Chapter 5 Chapter Four

They walked through the new district outside the city, and as soon as they crossed the bridge and entered the city of Bremen, Mosca saw the landmarks he remembered first.It was the steeple tower of a church, the body of the tower looked like the face of a sick man, a tendon of stone and plaster supported the spire towards the sky, and then they could still see it from the dark green wall. The white trail left by the explosion.They turned from Hull Strasse into the other side of Bremen, a once luxurious suburb with almost all intact housing that now serves as dormitories and residences for the occupying forces.

Mosca weighed in his mind the man walking beside him.Eddie Cassin was by no means a romantic guy, quite the contrary, as far as Mosca knew.He remembered Eddie finding a young Belgian girl in this town when they were soldiers together, a shapely girl as pretty as a Leston doll.He put her in a small windowless room and gave her a banquet.The girl picked up more than 30 American soldiers living in the dormitory, and did not leave the room for three days.The soldiers were in the waiting room, actually playing cards in the kitchen, waiting for their turn.The girl has a charming appearance and a gentle temperament. The soldiers treat her like a husband to a pregnant wife.They searched for chicken balls, bacon, and ham, and took turns serving her breakfast. They brought back bags from the cafeteria to feed her when she was hungry at noon and at night. She was talking and laughing naked, sitting on the bed. Get up and eat from the tray.There are constant people in her room from morning to night, and she seems to be in love with everyone.It's just that she is stubborn about one thing.Eddie Cassin would spend at least an hour a day with her and she would call him Daddy all the time.

"She's so pretty, how can I have it all to myself?" Eddie said.But Mosca always felt a mean smugness in his words. They turned from Kufsteinstrasse into Metzstrasse, the road was lined with tall, leafy trees, their car was driving in the evening shade, and Eddie parked in front of a four-story brick building.The building looks new and has a lawn in front. "This is it," he said, "the most exclusive American bachelor's house in Bremen." The summer sun had turned the brick walls crimson, and the entire road was in shadow.Mosca picked up the two suitcases and the blue backpack, and Eddie Cassin stepped onto the sidewalk ahead of him.A German butler greeted them at the door.

"This is Mrs. Meyer," Eddie Cassin said, putting his arm around her waist.Mrs. Meyer was about forty years old, with blonde hair.She had an excellent figure, the result of years of teaching swimming at a girls' school.The expression on her face was friendly, but it also looked wild, especially her surprisingly buck teeth, which added a bit of lust. Mosca nodded and said, "Nice to meet you, Mr. Mosca. Eddie told me a lot about you." Together they went up to the third floor, where Mrs. Meyer opened a door and handed Mosca the key.The room was spacious, with a narrow single bed in one corner, a large white-lacquered wardrobe in the other, and nothing else in the room.

Mosca put the two boxes on the floor and Eddie sat down on the edge of the bed.Eddie said to Mrs. Meyer, "Call Yergin." Mrs. Meyer said, "I'll get the sheets and blankets, too." They heard her go upstairs. "The room wasn't very nice," Mosca said. Eddie Cassin smiled. "We have a magician here, this guy Yergin. He can play with everything." They were waiting for Yergin, and Eddie took the time to tell Mosca about the dorms.Mrs. Meyer is an excellent housekeeper. She has never cut off the hot water in the building. Under her management, the eight maids do a good job of cleaning and washing clothes (that is different from Mrs. Meyer). agreed upon).She went herself to two well-furnished rooms on the top floor. "I hang out there most of the time," Eddie went on, "but I think she sleeps with Yergin too, and my room is below yours so we don't spy on each other. Thank goodness."

Mosca listened to Eddie's brief introduction of the situation in the building, and watched the deepening twilight, feeling more and more irritable.Eddie said Yerkin was indispensable to the Americans on Metz Avenue.He would install water taps so that the people who lived on the top floor could also take a shower.He will nail boxes for Americans who send porcelain home, and the packaging is well-attached. The domestic relatives and friends who received the porcelain have never found any damage.Yergin and Mrs. Meyer were in perfect harmony.Only Eddie knew that during the day, the two of them would carefully ransack all the rooms, stealing a pair of trousers from this room, a pair of socks from that room, a few towels here, and a few handkerchiefs there.Those Americans are careless and take no precautions against their own things.From the rooms of those who were particularly bluffing, they sometimes got a pack or half a pack of cigarettes.They do this with extreme caution.The maids who clean the room are honest and honest, and the severe punishment makes them dare not do it.

"For God's sake," said Mosca, "you know I'm going out. Tell those Germans to hurry up." Eddie went to the door and called, "Hey, Meyer, come on," and turned to Mosca and said, "She probably had a quick fight with Yerkin, she likes that." They heard her come downstairs up. She came in with a big armful of sheets and all, kicking Yergin behind her.Yergin held a silver tip in his hand, with a few nails around his mouth.The German is thin and small, just in the middle age with vigorous energy.Dressed in overalls and a cardigan-style army shirt, he gave the impression of being capable and respectable, and he would have easily won the trust of others were it not for the folds of skin under his eyes that made him look shrewd and cunning.

