One

In 1979 A.D., after the Spring Festival, the Songnen Plain in Northeast China was still cold and condensed, frozen for thousands of miles, and snow drifted for thousands of miles.

Not long after a long-distance bus from Heihe to Nenjiang entered the territory of Sunwu County, it suddenly stopped. A sheep stood in the middle of the road and stopped the car. The driver kept honking his horn, and it didn't move, like a stone carving. The driver had to jump out of the car to catch it, and when he got closer, he found that it was standing on three legs. It was apparently a sheep that had been injured by a wolf, and it had lost its entire hind leg and had a blur of flesh and blood on its crotch. The driver couldn't help but take a step back in shock. The sheep, but suddenly fell stiffly. One of the passengers also jumped out of the car, walked up to the driver, kicked the dead sheep, and said with certainty: "It's the sheep of the Corps." ”

The driver looked at him in amazement.

The passenger raised his hand and pointed into the distance: "It's all gone, and the young man who herds the sheep doesn't even care about handing over the sheep." ”

The driver looked in the direction pointed by the passengers, and on the snowfield, there were rows of low outlines of mud and straw houses, no cooking smoke, no human figures, and the silence was unusual, like the ruins of a nomadic tribe - it was a company of the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps a few days ago.

The passenger looked at the dead sheep: "Strange, why didn't the wolf eat it whole?" glanced at the driver, and said: "If you don't pick up the white, you can't pick it up, it's enough to eat a few meals, and the sheepskin is not small, I'll help you move it to the car!"

"Don't, don't......" The driver frowned, feeling that it was not a good omen, and gestured to the passengers to drag the dead sheep to the side of the road......

The coach started again.

It drove for less than an hour and was stopped for the second time.

Handbags and luggage bundles are connected together to "build" two "barricades" on the road. More than a dozen people stood on the side of the road, and it was clear from their clothes that they were young intellectuals of the Construction Corps, both men and women.

The driver had to stop the car slowly.

Some of the educated youths moved away from the "barricades", and some surrounded the cars.

The driver opened the cab door and said to them in a consultative tone: "There are a lot of you guys, and there are a lot of things, don't rush to get on the bus first, there is no empty space in the car, wait for me to mobilize the passengers and make some room for you......"

A young man said gratefully, "Then you are really a good person!"

The driver slammed the driver's door shut, saw that the "barricade" had been removed, and drove the car over. One of the passengers turned around, glanced at the rear window, and said, "Why bother, everyone can squeeze each other a little bit and let them all come up!" "Let them come up, it's going to be good all the way!" the driver muttered and sped up.

The driver suddenly saw someone riding a horse chasing after him from behind in the car mirror, and he immediately looked panicked. The rider caught up in the blink of an eye, but did not stop the car, overtook and galloped away. The driver sighed secretly.

The car had just turned a hill along the road, and almost all the passengers and the driver found that three tractors were lined up on the road, four people were standing in front of the tractors, three were holding their shoulders, and one was leading the horse, staring at the driver from the front window of the car.

There is also a company of the Production and Construction Corps in the vicinity of here.

"Oh no!" the driver cried out, stopped the car, and lowered his hands from the steering wheel, leaning back on the driver's seat helplessly and nervously.

At this time, a horse-drawn carriage also rushed up from behind, and on the carriage were more than a dozen male and female intellectuals who had just been thrown off, their luggage bundles, and handbags. The man leading the horse walked to the front of the car, opened the cab door, and yelled at the driver, "Get down!" He was one of the dozen educated youths.

The driver's face was pale, and he was very frightened, and he did not dare to go down.

A young man came over, pushed away the man leading the horse, and said to the driver: "Don't be afraid, he scares you, we won't do anything to you." Please open the car door and let us get in the car! There are us in the car, and then we meet the educated youth who stopped the car, we will keep you safe and sound and pass smoothly!" Under the hat of the sheep shearling, two short braids were exposed, and a pair of handsome big eyes looked at the driver pleadingly. It's a girl. The doors opened......

The car passed by a company of the Production and Construction Corps, which had been abandoned on the snowfield.

Passing by another ......

When the coach arrived at Nenjiang Railway Station, it was dark. More than a dozen educated youths grabbed their handbags and luggage bundles, jumped out of the car, and rushed into the station. The girl said to the driver before leaving, "Thank you!"

