A different kind of Lou Chun - "The Pretender" colleague

During the Spring Festival of 1983, my brother and I flew from New York to Shanghai with my aunt's ashes, and we finally saw our relatives whom we had not seen for nearly 30 years.

Shanghai is no longer what it looks like in memory, and the uncles are no longer the vigorous and handsome young men they used to be.However, despite the hustle and bustle of the crowd, and the passage of time across the vicissitudes of life, I still recognized the familiar tall and straight figure in the flow of people picking up the airport at a glance.The hair of the second uncle Mingcheng, who is in his seventies, is completely white, but his shoulders are still straight.Standing in the crowd in neat and formal attire, he was still as tall and tall as before.Those piercing eyes stared deeply, which made me cry instantly, and I looked into my father's deep eyes like stars and seas, as deep as complaints.

The memories my brother and I have of our father are just fragments.From the victory of the Anti-Japanese War to the liberation of Shanghai, he only appeared three times in our short four years of childhood.We remember his stalwart figure, well-dressed and handsome, but he came and went like the wind, always in a hurry.We remember his tearful gaze and nebula swaying with his lips pursed into a smile, but his face has long been blurred and cannot be combined into the picturesque face in the photo.What remains in my mind is the eternal elegance and silence, the bottomless, and the lamp that keeps writing at the desk every night.The second uncle said that the father was taking the risk of writing clarification materials for the mother.What risk?What is the clarification material?I don't understand, and my second uncle didn't explain.

In our young minds, father is an erratic and distant mystery.It seems that there will always be secret stories hidden, and endless questions to ponder.Even though it was rare to laugh and laugh with us, he often lost his mind and stared at his younger brother like a maniac, with long, long eyes, as if he was looking at another person through him.At that time, we were too young to understand our father's anxiety and worry about our mother's situation and his love for us so deep and strong that we had to restrain ourselves.In contrast, the warm and cheerful second uncle always wins our closeness and favor more than my father.We respect and distance ourselves from our father.I don't know who he is, what he's thinking, what he's doing, why he can't come home to play with us after work like other children's fathers.When I asked my aunt, my aunt just said that my father, like my mother, is doing very important and important work in other places.What job could be so important that we don't need it?I thought, but didn't ask.

One day when I was eight years old, my brother and I were suddenly picked up by my aunt in class.The last time we saw our father, he stretched out his hand and stroked our heads excitedly, knelt down and hugged us in tears and said: You are going back to Shanghai and seeing your mother soon.Tell mom: Dad loves you very much.

Hot tears and warm touch, Dad loves you very much—this is the last memory of our deep and restrained father.

"Second uncle!"

While meditating, the younger brother screamed in surprise and ran over, jumped over the crowd and hugged Uncle Ah Cheng tightly.

Vertical and horizontal tears ran across the weather-beaten face full of wrinkles.The second uncle shivered and hugged him back, as if trying to smile, but finally bowed his head and broke down in tears.

I also walked over with tears in my eyes, opened my arms silently, and embraced the two people who were embracing each other into my arms, listening to my younger brother sobbing like a baby:

"Five years ago, my aunt urged me repeatedly during her illness, and we went back to China after many ups and downs. We couldn't find any news about my uncle, so I went to Hunan Farm to find my second uncle and aunt. We all arrived in Changsha, but we were stopped by the relevant departments. See you. This time, I finally saw you!"

The younger brother is still the same as before, childishly stroking the second uncle's gray hair and old face inch by inch: "The second uncle is getting old, and he is more like my father."

"Where is the picture of your brother? It is really carved out of the same mold!"

The second uncle seemed to be dreaming when he watched me. He was stunned for a long time before he came back to his senses. With tears in his eyes, he stretched out his hand and patted the younger brother's forehead, choking with sobs and laughing: "Look at you little wild horse! What's wrong with the twins?" So far? Not at all!"

indeed.My brother and I are completely different in appearance and character.

My aunt said, I am like my father, like the sea.And the younger brother is like the mother, the fire.

But I never felt that my mother was as fierce and stubborn as they said.In my impression, she is as depressed and silent as her father, as deep as the ocean.

She is more like an ancient stone statue that has been going on for a long time, standing still in a corner, silently enduring the wind, sword, frost, and storm.Even, the hatred, abuse and determination from his own flesh and blood.

I never complained about my younger brother's fierceness and unfeelingness back then.After all, how difficult it was for a teenage child to be charged as a "family traitor" in New China at that time!No matter how good the grades are, politics will never pass.The teacher looked at us coldly, and the students were especially afraid to avoid us.My aunt and second uncle changed schools for us, but they couldn't erase the shameful background in the household registration survey.We have nothing to do with the red scarves of the Young Pioneers, and we will suffer cold reception and bullying wherever we go.One day, on the way home from school, after being yelled and scolded by a group of middle school students, traitors, and Japanese bastards, my younger brother ran to the street police station angrily and formally proposed to sever ties with his mother.Then, holding the certificate covered with a big bloody red stamp, he slammed it on the face of his mother, who was imprisoned in the firewood room of the party committee compound, with arrogance and arrogance.

