Chapter 17 Chapter Sixteen Involvement

As a graduate student in the Chinese Department, my life is simple enough.My courses have already been completed, and I only go back and forth between the research room, library and dormitory every day.However, my teachers still think I have too much "foreign affairs".What is "foreign affairs"?Just write novels.They usually keep a pleasant face and remind me that "should spend more energy on the paper".The meaning of this sentence is "I saw you published a novel in a certain newspaper and a certain periodical again."Otherwise, they would say something like: "Recently you are quite famous." Translated into the language I am familiar with, this sentence means: "I quite doubt how well you are doing academically."

I don't want to complain about my teachers at all.Their worries are not without reason.It was the end of my third year of graduate school, and I had only one year and two months left to write my graduation thesis—a paper that I decided to write in 300,000 words in the research plan. "The Literary Environment of the Western Han Dynasty" completed in length—and until April 1982, I had only completed 9,000 words of the first section of the first chapter.Before that, I spent most of my time like a vegetable planting myself on the bed to read all kinds of miscellaneous books that were not related to the topic of the thesis, and a small part of my time was writing manuscripts to earn living expenses.Before I was called up to serve in the military, I had always unconsciously thought that was the way life was.

However, that little "Bodhisattva Man" changed all that.Because of this, I was involved in waves of unrest, turmoil, conspiracy, struggle and even killing; and because of this, I found that people living around me were just like me (and some were a few years earlier than me) Years, or even decades) were involved in an environment where we were powerless to resist and had nowhere to turn for help—thus they had faces and identities that were completely different from what I had known in the past.During this whole "involvement" process, I also met some other people—for example, the red lotus I mentioned—these people should have been just passers-by and the same car as me. Travelers who are traveling together will not even have the chance to meet each other.However, after all, they came to my life and kept me busy giving out some emotions that can be called curiosity plus attachment plus fear or hatred or contempt or love.It is also because of the various emotions in it that this "involvement" has become a memory that I will never be able to erase in the future.It is precisely because of this memory that the "other life" that I had never really known before, but that I have always longed for, has become more real than anything else.Regarding this part, I have a general judgment, that is: Once a person enters and has a real life, he can lose everything.I didn't even write novels during the "involved" years.

On the night of April 17, 1982, in the 71st year of the Republic of China, I returned to my dormitory, unlocked the door, turned on the wall lamp, and found four men in gray youth clothes sitting and standing in the room. guy.From the looks of them, they were in their fifties at least—but youth clothing was the kind of clothing designed by bureaucrats to make the wearer look younger.Its jacket is actually a shirt that doesn't need to be tucked into the trousers, with four pockets on the top, bottom, left, and right, and a suit-style neckline, but it is opened higher.The lower body of this youth outfit must be suit pants of the same color—it generally looks like iron gray.The person who designed this garment (it is said to be the then President Chiang Ching-kuo) seems to intend to use its light appearance to reshape the serious image of civil servants in bureaucratic institutions; to make it look fresh and neat.Of course, the so-called youth attire has its own intention to eliminate the differences in seniority of public officials due to age differences.In other words: I should have imagined these four gray and iron characters a little younger.

The first young man in his fifties asked me: "Are you Zhang Dachun?" The second young man in his fifties asked me: "Your father is Zhang Kui, and he works as an editor at the Bureau of Historical and Political Compilation of the Ministry of National Defense. Your mother Liu Lanying, does not have any occupation. You live at Lane 4/8, Lane 115, Xizang Road. You graduated from the Catholic private Guangren Primary School, the private Dahua Middle School, the municipal Chenggong High School, and the Chinese Department of the Catholic Fu Jen Catholic University. You are now a third-year graduate student at the Institute of Chinese Studies, right?" A third young man in his fifties asked me, "You have published thirty-two short stories and sixty essays. I went to the choir and sang a tenor song. In addition, you are also a "lu la la" waiter trained by the China Youth Service Agency, a peripheral unit of the National Salvation Corps, right?" The fourth youth in his fifties asked me: "Zhang Hanqing Where is the rag I gave you?"

For the first three questions, I can only nod my head.Regarding the fourth one, I hesitated for a moment, and was about to answer: "What rags?" When the first young man in his fifties standing next to me slightly raised his leg and stared at him The big leather shoes said: "It seems that people are not allowed to kick people now, huh?" The second young man in his fifties sat on the edge of my bed and straightened up: "Don't scare other children." , the third young man in his fifties jumped up from his chair, slammed a copy of "Records of Historical Records" on the table, and said, "Aren't you a member of our party?" I just nodded, A thought flashed in my mind, "Joining the Kuomintang back then finally got some connections and took advantage of it", and the fourth young man in his fifties already said: "Party members are fucking useless, and party members should be more honest. Son."

