Chapter 35 Thirty-four

Maria's hobbies (3) The African cat passed quietly under their feet, and its fur grazed on their trouser legs, making a "snapping" sound.There was also the yellow and white one, which Daniel called Belle. "Beauty" is not charged at the moment, it is a little impatient, it seems to be looking for something.Maria asked Daniel if he heard Grandpa talking in the house, and Daniel replied that he heard it every day.Maria asked him again if he was afraid. He said that he had been used to it since he was a child. What was he afraid of?And it's no use being afraid. "If Dad doesn't like to work, he can come back. Why do you have to go to work every day? Don't you still have so many jewelry that can be sold? I went to the jewelry store to inquire, and the market is good."

"On the contrary, he just loves his job. You see, he's traveling again, and if he's not working, he doesn't have access to all kinds of clients. He's happy when he leaves the house in the morning." "Oh I see." Daniel was silent. He bent down and put a piece of chocolate candy into the mouth of the "beauty". The "beauty" ate the candy with a gloomy expression, and walked away proudly after eating.The other brown-striped one was still wiping on their trouser legs, as if telling them something. "I understand. Dad is on a long trip on the surface, but he is actually coming back to you, right?"

"Perhaps. But what will Grandpa and the others have to say? Shouldn't he be walking away? Like when we were drinking tea on the grass and saw him appear in mid-air?" Daniel didn't answer.Maria didn't want her son to answer either.For so many years, she has been waiting for that indeterminate answer, that thing that cannot be calculated and can only be confirmed by actions.She had woven the swirling tapestry in a trance, and her son had expressed her hunch that the pattern had been conceived from a book written by a Japanese that Jo had recently read.Maria hadn't read the book, but captured Joe's ghost.Daniel, on the other hand, entered this illusory world effortlessly.

"Daniel, you can't have a job in the future, right?" "I can help people as a gardener." He resolutely added sugar to his coffee, not worrying about such things at all.By being that personal gardener, he had access to all kinds of people, as Joe had done.Now Maria could see that the boy and his father belonged to the same kind of people, and she didn't need to worry about it at all.Maria thought again that he didn't really have to hide from Joe.He wasn't going to school, and Joe probably wouldn't be angry about it.But Daniel doesn't seem to be afraid of Joe's anger, but deliberately maintains a distant relationship with Joe.for what?Maybe he doesn't want to have too much daily contact with his father, but prefers to meet him at a certain delicate moment and place?

There is a portrait of her father in Maria's bedroom. She keeps the portrait behind the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe. She only meets him in the dark when she changes clothes.The face of the father in the portrait is very haughty, with piercing eyes.Maria found it difficult to meet his eyes.At first she hung him on the wall, but after realizing that being stared at by her father made her lose the ability to live, she invited the portrait into the closet.The day her father came into the closet was the day she started weaving the tapestry, and the communication in the dark made her more confident.In fact, the memory of her father in her childhood has almost disappeared in her mind, and the disappeared father has become the spiritual support of the portrait.Maria thought, this is what the so-called "adult" means.What is the father?The father is a kind of negation, his stern eyes turn Maria's life into a series of unreasonable miracles, and even indirectly affect Joe's life.In the middle of the night when the roses grew wildly, she had seen Joe rush downstairs like crazy, as if he wanted to look around the whole yard from left to right.

Joe had also seen a portrait of Maria's father, which had stood in the corner of the living room.Although he had never met the father, Joe said he was no stranger to his father-in-law, and that all the stories he read were about him. "You have a legendary father." Joe said this casually, but Maria was greatly shocked when she heard it.Perhaps it was Joe's encouragement that gave her some confidence in this indistinct father. Maria's obsession with fantasies in recent years was probably related to the father in the portrait.Since even one's own father can be resurrected in fiction, what else can't be fictionalized?One elderly neighbor, after viewing her tapestry, said the patterns made him "like falling into an abyss".But he bought the small tapestry anyway, obviously willing to experience the situation of falling into the abyss.In the dead of night, my father would talk, but my father's words could not be heard clearly. He seemed to be talking to my mother, and my grandfather's nagging was mixed in, but the words of my grandfather and mother could be heard clearly.They usually have to criticize her harshly.Maria was used to the criticism, what she wasn't used to was the muffled voice of her father behind her back.At this time, she would often think, why should she consider herself the daughter of such a man?She was also gratified about her relationship with Joe: she fell in love with Joe immediately, but it turned out that she had such a father.The structure of the world is really amazing.

Maria thought of her old age when she saw her own gray hair in the mirror.She had never imagined that her old age would be so active.Many years ago, she planned to spend a quiet old age on this old homestead. "Maria, Maria," she said to herself, "well, you are not your father's daughter, nor anyone's daughter, you are the daughter of this town. Now the town is gone, sinking to Underground, so your thoughts go underground, and you become an unearthed cultural relic."