Chapter 6 six

"She speaks very good English." Thomson said with a smile, "but her eyes speak very good Chinese, it's a pity that it's too difficult to understand." I took the big red wool tights knitted by my grandma and made a few stitches for her.On the shelf above the head, copper hooks are nailed to the edge, and a tin funnel hangs on it. The shadow of the funnel is falling on Nixi's face, like a light ink barrier with fine holes.Shari's eyes fell silent for a while. Thomson waited for a while, then went out with a glass of wine.After a while, he came in again and asked his grandmother to prepare the bath water for him, looked at the wool in Nixi's hand, and said:

"It's a fresh job. Mrs. Dou is really good at playing." Grandma smiled and said, "This is mine. I've been doing this for a long time." Thomson said, "I didn't pay attention." He took a Resting her head on her hands and leaning on the shelf with her elbows, she stood up and looked at Nixi, and said to her grandmother, "I've long wanted to bother you to wear a fleece vest, but I was afraid you would be too busy." The grandmother smiled and said: "Hey, you are so polite to me!" She paused, and then said: "If not, why don't we, my second sister, make one? She is skillful, and it will take less than two days." Nixi took a bamboo needle Putting it up against his lips, he turned his head and said, "Where am I? What a waste of wool!" Thomson hurriedly said, "Mrs. Dou, please take care of yourself. I just want this one. The ones bought outside are not as good. "Grandma, bring the wool." Grandma went to the back balcony and took a look around, and brought in a roll of old wool that was unwrapped and washed.Nixi said:

"There has to be an inch." Thomson said, "Mama, take my vest as a display." Grandma clapped her hands and said, "I have to be busy! Dinner must be prepared, and there is still time." You have to boil the bath water. I think so, second sister, you tie a loop of wool and let him put it on to try the size." She was busy boiling water, Nixi lowered her head and focused on knotting the wool, and let Thomson's words move her, She didn't answer.After five or six knots, she smiled and helped him put it off his head. In a hurry, for some reason, Nixi threw her hands away and said with a smile: "Mr. Thomson, I only think you are a good person!" Thomson put his hands on his waist surrounded by four needles, smiled and said, "Why? I don't understand these words." Nixi spat:

"You don't understand! Do you want me to teach you English?" She pinched one end of the bamboo needle and pricked him.He still wanted to go on, Nixi deliberately packed up the wool with a bit of reserve, and made an appointment to deliver the goods in three days, then left and got up. Even though the appointment was three days later, she was also impatient, so she worked overnight on that day and made it for him the next day.She was looking around with the woolen sweater stretched on her knees, and she was dangling the cradle with one foot, but Thomson, who was as impatient as she was, went to her house.He couldn't speak to the landlord and the tenant downstairs, and couldn't find out what was going on. Because he was a foreigner, everyone was terrified when they saw him, so they let him rush upstairs.The east wing room is divided into two rooms, the outer room is occupied by someone who combs his hair. A small door was dug in the board wall and hung with a floral curtain. When he lifted the curtain, Nixi was startled.She was sitting on the bed, a high-post wooden bed, with no curtains, a straw mat, and diapers and handkerchiefs hanging on the railing of the bed.On the table was a broken thermos bottle with a lake-colored foreign porcelain gargle.Nixi's family usually wore a blue bamboo jacket, with the collar open, buttoning up the buttons and apologizing: "Mr. Thomson, how did you find this place? You didn't come here either. Really, I didn't expect to fall into it either." Such a place!" As she spoke, the circles of her eyes turned red.Thomson was also quite embarrassed. He put his hands in his trouser pockets, stood in the middle of the room, and comforted him repeatedly: "Mrs. Dou, Mrs. Dou... You see me like this again, and it makes me feel even more uneasy." The overjoyed girl Serita held her younger brother's hand and climbed the curtain to look inside.There is a small stove under the board table, on which there is a pot of maltose stewed, and a pair of moso bamboo chopsticks are erected in the sugar.Nixi took out a chopstick, twisted a stick of sugar, put it into Serita's mouth, asked her to suck half of it, and handed the rest to her younger brother, saying: "Go out and play obediently." The children left , Nixi lowered her head, put her hand inside the sweater, grabbed one sleeve, and turned it over.

Thomson laughed and said, "Oh, it's ready, so fast! Let me try." She brought it over and stood in front of him. He was half-dressed, his head was stuffed in the sweater, and before he could get it out, he stretched out his hand. Come to hug her, through the sweater, his breath is hot on her cheeks and her neck.Nixi shook him away vigorously, and said in a hurry: "You are really a bad person, a bad person!" When Thomson turned his head to look, she had already run to the cradle, standing awe-inspiring, quite like a bullied young mother.However, she couldn't help him to look at it again and again, but she held back her smile and turned her head away, swaying her body, bending one leg, and rubbing her knees on the cradle.

