The Complete Works of Xu Zhimo's Classical Prose

Chapter 32 Laughing at Life's Hibiscus Bird (4)
Hear the obscene sounds, hear the brutal sounds;

Tigers and wolves are in the bustling streets, robbers are in your wives' beds, crimes are in your deep souls...

white flag
Come, follow me, take a white flag in your hands, not a white flag that says agitation, hatred, and encouragement, nor a white flag painted with unclean blood, nor a white flag painted with repentance and spells (put Confession is drawn in your hearts);

You are lined up, silent, solemn, like a mourning procession, not allowing a trace of color or smile to remain on your face, serious, silent, like a team of soldiers desperate to die;

Now the time has come, raise the white flags in your hands together, as if raising your hearts, and look up at the blue sky above your heads, without blinking, fearfully, as if looking at your own souls;
Now the time has come, you let you boil, suffocate, burst, boil tears flow, direct, mad flow, free flow, happy flow, full flow, flow like a mountain and river flowing out of a gorge, like a torrential rain torrential flow...

Now is the time, let you swallow, oppress, struggle, howl with turbulent voices, howl, howl wildly, howl presumptuously, howl ferociously, like the howling of a hurricane among the waves of the sea, like the howling of your most lost Howling when dear flesh and blood...

Now is the time for you to repent of your restored nature, the repentance of your nature that has been boiled away from the tears, the repentance of your nature that has been awakened by the thunder of mourning, the silent repentance, the eternal repentance, the deep repentance, like the cold The starlight falls on a lonely valley, like a black-clothed nun crouching in front of a golden lacquered shrine;  …

In the boiling of tears, in the howling, in the silence of confession, you have seen the eternal majesty of God.

baby
We have to look forward to a great fact, and we have to wait for a sweet baby to be born:

Look at his mother suffering on her delivery bed!
The serenity, softness, and beauty of her young woman are now transformed into an unbelievable ugliness in the violent labor pain: you can see that all the muscles and tendons of her body are swelling under her thin and tender skin, the terrible blue and purple, like It was as if a frightened water green snake was swimming in the ditches. Beads of sweat stuck to her forehead like soybeans. Her limbs and body were violently twitching, bent, straightened, and twisted. As if her matting had been woven of needle points, as if her tents had been woven of fire;

A serene, calm, dignified, beautiful young woman, now transformed into a devil-like horror in the cruelty of colic: her eyes, sometimes tightly closed, sometimes wide open, her eyes She used to be like a star reflected in a pond on a winter night, but now she spews out blue-yellow fierce flames, her eyes are like red-hot coals, reflecting the last struggle of her soul, and her lips, which used to be scarlet, are now like furnaces. Her mouth was trembling, twisting, twisting, and the passionate kiss of death did not allow her to breathe a single breath of peace. Her hair was untied, lying on her mouth, spreading across her chest like a mess. of twine, clutching between her fingers a few fringes of untwisted hair;

The mother suffers on her birth bed:

But she has not yet despaired, her life is struggling with blood and flesh and bones and limbs, on the edge of the cliff, resisting, fighting, the persecution of death;

She hasn't let go yet, because she knows (her soul knows!) that this pain is not without cause, because she knows that in her womb lies a little seed of life greater than herself, containing a being more permanent than all. the baby;
For she knows that pain is the sign of a baby asking to be born, the news of a seed bursting in the earth into a beautiful life, her chance to fulfill her own life's mission;

Because she knew that this patience would bear fruit, and in her stupor of agony she seemed to hear the voice of God allowing prayers in the world, as if she heard the voices of angels praising the bright future;
So she endured, resisted, struggled... She fought to break the delicacy of her whole body, she wanted to redeem the life that was turbulent in her womb, in the hope of a complete, beautiful baby born in her In the process, the sharpest and deepest pain is forced into the sharpest and deepest pleasure...

This may be a boring hope, but whoever is unwilling to live will make the last edge of despair, and we still have to think that the arm of hope stretches out from the darkness to hold us.We have to look forward to this painful present, but to prepare for a more glorious future. We must look forward to the birth of a white, fat, lively baby!

Recently, there are two facts that have touched me deeply.Let me tell you about it.

