After I went to the farm, as the "Nine Commentaries" criticizing the Soviet Union were published one after another, the leftist wind became stronger and more chilling. I began to have nightmares. Before dawn on December 5, 1963, I dreamed that a war broke out. I was fleeing in the wilderness, ran to a farmhouse, jumped over the wall, hid in the weeds, and was trembling with fear. I just couldn't figure out who was fighting with whom.
I woke up in a cold sweat and my heart was pounding. After a few days, one night I dreamed of being in prison again. The scene was like the Ten Halls of Yama in the City God Temple: an acquaintance led me out of the wall. These dark subconscious activities cannot be said to have nothing to do with the threat of the leftist wind. The first signal that the leftist wind blew to the farm was that the farm director Lu Deyin told me not to read thread-bound books anymore, and I should learn more about politics in the future.
"This is the intention of the leading comrades in the organization!" he said. As the farm director, he never made things difficult for me, and I had to listen to his advice. So I locked all the ancient books I brought with me into a drawer and stopped studying at night. I was bored, so I taught Huowa how to play chess under the lamp, every night. Huowa, Chen Tinggui, was a primary school graduate, fourteen years old at the time, and lived on the slope behind the farm house. Huowa was extremely smart, with a thin monkey face and two ghostly eyes. He could smoke, drink, and tell jokes.
He had been hungry for three years, was stunted, and weak and sickly. Since playing chess, Huowa and I have become close friends regardless of age. Later, we often went to the river to swim together, and went to the market many times. Huowa knew that I was a big rightist and a (in his words) literary A**h0le, but he was very good to me and was willing to tell me anything. After dinner every day, he came running, poured out the chess pieces on the square table, spread out the chessboard, set it up, and sat there with a sly smile waiting for me.
I worked during the day and studied the Nine Commentaries when it rained. I played chess at night. After a month and a half like this, I could no longer resist the urge to read. On the evening of February 15, 1964, I opened the drawer again, rescued those innocent books, set up my battlefield under the lamp, and continued to work on my "Wandering in the Sea of Words". Huo Wa came to pester me, but I waved him away. He had no choice but to challenge Lu Deyin. From then on, the two of them fought fiercely every night.
I turned back into my true form as a bookworm in the next room, swimming in the abyss of bound books, so happy. Lu Deyin turned a blind eye and didn't want to bother me any more. In his view, being obsessed with ancient books was just taking poison, not poisoning after all. Besides, the situation was not very good there. Huo Wa always had superior soldiers and used many tricks, often forcing his horse to not jump out and his cannon to not fire. He was so angry that he hit the chess pieces hard, so he didn't have the time to bother me. I went out to pee and glanced at the battlefield. Lu Deyin's face was always livid, while Huowa shook his head and blinked, with a slight smile on his face.
At the end of 1964, Zuofeng was upgraded. On November 1st, Sunday, I went to Tianhui Town to attend the market and read the newspaper. What surprised me was that Shao Quanlin was also criticized, saying that his "theory of writing middle characters" was so bad. The crooked movement is coming again, I'm sure. My mind was in a mess, and I didn’t want to sit in the teahouse anymore. On the way home, it rained, and the brim of my hat dripped, and my clothes and trousers were all wet. After reading at night, I was worried and insomnia, and heard a sound in the sky, a rattling sound, getting closer from far away, then getting farther away from near, and slowly disappeared.
Those geese following the sun, before the lakes on the northern grasslands freeze, fly in groups, day and night, to the south, to the warm Jianghuai River Basin with lush aquatic plants, to escape the harsh cold current. Where can I fly to? I am a human being, a person who, as Zhuang Zhou calls it, "once he is formed," can only "wait for death." I am not a bird, and I have no wings of freedom. Two days later, Liu Xinghuo and Huang Dan were driven off the farm. Nine days later, Zhang Zhang was also driven down. The three of them worked well in the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles. They were not right-wingers, nor did they have any other labels. There were no problems in the first place.
Perhaps it should be said that there were some problems in the past, but they were clarified later. It is no longer a problem, but as the left wind escalates and the "centered character theory" criticizes, those problems that were no longer a problem now become a big problem again. Soon after, another problematic figure, Mou Kanghua, was driven out. His problem is that he is too honest, which makes him unlucky. About two months ago, he saw a very serious advertisement published in the party newspaper, saying that anyone who holds old stocks of Chongqing Minsheng Steamship Company should go to a certain bank to have the stock money refunded with the old stocks. He believed it. Follow the law. The result was very funny. What was returned to him was not the stock money, but a bourgeois hat, and he was immediately driven off the farm. Zuo Feng's speed of implementation is just like what Meng Ke said was "faster than setting a post", and a year later Lin Biao meant the same thing when he said "immediate results".