Thomson said: "Did you know? There is a kind of Chinese dim sum, you bite into the soup, that's what you are." Nixi spat: "Nonsense!" She looked down at herself, the sweater with a lot of lint on it, and said : "Where did you come from this wool, net hair!" Thomson laughed and said, "It's Grandma's, I just picked it up." Nixi pointed at him and said: "Where do you want to wear a vest? Sincerely..." As she spoke, she smiled again, and with her head down, she picked up the fluff on her clothes bit by bit, dusted them off, and said:

"Look at you, you've got a whole body too!" Then she came over to pick it up for him.Thomson embraced her again this time, and she yielded to him. Her house was not clean, and there were many eyes and ears. When the two of them were in contact, Nixi would always go to his house.It is inconvenient to go to the hotel, because Hong Kong is a small place, there are only these few British people, it is like a big club, bumping into acquaintances. Nixi was one month pregnant when she came out of Dou's house, and gradually became ill with Xilai, who was bedridden.Thomson had to covertly visit her at her house.He felt ashamed when he thought about it. If she was an actress, a pointe dance star, or a famous slut, then there would be no shame, and it would be okay to make it public, but Nixi was just a poor Chinese widow, dragging Four children, pregnant again.She insisted that the child belonged to him, and asked him to find her a house and move.It is a dangerous drag to fix their relationship, and it is not necessarily more beneficial than zero whoring, but for some reason, he still comes to see her every day.One day when he came, she fell asleep with her head covered. He reached out and touched her forehead, and asked, "Do you have a fever?" She kept silent and bit his finger lightly.Thomson flung himself on the edge of her bed, with his face pressed against the quilt, and began to cry at her orders in the quilt.Asked her, asked again and again, Fang said: "I know that I must die this time. I must die. You showed me the house and moved in to live with you for a day. Even if I die, I am willing to die, and I am also willing to die. Your people, died for your children."

Nixi's world suddenly became richer, stumbling and full of things, mahogany and teak Western-style round table, with claws growing on the table legs, and the claws stepped on the ball; a large dining table, a complete set of twelve chairs, carved There are foreign-style cloud heads, roses and tendrils of climbing vines, and small copper nails are inlaid on the red leather heart of the chair back; the velvet sofa has faint roses and foreign-style cloud heads on the dark velvet; A small holder; a layer of white lace gauze is hung in the woven flower curtain; the dressing table is full of small holders digging flowers, and there is also a pleated pink skirt, and even the desk lamp and telephone are wearing ruffles red gauze skirt.There is a silver tray on the chest of drawers, and inside the tray are a large silver gargle bowl, a silver powder vat, a silver handle mirror, and three silver jugs, large and small, for pure display.Underground are Beijing carpets woven for foreigners.There are even antiques in the house - bric-a-brac sold exclusively to foreigners.A fragrant and fragrant carved sandalwood box stands in the corner of the room.Empty wine bottles piled up in the back yard, and servants sold them by the dozen to secondhand collectors.There are so many things that even Nixi himself was surprised, and even Thomson was surprised.He really rented a bungalow for this vulgar Cantonese woman, and bought all these things.She is over thirty years old, and gradually getting fatter, with thick gold chains shining in the black gauze shirt, her lips are blatantly red, and her sophisticated and provocative provocation is also a bit blatant.Thomson was very surprised to find that his own hobbies were no different from those of ordinary sailors.

Nixi's new house is complete with everything, even books, leather-bound travel magazines, Western cookbooks, colorful and finely printed children's textbooks, and fairy tales.Nixi’s children were all sent to the kindergarten, and the eldest girl, Serita, was sent to the girls’ school attached to the monastery. She was dressed in a white uniform, with long hair hanging down, black curly hair hanging down to her thighs, and her pale black face and hands. A small, sturdy man, like a black whirlwind blown out of white reeds.This half-Indian girl has experienced a lot of hardships with her mother, and she is used to being beaten by Nixi when things go well.Serita seldom speaks, her mouth is tightly pursed when she grows up.She watched coldly as her mother was with the man.Because she despises that stuff, she leans towards Catholicism, knows the prayers by heart, and never leaves a little Bible in a black cloth case with a small white cross embroidered on it.Sometimes she also preached to her mother.She spoke clearly and firmly, and gradually she was able to speak grammatical English.