At that moment, I suddenly felt violated-you can say that this feeling came too late; because I should have felt violated as early as the moment I turned on the wall lamp.In fact, they had entered my dormitory a long time before that, violating my messy, filthy, and smelly living space like a rat's nest.You can also say that the feeling of being violated is so strong, and it also contains the anger of the mouse that feels that it is unbearable.The four of them didn't accuse me, they didn't even care nor were they surprised that I lived like a mouse--the only thing is that a person who lives a pure mouse life like me is very uncomfortable-like you Spread everything in front of people's eyes, and there is nothing to hide; people turn a blind eye.When people know everything about you and treat you as nothing, you are even more humble.

In that extremely humble moment, for the first time in my life, I experienced the joy of writing a novel-it was no longer a job I did to earn royalties, but it suddenly became a part of my real life.I responded to the four guys in youth clothes and replied: "That rag is a blood book." The four guys suddenly looked at me, I looked at him, and he looked at you.A situation that might be called looking at each other.I knew immediately: they had been tricked into my novel.The blood book is too bizarre, too weird, too unreal, and too disturbing?outside.Because of this, they not only lost control of everything they knew, but also couldn't maintain the attitude of turning a blind eye to my narration.During this moment of looking at each other, the four mouths moved in unison, repeating the word "blood book".Next—an important technique—is to win the reader's further trust with the least bizarre, least weird, most realistic, and most consistent with empirical or logical rules of detail: "At first glance, the writing is black. But it's definitely not ink, it's blood—it looks dark and black because of age. Also, it's not really a rag, it's a kind of poplin handkerchief, but very old gone."

Then, I described the fictitious handkerchief in great detail—including its fine silk trim, the word “Pan” embroidered on one corner (in block letters with Wei Bei-style corners) and other details—the reason why This is because I don't know what a blood book should contain; I need a little time.Two of the four youths in their fifties actually took out small notepads from their pockets to write.While writing, a guy seemed to ask casually: "What about the stuff? Didn't I give it to you?" "It was taken back by that old man who drove the ambulance again." I tried my best to make my face look a little more innocent than innocent: "He said that the things belonged to him in the first place—do you know that my old man Brother used to be a member of the old Cao Gang?" I deliberately lowered my voice in the last sentence, with a bit of uncontrollable excitement.As a result, no one paid attention to me.

The one who wanted to kick me with the big leather shoes asked, "What is written on the handkerchief?" "I didn't write a few words. It was very scribbled. It was a cursive script that was harder to read than cursive script—that's why my elder brother asked me to read it. He thought he could read any character if he studied Chinese." I wrinkled Eyebrow, it seems that it is very hard to think, but in fact it is really hard to put together a little knowledge about the old Cao Gang in my memory into the following words: "Frankly speaking: I can't recognize the first word, and the second One is a word for "things", which are things of animals and plants. The next is "on top of Datong Enlightenment". There are two more unrecognizable characters on it. Then there are "secret acquisition". Then there are four more unrecognizable characters. The word. The last is "precepts". That's it."

"What is on top of Datong Wuxue, what secret, what, what, what, what, what, what precepts." The guy who threw my "Historical Records will be annotated and verified" read the sentence he memorized, as if he was asking me for proof. Take a deep look at me. I nod.In fact, this passage can be said to be meaningless at all.My father is the first thing that comes to my mind when I read a word, a word.Because he is also the standard civil servant who wears youth clothes to work in the ministry in spring, summer, and autumn.My elder brother once told me: My father used to help the character generation to be "li", so the first word that came out of my mind was "li", so I simply used a word with the same pronunciation as "li". The word "gift" is compiled from the word "li".But who would mention any "gift" in a blood book?So the word "li" must be said to be a word that I can't recognize. With the first word, the following sentences are convenient.The sentence I was thinking to myself was: "Gifts are above Datong Enlightenment and should be obtained quickly and secretly, not for Zhu Bajie."Datong Wuxue is the four characters below the generation of "Li", and the words "Yisu" and "Don't be a pig" are just words that I thought of casually, and I casually said that they were words that I couldn't recognize—if this The whole sentence has any meaning, but it's just calling these four people Zhu Bajie who can't get gifts. The four Zhu Bajie winked at each other, as if they were not satisfied, but they had to be satisfied.Immediately, I showed that I wanted to help a little more and said: "I heard that Datong Wuxue is the four-character spectrum of Lao Caobang's theory of character ranking. I don't understand what it means." "You better not understand " said the first Zhu Bajie. "It's better if you forget." The second Zhu Bajie said. "We haven't been here at all, so you understand?" said the third Zhu Bajie. "It would be great if you understand it." said the fourth Zhu Bajie.