Chapter 3 smelly streets

Recently, jujubes are rarely seen in fruit shops in cities.Due to the advancement of cultivation technology, among the high-grade fruits that are quite exquisite, jujubes and the like are probably no longer cared about.But I love the herbaceous fruit speckled with bird eggs.I love the sweet and sour sap that oozes from my parched tongue. My father called me to the small inn from the back door of the primary school.In a vegetable shop passing by, he bought me dates.In the large, vulgar room of the inn, travelers lay in disarray, including couples.My father's place is about two sizes. He sat there cross-legged, spread out a newspaper, and told me to eat the jujubes I just bought.There were unexpectedly many dates, and I was full.

"Well, what does your mother do?" my father asked me.He had grown fat then, and in his heyday he had been massive in satins, but now in his crumpled clothes he showed only a broad body.My father smiled and told the tenants living with me about my situation. My father's life continued until he moved to Kokura.He was defeated in the speculative business of rice and was kicked out of the brokerage shop. He and the same downcast people, like beggar gamblers, gamble on the market of the day in front of the exchange every day. After my father left home, my mother and I were taken care of by a neighbor's kamaboko shop for a while.My mother worked there like a maid, and I was stared at by the sons of that family.The family put the scattered fish bones they ate together and boiled them into soup for my mother and me to eat.Mother often cried secretly.

My father finally came home, and my family decided to move to Kokura.There is a public bath on a street called Jiusenba in Kokura.We were assisted by an old man whom we knew well, Okuda, who kept a fire in the bath.The old couple are very kind-hearted, and they have won the trust of their employer, Kamei.Behind the bathing pool, there are two six-fold houses. The owner of the bathing pool didn't seem to ask for a room fee, and the three of us in our family rented one of them. I transferred to elementary school and became a fifth grader at Tenjinjima Elementary School. My father asked someone to look for a job, but people over forty couldn't find any ideal jobs.There was a department store called Hyogo store nearby, and my father was once employed to watch over the shoes that customers took off when they entered the store.Although it is a department store, customers at that time took off their clogs and walked to the counter on the tatami mats.

Near the market in Yuchi, there is a bridge called Dan crossing the bridge. After crossing the bridge, there is an old bookstore on the corner.Because I couldn't breathe in the small room, I often went to this second-hand bookstore and read books standing in the store.There is a small tram in front of the bookstore, leading to a place called Xiangchunkou. From Xiangcunkou to and from a town called North.Near the tram terminal at Xiangchunkou, there is an old wooden church. Later, I realized that I went to this church to learn French.In Ogai's "Ogura Diary", it is written about the friendship with the French priest Beirutran there.

From the end of that year, my father began to sell salted abalone on the bridge.The selling targets were customers who came from the market, and the price seemed to be lower than that on the market, but the sales turned out to be unexpectedly good. From then on, we were finally "liberated" from the Okuda family's rented house, and moved to a shabby rental house called Nakajima outside the city.My house is a wooden house surrounded by wooden boards in a small alley, half of which is still lived by the old woman who owns the house, and the partition walls between the houses are also made of wooden boards.The surrounding residents are all poor people, and it is a dirty and messy place, and the alleys don't see much sunlight during the day.

But because they finally have a house that feels like a home, the parents are more relaxed.The eaves are made of tinplate. In summer, the house is so hot that it can steam to death, and in winter it is surprisingly cold.During the rainy season, many slugs will crawl out of the tatami. My father still sells salmon on the bridge, and he probably wants to sell it at home too. One day, he wrote the words "Sell salmon" on a piece of paper and posted it on the door of the house.However, the sale of salmon and turtles did not last long. Later, my father became an open-air vendor at temple fairs.

If we talk about dating, we only communicate with the Okuda family who lived in the past.The owner of that bathhouse has a son, and they often hear the mention of "Kamei's young master".He is one year older than me and always comes first in school.After graduating from elementary school, he entered Xiaokura Junior High School, and later transferred to a high school somewhere, and then entered Dongda University. "Kamei's Young Master" later became the Deputy Minister of Labor. My father has a certain amount of social knowledge, and I think if he is lucky, he might become a rather prestigious figure.The mother, who had a bad relationship with her father, also admitted this, saying to him:

"Your ears are small, and you are born with a bad life." These words also contain the fate of his father being sent to a poor family as an adopted son right after he was born. In the Tanaka family, the father’s biological parents, the second son died, and the third son, Kasaburo, inherited the family business. As mentioned earlier, he later entered the Higher Normal School, and then joined the company that published study reference books in Tokyo at that time.He seems to have had little correspondence with his father. At that time, my father took my mother out to set up stalls in the open air at the temple fair, but they each did their own business.

The mother left home pushing the small stall cart, and the father pulled the cart away.Both cars were loaded with junk.Most of my father's business is selling lemonade in summer.Mother burns dried squid on a charcoal stove and sells boiled eggs or .She likes to smoke, and the pipe never leaves her mouth.There are unsold goods in front of her, and she looks at the passers-by, with a cigarette bag in her mouth, and a calm expression on her face.My father thought he was joining the ranks of quack merchants, and he was talking with them in code. No matter what humble business he did, his father soon regarded himself as an expert and dazzled others.He has done all kinds of business, and most of them are like this.I've never seen him in pain.He was a little embarrassed only when the person who asked for the bill came to his door.