When Nixi first met Thomson, she had a child in her belly, but she had a miscarriage shortly after being with Thomson.Thomson spent almost every day at Nixi's house, but every summer, when he went to Qingdao for summer vacation, he sent Nixi's mother and son to Japan.In Nagasaki, Nixi is the mysterious Mrs. Symson. All the Westerners in the summer pay attention to her. They guess that she is the concubine of a big man. The incredible Chinese woman in adventure novels. Her evening dress is full of rhinestones, like a A glass bottle with a thin waist and a fat belly contains a bottle of fireflies.

Sometimes Nixi also wears Chinese clothes, but because her feet are not bound, she wears Manchurian style high-soled satin shoes.Flat gold, woven gold, and the latest styles, hollowed out, lined with light-colored satin, with a line of crab writing, "Good morning", or "Forget me not".In Hong Kong, people take to the streets to sit in bamboo sedan chairs, put their feet high, and swagger through the streets.The Qing Dynasty changed to the Republic of China, and Nixi panicked, fearing that the flag dress would cause trouble, so she gave away more than a dozen pairs of shoes in disorder, and gave them away cleanly.Ni Xi remembered very clearly when the Republic of China was founded, and it was because of this panic. The Republic of China is still her world.The happy days are one after another, melting together like colorful fruit candies. Thomson asked her if she could transfer her god-sister to serve her in the new house, but she not only did not want it, but also feared that the grandmother would take credit for her, so she instigated Thomson to dismiss her.In the old house, although she is not the official hostess, and she does not show her face easily, she also replaced a group of servants there, bought her confidantes, and specially spied on Thomson's privacy. Unmarried English ladies are present.She became a naturalized British citizen with arguing, and the name on the passport was Mrs. Symson, but her relationship with Thomson was not very secret.The nuns in the monastery dealt with her again.She also hurt Mrs. Melanie with some sarcastic remarks.However, if you want to take revenge and show off in front of them, you have to continue to communicate with them.Nixi recalled the past from the beginning, and each case had to be clear about grievances and grievances.She took a carriage to Yahya's silk shop to pick out the latest clothing materials, and quarreled with the clerk on an excuse, and insisted on asking the boss to speak out.Thomson is an engineer working in the government, and he has a bit of official air. Yahya is a businessman of colored race, and he escaped immediately, only daring to show his face. Nixi made a fuss, but to no avail. Pharis, Yahyana's cousin, also became a well-known jeweler at this time.One day, he passed by a flower shop, looked in through the glass window, and saw Nixi buying flowers inside through the mountains of flowers.Around her neck was a pink and blue tulle scarf, and her twelve-year-old daughter Serita snuggled up behind her, pulling the scarf over her head. It was hot summer, the flower shop was wide open, and Serita Standing in the wind, the veil in the hot wind fluttered over her face.She has an Indian face, although she is young and naive, there is a kind of overly descriptive cruelty in her pointed nose and big bushy eyes.Perhaps because of the veil on her head, or perhaps because of the fragrant wind blowing from the flower shop, Pharis suddenly thought of his cousins, in India, in the sunny garden, full of flowers.He walked outside the wall, and a ball jumped out of the tree on top of the wall.He picked up the ball, climbed up the tree, and threw it in. The cousins ​​who played the ball rushed in, and the red and blue pastel veils could not keep up with them.Running inside, Fangcai Ao burst out laughing, laughing, but went to tell his uncle, so that his uncle told his father that he was beaten.For Pharis always remembered this, and his love for a woman was always accompanied by a willingness to be beaten for her. Pharis is thirty-one years old and has never been married.The cousins ​​in my hometown were all married long ago, and none of them were left. He didn't like the women here. Their faces were as pale as white and as red as possible. Their hair was sticky like black plaster, and they spit everywhere.Women in Hong Kong, like everything in Hong Kong, are all unhappy, because since he left his hometown and came here at the age of eighteen, he has suffered a lot from the filth, evil and oppression.Now he is doing very well, in fact, he is used to living in China, and he does not want to go back, but he often thinks of India when he was young.He was already fat, and when he got more money, he became even fatter. His face was full of black oil, his sharp eyes and nose were buried in the bloated fat, and only a little tip and a melancholy bud were exposed. He didn't say hello to Nixi, but Nixi saw him first, nodded with a smile, came out of the flower shop, greeted him loudly, and invited him to her house.Nixi originally hated Faris a little, because he didn't let her be caged back then.Now that she met him again, she would like to show him how comfortable her life is, so that he can spread the word to Yahya.He visited her house several times.Faris was an honest man, and he was always just chatting with her.Thomson knew that he was a well-to-do businessman, and