Chapter 7 Chapter Six

Cardamom walked into the dining room at dinner.She herself knew that she was not good, and she was very ignorant. The soles of her embroidered shoes rubbed against the old wooden floor, and she smiled embarrassingly: "There is soup!" The girls looked at her, believing they could keep the cheekiest people out of the world with their eyes.But the cardamom was not blocked. "We only have two breads, so dry." Cardamom said. Nobody paid any attention to her.George Chen made four loaves of bread in total, and sixteen students, two priests, and two male employees were divided into two.If there is something to do, she still wants some. She thought she came here to visit relatives?

"Are you used to eating bread every day? I'm a bumpkin, and I can't eat foreign bread." Cardamom tilted the soup bucket on the table and opened it inside. There was only a bottom of the soup, and there were a few slices of boiled cabbage. And a few knots of soaked noodles.Cardamom thickened her skin further, and picked up a long-handled copper spoon.The angle between the spoon and the handle of the spoon is 90 degrees, and the soup must be filled in the right way, just like digging well water, straight up and down.Like cardamom, I don't know the point, and the soup is poured back into the bucket over and over again.The girls act like they don't have her and just eat theirs.

A girl said, "Somebody, call Father Fabio Adornado." "Already called," another girl said. Cardamom found herself under the steps, pouted and said, "If you don't help, you won't help." She stood on tiptoe tremblingly, and lifted the handle of the spoon straight up to the top of the bucket, but her arms were limited, so she lifted it above her head, and the spoon was still there. under the rim.She rescued herself again and said, "The table is too high." "I'm a wax gourd, and I still think the table is high." Someone interrupted.

"You are the winter melon." Cardamom had endured enough, let go of her hand, and the copper spoon fell back into the bucket with a bang, like the opening gong. "Rotten winter melon," said another girl. Cardamom's eyes immediately puffed up: "If you have the guts to stand up and scold!" Girls don't want to be "kind", and paying attention to a cheap bastard like her is enough to flatter her.So they went on supper again in muffled and solemn voices.But as soon as Cardamom walked towards the door, someone said again: "The rotten winter melon in June."

The person who said this was Xu Xiaoyu. "The seeds and flesh are rotten," Sophie said. Cardamom turned around and threw the soup in the bowl at Sophie unexpectedly.Cardamom wasn't much older than these girls, he didn't understand books, and his mind was a bit more immature, but his body was mature.The girls were full of anxiety, boredom and sadness, but at this moment they found an outlet and rushed towards Cardamom.A girl ran over and closed the dining room door, her spine pressed against the door.Cardamom was originally a villain, but now they have become their enemies.The door was blocked, but Cardamom's crisp swear words could not be blocked. Fabi heard it from a long distance.The cook Chen Qiaozhi thought he was walking slowly, so he said to him, "I've been fighting for a while, and I'm afraid it's good or bad!"

Sure enough, when the door was opened, Cardamom's face was covered with blood, and a bunch of hair was pulled out.She was touching the bald scar on her head the size of a copper plate, reflecting the candlelight on it.Chen Qiaozhi hurried over, trying to help Cardamom up from the ground.She pushed her hand and got up by herself, her mouth was still very hard: "My mother, I have been beaten since I was a child, and a few feather dusters have been broken on me. Afraid of your tender fists? A dozen beat me one, what!" The girls were as pale as hurt, with tears in their eyes.More than a dozen girls insisted that the cardamom was the first to be exported, and then shot first.How badly were they hurt?Those filthy, stinking, maggot-like filthy words invaded their clean ears, and the dirty things about men and women that they hadn't been proven were finally exposed by cardamom.

Fabi asked George to take the cardamom back to the warehouse in the basement.Soon Chen Qiaozhi came back and told Fabio that Miss Zhao Yumo wanted to see the vice priest."No!" said Fabio, startled by his own hoarse voice.Moreover, Chen Qiaozhi's frightened face is also a mirror, reflecting how abrupt his anger and irritability are.He turned around and walked towards Father Engman's residence, walking quickly, and said in his heart: Pooh, do you think Zhao Yumo seduced me with two winks?What handle did I leave in your hands?If you want to see me, you can see it? ……Pooh!We must find ways to send them away, resolutely petition Father Engelman, and stuff them into the safe zone. ... Really pulled down?