"We don't have a traitor mother like you! From today on, my aunt is our mother."

The younger brother was strict with justice, and all the grievances that had been pent up for five years broke out.

Cowardly, I shrank aside, anxiously waiting for the arrival of a violent storm.However, no.The mother just brushed the hair scattered on her forehead, glanced at the statement and handed it back to the younger brother, and said lightly: "Very well, you don't have to be troubled by me anymore."

Her voice was so peaceful, even relieved.If I ignore the undulating chest and slightly trembling lips, I almost think she is talking about the weather that day.

The younger brother stared blankly at his mother, as if he only realized what he had done at this moment, and fled in despair.And I stood on the ground as if rooted under my feet, and a feeling of sadness that didn't match my age suddenly enveloped me.

At this moment, my mother turned her eyes to me.

Like fire, but also like the sea.Infinite sorrow, infinite longing, infinite tenderness.

Just like when a father looked at his younger brother back then, his eyes were filled with a vast sea, containing so much deep and deep affection that cannot be expressed in words.

It turned out that they were all trying to see the longing for no return from us.

At the age of 13, I bumped into my mother's eyes at that moment, and for the first time vaguely understood the lovesickness between my parents.

Mother's silent acceptance is like the calm before the storm.We more or less expected what kind of temper my aunt would have, and we were also prepared to deal with the family law ruthlessly.But what I didn't expect was that the second uncle, who was always kind and kind, was so enraged that he smashed the whole rosewood table with his palm!

"Remember to me: Your mother is the greatest and most beautiful woman in the world. Like your father, she is a hero of this country and the pride of our Ming family!"

My brother and I were relatively panicked.The mother in the family population is in conflict with the various rumors outside, and we don't know how to coordinate.Those worldly events were too incomprehensible and complicated for us who were children at that time.

"However, the uncles and aunts at the police station praised us for killing our relatives righteously. They also said that our revolutionary actions will be reported to the school and the whole school will praise them."

"evil creature!"

Brother's words, in exchange for a crisp slap from my aunt.

My aunt was so angry that she was trembling all over, and she could hardly stand still.

The second aunt hurriedly wiped away her tears and supported her to persuade her: "The child is still young and not sensible. Sister secretly sent me a message, asking us not to embarrass the child..."

"No matter how ignorant you are, you definitely shouldn't do such a thing!" The second uncle pointed at our noses, heartbroken:

"Life is like an adversary. A deserter who retreats and betrays when he encounters pressure, how can he be worthy of being the child of my elder brother and sister-in-law?"

That night, my aunt and my second uncle and aunt closed the door and talked very late.

Our treatment at school seems to have improved slightly.Gradually, the second uncle and aunt, who were always busy, became strangely relaxed. Sometimes they would return home before school was over; As soon as I go, I don’t go home for two or three days.

My aunt still called my uncle in Beijing from time to time, but she talked less and less, and her face became more and more ugly.A few times, I even shed tears.

The atmosphere at home became more and more dull and depressed.

One evening a few months later, my aunt suddenly took my brother and I on a train heading south in a hurry.We left Shanghai for Guangzhou, and after a brief stay there, we crossed the border by boat and returned to Hong Kong.

It was after the Spring Festival in 1955, and the mountains and rain were about to come and the building was full of wind.The mother has been transferred to a warehouse on the outskirts of Shanghai, where she is strictly guarded and visits are prohibited.

In the end, we couldn't see our mother again and say sorry.

"Look at us, what are we doing standing here?"

The second uncle wiped his tears and patted my shoulder, and I realized that the flow of people around me had already dispersed.My second uncle held each other like we did when we were young, and led us striding upstairs: "Your second aunt has difficulty moving, so I asked her to wait in the waiting room. I'm afraid I'm in a hurry right now."

Seeing a corner of the waiting room from a distance, a figure sitting in a wheelchair looking up, my brother and I couldn't help but rushed up.

"Second Aunt!"

"Auntie!"

The gentle and pretty Tingting young woman in the past is now an old man in her sixties, but she is still as graceful as before.We hugged her tightly from left to right, and unconsciously called out the old names, as if we wanted to see the faint shadow of our mother from her.

My father once said that my mother is beautiful and my aunt is beautiful and charming.And they all felt that their aunt was similar to their mother, not because of their appearance, but because of their unyielding perseverance in their bones.Going to prison with her second uncle, she is only 35 years old, and she still has a lot of good years.The task force sent people to put pressure on her 24 hours a day, asking her to draw a line with her second uncle, and to make up for the mistakes by exposing and reporting, but they were all strictly rejected.During this period, her leg was injured and disabled, until now even my second uncle doesn't know the details.From then on, he could only travel in a wheelchair. After 20 years in prison, he was sent to a labor camp with his second uncle, and they both returned to Shanghai two years ago.