thought highly of him.Pharis never came to the door empty-handed, and always brought some eating toys for the children.Serita called him uncle in the silk shop when she was a child, but now she doesn't recognize him, she just smiles faintly when she sees him, with the corner of her mouth tilted to one side. After living a stable life for five or six years, Nixi gained weight and gradually became dazed. Her eyes were often expressionless, like a layer of white paint on a glass window.Only when she talked to Pharis about her past sufferings and hardships, her eyes came alive again.Whenever Thomson was in front of her, she would happily talk about her ex-husband Yahya, how he abused her, how she endured it, for Serita and Jimmy, and how she followed a Chinese for Serita and Jimmy; For Serita and Jimmy and the Chinese's two children, she followed Thomson again.Thomson sat awkwardly on one side, with his left foot crossed over his right, and vice versa, his right foot crossed over his left; his left elbow propped on the arm of the rattan chair, and his right elbow.The rattan chair creaked, which annoyed him especially.But only at this time, Nixi's eyes have the brilliance of the past, and when there are quarrels, Nixi herself knows this, so she likes to quarrel more and more. She had a new girl named Penny, a chestnut-haired, fair-complexioned, pure Englishman, whom Thomson loved in every possible way.Nixi felt that her position was consolidated, and she was a little bit guarded against him.As usual, the government has a menstrual holiday every three years, and the British can go back home to see it.Thomson didn't go last time for some reason, but this time, Nixi couldn't stop him, so he had to go. After going there for two months, Nixi wanted to show off their sedan-style car, and invited all the nuns to go for a drive across the sea to Kowloon. There was a temple fair in Yuen Long Town, so they went there to catch up with the excitement.Little Steamboat took the car to Kowloon, but the weather changed as soon as it said it, and it began to rain.Nixi hugged Ping Ni and led the children and all the nuns to watch the temple fair in the rain. The mud splashed on the white silk stockings and white satin high-heeled shoes.Wild sparks are blooming high on the big trees, and scarlet dots are densely dotted in the pale sky.The underground is full of stalls, under the oil-paper umbrellas, they sell flat fish, large round fish with a diameter of one foot, cut into sections, white and red inside; summer hats, baskets, small cans of paint, gluten, white mountain of bean curd residue. , piles of lavender shrimp paste, with chopsticks poking on the mountain.Nixi and his group went around in circles, picked a dry place under a tree outside the market, sat down and took out food for a picnic.Immediately surrounded by a circle of country people, watching helplessly.Nixi used a small awl to poke holes in a can of anchovies, while they watched from the sidelines, she liked the feeling of returning home. Among the nuns, only the elderly Mrs. Tie Lisi, who was afraid of rain and moving, did not follow to the market, and sat alone in the car to read the newspaper. The social news column of "South China Daily" is the only contact Tie Lies has with the human world. It records the life, death, and marriage of local elites. It is a light gray world, and there is a kind of neat pleasure in the flatness.She made a mistake today and read yesterday's paper, but she continued to read all the way to Kowloon, saying excitedly from time to time: "Did you see, Mrs. Melanie, Mary Ashcroft is engaged Yes. You remember, her mother used to learn piano from me, and I forbade her to keep her nails.... Mrs. Cooper's brain is congested, I said she can't survive this year! Look!... She has a bad temper. Mr. Cooper is really He is one of the best people. Their roses always win prizes at the Flower Fair every year, and they invite us to play during festivals, and they copied our recipe for making cakes..." Mrs. Melanie said to the two little nuns under the shade of the tree: "You can make two sandwiches and send them to Mrs. Tieresi. Hers can't be missed." One came to wrap it up, and suddenly said in surprise: "Huh? Isn't this today's newspaper?" Another nun hurriedly said: "Damn it, Mrs. Tielisi hasn't read it yet, the newspaper is her life." This little nun took out the new newspaper, held it in his hand and looked at it, and the other said: "Send it to her quickly, she hates that people read the newspaper before her." This one has already read the news one by one. He came out and read "Dorothy, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Boyd of Birmingham, and Mr. William Thomson of the country," stopped, looked up at Nixi, and the two little Nixie Looking at each other, in addition to the fear, there is also the joy of discovering something.Mrs. Melanie Ding Ding knocked on the canned fruit, but she didn't hear it. Nixi heard a buzzing sound in her ears, and then she fainted, then her heart became quiet, and she heard it clearly. She drilled small holes in the tin can , have the ability to chisel all the way through neatly and neatly, and chisel out a semicircular row. However, at this moment Mrs. Tieresi walked over from the car, and she probably realized that the newspaper she was reading was from yesterday. He put the newspaper and the umbrella over his head.In front of her social news column, Nixi felt that she was a countryman outside