One

It was a dead and boundless expanse, covered with dead branches, dead leaves, and poisonous algae for years. The dark brown surface of the stagnant water presents a false calm. The abyss of silt beneath the surface of the water is stained with the skeleton of a bear, the gun of a hunter, and the tractor of a reclamation team...... It reeks of death within a hundred miles. People call it "Oninuma".

After I arrived in the Great Northern Wilderness, I heard a lot of legends about the "ghost swamp": in the middle of the night when there was no moon and no stars, when the wasteland was sleeping in quiet darkness, I could see the green and flickering "ghost fire" fluttering, and I could hear the roar of the bear that was swallowed by the "ghost swamp", the guns of the hunters calling for help, and the desperate and miserable cries of other unfortunate victims...... A strange bird call could be heard, as if a woman was crying out desolately, "How pitiful, how pitiful...... and yet no one had ever seen such a bird look like. The Oroqen people call these birds "soul birds", saying that they are the spirits of the earth god change, and they recruit and soothe the ghosts of people and animals who die in the "ghost swamp" in the middle of the night. "Ghost fire" is the lantern they hit.

Like the terrifying nine-headed dragon in Greek mythology and legend, the "Oni Swamp" occupies the fertile land behind it, and as long as the seeds are sown in the spring, tens of millions of tons of grain can be recovered in the autumn. However, no one dared to wade into the "ghost swamp" to sow a seed. It is said that a large sa of the Japanese Kwantung Army became interested in that fertile soil and fantasized about creating a farm there and becoming a big farmer in the future, and personally led a survey team to cross the "Oni Swamp" in winter. They went into the sea like mud oxen and never returned. The old people of the Great Northern Wilderness, some say that they were eaten by wolves, some say that they were frozen to death by the severe cold of more than minus 40 degrees Celsius, some say that they starved to death due to insufficient provisions, some say that they were wiped out by the Oroqen tribe, and some say that when they returned in spring, they were trapped at the bottom of the swamp with their cars and ...... The Oroqen people call the 10,000 hectares of fertile land "the wilderness". "Full cover" is the meaning of the demon king in the Oroqen language. They occasionally appear in the wilderness in winter, but they never hunt any of the animals there, fearing punishment from the "full cover".

The terrifying "Oni Swamp"! The mysterious "Covered Wasteland"!

In the winter of the third year when I arrived in the Great Northern Wilderness, our company formed an advance team of more than a dozen intellectual youths and marched there!

Our company, due to the wrong selection of the site at the beginning, the cultivated land was limited and low-lying, and as soon as the wheat harvest met the rainy season, the harvester was stuck in the wheat field, like a paralyzed toad, unable to operate. As a result, the harvest has been in short supply year after year. That year was even worse, and even the seeds were not recovered. The regiment decided to disband our company. The more than 200 young intellectuals who get along with the whole company day and night will be divided into various fraternal companies, which means that not only will we not be able to contribute grain to the country, but we will also be unable to support ourselves! We have just arrived in the Great Northern Wilderness for three years! Many people still have to make great achievements in the war against heaven and earth! The conviction of reclaiming and garrisoning the frontiers has not yet been shaken! The spirit and enthusiasm of arduous pioneering work have not yet been extinguished!

What could be more humiliating to us than this decision in the regiment? Many people wept on the spot when they heard the old company commander announce the decision in shame. Li Xiaoyan, the deputy instructor, first stood up and fiercely and resolutely opposed the acceptance of this disgraceful "dissolution order".

She said: "The company must not be disbanded! We can go and reclaim the 'Mangai Wasteland'! We are closest to it, and we should have thought of reclaiming it a long time ago! We must rebuild the company there! We must leave the footprints of the first line of reclaimers on the 'Mangai Wasteland'! We must make a guarantee to the regiment that the wasteland will be cleared in that year! Grain will be collected in that year! A new point will be built in the next year! We will make a military order!"

