Chapter 14 Cigarette shop proprietress

Although Shanghai has many bustling big stores, in my impression, the most familiar.The most intimate one is a small cigarette paper shop embedded in a big alley.The storefront is very narrow, four or five steps wide in total, but the supplies are miscellaneous and complete. Therefore, every household living in this big alley has to send someone to the small cigarette paper shop to buy this and that, although It doesn't cost a lot of money, but everyone's purchases are trivial, so there is a steady stream of customers in front of the small cigarette paper shop from morning till night, some rushing to carry a bottle of soy sauce while they are cooking, and some bought Things are still lingering.Regardless of whether she is coming or not, the proprietress of the tobacco paper shop is equally enthusiastic and patient.

In my memory when I was young, the proprietress of the cigarette paper shop was pretty and pretty. Unfortunately, her left foot was limping badly. When she turned around in a hurry, her shoulders tilted up and down, and she often slumped up and down. .Take this and that.However, her "tilting" and "limping" are extremely dexterous and agile.Simply put, no matter how many things you buy, as long as you put them all on the counter, she will calculate the price with just a glance, adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing as if she has an abacus hidden in her heart.In contrast, her husband was much duller, often made mistakes in his calculations, and had no expression on his face when dealing with customers. Therefore, anyone who came to buy things in a cigarette paper shop liked to see the proprietress standing at the counter.But the proprietress has to do housework besides standing at the counter.She has four little pigs, two boys and two girls, all only one or two years apart. Sometimes she is seen cooking in the kitchen, and she has to carry one on her back. The kitchen is built next to the shop with broken bricks and boards. Put two pieces of tarpaulin on it, and sometimes see her leading four little girls to eat, a small round table is placed in the open air, and a child sits on each of her thick and thin legs, feeding one, and filling the other with a spoon, from the alley People coming in and out, or a friendly greeting: The proprietress laughed at dinner?Or take a closer look: What is the lady boss eating?The proprietress should be calm and eat calmly, although the dishes on the small round table are always very simple.Some people say that the proprietress pretends to be poor and owns a cigarette paper shop. She was considered a small business owner in the old society, and she was always richer than ordinary people.Some people say that the proprietress is really poor, she can't make much money by selling odds and ends, and the family of six needs food and clothing.I was still young at that time, and I didn’t have the concept of rich and poor. I just envied the boss’s daughters, thinking that they could take out hawthorns and marble candies to eat as much as they wanted, and I was very happy when I had a few pennies for pocket money. I was so happy that I had to go to the cigarette paper shop to spend all my money.But on the first day, I walked past the cigarette paper shop, only to hear people crying and screaming in the shop. The proprietress waved the cane and beat the bottoms of the four girls, big and small, evenly. While sharply lecturing: I have taken care of you a long time ago, you are not allowed to eat food from the store, and you are not allowed to touch a single marble candy!Is it okay to develop bad habits?In the future, the entire family will be eaten up by you!Some neighbors whispered,——the proprietress is really, it’s not a crime for a little girl to eat candy, I see her limping to the bank for a year or so, no matter how little she saves, she still has money to save what!From this day on, I realized that the boss's daughters are more miserable than me, and they can't even eat a marble candy.

A few years later, the dull boss suddenly died of a cerebral hemorrhage. The lady boss had a white flower on her head. She was busy with the work at the counter and the kitchen by herself, and her shoulders became more serious. .However, as long as she stood on the counter, she was still smiling, enthusiastic and patient.When her family ate around the small round table, the dishes on the table were still as simple as before, but the four little buns grew up like me and became adults.Soon, I went to the Great Northern Wilderness in the countryside, and every two or three years I came back to Shanghai to visit relatives. Whenever I walked past the cigarette paper shop, I couldn't help but cast a friendly glance at the proprietress who was busy alone at the counter.The small shop and the proprietress remain the same, the most basic things are still displayed in the store, the proprietress is no longer delicate but does not look old-fashioned.The only change is that the four little girls can't see each other anymore, some of them also study, and some of them go to the countryside.Another ten or eight years later, I was officially transferred to Shanghai to work, and I occasionally went to that cigarette paper shop out of curiosity, only to hear that the proprietress's four daughters were very successful and promising, and two of them went to the countryside. Although they stayed in other places to work, they both went to college, one became the deputy chief engineer, and the other was a doctor.The other two, one went to study abroad at their own expense, and the other is teaching in Shanghai.I imagined them in my heart, and at the same time, I thought of the vine shooting four big and small buttocks...

The small cigarette paper shop is still the same, with such a small facade and so many odds and ends.The proprietress is still the same, no longer delicate or old-fashioned, but she is fatter than ten years ago, and her shoulders are tilted up and down correspondingly. But in a flash, after all, it has been more than thirty years!