He shook hands with Eddie Cassin, then offered his hand to Mosca, who shook his hand as a gesture of courtesy.Occupation of Germany, I thought, was indeed friendly. "I'm the jack-of-all-trades here," Yerkin said.He said this with a bit of restraint, "Whenever you need to decorate, just call me." "I'd like a bigger bed," Mosca said, "some furniture, a radio, and other things I'll think of later." Yergin unbuttoned the pockets of his cardigan shirt and took out a pencil. "No problem," he said briskly, "there's too little furniture in these rooms. That's the rule. But I've helped all of your colleagues. Small or big radio?"

"What price?" Mosca asked him. "Five to ten packs of cigarettes." "I'm talking about money," Mosca said. "I don't have a cigarette." "U.S. dollar or car pass?" "draft." "Listen," said Yerkin slowly, "I think you need a radio here, some lamps, four or five chairs, a couch, and a big bed. I'll get you all that, I'll talk about the price later. If you don't have any cigarettes at the moment, I can wait a while. I'm in business and know when to pay credit. Besides, you're a friend of Mr. Cassin's."

"That's good," Mosca said.He took off his shirt and opened his blue backpack for a towel and soap. "If you want laundry, please tell me, and I'll tell the maid." Mrs. Meyer smiled at him.She liked looking at Mosca's body with the white scars, and thought that the scars must have stretched all the way to the cleft of her thigh. "How much is the laundry?" Mosca asked, opening the case and pulling out a clean change of clothes. " "Oh, I forgot to say, no money. Just give me a few chocolates a week, and I promise to make the maid happy."

