pants, pulled on his shoes, and stood up.He fiddled with Lin Xiuqin's head and said, "Stop snoring, it will make the neighbors unable to sleep." His wife trembled as if frightened, and turned over.Hu Xiang picked up a fan, pulled the door and went outside. I don't know if it's the moonlight or the stars shining on the dark land. Rows of earthen houses of the cadre school are lined up in the dark night. He gently walks past the rows of earthen houses waving his fan gently.It was already late at night, and the doors of every house were open and curtains were hung, seeking ventilation. Some houses were already snoring, while others were still whispering.After passing through a "black dimple" doorway, he stopped and listened for a while.A dozen "black dimples" passed by, and he heard some words, but they all disappointed him; only the whispers from two or three "black dimples" seemed to resonate with the growing suspicion and hatred in his heart.He knew that walking around in the middle of the night like this was a suspicious thing, and the fan in his hand somewhat dispelled doubts: he was hot, he couldn't sleep, his daughter died, and his nerves were a little irritated.He was like a gray-headed stupid pig, standing up on two hind legs and walking in the moonlight ignorantly. Once a person is as stupid as a pig, it is not easy to arouse suspicion. He stood at the door of the last "black dimple" for the longest time. The voices of the four men inside were talking about politics one by one, mixed with gossip from south to north.He felt that he was standing in the dark like an unobtrusive ghost, and suddenly felt a gloomy atmosphere approaching his back, just like being unable to turn over due to terror in a nightmare, he also felt himself moving for a while. Can't get out.The gloomy thing behind was still pressing his back silently, he turned his bulky body with all his strength, and faced him, the discipline political commissar led several people in military uniform and plain clothes to stand majestically in front of him.