We are accustomed to hearing and even tired of the rhetoric of the assistant instructor on any occasion. But what she said stirred us and inspired us! I think it was the most heroic and powerful thing she said! Many people felt the same way as me.

The regiment retracted the decision that had been made and accepted our military order.

A few days later, two of our company's latest 54-horsepower tractors, dressed in red and flowers, dragged the wooden climbing plough that had been made in a hurry, and drove to the vast snowfield under the escort of the whole company.

Hope, trust, sustenance, and wordless exhortation are expressed from the eyes that are silently watching us. Every member of our reclamation team has experienced a sense of responsibility from these eyes. Every single one of us cried.

Oh!

How we cherish our sense of responsibility!

How easily we are excited and moved!

The first climbing plow was loaded with grain and luggage. The second plough had a tent set up on it. More than a dozen of us reclamation team members were huddled in tents one by one. I sat on the tattered washbasin that I was clasped on, and I held an open copy of the "History of the Hongnan War" between my knees. I guess it's the only food for our group. But I don't rely on it to stuff my mind and thoughts. I was staring at the lead on the page, but I was recalling what I had read: War and Peace, John Christopher, Les Miserables, The Red and the Black...... Deep down, I was secretly moved by the fate of the characters in the book.

Next to me sat my sister, who was holding a small wicker cage with a small squirrel in it. Along the way, she didn't say a word, like a mute. Her face was so pale, her expression was so dull, and her eyes were so desolate! I had no brothers or sisters. There was only one sister, whom I had loved since childhood, but I pitied her and hated her, and not long ago she had ruined her reputation and made me lose face.

Opposite sat the deputy instructor Li Xiaoyan, and next to him sat the blacksmith Wang Zhigang. He was dark, muscular, and had a face with rough lines, giving the impression of a dignified man with strong will and infinite strength. He was reminiscent of Othello, the character of Shakespeare's tragedy, and thus earned the nickname "Moorish". He has a withdrawn personality, is upright, dares to uphold justice, and does not like to be in the limelight, but his words and deeds have potential influence among the educated youth. I envy his invisible prestige among our intellectuals that no one can match. He secretly loves our deputy instructor Li Xiaoyan. Many male intellectuals know this, and he himself has publicly admitted it in the big dormitory, but no one dares to make a joke about him at this point. I admired his courage and amazing frankness in openly acknowledging love. From that day on, I saw him as my adversary. Because I also secretly love our assistant instructor. He joined our reclamation team and was named by the deputy instructor. This especially made me extremely jealous! And what made me even more jealous was that Li Xiaoyan actually rested her head on his broad shoulders at the moment, as if she was napping instead of sleeping!

I looked at her, and I couldn't help but ask myself again: Why do I love her, what is her charm that attracts me, is it because she is beautiful? Yes, she is beautiful. She is a Shanghai girl, with a delicate and charming face, fair skin on her face, handsome facial features, and a pair of big and bright eyes. The eyebrows were thin and long, and the distance between them and the eyes was slightly wider, which gave her face a perpetual expression of raised eyebrows and astonishment. Ever since I first met her, I couldn't stop paying attention to her. She also has a graceful figure, slender, slim, and slim. It is said that she is a top student in the small class of Shanghai Ballet School, and many military art troupes and local literary and artistic units have competed to recruit her, but she refused, but voluntarily signed up to come to the Great Northern Wilderness. She is not the only beautiful girl I have seen, contacted and acquainted, and I am not so easily confused, fascinated and attracted by the beauty of girls. The more I am in front of beautiful girls, the more I will show a kind of arrogance. My motto is: never rashly ** captive. Is it her solemn and dignified personality that has aroused my affection? I prefer a girl with a warm and hearty disposition, and I even think that her seriousness and solemnity are contrived hypocrisy, for which I have despised her to the extreme. As soon as she arrived in the Great Northern Wilderness, she made a vow that in order to consciously test her firmness to take root in the frontier, she would not visit her home within three years. She proposed to the young women of the whole company not to look in the mirror, not to apply balm, not to wear floral clothes. The unanimous response to her initiative is doubtful whether it is sincere. According to the young women, she was often deeply distressed by the fact that her face was so white and tender, and in the summer, she had secretly run to the river and lay alone on the secluded river beach, but she could only make her face white and red, but not further red and black. Therefore, she deliberately dressed more masculine than all the girls to make up for the innate deficiency in the "re-education" standard of "tanning the skin to refine the heart". She also intends to do the same tiring work as the young men, and wants to make her body shape more in line with the "beauty of the laborer". Unfortunately, the results are very little, although it has been stronger in the past three years, it is still so slender, so slim, so slim, like a tall little birch. She really didn't visit her home for three years. In the first year, she became a platoon commander, in the second year she joined the party, and in the third year she became our deputy instructor, becoming a glorious example for the intellectual youth of the whole regiment to take root in the frontier.