"Call me Second Aunt!"

The second uncle is still the same as before, correcting our address very seriously and stubbornly, looking at the second aunt with tenderness and satisfaction in his eyes.

"You two children are so old!"

The second aunt burst into tears, hugging us, touching and looking at us, crying and laughing: "One is like a father, and the other is like a mother, that's great!"

When going out, the second uncle bent down and twisted the blanket covering the second aunt's legs tightly.The second aunt stretched out her hand and buttoned the buttons of the second uncle's open coat tightly one by one.

Looking at the second uncle pushing the second aunt in the wheelchair, with gray hair, walking slowly in the bustling crowd, the calmness of the mind after the turbulent waves, the intimacy, naturalness, and indescribable happiness and affection made me burst into tears. Feeling sad, he blurted out and asked, "How is little uncle doing? Are you okay?"

"Sometimes good and sometimes bad." Second Aunt's face darkened: "Occasionally she can wake up for a while, but most of the time she is still confused. Either she is in a daze, or she is talking nonsense."

"The star and bright moon..."

"They are no longer called stars, but bright moon."

The younger brother's words were interrupted by a heavy sigh: "I heard that he also left the country later, and there is no contact anymore."

We walked in silence for a while until we stopped in front of the bus stop.The second uncle silently held the second aunt's hand, and sighed:

"The smallest and pitiful baby in my family is not as lucky as me."

Yes.If the younger uncle is like the second uncle, and has a loving wife who lives and dies, then he should also be able to survive those dark years.

But in fact, the little aunt is not nostalgic for the little uncle.Even if she draws a clear line and actively reports, she intentionally avoids my uncle's history in the military command, and instead focuses on exposing her superiors——my uncle's biological father, Uncle Li, and the No. 76 female devil—I Mother's "numerous crimes" in Shanghai.But to my uncle, this is an even more unforgivable betrayal than accusations for myself!The little aunt later took a pair of children, and Lightning remarried to a high-ranking official in the military region.I didn't want to, but I was brutally persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.During the more than a year from June 1970 to June [-], she went to Qincheng Prison to ask to see her uncle again and again, but was refused by him again and again.Finally, in the spring of [-], on the [-]th anniversary of her engagement with my uncle, he committed suicide by taking poison.

Auntie's death hit my uncle no less than her betrayal 15 years ago.Uncle collapsed overnight, gradually became mentally disturbed, and his mind was in a trance.

I guess, even though I have hated her for so many years, my uncle can never forget his love.And as a traitor of the Ming family, the little aunt who was scolded to death by her aunt gnashed her teeth, but was forced to succumb to the pressure of power, and was swallowed up by her own conscience, perhaps, just to protect her children from harm.

This tragedy, to be blamed, can only be attributed to that cruel era.

The uncle lying in the hospital is much, much older than the hale and hearty second uncle.His eyes were empty, he was bewildered and foolish, and he did not have the charming demeanor of talking and laughing Yan Yan back then.

"Mingtai, Minglang Mingche came to see you. Do you remember? The eldest brother's child."

The moment he saw me, my uncle's cloudy eyes suddenly burst into brilliance strangely.He sat up suddenly from the bed, and grabbed my hand firmly:

"Big brother!"

A call, 43 years of long missing, reincarnation of life and death.

"Brother, you are finally back!"

It seemed that the spring that had been dry for centuries suddenly burst out, and my uncle held me tightly and cried like a child:

"You are late...Brother, you will never see sister-in-law again. It is Jinyun, Jinyun betrayed her! Brother, I am sorry for you, I am sorry for sister-in-law!...Why didn't you come back earlier? You know them How did you treat your sister-in-law? Even your son doesn’t want her to be a mother! In the past, the eldest sister objected to you being together, and you dared not let her see her for fear of being wronged. Do you know how these people treated her sister-in-law later? Brother, I want to ask you, is this the new world you want? Are you worth it, are you worth it?"

The little uncle's tearful question was exactly what I wanted to ask.

His father joined the party in 1928 and died heroically in Taipei in 57.It was not until 1975 that he was recognized as a revolutionary martyr by the State Council.It is said that Premier Zhou, the former head of state, made the final decision despite his illness.

The two uncles and second aunt were imprisoned in 55, sent to a labor camp in a harsh place in 75, and were still not free when they were released in 80, and their actions were all monitored.It was not officially rehabilitated until March 1982.

And our mother who died unjustly was officially acquitted at the end of September of the same year, and she was completely exonerated from the traitor she had carried for more than 40 years.