A few days ago, the flag was hung at the Russian legation, and I also went to see it.Garahan stood on the stage, smiling slightly, his face had a serious blue light, and when he tilted his head sideways to watch the flag go up, I felt the dignity of his personality, he was at least A courageous man, he has the determination to sacrifice for the cause, at least there is no trace of carelessness on his face, and at the same time, a red light slowly rises on the flagpole on the roof, and there is no cloud behind his back the blue sky.The brand-new red flag fluttered precariously in the wind.This strange color and sound aroused my strange feeling.Is it shyness, pride, or contempt, and now this red flag is facing our huge nation for the first time?The people present also clapped their hands, but only intermittently. I think this is our respect for the first time we saw the red flag; but is it contempt, pride, or shame?That red is a great symbol, representing the greatest period in human history; it not only marks the bloodshed of the Russian nation, but also sets an example of a brave attempt for mankind.In the sound of the flag shaking, not only did I seem to hear the voices of the defeat and victory of the Slavic nation in the past ten years, but I also imagined the frenzy of the French Revolution hundreds of thousands of years ago, on July [-], [-] The madness of the citizens of Paris when they broke Bastille prison that day.Liberty, equality, fraternity!Friendship, equality, freedom!Listen, in this call, the flame of human ideals has been shooting from the ground to the zenith, and there has never been a period of more important and stronger transformation in history.Carlyle (Carlyle) in his history of the French Revolution described this event with three famous lines, he said, "To describe this seen transends the talent of mortals. After four hours of world bed, am it surrenders. The Bastille is down!" He said: "It is beyond the power of ordinary people to describe this scene. After four hours of madness, he (the prison) surrendered. Bastia is down!" Breaking the prison of a political prisoner is not a big deal. But there is a symbol in this fact.Bastia represents the force that hinders freedom, the attack of the Parisians represents the force that fights for freedom for all mankind, and Bastia's "down" is the proof of the victory of human ideals.Liberty, equality, fraternity!
Friendship, equality, freedom!The French screamed wildly hundreds of years ago.This cry is still resounding in the human spirit.Don't we seem to hear it, even though hundreds of decades of time have passed in the wilderness.Now the ferocious Bastia is blocking us again; if we don't go mad again, the iron nails on his prison door are about to pierce our hearts one by one!
It's a thing.Another thing is my impression when I accompanied Tagore to Japan in June.When I crossed the Pacific Ocean seven years ago, I visited Tokyo for a few hours. I remember going to Ueno Park, going up a hill and looking down at the Tokyo market.This time I went to Ueno again, and I climbed a mountain to see Tokyo City again, the difference is too big!Houses, yes, they used to exist; but in the past they were tall buildings with several floors, and there were many famous buildings, such as the Imperial Theater, Imperial University, etc. The ones I saw this time, it’s pitiful to say the least. The fish-scale-like house that is supported is white and loose like a flower head with rotten hair, and it is no longer as prosperous and prosperous as it used to be.Nineteen cities were swallowed up by the earthquake and burned.The ground we stand on usually seems solid, but when he gets up, he turns over a little, or opens his mouth slightly, our fragile civilization and fragile life are enough.We in China can hardly imagine that there can be such a catastrophe in the world, in the waking world, not in the dream world.