In the summer of the third year, one evening not long after the regiment appointed her as the assistant instructor, I was sketching by the river with a homemade simple painting clip, and suddenly I heard someone singing softly in the upper reaches of the river......

This song was included in the category of "****" at that time, and it was absolutely forbidden to sing. Which girl is singing? She is too careless and careless! If our deputy instructor hears it, it is indispensable to start another "struggle in the ideological field." But how beautiful she sings, her voice is so sweet, so mellow, so tactful. Out of pure curiosity, I put away my picture folder and quietly searched the riverside upstream. Under an old willow tree with a crooked neck, in the shelter of a clump of artemisia grass, across the river I saw the singing girl, who was actually our assistant instructor! She sat on a large smooth bluestone by the river, with two bare feet into the water, her trousers rolled up above her knees, and a bare white calf. She was washing clothes, and the sweet and mellow singing voice was what she sang while washing clothes: Ninety-nine, that sunny God, hey, my eighteen-year-old brother is thinking about Xiao Yinglian......

I, looking at her from across the bank in a daze, was completely stunned.

She rubbed and rinsed, washed the last garment, wrung it out, got up from the big bluestone, stepped onto the riverbank, tiptoed, carefully walked over a cobblestone, and hung the garment on the branches of the bush. Because she was afraid of pebbles, her feet were raised high, light, and her steps were very broken, so that the few steps she walked carefully were very similar to a little swan dance in the ballet "Swan Lake". She dried her clothes and walked back to the river with the same steps. She picked a few wild flowers by the river, sniffed them, and played with them admiringly for a while, three on the left and three on the right, inserted them into her sideburns, and she squatted down. Gazing at the surface of the water for a long time. She admired herself! She admired her beauty! She admired herself for so long before she slowly straightened up. Suddenly, she jumped lightly onto the smooth and flat bluestone, stretched out her arms, and spun gracefully for half a circle, and actually danced a cheerful, enthusiastic and rapid Mexican folk dance!

The slight sound of the clip falling into the water made her suddenly stop dancing, and she looked alarmingly at the other side, and when she found me, she immediately froze on the big bluestone. The posture was like a puzzled fawn, and like a frightened crane.

Across the river, she looked at me, and I looked at her.

We were all stunned.

I first returned to normalcy, jumped into the river, salvaged my folder, waded through the shallow water, pretended to be nothing, and flowed to the other side. By this time, the few wildflowers she had planted in her sideburns were gone, and her rolled-up trousers had been lowered.

"You, what are you doing by the river?" she asked me, clearly trying to preempt psychologically, showing a very natural appearance, trying to hide her embarrassment, trying to maintain the reserve of a dignified girl in front of a young man, and trying to maintain the dignity of an assistant instructor. However, she didn't have time to button up her whitewashed corps uniform, revealing a short, tight light pink shirt, a thin one with a sweetheart collar. I inadvertently caught a glimpse of her snow-white neck, snow-white part of her breasts, and equally snow-white round shoulders, and the graceful silhouette of her towering breasts under a tight blouse. I quickly looked away. At that moment my heart was pounding, my face was hot, and I inexplicably felt a sense of shameful guilt, and I felt that I had blasphemed her, and I had blasphemed myself. Though I can swear to God, at that moment there was absolutely not the slightest evil thought in my heart, not even the forgivable instinctive impulse of a young man for a beautiful girl, and this impulse was also germinated by Adam, the creation of God, to Eve.