the railing, and she was shaking her hands, seeing that Thomson and his English bride could not hit him. She counted herself among the country folk who were all around watching them eat.The entire rainy countryside jumped up and down like a group of muddy wild dogs, big, heavy, smelly, snorting, and terribly affectionate and hateful. Nixi felt numb for a while, hugged Pinny and immediately stood up, touched Pinny's pants, pretending to change her diaper, and said to herself, "The diaper is still in the car." She walked towards the car, Called together a few older children, took them into the car, told the driver to drive quickly, and left a few nuns in Yuen Long Town, no matter what. Back in Hong Kong, she bought a copy of the "South China Daily", and the central government helped her understand it. Sure enough, Tom Shengye got married in England on the 6th of this month. After a while, Thomson brought his wife to China, and Nixi didn't know how to spend the two months between them.The home is still full of things, but everything is a thing of the past.It's like looking at a tall building from a distance. There is a room in the window full of old-fashioned furniture, representing a certain era, which is gorgeous, trivial, and crowded; the window faces another window at the back, looking straight through In the past, through the bed curtain and cupboard, I saw the bright red sky behind the house, and the sun set. Before Thomson returned to Hong Kong, he sent a telegram to Faris, asking him to tell Nixi not to meet him at the pier, otherwise he would never see her face.After hearing this, Nixi cried a lot, unable to do anything.When he arrived in Hong Kong, she went to his office to look for him. Through the desk, she leaned over to him and cried softly: "Bill!" Thomson stood with his hands on the table, looking at her blankly, as if he didn't remember who she was.Nixi suddenly felt that her own thighs were leaning against the desk, that she was full of fat, that she was dressed in too fancy clothes, and that she was an inferior woman; Thomson's world was a relief of light gray stone On Qingping's pattern, she is a large piece protruding abruptly, and the relief has become a stone statue, with her breasts and lower body protruding high.She thought she was too big and conspicuous as a whole.Thomson sensed her feeling at once, and she shrank suddenly before him, losing the outrageous beauty that had attracted him before. Feeling safe, he signed a check for 5,000 yuan and said, "This is yours, as long as you promise that you will never see me again." He shouted loudly: "Miss Fiddlestone!" Thomson had a Chinese habit in this point, and he never rang the bell when calling for the female secretary, but only yelled.The female secretary came in, and Nixi didn't want to quarrel with him in front of people, so she wanted to leave some room, so she had to leave.When the money ran out, I went to him again. Several times, there was such a woman wearing a plum-blossom black-faced net in the communication office, guarding him at the gate, crying, threatening, beating, and cheating. Pinning her face made Pinney cry and howl, deliberately making Thomson feel bad.Thomson gave the money several times, but he didn't give it up.Nixi teased Faris to pass on the message again, but Faris couldn't bear it, and often gave her money out of his own pocket without explaining.Nixi only thought it was given by Thomson, and said that his old love was still there, so she went to tangle with him again. Thomson was so anxious that he asked for leave due to illness, and took his wife to Qingdao to recuperate. Pharis went to her house for three or two days, and suddenly disappeared for a week.Nixi had always known an old Indian woman who came to see her, and said gently about Faris, saying that he had entrusted her to be a matchmaker.Nixi squatted on the ground to adjust the shoelaces, sat down crookedly, threw herself on the sofa chair, laughed and said, "Faris is so childish!" Going down, two fleshy yellow overflowing rivers, the soup flows into the years to come.She is still beautiful, men are unreliable, money is also unreliable, but she is still reliable.With the windows wide open, I heard steamers deflate at sea.Thomson left Hong Kong.Just go and go, one after another.The cold siren sound flowed down her arm. She smiled and said, "Faris is younger than me! It's not the right age." The Indian woman paused, then smiled and said, "The difference in age is too far. What he meant...Serita ...Serita is only thirteen this year, and he is already thirty-one, but he is willing to wait until she grows up. If you will, let them be engaged, first to reassure him, and second to him You can pay to send her to school. It's a pity if you don't study well. Of course, younger brothers and sisters also have to go to school. You are married, and if you need his help when you encounter something, there is also a name. Mrs. Symson, don’t you think so?” Nixi raised her head and saw that in the next room, Serita was sitting on a wicker chair to enjoy the shade, she presumably yawned and stretched herself, the door was ajar, and only white A pair of small pale hands appeared out of nowhere beside the lacquered door, the knuckles were darker black—as if a small hand stretched out from the pale future and touched her heart. Nixi knew she was getting old.She leaned on the sofa and stood up, her stiff kneecap cracked, as if something inside her was shattered. (1944)