They were four problematic people, plus me, who was no longer a problem to be solved but an ironclad case, mixed together. Under their care, they all treat me equally regardless of distinction. Every day while working in the fields, the five people tell jokes and eat meat and vegetables. Although everyone has their own secrets and is worried about their own problems. I often make dumplings for lunch and laugh while eating, which really creates a warm and relaxed atmosphere. There is an ancient saying: "Only food can make you forget your worries." That's right. The escalating "Left" wind has brought with it a terrible legend, saying that five types of elements, namely landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists, who live in big cities, will be deported to other places or repatriated to their place of origin. Take good care of it.
This is tantamount to a fatal blow to me. I am not afraid of returning to my hometown to work. What I'm afraid of is that I have an old mother who lives in my hometown, and a younger sister and younger brother who all work in my hometown. After I caused a huge disaster seven years ago, I caused them to suffer. My mother, who had taken off her hat, put it on again, my sisters and brothers were excluded from work, those who went to school were expelled, and those who were unemployed were not given arrangements. It was already miserable enough. I If they were taken back wearing a hat, it would definitely make their situation even more embarrassing! I hope this will always remain a legend and not be fulfilled.
Little did he know that others had already taken action. On December 6, my second sister came to see me, and I learned that the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles had sent people to my hometown, Jintang County, Sichuan, to contact me. According to the second sister, the county is not willing to have me. When my mother heard the news, she was horrified and asked her second sister to tell me that I could go anywhere in the world and never go back to my hometown.
This blow really hit me hard. For several days, I was in a daze. I often couldn't understand what others said and asked them to repeat it. I couldn't concentrate on reading at night. I always lost when playing chess. I had a nightmare before dawn on December 24, dreaming of an enemy air raid. The following is an excerpt from my diary that day:
......A group of bright spots flew in the night sky, numbering hundreds, circling back and forth at a very high speed and making a deafening noise. They were obviously supersonic jet bombers. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the shape of the plane, but I saw that the bright spots were spark-like and red in color. They dropped bombs four times in total. The first time they swooped over my head, I was in the field with many people, all of whom were refugees.
The crops in the field had been harvested, and there was nowhere to hide. I lay under a high ridge, but I heard the sound of bang bang explosions. The second time they swooped over my head, I had moved to a section of earth wall and curled up motionless. After a burst of explosions, I saw the earth wall collapsing from far to near, crushing many people. The earth wall was about to collapse to me, so I quickly crawled away. The third time they swooped over, I had already hidden in a big house (similar to Beijing's Dong'an Market), and the bombs exploded, and the tiles and beams fell off the roof, and there was thick smoke and fire.
The fourth time, I was on the drying dam of the farm and saw the bright spots fly far away to the other side of Mopan Mountain and circle. I was terrified that the Sichuan Chemical Plant was being bombed. The plant was very close to my hometown, and I was worried whether my mother and my brothers and sisters had been killed. When I was half awake, I could still hear the deafening sound of "bang bang bang". When I woke up, it was the sound of cars on the road in front of the farm. I looked at my watch, it was almost 7 o'clock. It was already daybreak, my heart was still beating, my breath was still gasping, I was still alive, I felt lucky.
I was thinking about it carefully when I was lying on the pillow. I remembered that I had read the latest issue of Popular Science before falling asleep last night. There were two pictures of an atomic bomb explosion: one was a ball of fire, and the other was a column of mushroom-shaped smoke rising into the sky. I stared at it for a long time and felt terrified, but then I forgot about it. Could the scene in my dream be related to this?
I hope that in this life I will not wake up and see the scene in my dream, and live the rest of my life as a peace dog.
The fear in the dream, now analyzed, may come from the fear of being taken back to his hometown. The enemy air raid is just a dream disguised. Dreams can disguise themselves. I think about it every day and dream about it at night. From "thinking" to "dreaming", this is a reflection process, both direct reflection type and indirect reflection type. Disguised dreams are like symbolist poems, which are indirect reflections.