We Chinese live in disasters. Floods, droughts, swordsmanship, robbery, etc. are not listed in detail, but I dare say that all our disasters combined are not worth the catastrophe our neighbors suffered a year ago.That thing was terrible, and I dare say it exceeded the limit of human endurance.Some people in our country are gratified by the catastrophe of the Japanese, saying that they deserve it. I really want to ask the doctors of Xiehe Hospital to use X-rays to check those few of them to see if they have hearts.Because in the face of a terrible fate, all of us human beings are just a group of sheep in the mountains when there is thunder and storm, so what racial, political, etc. prejudices and sentiments can be tolerated there?Let me tell you a little bit about the situation, because although you have read the detailed records in the newspapers, if you have not checked it yourself, you will inevitably have a certain distance.Before I came to Japan and after I saw Japan, my views were completely different.Just think about it and assume that we are gathering here today, what I'm talking about, what you listen to, if the Japanese trick comes up on our heads, it's going to take three seconds for me to bid farewell to you, the podium and the room forever It fell to the ground, like a magic trick, and the trace was gone.That's a fact. There are several five- or six-story buildings in Yokohama, all of which were completely leveled with the ground within three to four seconds, and completely disappeared.You know that when the holy book describes catastrophe, not to mention that fragile human beings have completely given up all vanity, even the most ferocious beasts and birds will change their nature in an instant, and tigers will be like kittens. Hiding next to you, the harpy with a sharp beak will have to hide in the chicken shed to nest, more tame than chickens.During such extraordinary changes, they seemed to have realized the kinship relationship between them as biological beings, and they were both small bugs deprived of resistance in front of the sky's wrath, and sympathy with fate occurred in this.Just think about Tokyo, with a population of 300 million, hundreds of years of hard work, suddenly facing the reality of the final judgment, just today we recall when their whole city was like a boiling oil pan The original bustling market has turned into a blazing brazier, in which human beings' most concentrated mental and physical achievements have all become fuel, and in which art, education, politics, and society are the bones, flesh and blood of human beings. Turned into ashes, there are millions of men, women, and children crying. This crying itself can shake the world. Let’s not talk about our personal experience. Even when we sit on a chair and imagine such an unbelievable scene, we can’t help but feel scared, right? ?
That's not a naughty thing.It would have required at least the genius of Homer or Shakespeare just to describe such a drastic change.Just think about it at that time, if you experienced it yourself, what would your psychology be like?Do you still hate your enemy?Have you not forgiven your friend?Are you still attached to your personal selfish interests?Do you still have a chance to deceive people?Is there any hope for you?You don't put your arms around the creature beside you, be it your wife, your old man, your footman, your mother, your friend, your old mother, your cat, your dog, put your soul Shall the remaining light shine forth together, to make a final union with your fellow-struggled fellow-men in this general darkness?
But the means of fate are not that simple.It would be a happy end if he wiped everything out of you; he didn't.He still keeps you alive, and he has even harsher tests for you.You are in great distress, and you are still panting; your home, your possessions, have all turned to ashes under your feet, and the flesh and blood of your loved ones, wives, and children are still burning in the fire, and you Everything is gone; but the sun is shining brightly on your head again, and you are still standing on the flat ground. You suspect that this must be a dream, but it is not a dream, because soon you find that you are in the same boat as yourself. Many people, they also suspect that what they experience is a dream.It's not a dream; it's real.You're still alive, you're still breathing, and you've got to do it all over again, basically all over again.Unless you let go voluntarily, there is no brave element in your soul.

That's when your real test will come.This exam paper is not easy to hand in. Only then will you know how capable you are, how much you are worth, and how much you are worth.

This is the reality of our neighbors, the Japanese, after the disaster.It's all over, if you want to come, you have to come here completely. It is not enough to do your best, and with the efforts of your son, your grandson, your grandson's son's son's grandson, you may be able to support this property again. But in this process of hard work, no one can guarantee that the sky and the earth will stop making troubles; your decades are only a few seconds of his.So the question is do you do it or not?Just a simple sentence, do you want to do it, yes or no?At the same time, maybe the ruthless fate twisted his ugly and terrible face and sneered beside you, waiting for your final reply.Do you want to do it, he seems to be salivating at his strange face and asking you!
Our brave neighbors have handed in their exam papers; they have answered with a crisp dry word that we cannot but admire.We cannot fail to respect their spiritual personality.Before the flames of the great earthquake abated, the second struggle of our neighbors had solemnly begun.Before the cruel arm of fate loosens, they have declared their active attitude to declare war on fate.This is a spiritual victory, this is greatness, this is proof that they have unshakable confidence and unshakable self-confidence; it proves that they are morally and spiritually prepared, have the strongest perseverance and endurance, and have the heart Those with latent energy and sufficient reserves, for example, even though the former enemy was destroyed by artillery fire, this is just a chance for them to go out.Not only are they not pessimistic, not negative, not only not desperate, not only are they not begging for mercy with low voices, not only are they not lying on the ground waiting for help, but in their view, this catastrophe is just a great thorn, a great encouragement, and a great inspiration , a due experiment, so their new attitudes are only doubly positive, doubly brave, doubly excited, and doubly hopeful; they seem to be generals who have gone through a great battle. The louder the drum beats, the more courageous he is, the tighter his pace is, and the stronger his determination to win.This, I say, is a triumph of the spirit, a moral coercion, great, impossible, admirable, admirable.As Tagore said, national disasters and personal disasters are all a kind of experiment: unless the result of the disaster overwhelms your will and bravery, that is the real disaster, because you have no hope of turning over.

This is not to say that they do not feel the reality of the disaster. They are also human beings. Although they are brave, their hearts are not made of iron.But the state in which they manifest their distress is noticeable; they do not come with piecemeal calls, they employ a majestic solemnity.On the anniversary of the earthquake disaster, they chose a time to hold their national mourning; for a period of seconds or minutes, all the people of their country were silent in unison, and the hearts of the people of the whole country were silent in that short period of time. In a penitent, prayerful, general silence; (how sad it was!) Then a signal broke the national silence, and the millions of people cried out in unison, lamenting that they had suffered In this pervasive wail, their citizens not only vented their accumulated sorrow, but this trombone also showed their great determination to start again unanimously. (How majestic this is!)
(End of this chapter)