The second uncle said that the mother and father were not on the same line back then.Because the mother's superior, the Chief Ye Feng whom my aunt had always missed all his life, died in the Southern Anhui Incident, so it took more than half a year longer than their own to investigate that period of history and restore their mother's innocence.

"Sister's grievances are finally redressed. Where's the teacher? Where is my teacher?" Second Aunt sighed sadly.

Back then, the Japanese and puppets were frightened, the military command agent code-named "Poisonous Bee", was the instructor of the younger uncle and the second aunt in the early years, his father's life and death partner, and an official to the Kuomintang Ministry of Defense Lieutenant General Gao Shen.Later, his father was arrested and sacrificed to protect him from the blockade of Taiwan with intelligence, and he has since disappeared and his whereabouts are unknown.Presumably, he also fell into the vast waves of returning home bravely.

The Taiwan authorities are still looking for this fugitive who betrayed the country and joined the Communist Party.On the mainland, he is the head of the heinous Kuomintang Intelligence Bureau.His secret instigation and organizational relationship are all in charge of his mother.It took nearly 40 years for her mother to be wronged before she was rehabilitated. The anti-Japanese hero she grew up to be the most powerful anti-Japanese hero in Shanghai, but she doesn't know when she will be able to rectify her name.

Let me ask you in the troubled times, how many heroic warriors who have destroyed their homes to relieve hardships and sacrificed for the well-being of the national independence and the people, have no name in history, and have been wronged to death.

I silently looked around at the ten-square-meter small room where my second uncle and aunt lived.

The Ming Mansion, once full of warm laughter, has long been confiscated and turned into a small office building for a certain chief.The ancestral hall of the Ming clan in his hometown in Suzhou was smashed and leveled long ago, and a factory of some sort was built.My aunt's urn can only lie quietly on the bedside table together with the old black and white family photo.

The second uncle told us with regret that the landscape painting that had been hanging in the living room was what my father insisted on leaving to us before going to the stage alone.It's a pity that my aunt took us away in a hurry and didn't take it away, so I couldn't find it in the vast catastrophe.

"Even this photo was secretly saved for us by a kind prison guard."

The second aunt took out a handkerchief and wiped the frame of the photo carefully, and the second uncle was fascinated by it: "Eldest sister can't go back to the ancestral hall. Looking at this photo every day, it can be regarded as a family together."

And what about my parents?

The surging Huangpu River flows continuously into the East China Sea.I don't know if my father's soul has ever returned?

My uncle's frantic and unwilling cry sounded in my ears again:

Do you know how these people treated my sister-in-law later?She doesn't even have a grave, she doesn't even have a grave!

In this way, parents have completely dedicated their lives to their persistent pursuit of ideals.They love each other deeply, but they can only look at each other from a distance, and it is even impossible for them to be buried together after death.

Is it worth it?Is it worth it?

"No, boy, don't ask such questions."

Second uncle looked into my eyes.The tearful eyes were as deep and calm as his father's back then, firm as a rock:

"A history of espionage, true and false, false and true. We are soldiers, martyrs, and indomitable warriors, but we are not the ones who can stand in the sun and receive the cheers of victory. Because behind us, there are always conspiracy and calculations , there are traps. Many of us, many things, will be lost in darkness forever. But that doesn't mean it's not worth it."

"Your fathers and mothers, they don't care about gains and losses, they don't care about fame. They just want to save the broken mountains and rivers, and only raise their heads for the people to live in peace. Their greatness does not need anyone to remember or miss them. Because of their love, It has penetrated into this soil long ago. Their souls and flesh have been carved into the picturesque landscape. If they see all this later and go back and make a new choice, believe me, they will still go the same way! Your uncle and I, Second aunt and her missing teacher, we are all."

"It's worth it if you have no regrets in your heart. Born here and raised here, loved and fought. Stand upright, stand upright and have no regrets. This is a complete life."

Consummation?

I do not know.

All I know is: my father and mother, my family my love and they deserve more.

A few months later, at my vacation home in the suburbs of New York, I received a package from my second uncle from Shanghai.Open it, and inside is a brand new oil painting.

Next to the lake, next to the woods, there is an exquisite two-story building, which is very similar to the house left to us by my aunt.

In the yard full of flowers and plants, there is a pair of men and women standing side by side.

The men are tall and straight, while the women have long hair fluttering.

They intertwined their fingers, quietly looking at a pair of little boys who were huddled under a tree and swinging on a big tire...

The place where the oil painting is signed are two handsome and elegant characters——

home.

The author has something to say:

More than a year of crying blood is finally completely completed.

Salute to the unsung martyrs!

A silent tribute to the loyal soul who died!

May this river be clear and clean, as you wish;

May lovers in the kingdom of heaven stay together forever and never leave each other.