The day after the nightmare, on the afternoon of December 25, others and I were fishing for sand (used for soil regeneration) from the river. The driver Zeng Shaohua ran to the farm and informed me that I must arrive at the office before 10 o'clock tomorrow morning because there was something urgent. He didn't say what it was. To hide my fear, I couldn’t ask more questions. It is estimated that I will be deported back to my hometown soon. I was so stunned all night that I couldn't sleep peacefully. I got up early the next day and started cooking in advance (I also served as the cook). After finishing the work, he rode towards the office.
On the way, he was in a trance, and almost turned into a ghost under the wheels of the car at Si Ma Bridge. He stayed at the bridge to watch Sima Xiangru return home in glory, in a carriage and on horse, and was envious that he had endured all the hardships and became the imperial writer of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. I arrived at the office gate early. The driver Zeng Shaohua came up, looking very mysterious, and whispered: "Wait here. I'll go in and notify. Someone is looking for you." Then he covered his mouth with his left hand, pointed to the auditorium with his right finger, pursed his lips and smiled, and added Whisper: "The Eighteenth Son is being interrogated!" Then I saw that the auditorium was full of people. It seemed that someone was making an impassioned speech criticizing Zeng Shaohua's "Eighteenth Son".
There were at least seven or eight people named Li in the agency. I don’t know which one is the unlucky one. I suddenly had an enlightenment and thought to myself: "Should I already be engaged in a movement? Criticizing and writing about middle-aged people?" Anyway, it has nothing to do with me. I am a person who is about to crawl. When the time comes, I will kick out of the Prime Minister's Mansion and control other people's cows to kill horses and horses to kill cows. I'm not even qualified to be a cow or horse! So I turned away, turned my back to the auditorium, stood next to the second door, and asked with suspicion, "Someone is looking for me, who?"
Xi Xiang came out and waved to me, and I followed him. Instead of walking towards the auditorium, I turned left, walked in through the small door, and walked towards the former office of the Music Association.
A stranger sat there waiting for me. Look at that look, it's quite stern.
"This is a comrade from the provincial party committee, and he wants to talk to you," Xi Xiang said. He refused to even introduce the stranger's name to me, and sat down to the side, ready to take notes.
"Sit down," the stranger said.
I sat down opposite him, across a desk, feeling uneasy because this was the setting for a trial.
The stranger stared at me fiercely and said, "I am from the provincial party committee working group, and I want you to tell me the truth." He also refused to introduce his name. It was not necessary for the prisoners to know the judge's name, and it had always been like this.
I talked from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and reviewed my words and deeds in detail before and after 1957, pleading guilty and begging for mercy, in a very despicable manner. The stranger leaned his elbows on the edge of the table, staring at my face with wide eyes. Later, his facial muscles gradually relaxed, his revolutionary vigilance gradually eased, and a gentle humanity was revealed. Thinking about his interjection, I soon realized that he was not interested in me at all, but in the other two responsible comrades. Now we have to destroy these two responsible comrades and criticize their "rightism". Are they also "rightist"? I just think this is ridiculous.
Entering the spring of 1965, I had nightmares at least once every month. I dreamed that I was shot. I dreamed that others killed me like a pig. The most bizarre thing was that on the night of February 13, I dreamed that someone was holding a kitchen knife and wanted to cut open my chest and abdomen, but I was very willing to do so. I said, "I'm afraid I'm going to struggle. You can tie me to the bench first." I also took the initiative to help the man tie up my hands and feet. Then I closed my eyes tightly and felt the blade pushing and pulling open my chest and abdomen.
A long mouth, and I felt the person reach into my chest and take out my heart. I seemed a little sad, feeling that this was how my life was going to be. This strange dream, according to current analysis, may be a tortuous reflection of the shock of being repatriated to his place of origin, the subconscious desire for complete transformation, and the willingness to take the initiative to confess his heart to the party (remove the heart). Before that, Lu Deyin lent me a large stack of "Red Flag" and asked me to study politics well. He was very sincere and said: "How many thirty-three-year-olds can a person have in a lifetime! Work hard, I am willing to help you take off your hat next year.
How can this farm be a place to hang out all your life! Take off your hat and make a home. Let's go!" This time I followed his advice and stopped writing "Wandering in the Sea of Words", and of course I stopped reading thread-bound books. But the stack of "Red Flag" is really boring to read, and the leftist tone is especially disgusting. To be honest, I still read them all.
For ten months, I only studied natural science at night, or played chess with Huo Wa. His chess skills have improved dramatically and surpassed mine.