She's so sensitive! She was like a device that had received an electronic signal, and immediately subconsciously covered the placket of her clothes with both hands, and immediately turned away. When she turned around again, there was another assistant instructor I was familiar with. She even hooked the collar of her coat. It's just that he still has a pair of bare feet. Even these bare feet, she was struggling to step into the mud and sand by the river, burying them with the sand.

I wanted to find a way to break the situation, but what I said was a stupid sentence: "You...... It's so beautiful!"

"What?......" her face flushed like a cloud. Because of my unexpected appearance, she fell from the realm of self-absorbed forgetfulness just now, into this embarrassment that could not be concealed in front of me, and I felt guilty and pity for her from the bottom of my heart.

"I ...... I mean, that dance you just danced was so beautiful! If I'm not mistaken, it's a Mexican folk dance, right?" "Mexican dance? "So, do you want to deny that you just sang?" "Sing? I just sang." What is the need to deny this?" The expression on her face added to the disguised candor in addition to the disguised confusion.

A clear river, a tiger head mountain, Dazhai is on the other side of that mountain......

She sang two more lines and said, "That's what I just sang." Why, you heard ?......" At this time, the crimson on her face had disappeared, and her demeanor had become natural. I felt that she was making a blatant fool of me as if I was blind and deaf! I was furious and said coldly, "No! I heard you sing not this song! You sang 'Eighteen-year-old brother is thinking about little Yinglian'!"

"Eighteen-year-old brother, what little Yinglian, don't talk nonsense! I have never heard this song!" Her two long, thin eyebrows were raised, and her face, which had already had a look of surprise, showed an expression of surprise and astonishment. It's as if I said to my face that she's a thief!

Such a charming and moving face, several hypocritical changes in the expression appeared on this face.

I stared at the face in amazement, and froze in front of her. I had nothing more to say to her. She seemed to me to be the sphinx monster of Egypt, and the sphinx had to confess more than her! Because the Sphinx said the same thing to everyone: "If you don't guess my riddle, I'll eat you!"

And she, trying to convince a man of his nerves, that she was alive and well in the daylight! I said two words to her almost viciously: "Hypocrisy!" I turned sharply and strode away with a contempt for her that seemed to never be erased. "Wait!" she called out to me. I stood down, not turning, but I could imagine how she had rushed after me, and felt her uneasy breathing. "You, do you know that you have to report to Lian Li?......" her voice was pleading with bitterness that was difficult to explain. I relented, turned my back to her, and shook my head. I walked far away, and I couldn't help but look back at her, who was still standing by the river, like a stone sculpture, motionless...... I haven't told anyone about it. I'm not so despicable! Since then, in every regimental life, when she tirelessly taught us all kinds of ideological education, as soon as she came into contact with my gaze, her tone and demeanor became unnatural...... It made me feel a little sorry for her. Soon I received a telegram that my mother was seriously ill. Lianli did not approve leave, and the reason is simple - it is the summer harvest season, and I am a Combein hand. In fact, I know that the main reason is that the company commander does not believe in the authenticity of this telegram. Some young intellectuals or their parents who think very much about their parents have used telegrams such as when our parents are seriously ill, critically ill, or even dead to make our company commanders fall for the trick several times. The company commander is a typical empiricist, and for such a person, explanations and pleadings are useless, and the effect can only be counterproductive. But I could not remain indifferent to this telegram. My father died young, and my mother was a worker in the street Xiaowuqi factory. How difficult it was for her to pull my sister and me apart in a difficult life! No one can be more sympathetic than me for the heart she broke for our brother and sister. Now my sister and I have come to the Great Northern Wilderness, leaving her alone at home. She is a strong woman, and no matter how much she misses me and my sister, she will not cheat......

