Chapter 11 when lantana blooms

It was about midnight, and I felt that I couldn't fall asleep, so I got up to urinate, put down the glass drowner, and walked up to the window that opened to the south.Pulling the window curtain, he lowered his body and got in. His upper body was like a ham in a sandwich, sandwiched between the glass and the window curtain. Outside the window is the last quarter moon night on the twentieth side, which is not too full. The treetops in the garden, the gaps in the ground, and the asphalt walks like white threads are all covered with silver powder moonlight, which is mixed with the translucent black shadows. cover each other.The surroundings are only silent and quiet, just like the world in a dream.In the season of the first summer, it should be a bit hot, but the indoor air that invades through the seams of the plush pajamas is sharp and cold.

This is the first-class ward building of the Charity Hospital run by the French Catholic Church. When he entered the hospital this morning, the rough young French doctor listened to him in a daze, and did not reply until night.Only in the evening, the shepherd mother in the white hat came once.Ask her what is the disease?She just smiled and shook her head, saying that she had to ask the chief doctor before she could find out. But now it is already deep midnight, these people who eat charity meals are really too heartless, too irresponsible, and too lacking in love for the same kind of sentient beings.Fortunately, this disease is still mild. What if it is a serious disease?After putting it on hold for more than ten hours, could it be possible that the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus can really happen again in the modern twentieth century?

Feeling so anxious and anxious in my heart, I pressed my forehead against the cool and shady glass window, and my eyes were all focused on the hazy moonlight and the dim shade of flowers in the garden outside the window, unintentionally watching.Standing for a few minutes, complaining for a few minutes, imitating Mrs. Roland's famous line in my heart, crying and crying: "Charity! Charity! Under your name, I really don't know how many innocent victims have been killed and how many despicable sages have been fattened up!" When the resentment reached its peak, he suddenly raised his head to look, in the distance in the twilight, on top of a pile of tree shadows, a golden light flashed, and suddenly he saw a golden cross.

"Ah, that's not right, the Virgin Mary is appearing!" With such a change in my heart, my hair naturally stood on end.Taking a closer look, the golden cross was still shining in the moonlight, not moving at all.After staring at it for a while, I also became a little scared, so I turned my eyes away as if fleeing.But not long after staying in the shade of a pile of black trees in this place of escape, in the dark background, there suddenly appeared many concentric, unlucky whites that were slightly shorter than candles. objects come.One, two, seven or eight, at a glance, although there are not many, there are not many, and they are probably the magnolias that are still blooming. The best way to explain this white phantom, I shrank my body and retreated to my bed.

At around ten o'clock in the morning on the second day after entering the hospital, the shepherd with a mysterious smile came to my bedside quietly like swimming in water. "The doctor said that you are suffering from jaundice, and you should eat light food." Saying this softly, she stretched out her hand to check my pulse again.She pinched my arm with one hand, raised the other hand, and looked at the watch on her own arm.I didn't say a word, just opened my eyes wide and looked at the strange lines and colors all over her body. On the head is a snow-like white linen hat made of seven or eight straight and slanted lines. Under the white shadow is a flesh-colored reddish face that is as tender as rice flour.Because I slept there, all I could see was half of the Tan Dai-like side profile with a high nose bridge that was printed there on the cover of "The Divine Comedy".And that big, dark eye is also slanting down like a dream.Enough to break the heavy dream shadow and the two stimuli of the quiet surroundings are those long and dark eyes that were born on her eyelids. Although they are not very thick, they can be seen carefully one by one. Drawn eyelashes and splayed eyebrows, and chirping, only the sound of clock hands walking quietly on her fat white arm.She bowed her head silently, pressed my arm, sometimes blinked her eyes, exhaled in a very thin way, one low and one high, she really didn't know how long she had listened to my pulse, and suddenly she moved her whole body. Sideways, showing me a full face with a smile again, the shape of the face is a protruding and oblong oval face.

"Your pulse is not fast. It will take about a few days, and it will get better soon." Her words are full of circumflex charm, but they are pure Beijing accent. "Will it be alright? Won't it die?" "Hey, what did you say?" She seemed to think that my words were too rough, she smiled sweetly, and she immediately turned around quietly and quickly, and walked out of the room.But the lingering sound of "Hey, what are you talking about?" is in my head like a horse running in circles after the big bell rang. . The doctor came every other day, and the bitter and salty medicine had to be swallowed four times a day, but what was more than enough to offset these hatreds was the solemn coming of the shepherd mother. One or two more times than the number of medications.Needless to say, anyone would be bored with such a monotonous and boring life as a prisoner in a monastery. After I stayed in the hospital for a week, I was so reckless that I didn't even want the doctor to come, and I didn't want to take any more medicine. The shepherd is checking my pulse, but I only hope that she will come to check on me from morning to morning, and never leave until night.