In the station, on the platform and in the waiting room, hundreds of educated youths are waiting for the train. The handbags and luggage bundles they carried with them were piled up like a hill. anxious, dazed, melancholy, contemplative, indifferent, desolate, happy, solemn, grim...... All kinds of looks and expressions are presented on the tired faces of male and female intellectuals. Some of them get here from the company, and it takes four or five days. Those who were separated from their friends shouted loudly and ran around. Those who have lost something rummage through other people's handbags or luggage piles have caused scolding and arguing.

The consignment office is even more chaotic, fastidious, serious and excessive inspection, swearing, begging, protesting, threatening...... In the corner, next to the broken mirrored cabinet, an educated youth and an unidentified passenger were making a deal: "Thirty yuan ......" "Thirty yuan?!" I have worked hard from the company to get here, and I would be reluctant to ...... if I can't consign it." "Thirty-five! No more yuan will be added!" "Okay, good, thirty-five will be thirty-five!" The educated youth who sold the cabinet took the money and left. After walking a few steps, he turned back again, gave the other party back the money, and said loudly, "It's not for sale!" Then another kick, another hole...... A female intellectual, who was holding a child in her arms, ran over to stop her, shouting in a Shanghai accent: "You are crazy!

"Wow......" the child cried......

The train came into the station.

Hundreds of educated youths surrounded the doors and windows of each carriage as if they were hunting a huge beast. Handbags and luggage bundles were crammed into the carriage through the open window. Those who can't wait to get into the car through the door climb through the window.

"Don't ...... your child from the window"

It's already stuffed in. The cry of a child could be heard from inside the carriage......

Another window, an inseparable parting!

The girl was on the platform, and the young man was in the carriage. The young man leaned out of the window, and the girl grabbed him by the arm, crying and shouting, "I won't let you go!" I won't let ......you go! I won't let you go."

The lad burst into tears.

Several intellectual youths looked at them sympathetically.

Someone shook his head and said softly: "The girl of the Great Northern Wilderness ......"

The loudspeaker at the station sounded: "Passengers, please note that this train is four hours late...... The weather forecast is broadcast below, in the Nenjiang area, minus 24 degrees. In the Heihe region, the temperature continues to drop, and there is a snowstorm tonight due to the influence of the Siberian cold current......"

......

On a night during the return of more than 400,000 intellectual youths to the city in the Great Northern Wilderness, Pei Xiaoyun, a soldier of the Third Regiment Engineering Company of a division of the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps, stood guard at the border post for the first time tonight on the northernmost border of Northeast China on Hump Mountain.

"Coordinate No. 6" stands on the top of the snow-capped Hump Mountain. It was covered in a frosty shell by the cold winter, and from a distance, the whole body reflected a cold light like silver.

The moon, frozen in the night sky, is like a round mirror made of ice cubes, just wiped with snow, and even the phantom of the Toad Palace has been wiped away. The night sky was so clear and unusually clear that one felt that something ominous lurked, as if nature was secretly gathering a destructive and destructive force. Occasionally, thin clouds like silk spried across the night sky, and the shadows of the clouds followed in a hurry across the vast snowfield. The sparse stars stared timidly at the earth. Everything on the earth showed fear and held its breath. There is no wind, and the dead leaves of the artemisia grass sticking out of the snow, and the thin bald branches of the trees, are all still. The wasteland was silent. In the ravine between the two peaks of Hump Mountain, the wolf howls incessantly, causing dogs to bark in the nearby village. After the barking of the dog, the silence became more and more silent. This awe-inspiring silence is a symptom of hypocrisy before the blizzard in the Great Northern Wilderness.

Pei Xiaoyun stood on the sentry post with a gun on her shoulder. She took off her cotton gloves and looked at her watch by moonlight—seven and nine o'clock. Today is her birthday, and nine o'clock is the moment of her birth. Twenty-five years ago, on this day, at this moment, she was born from her mother's womb. She didn't cry when she was born, but the nurse lifted her body upside down and slapped her twice on the buttocks, and she cried out loud. At the same time as she let out her first cry to the world, her mother left the world suddenly, and before she could look at her, she may have heard her cry......