I must go back to my mother at once!

I quietly left the company that day......

Oh, my mother, a woman who has endured all the hardships of life in this life, she is too strong and loves her children too much. She was already sick and dying, knowing that she would die soon, but she only took a telegram to her son that was "seriously ill", and she was afraid that such a grim word as "critically ill" would frighten her child.

In the last five days of my mother's life, I gave her the greatest love and filial piety that an old son could give, and in the place of my sister, I repaid her kindness for bringing us into this world and raising us as adults.

Five days, five short days! No matter how much filial piety I give to her old man in these five days, it can only be regarded as a symbolic reward from a son to his mother!

My mother's last words before she died were: "Take care of your sister!

On the day of my return, the regimental branch discussed what kind of punishment should be given to me, a "deserter," in accordance with the instructions of the company commander. Someone revealed to me in advance that they would take me as a model and kill chickens to show monkeys, and the punishment had already been determined - expulsion from the group. The discussion is nothing more than an organizational form.

I, on the other hand, don't care about any punishment at all.

The associate instructor moderated the discussion. I think she's going to be happy now! She can take revenge in a big way. I was ready to listen to her talk without saying a word, and accept her criticism of me without saying a word.

She asked me to start by talking about my own mistakes.

I, without looking at anyone, only muttered indifferently, "My mother...... He's dead...... After saying this three days ago, ......" lowered his head and covered his face with his hands. I was sure by feeling that all eyes were on me at once.

In an instant, it seemed that everyone present had stopped breathing, and the silence was suffocating, as if the air had frozen! For a long time, I heard the deputy instructor say two words in an extremely low voice that could just be heard: "The meeting is ...... ended."

She was the first to get up and leave.

As I walked past the company headquarters with mechanical steps, I heard the sound of a fierce quarrel between the deputy instructor and the company commander from inside, and she had always obeyed the company commander's "instructions", and I couldn't help but stop.

"I am the commander of a company, don't I have the authority to punish a soldier?" was the company commander's annoyed Sichuan accent. "I am the secretary of the Youth League branch, how to punish a member who has made a mistake, this is the right of the League organization!" the deputy instructor's voice was also so excited. "You are doing this to protect a deserter!" "Deserter? Did he escape from the battlefield? Did he flee to the other side of the Heilongjiang River? Do you know? His mother is dead! He returned to the company on the third day after his mother's death...... "Oh! Dead ?......" "Company commander! I am also an intellectual young man, and I also have old fathers and mothers, and they miss me day and night, and I miss them day and night. If I hadn't been bound by my vows, I would have wanted to go back to my parents right away, but...... I can't! I don't agree with his expulsion! Company commander! Please put yourself in his shoes......

I heard her crying. As I stood outside the company headquarters, tears welled up in my eyes! I was full of gratitude to her! Not because she defended me on my behalf, but because the sentence she said, "I am also a young ...... of knowledge," completely eliminated all kinds of misunderstandings and prejudices I had about her before that. With this sentence, it was enough for me to willingly go to the soup for her. These words made me see the noble nature of a girl! a compassionate heart!

However, it was she who told me a thunderous story, and two days later...... "Shall we go together?" and before calling it a day, she followed me to hoe the last long ridge. As we hoeed and hoeed, she said the above to me. This is the second time in three years that she has taken the initiative to speak to me. The first time was by that creek not long ago. The grim expression on her face gave me a sense of foreboding. When all the men were lined up with hoes, she said to me in a loud voice, "You stay a step, and we will go together!" and the young men and women all looked at her with strange eyes, and at me. When they were far away, she stared at me and said, "I transferred your sister to our company without your consent." "Ahh......h What's wrong with her? Tell me!" "While you were home, she ......" "Say!" "She had an abortion...... "My body shook a little and I almost fell!" She stepped forward and put her hands on me. I shoved her away and yelled, "You talk nonsense!" She staggered back, looked at me in fear, and squeezed out two terrible words from between her trembling lips, "Really." ”

I felt like I was sinking into the dirt beneath my feet!I wanted to scream out something terrible, but it seemed like something was clogging my throat again! I opened my mouth wide and let out only a hoarse **-like sound. I stared at her with wide eyes, but she blurred in front of my eyes.