Fabi's footsteps suddenly slowed down, and he found sadly that his heart was not so hard. When Fabi Adonado was six years old, his parents caught the plague during their missionary journey and died almost at the same time. The meaning of the word mother was grandma to him.It is called grandma, but in fact grandma is only a few years older than his mother, and grandma is the one who has hugged and carried him since he was born.Grandma's loose and soft big tits were his childhood sweet home, as long as he leaned on them, he would fall asleep peacefully.After his parents died, his real grandmother came to China.The grandmother is a tall, big, curly-haired woman in black. He hides behind his Chinese grandma, and dare not greet his own grandma.His grandmother came to take him back to the United States, and a middle school teacher in the township struggled to interpret for both parties. After hearing the bad news, Fabio sneaked away.

It was the season when the rice had just been planted, and there were straw stacks everywhere to hide.At night, Fabio sneaked back to his grandma's thatched cottage, picked off the old dried water chestnuts and dried rice cakes that grandma had left to dry under the eaves, and brought back the straw stack to cook for himself.Fabio knew where the twelve twisted ducks raised by grandma laid their eggs.Fabi always catches duck eggs before grandma goes to the river to pick them up, breaks them open and drinks them raw.When the grandma realized that her things were constantly being lost because of house thieves, she knew it in her heart.Why is the widow granny selfish and wants to keep Fabi?

Fabi’s grandmother cleaned up the inheritance of her daughter and son-in-law, sold off the furniture and clothes that could be sold, and waited in vain for Fabi for half a month. Finally, she couldn’t stand the food, living, toileting and gnats in the villages in Jiangbei, China, and finally gave up bringing My grandson’s plan to return to China was told to the patriarch of my grandmother’s village that once Fabi was found, he must ask the middle school teacher in the township to write to her in English, and she would pick him up again. But Fabi's grandmother never received any letters from the Jiangbei countryside in China.When Fabio was an adult, he secretly regretted his childhood affection and self-willedness when he was accepted as a seminary student by Father Engelmann.After Fabi's maternal grandmother left, Fabi and grandma went to join a distant relative of grandma. This relative was a friend of Fabi's parents, and it was he who introduced grandma to Fabi's parents as a helper.Granny has since then washed and cleaned for this relative, and Fabi and the young masters of the family eat and live together.When 17-year-old Fabio graduated from a church middle school in Yangzhou, Father Ingeman came to give a speech at the school. The priest was very curious about Fabio, a Chinese young man with a Western face, and took the initiative to chat with Fabio. When Father Man left Yangzhou and returned to Nanjing, it was Fabi Adornato who carried his luggage for him. He only realized when Father Engelman walked down from the podium with a smile and walked towards him that he was seventeen years old. Year-old's life is so lonely, he can never be a Chinese.Father Engelmann's elegant and calm demeanor, like his eloquence and knowledge, won the young Fabio within an hour. Only then did he realize that he was never willing to be a Chinese.He also understood that Father Engelman was friendly to him because he was a Westerner, and the priest suggested to him that Fabio would continue to mix with the Chinese, and that continuing to be a Chinese would ruin him.Engelman and Fabio were talking, like two camels in a herd of horses, they hit it off and fell in love with each other.