Mother's character is that she always has to find some suffering in order to feel at ease.By then, my father had become serious.It is true that no woman would fall in love with him when he was so poor.My mother's younger brother often came from Xiaguan, and praised him as soon as he came: "Brother-in-law is like a different person." The mother always stabbed the "old bottom" who quarreled with her father to her younger brother.Her younger brother, who used to work on the railway, had already become an employee of the city government at that time, and lived a peaceful life.The father looked down on the cautious lifestyle of the brother-in-law, and the brother-in-law laughed at the lazy and carefree appearance of the brother-in-law.

I don't know what that woman was like in my father's Xiaguan era.Anyway, I let my mother wander around Huajie (a street with a lot of brothels) on her back, so it can be seen that she was a prostitute.But I knew that woman's name was Xue from the occasional conversation between my father and my mother.So I mentioned her because this woman named Xue happened to come to Xiaocang and became the wife of the owner of a wardrobe shop on a street in Xiaocang.The father told the mother this, so it can be seen that even if he saw this familiar woman, he would not be able to have a relationship!The wardrobe store is located on a street with many pedestrians, maybe my father saw her when he passed by there! It can be seen that the father is a person who knows no sorrow.If it were an ordinary person, in front of his past woman who married into a wealthy family, he might have to cover up his shabby appearance.I think that my father probably talked with Yuki who was selling things in front of that wardrobe store.Because he is a kind person. In my memory, there is also the scene when my father was dressed in silk and satin clothes, and he was in contact with his colleagues in the speculative business.I was taken by my father to the house of his fellow speculators, and one of those speculators was blind.He asked a boy about five years older than me to hold his hand and walk around the exchange.There are several small wooden bridges on the dirty ditch in the back alley.Across the bridge, at the end of the alley, there is a house with black board walls, and that is where the "gamblers" gather.They were the scum of beggar speculators who couldn't even get into a broker's shop.I can't forget the tall figure of my father sitting among them. In front of the wooden house of Nakajima in Kokura, there is a small river flowing with white alkaline water.The stench of wastewater from a nearby paper mill wafts into the lowlands.However, after living here for a long time, if you can't smell the smell, you don't feel like you are at home.Every time I come back from school, as soon as I go back to the bridge that exudes the smell of waste alkali, a kind of relaxed mood of returning home arises spontaneously. The landlord is an old woman over 60 years old. She lives with a girl who is one year younger than me. Their life is very simple.The girl was the granddaughter of the old woman, and she said that her father had gone to work far away.According to neighbor lore, her father had been in prison for a long time.Even so, the old woman is still counting on that as long as her son can come back, it will be better in the future. The little girl gets up early in the morning to make breakfast and then goes to school. "Grandma, I don't want a lunch box today." Upon hearing the voice, the old lady happily replied "Oh, really!" The granddaughter often skipped lunch to please her grandma.Next door was a middle-aged woman with lung disease.There is no toilet in my house. There is a public toilet shared by two or three families nearby. The woman’s husband carried his wife, who was delirious, to the toilet. After he left, the toilet was full of blood. Grandma finally came.Because father and mother are chasing Gaoshi to a faraway place, they need a helper to cook.My parents got up before dawn, pushed the carts and trucks, and didn't come back until midnight.Where they went, and how far they traveled, is hard to guess.The so-called Gaoshi refers to the simple theatrical stages or juggling sheds set up in the countryside during New Year’s and festivals. Around these sheds are small open-air shops selling soft snacks, sugar, lemonade, and boiled eggs.Because it is aimed at those people, I have to go to far, far places every day. "Oh, I was fooled today." Mother came back muttering.For example, I heard that it was a Ksitigarbha Temple Fair in the village, but when I rushed to see it, it turned out that it was just a small ancestral hall in the forest, and the people who came were only fourteen or five children. This situation is not surprising. Later, my father opened a bashao (pastry with the pattern of ba) shop on the side of the road next to the Xiaocang military training ground. Here, my father also showed his optimist nature. He often talked with the passing guests, which was really difficult for him. He also subscribed to the newspaper every day and proudly boasted about the little knowledge in the newspaper.However, in general, compared with current affairs and politics at the time, he talked more about recalling his own youth.Whether it was a hot summer or a snowy winter, my father would set up a tent with flour sack cloth under the pine tree by the roadside, and sold Imagawa yaki and lemonade for about two years. With a father like this, I have acquired some common sense.Although it is a disorganized content published in newspapers and magazines, I think I still know more than other students. When I was in the sixth grade of elementary school, my friends began to prepare for the entrance examination for middle school.At that time, my father seemed to have had some correspondence with Kasaburo Tanaka in Tokyo.Kasaburo said in the letter, "My son is about to take the middle school entrance exam. What are you going to do?" My father told him that he wanted me to continue my education, but there was no tuition fee. Let's see if he could borrow some.From here on.Their correspondence ceased. When I was in the second grade of high school, my father finally had a good start and opened a small restaurant in Konya Town near the Kamei bath where I used to live.It seems that a lot of money was borrowed to start it.It was the "golden" time for my mother.Because of the needs of doing business, he even hired three maids.Sitting in front of the long brazier, my mother combed her hair in a round bun inserted into a blue hairpin. Except for a round bun, she didn't wear any other hair styles.Even when selling dried squid and boiled eggs at the open-air stalls, they also act like those big sisters who touch their buns. However, when opening a restaurant, the shape and the way of panning are different from those in the past.I used to do it casually by myself, but since I started this kind of business to attract customers, I go to the hairdressing shop every time.However, still due to his father's laziness, the store's situation gradually declined. I've given up on going to middle school.At that time, there was an advertisement in the newspaper for middle school lectures produced by Waseda University, and my father ordered it for me.However, even this meager fee did not last long, because the family business was getting worse and worse.

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