I suddenly went crazy and ran towards the company......

That night, when the big dormitory was snoring one after another, I put my head under the quilt, bit the corner of the quilt and cried silently all night. I remembered my mother's advice when she was dying, and I had not yet informed my sister of my mother's death, but she had done such a dishonoring thing, and had the face to be transferred to my company in an attempt to obtain my protection. No, I will punish her severely, with the power of an older brother!

The next day, I was called to the company headquarters by the deputy instructor, where I met my sister. I must have been demonically possessed! I lunged at my sister like a ferocious leopard, grabbed her hair with both hands, and slammed her head into the earthen wall one after the other......

"Stop!" I heard the assistant instructor's voice change and rushed forward to break my hand. I yelled at her, "Get out of here!" and I was torturing my sister, but like myself, and I felt a kind of pleasure in this hysteria. "Smack!" I got a hard slap in the face. I finally let go of my hand. The second slap was harsher than the first.

These two slaps suddenly woke me up, and I couldn't help but take a few steps backwards and subconsciously touch my hot cheeks.

Sister, from beginning to end, there was no word, no **, no shouting, no pleading. My hair was messy, and it hid her bloodless pale face, her tear-rippling face, her big eyes sunken in her sockets.

The assistant instructor's face was as pale as her sister's, and she held her sister tightly in her arms, her chest rising and falling violently, and she glared at me with the desire to fight for her life. "Brute!" was the first curse I had ever heard from her. From that day on, I fell in love with her...... She was now sitting across from me, with the climbing plough of her tent, dragged by a weary iron oxen, and marching across the snowy fields...... The tent curtain was rolled up, and the snow powder raised by the northwest wind poured in, and we shrank from the cold, but no one wanted to lower the tent curtain. From the mouth of the tent, it is always white...... White earth, white mountains, white rivers, white forests. "The big smoke bubbles are blowing", like thousands of crazy bison rushing in unison, demonstratively chasing behind the big climbing plow.

The assistant instructor silently looked around at everyone and said to himself, "Who's going to tell a story? Why don't you sing a song together?" Everyone is tired. The assistant instructor stopped his gaze on my face. I cleared my throat and sang the "Song of the Soldiers of the Corps": The soldiers of the Corps, with the rising sun in their chests, hold a gun in one hand and a pickaxe in the other......

No one echoed me, so I had to sing the first two lines and stop with interest.

At this time, the "Moor" Wang Zhigang whistled. He can't sing, but he whistles quite well. To my surprise, he played the famous Russian folk song "Three Sets of Carriages," and this "Moorish man" did not take the existence of the assistant instructor seriously, but his whistle was really fascinating, like a clarinet and a trumpet, and the beats and tunes were played accurately, revealing a faint sentimentality and deep melancholy.

I don't know who it was, but it was whispered and whistled, and then, the second, and the third...... Finally, a small chorus was formed very naturally.

My sister looked up, her dark eyes wide, her stunned gaze restlessly at this, at that, and quickly lowered her head. She let out a deep, deep sigh that shook my heart.

I, looking at the assistant instructor face to face, guessed that she would immediately stop it in a serious manner! head, still on the shoulders of the "Moors". She closed her eyes and pretended to be sleepy. I noticed that her hand on the side of her leg was clearly secretly tapping the beat! My pride was stabbed and I bit my lip tightly.

Ice and snow cover the Volga, there are three sets of cars running on the glacier, and someone is singing a melancholy song, singing about it......

Night fell quietly, and the tyrannical "big smoke bubbles" did not know whether they were willing to give in, or were left far behind by the tractors advancing at full speed, and the wasteland was so quiet! The darkness completely hung the curtain for us......