After Fabi graduated from Nanjing Theological Seminary, Father Engelmann, who was a part-time professor at the seminary, applied for a scholarship for Fabi to study in the United States for three years.Fabio found his entire family in the United States, with a large group of relatives, young and old.He scratched his scalp when he was reunited with them; when he was nervous, his scalp would be full of ant-like itch.At this time, he realized that he could not be an American either. He felt that the person who was chatting warmly with his American relatives was a fake Fabio, and the real Fabio shrank in his heart, counting the minutes and hoping that this historic blood meeting would end as soon as possible. He knocked lightly on the door of Father Engman's living room, and Engelman invited him in.The relationship between the priest and Fabio has been maintained intact at the first meeting, and no intimacy has been enhanced. If Father Engelman were your neighbor next door, he would say to you cordially and sincerely when they first met: "Knowing you is really true." Good!" But after decades of being a neighbor, he still said, "It's so good to know you!" He can solidify the sense of familiarity and make the friendship neither grow nor die. "What's the matter, Fabi?" asked Father Engelmann.He didn't give up his seat politely as usual. Originally, Fabio came to report to Engman about the conflict between the female students and cardamom, and urged Engman to send the prostitutes to a safe area.But as soon as he entered Engman's drawing room, he felt that the priest was full of deeper worries, and what he wanted to say seemed out of place in the atmosphere and did not carry enough weight.Father Engelmann was receiving reports on the situation in Nanjing from foreign radio stations on the shortwave radio. He glanced at Adonado who came in hastily, and then turned to the radio.Accompanying him, Fabi listened to the extremely noisy radio in silence, his eyes browsing the milky white worn out by the years, the original color was dull, and the white rectangles and ellipses of different sizes were imprints left by various photo frames .In the early days of the air raid, Father Engelmann was afraid that the bombing would damage the frames of the glasses, so he asked Gu to take them off and store them away.Fabio remembered what each absent frame contained, because Father Engelmann had never moved them, or replaced them, in decades.The largest vertical elliptical imprint is left by the portrait of Engelmann's priestly parents.The portrait, which began as a tiny photograph on the back of a pocket watch his father had left him, has been masterfully enlarged and delicately restored to look half science, half art.At the bottom left, the rectangular blank is left by Engelman's graduation full body photo, and it is also evidence that Engelman was once young.The horizontal oval at the lower right originally hung a photo of the Pope receiving Father Engelmann. Father Engelman seemed to be saying to himself: "It seems to be true—they were secretly shooting Chinese soldiers. The gunfire just now came from the execution ground by the river. Even the Japanese journalists and the Germans were shocked by this." At around five o'clock this morning, gunshots rang out along the river, very dense machine gunfire.At that time, Father Engelmann wondered whether the Chinese army was still resisting.However, according to the person in charge of the safe zone, all the Chinese troops who had not had time to retreat had been captured.Putting together the news on the radio and the gunshots this morning, Ingeman said to Fabio: "Japan is defying the international prisoner of war laws and provoking civilization and humanity? Can you believe it? Is this the Japanese country I know?" people?" "We need to find a way to get food and water. Otherwise, there will be no drinking water tomorrow." Fabi said. Father Engelman understood what Fabi meant: It was supposed that within three days the occupying forces would put down their murderous intentions, put down their butcher knives, and take over Nanjing, which had been slaughtered by them. Get into the inertia and make it stop seem so far away.Fabi also had another meaning: the priest gave kindness to a dozen kiln sisters and asked them to share the only food resources of the female students, and it was time for everyone to share the consequences. "Tomorrow, I will go to the safe area to get some food. Even potatoes and sweet potatoes can last for two days. The children will never go hungry," the priest said. "What about two days later?" Fabio said, "There is still water, how to solve it?" "Now it's time to plan hour by hour! Live an hour count as an hour!" Fabio could tell that Engelman was angry.Engman told Fabi more than once that he hoped that Fabi would overcome his "passive-aggressiveness", argue clearly and criticize directly, like most real Americans.Fabi's "passive-aggressiveness" is Chinese, and he doesn't like it very much. Engelman looked at Fabio and said, "Do you have any constructive and positive suggestions about water?" "Zhao Yumo said that when they escaped here, they passed a pond. I am familiar with Nanjing. I don't remember that there is a pond nearby, but she said she saw it." I want to ask Lao Gu to look for it before dawn. "Okay, that's fine for you. You see, the solution has been found." Father Engelman rewarded Fabi with a smile, which was completely different from his usual elegant and lacking enthusiasm. Fabi felt a burst of emotion in his heart. He had been with Engman for so many years, and he saw the priest annoyed and genuinely smiling in just ten minutes.It seems that the strangeness that this next-door neighbor has successfully maintained for many years is likely to be broken. Father Engelmann said, "Send the children to the church hall." "They should all be asleep," said Fabio. "Go call them."