At the end of 1965, Yao Wenyuan, the leader of the extreme left, published an article criticizing Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, and the leftist trend escalated. I finally learned from him for the second time (the first time was in 1957 when he wrote a special article to criticize me), and realized that I should not dream of removing the hat again, so I took out the thread-bound books again, stopped the chess game, and hurried to study, making sure to finish my "Wandering in the Sea of Words" before the disaster came. Moreover, the farm had already announced its closure on November 8, leaving me alone here, with no labor to do, just right to write day and night. In late February 1966, "Wandering in the Sea of Words" was completed, about 100,000 words, bound in twelve volumes, just enough to fill the small box made from the spittoon. I finally got ahead of the disaster, and I was very happy!
After breakfast on March 3, 1966, the American-made small Jeep I was familiar with (it participated in World War II) was towing an empty small tow truck, dragging an empty and unknown destiny. I sighed lowly and slowly. Driving slowly, we stopped at the farm's sun dam. I was at my desk reviewing "Zi Xue Meng Qiu" by Wang Jun, a philologist from the Qing Dynasty. I looked up and saw the driver Zeng Shaohua getting out of the car, and the farm director Lu Deyin who had already delivered the business also got off the car. I knew they were here to lure the fat pigs back to the agency and had nothing to do with me, so I lowered my head and continued studying.
"Zi Xue Meng Qiu" is a thin enlightenment book. It is very shallow. When I was in the first grade of junior high school, my Chinese teacher taught it to me. I found it very interesting at the time. The seeds of Chinese philology were sown into my mind at that time, in the spring of 1944. Reading this book now is like meeting an old friend. I was thinking about the pronunciation and meaning of the words "Yu" and "Ping" when Lu Deyin walked in and whispered: "Emmett, hurry up and pack your luggage. Go back!"
I was stunned for a while, then I folded the corner of that page and closed the book. I thought I could continue reading from this page in the future, but I didn't know that this would be my last goodbye!
After I packed my luggage, Lu Deyin was busy lifting three fat pigs onto the small trailer. The fat pigs jumped up and down, protested loudly, and refused to board the train. I couldn't help but smile bitterly when I thought about myself being so obedient.
I can't live here again in this life. I'll go out for a walk. When I walked to the pond at the south end of the farm, I suddenly remembered that in the summer of 1960, I suffered from hunger edema. My face and legs were swollen, and I was sleepy and confused all day. One day at noon, I was pulling a manure truck back to the farm from the second brick factory. I fell by the pond where the grass was green and the water chestnuts were rustling. In the sun that burned my skin, I fell into a deep sleep. When I was awakened by a PLA soldier who came out of the airport for a walk, the setting sun was about to set. Thinking of this incident, I didn't want to move forward, because there were more sad stories ahead, and I didn't want to touch them.
The so-called farm of the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles is nothing more than a dozen acres of land and a big house. The field was established in January 1960, and I was one of the earliest pioneers. This was originally the eastern edge of Phoenix Mountain Airport. During World War II, the US Air Force was stationed at this airport.
The more than ten acres of land on the farm were all used as airport runways and aprons, but were later abandoned and turned into wasteland. In the early days of the construction of the site, the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles sent people to dig out wasteland with pickaxes every day. As soon as the hoe hit the ground, there was a clang clang, and there were layers of pebbles underneath. I have done these labors here: pulling carts, digging the ground, planting vegetables, rapeseed, melons, potatoes, corn, cotton, raising pigs, cooking, keeping vigil, and so on. Also, when that big house was being built, I went up to the roof trusses to cover the tiles.
I lived on the farm twice for three years and one month. This is my university, where I sang, cried, worked hard, endured wind and rain, worked hard, got sick, felt lonely, dreamed, studied hard, and now I have graduated. For an honest person, going to this university is not a waste of life. What I have learned will be useful in dealing with the difficult years ahead, so that I can survive in adversity and survive strongly. I remembered a folk proverb: "No matter how poor you are, you can only beg for food! If you don't die, you will always make a living!"
The jeep honked at me from the other end. I hurried back to the big house and said goodbye to the comrades from the Provincial Science and Technology Association who lived on the farm. I had been eating from the same pot with them under the same roof for several months. I went to the well to fill the kitchen water tank. There was a bunch of chrysanthemums on the lip of the well. Every autumn, a few small flowers with yellow stamens and purple petals bloomed. Every day when I fetched water, I would look at them a few times. It was spring now, and they were still dreaming. When the autumn flowers bloomed, they would see a stranger fetching water there, and it would no longer be me.
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