"Very well," said Mosca impatiently.Then he said to Yergin, "Go and see if you can get all that stuff tomorrow." Eddie Cassin shook his head resignedly when the two Germans were gone, pretending to reproach them. "Times are different, Walter," he said. "The Occupation has entered a new phase. We treat people like Mrs. Meyer and Yerkin with courtesy, shake their hands, give them cigarettes every time we do business. They can help us , Walter." "To hell with them, where's the bathroom?" Mosca asked. Eddie Cassin led him down the hall.The bathroom was large, with three bathtubs, the first time Mosca had seen such a large bathtub, and a toilet, with a small table beside it, on which magazines and American newspapers were scattered. "It's first-rate," Mosca said.He starts the shower and Eddie sits on the toilet with him. "You're going to bring your girlfriend here?" Eddie asked. "If I can find her, and she will be with me again," Mosca said. "Are you going to find her tonight?" Mosca dried himself off and put the blades on the razor. "Yes," he said, glancing at the half-open window.It was getting dark. "I'll go look for it tonight." Eddie stood up and walked to the door. "If it doesn't work, go upstairs to Mrs. Meyer's room for a drink when you come back." He patted Mosca, "If all goes well, then, I'll meet you at the air force base tomorrow morning." He went to the lobby outside go. Mosca was left alone, with an irresistible desire to stop shaving, to sleep in his room, or to spend the evening drinking with Eddie upstairs at Mrs. Meyer's.He consciously recalled the name Shaolian, but at the thought of going out of the house to find her, he felt inexplicably reluctant.Still, he forced himself to shave and brush his hair.He walked to the bathroom window and opened it wide. There was a small road outside, and there were almost no pedestrians.But looking along the ruins, he saw a woman in black, a shadow in the deepening night, who was pulling the overgrown weeds on the garbage dump, and already had a large armful of grass in her arms.Nearer, almost directly under his window, he saw a family of four, husband, wife, and two young boys, who were building a wall that was at most a foot high.The two children used the tabloid cart to load the broken bricks they picked out from the ruins, and the husband and wife hacked and scraped to build the broken bricks.The wreckage of the house seemed to frame the image of the family, deeply engraved in Mosca's memory.The last ray of sunlight also disappeared.The whole street and those people became a mass of black shadows, moving in a darker and bigger shadow.Mosca went back to his room. He took out a wine bottle from the box and drank it for a long time. What should he wear?He had to think, "This is the first time she's seen me without my uniform." He put on a light gray suit and white open-necked shirt.The house was not cleared either - the trunk was open but everything was taken out, dirty laundry was thrown on the floor, and shaving knives were left in a mess on the bed.He drank another month's wine at last, and then ran down the stairs into the hot summer night outside. He boarded a tram, and the conductor immediately recognized him as an American and asked him for a cigarette.Mosca gave him one, and then watched every passing tram attentively, thinking that she might have left her lodgings to spend the evening somewhere.Several times he couldn't help becoming nervous and excited, thinking he saw her. He saw the back or profile of some girls very similar to her, but he couldn't tell for sure. He got off the tram, and when he walked along the street in his memory, he couldn't remember which house it was, so he had to go door to door to check the resident's name on the gate.He only found one wrong house, and the second house had her name on the door.He knocked on the door, waited a few minutes, and knocked a few more times. The door opened, and by the dim light in the passage he recognized the old woman as the landlady.Her gray hair was neatly coiled on her head, and she wore an old black dress and a frayed shawl, and all old women had the sadness of her. "Who are you looking for, sir?" she asked. "Is Miss Helian at home?" Mosca was a little surprised at how fluent German he could speak. The old woman didn't recognize Di, or realize that he wasn't German. "Come in," she said.He followed her through the dimly lit hall to the door of the room.The old woman knocked on the door and said: "Miss Hailian, there is a guest looking for you, it is a man." He finally heard her voice, gentle but somewhat surprised. "Male?" Then he said: "Please wait a moment." Mosca opened the door and walked in. She sat with her back to him, hastily pinning barrettes into her freshly washed hair.On the table beside her was a dark loaf of bread.Against the wall was a narrow bed with a bedside table next to it. He stared at her intently, Helian fixed her hair, then reached out and grabbed the bread on the table to put it in the cabinet.Then she turned and saw Mosca standing on the door. Mosca saw that she was pale and bony, with almost only a frame of her face left, and her body was thinner than he remembered.The bread in her hand fell on the uneven wooden floor, and the expression on her face was not surprised. Mosca even felt that it was annoyed and a little bit unhappy.But her face was immediately clouded with sorrow.He walked in front of her, her face looked wrinkled, and tears flowed down the countless wrinkles, dripping on his hand holding her thin chin.She lowered her head, her face pressed against his shoulder. "Let me see you," Mosca said, "let me see you." He tried to lift her face up, but she pressed hard against his shoulder. "Well, well," he said, "I was trying to scare you." She was still sobbing, and there was nothing he could do but look around until she calmed down.He looked at the narrow bed, the old-fashioned wardrobe, and the photo he gave her on the dressing table, enlarged and framed.A single desk lamp was dimly lit, and the faint yellow light was oppressive, and the walls and ceiling were bulging inwards from the pressure of the broken bricks and tiles on the roof. Helene looked up at last—she cried and laughed. "Oh, you," she said, "why didn't you write? Why didn't you let me know beforehand?" "I wanted to scare you," he said again, and he kissed her tenderly. She leaned against him and said in a weak voice: "When I saw you just now, I thought you were dead, I feel like I'm dreaming, I'm crazy, I can't tell, I look so ugly, I just washed my hair. She looked down at the ugly homely dress she was wearing, and then looked up at him. He could see the dark circles under her eyes now, as if the pigment in the rest of her face had concentrated and made this circle of skin almost jet-black.His hands touched her withered hair, which was still wet.Her body was close to him, hard and thin. She smiled slightly, and he noticed a chipped tooth in the corner of her mouth.He stroked her cheek lightly and asked, "What's the matter!" Helian was a little embarrassed. "That kid," she said. "I lost two teeth." She smiled at him and asked like a child, "Do I look ugly?" Mosca shook his head slowly. "No," he said, "not ugly." He remembered. "What's the matter with the boy? Did you get rid of it?" "No," Helian replied, "the baby was born prematurely and only lived a few hours. I have only been out of the hospital for a month." She knew he didn't believe it, knew his lack of trust in her, so she went to the edge of the dresser and pulled out a bundle of papers tied with old string, turned them over, and handed him four official papers. "Look," she didn't feel her pride hurt or angry, because she knew that in that world, at that time, she had to show evidence, and there was no absolute trust between people. The official seals and seals of several different agencies dispelled his doubts, and he almost believed guiltily that she was not lying. Helian went to the cabinet and took out a large pile of clothes.She shook out one by one, a small shirt, a blouse, and trousers.Some of the fabrics and colors are familiar to Mosca.He understood that because she had nothing at hand, she had to cut off her dresses and even underwear, and changed them into small underwear for the children to wear. "I knew it had to be a boy," she said.Hearing this, Mosca was suddenly furious.He was annoyed that she lost the rosy cheeks, sacrificed the muscles of her body, sacrificed two teeth, and those delicately tailored little clothes for the child, but she got nothing in return. He understood: It was his own needs, not hers, that drove him back here. Mosca sat on the edge of the bed, and Helene sat next to him.For a moment they both stiffened, staring blankly at the empty table, the only chair, the jagged walls and sunken ceiling.Then they moved slowly, like some ancient tribal ritual, where the pagans were making a relationship with a majestic but vague god, and they themselves didn't know whether this ritual would bring them disaster or good fortune.The two finally joined each other on that single bed, his lust came from drunkenness, guilt and remorse, while hers came from love and tenderness.She firmly believes that this union is auspicious and will bring happiness to both parties.She silently endured the pain he caused her unrecovered body, his wild passion, and his distrust of her, himself, and everything in the world.She understood: No matter what, among all the people he knew in this world, what he needed was her, her loyalty, her body, her trust and love.