When she first came, she just smiled, took my temperature, checked my pulse, and said a few words that had to be said.But one day after she found a pamphlet of Baudelaire in Nie Song version under my pillow one day, she talked to me more, and the time she stayed beside my bed grew longer and longer. up. She told me about the system and duties of the Soeurs de charite (White Hats), and she also told me about the general principles of the Romance Doricism (Catechisme).She said that her brother had gone to Rome to meet the Pope, and she said that her faith was strengthened fifteen years ago at the age of fourteen.And what she expressed the most sympathy for me seems to be because my hometown is far away in Beijing. "How can a person who is single and sick in this unaccompanied Shanghai not feel strangely lonely and lonely?" What a coincidence, especially, when the two of them were talking, they found out that their hometowns were both in Xicheng, not more than two or three hundred paces apart, and they could be heard in the yards of both of them. You can see the morning bell and evening drum in Beitang.Because of this kind of relationship, after a week after I was admitted to the hospital, I felt that there was nothing wrong with being jealous, because every time I had a meal, she always asked the cook to pay special attention to me, and the cream on the pudding was also special. Added too much, and several times, and because the fixed food in the hospital did not suit my appetite, she actually liked to deliver her own pots of vegetables that I could eat, and the poor male nurse Philip delivered them one by one to share with me. exchange.

I lived in the hospital like this for more than half a month, although the doctor's rude obsession still can't be changed, the sour, salty and bitter taste of the medicine is still unpalatable, but the crimson yellow in the urine has gradually faded away , and the soft and weak feet can walk more than a mile. In addition, the season pushes us into mid-summer. In the long afternoon, the fiery sun is a little westward, and I can’t sit still in the room. Before evening prayer, she is often willing to come and take a walk in the garden downstairs with me. step.The two walked out from the front of the court, walked along the corridor of the grape trellis, walked through the magnolia bushes, passed through the linden forest, and arrived at the rockery in front of the stone altar circle with the statue of the Virgin Mary standing on a golden cross. They always sat on the bench. , sat down until evening prayer, and then walked back.

This leisurely and leisurely half-hour evening walk was only once every two days or every other day at first, but later it became a habit, and it became necessary to walk every day.Of course, this is a kind of supreme comfort to me, which can break the monotonous life of the whole day, and she seems to be interested in this stroll as she is busy all day long. Another week passed and the weather got hotter.All kinds of flowers and trees in the garden have bloomed and fallen cleanly, only a clump of shrubs on the corner of the wall, probably roses, and a few red and white flowers left, adorning the scenery there.It's not far away to go to midsummer, and I'm also planning to quit this charity hospital with expensive medical expenses and go back to Beijing for the summer.But even though I have such a plan in my heart, one is that the illness has not healed after all, and the other is that I feel a little bit reluctant to let go of the surrounding flowers and trees and the joy of life for more than half a month, so I suffer day after day, and I live again. A few days of boring sick prisoners.

One afternoon, in addition to the heavy rain of the previous two days, the weather was bright and sunny, and I was pacing up and down in the ward, feeling strangely anxious in my heart.The newly captured lion was wandering around in the iron cage, or I can imagine my state of mind at this time, because that day, from the morning until the evening prayer time, the shepherd mother was still there all day long. Never been here. The evening time passed, the lights were turned on, and it was not until dinner was brought that Philip took out a letter from his white coat pocket, which needless to say was entrusted to him by the shepherd. letter.

The letter said that she went to the Central Hall to retreat today, and she will leave Shanghai to serve in a hospital in Hong Kong after she has some rest.If you come to meet and say goodbye, you will inevitably feel sad, so seeing each other is worse than not seeing each other.At the end, I told you again and again, teach me to take good care of it, and think quietly about the life of a saint passed down in the scriptures.If, through this illness, I can turn to God and bathe in the mercy of Our Lady, there will be no greater joy for her. After I read this letter, of course I didn't swallow a spoonful of my dinner.After sitting under the electric light for tens of minutes, I stood up and looked out the window. In the bright blue sky, a moon like a silver basin had already risen.It's not about the fifteenth or sixteenth, but it should be the night of the thirteenth fourteenth. I stood in front of the window for a while, turned around, put on a new flannel gown, picked up my walking stick, and slowly, slowly, walked down the stairs and out of the building door. Walked up the aisle of grapes that the two of us walked through every day during evening prayers.As I walked, the moonlight printed many shadows of branches and stacked stones on my body.When we got to the stone altar of the Madonna, I sat alone on the long chair that the two of us sat on for a long time.Suddenly there was a breeze, but I accidentally smelled a very quiet, very indifferent fragrance that resembled flowers and leaves.I slightly shifted my head resting on the backs of the two hands holding the cane, and glanced over my right shoulder. On my own clothes, I saw the shadows of a row of very slender and symmetrical leaves, and A few flower shadows with slender stamens and thin petals come. "Ah! Lantana flowers are blooming!" After unconsciously uttering this monologue, I stood up from the bench and walked back to the ward. June 1932