It was her father who told her, on her fifth birthday. That day, her father picked her up from kindergarten, and she cried all the way to ask her father for a mother. It was the first time that her young mind realized what was missing more than other children, the first time she felt that life was unfair to her, the first time she protested against life, and the first time she cried with her father. She didn't want to lack anything more than other children, she wanted a mother, just like she asked her father for a rag doll. When she returned home, she was tired of crying and sulking, not eating, not sleeping, and ignoring her father. His father was a lecturer in the philosophy department of the university, and in the social sciences, he was a faithful propagandist of dialectical materialism. But when it comes to explaining his own life, he is a fatalistic person. "Don't cry. Her father said to her, "You are not the only child who has lost her mother since she was a child." Tell me, why do you suddenly want a mother?" Her father stared blankly at her for a long time. "Daddy, I want a mom, I want it!" the father silently dragged the suitcase out from under the bed, opened it, found the old photo album, held her in his lap, and flipped through the pages to her. All photos are of a young and beautiful woman. My father closed the album and said, "She's Mommy." "Mom, how young is Mommy, how beautiful Mom is! In every photo, the mother has a gentle and graceful smile on her face. That smile tells others, and tells my daughter, that I have lived very happily in this world. "Where's Mom, why don't you ever come home?" "Mom is in another world. "I'm going there, I'm going to my mother!" said the father with a wry smile. "Son, sooner or later each of us has to go to that world, but we can't go to our mother right now. I still have a lot to do in this world, and you haven't started to do anything yet......" She didn't understand her father's words. "Mom...... Dead...... "Dead—she understood." She cried. "Remember, mom died to give birth to you. Her father gently stroked her head and told her about the pain her mother had endured on the day she was born. "Mom is a singer, do you want to listen to Mom's songs?"

Tears rolled down her little face, on the flower pocket, and on her father's hand.

Baby, your dad is in the guerrillas and is living that turbulent life......

The record rotates slowly, playing the beautiful voice of the mother singing. She felt that the record was what her father called "another world", and her mother lived there and sang every day. Mom's singing diluted the haze caused by the grim word "death" in her young heart. The father put away the record and said, "Son, pick a picture of your mother and keep it for yourself." She judged from the child's consciousness that those pictures, no, mother, were probably not as important to her as they were to her father. She chose one of the smallest two-inch photos. From that day on, her child's mental and emotional world matured and enriched earlier than the average child. Later, she often declared in front of the children: "I also have a mother." "Where does your mother work?" "Why did your mother never pick you up from kindergarten?" "You're a lying child! Lying is not a good child!" "Liar! Wolf coming! Wolf coming...... Surrounded by humiliation, she took out her mother's picture from her pocket and said loudly, "Oh, look, my mother!" and she said this aloud, and she received a hazy comfort, a kind of empty satisfaction. As she grew up, she realized more and more how important her mother is to a person, especially to her childhood and adolescence! First of all, I experienced the value of my existence from maternal love. Fathers often teach their children to see the world with intellectual eyes, and mothers often teach their children to see the world with emotional eyes. Children who have lost their mother's love since childhood live in their short-sighted vision, and it is difficult to show the whole picture. That alone means misfortune.

In gymnastics class, she fell off the balance beam, fractured her left leg, and lay at home for more than a month. Her father washed her face, washed her hands, washed her feet, and combed her hair. Even cut her fingernails and toenails. One day, her father read "Selected Poems of Heine" to her, and she suddenly said, "Dad, wipe my body!" The father looked at her for a moment, without answering, without any expression, and closed the book of poems. In the evening, three of her female classmates came to the house. My father had boiled a large basin of hot water, prepared towels and soap, found out the underwear she needed to change, and then said to the three female classmates, "I'm sorry for you." Then he turned and walked out of her room. The door was gently slammed shut by a female classmate. They began to undress her with all their hands and feet, stripping her naked......

After her classmates left, she cried silently. Although she thanked them, although she felt that her body was clean and comfortable, she was bruised in her heart by an unspeakable bruise, and a complex grievance sprouted......

When her father walked into the room, she covered her head with a quilt. Her father stood silently by her bedside for a long time before leaving. She heard her father's slight sigh before leaving, not knowing if it was for himself or for her......

That year, she was fifteen years old. From then on, the hour of nine o'clock in the evening became a sacred moment for her. At this moment, she stared at the big wall clock for a long time. Her girl's mind transcended time and space, and became close to the heart of her mother, whom she had never met in another world, merging and becoming one......

A girl's mind has a special function, and the more she feels that something is missing, the easier it is to make up for it with imagination. Imagination is always more perfect and fascinating than life itself. The ardent yearning and hunger for her mother's love made her even more dissatisfied with the only father's love.

Soon after, my father was also taken from this world, in the second year of a decade of turmoil...... She became an emotional despair. For a girl whose emotional needs are extremely delicate and whose inner world is immature and rich, this state of abject poverty is enough to weatherize the soul. Thankfully, she survived. The soul survived. The soul is pregnant with a little hope for life, and it will not harden like the liver......

At this moment, Pei Xiaoyun glanced at her watch again - nine o'clock. It was probably the hundredth time she had worshiped this sacred moment alone. She took off her gloves, reached into the pocket of her underwear with one hand, and pulled out a small plastic clip with the two-inch photo of her mother in it. Looking at her mother's photo, the twenty-five-year-old Shanghai girl couldn't help but kneel, and the moonlight clearly reflected the figure of her shoulder gun on the snow.

She had many, many things to say to her mother, on this night, at this moment. She wanted to say: "Dear mother, I am so happy tonight! I have been approved to be a soldier of the combat readiness detachment! I stand guard for the first time tonight ......."

She wanted to say, "Dear mother, it's not easy to get this gun on my shoulder! And I only gained such trust not so long ago......"

She wanted to ask: "Mom, do I leave the Great Northern Wilderness like others, or do I stay? Leave, there are things that I can't part with emotionally." Stay, I will feel lonely and abandoned......"

She wanted to ask: "Mom, even if I go back to Shanghai, who will be my relatives? Is there someone in Shanghai that I can be cared for and trusted......?"

She wanted to ask......

Suddenly she felt something touch her—a dog, a dog as big as a leopard. Covered in black hair, it shimmered like black satin in the moonlight. With a thick neck, a square head, big ears, and a wide mouth, he looks very fierce.

She was not frightened, the dog had a special affection for her. It was called "Black Panther", and its name was given by the intellectuals of the engineering company. Its mother gave birth to a total of six puppies, including her. The old followed the wood-cutting cart up the hill one day, and was caught in a wild boar leose set by the hunter and fed alive to the wolves. Five of the six puppies starved to death due to weaning, and the "Black Panther" was carried back to the dormitory by Cao Tieqiang, the platoon leader of the male intellectual youth platoon, and survived like a baby. It is the pet of both men and women. When it grows up, it looks at the warehouse, guards the wheat field, and repays the kindness of the educated youth. Someone took it to the sentry post to stand guard once, and it added another obligation, every late at night, to run consciously and be the companion of the person standing guard until dawn.

The "black panther" recognized Pei Xiaoyun, pounced on her with two front paws, stretched his neck to lick her face and please her. She patted the panther on the head, then held its wide mouth and pressed it to her frozen red cheek, pushed it away, and slowly stood up. Because she knelt on the snow just now, she was embarrassed even in front of the "Black Panther". The sacred sense of responsibility of a sentinel and the heroic spirit of a warrior suddenly germinated in her heart.

"Black Panther" pestered her with vigour.

"'Black Panther', don't mess around with me!" she scolded it sternly, straightening up, shoulder-facing guns, and her eyes surveyed the frozen Heilongjiang River. The "panther" obediently lay at her feet, looking intently at a star in the sky.

After a moment, she felt cold. She regretted not wearing a cotton coat, the cotton coat was too fat, and she usually didn't like to wear it. What's more, the first time she stood guard tonight, she was bloated and swollen, and she lost the heroic posture of a sentry! But after all, she felt cold. Look at the watch again, and after two hours, someone will come to take over, and you can hold on. She took off her gloves with both hands, put them to her mouth for a while, rubbed them for a while, unbuttoned one of her clothes, and reached into the cotton coat crosswise, clasped tightly under her armpits to keep warm. Her feet were also a little painful from the cold, and she stomped lightly. The "panther" was covered in fur and did not seem to be cold, lying motionless in the snow den, no longer looking at the stars, looking sideways at her, his eyes showing mockery of her.

"Bad thing!" she scolded, turning to look down the hill. The regimental headquarters was pitch black, and the tall chimneys of the brick houses and the canteen of the regiment were clearly outlined. Only the four windows of the conference room of the regiment headquarters transmit light.

She couldn't help but think of him, he had gone to the regiment headquarters at four o'clock in the afternoon for an emergency meeting, and it was obvious that the meeting had not yet been dissolved. I don't know what kind of important meeting this was, and why it was held so late.

He, perhaps, is speaking?

Perhaps, having spoken, is looking out of the window, thinking of her?

Fool! He couldn't even look at her!

She smiled......