Chapter 7 a green silk shirt

I did exactly as I was told, pushed the door open and went in without knocking.However, when I suddenly saw a tall and fat woman standing in front of me, I was taken aback.There was something seldom seen in her face: wonderful colour, healthy, very healthy, healthy, serene, confident. The look of her eyes was indifferent.She stood at the table picking vegetables, next to a plate with leftover cake on which a big fat cat was sniffing.The room was short and narrow, the air was stale, and there was an oily smell.My wincing eyes flicked back and forth between the cake and the cat and the healthy face of the woman, and there was a choking bitter taste in my throat that made me choke.

"What's the matter?" she asked without raising her eyes. With trembling hands, I unzip my handbag, hitting my head against the low doorjamb, and finally pull out my belongings: a shirt. "A shirt," I said hoarsely, "I think . . . maybe . . . a shirt." "My husband's shirt is enough for ten years!" After she said this, she raised her eyes as if by accident, staring at the soft green shirt that was rustling, and I saw a sudden change in her eyes. An uncontrollable desire flashed, thinking that this matter was a sure thing.Without even wiping her hands, she grabbed the shirt, lifted the shoulders of the shirt, turned it over and over to inspect every seam, and then muttered indistinctly.

I watched impatiently and anxiously as she went on to clean the cabbages, went to the stove and lifted the lid of a sizzling pot.A delicious smell of hot oil permeated the room.At this time, the cat had been sniffing the cake for a long time, and obviously felt that it was not fresh enough, so it jumped lazily, jumped onto the chair with a graceful posture, jumped from the chair to the ground, and walked from the cake to the cake. I ran out the door. The oil was boiling, and I believe I heard lumps of lard crackling and bouncing in the covered pan, for then a memory from a distant past told me that it was lard, and lard was being rendered in this pan.The woman continued to peel the cabbage.There was a place where a cow lowed and a barrow creaked, and I was still standing in the doorway, my shirt dangling on the back of a dirty chair, my beloved soft green silk The softness of the shirt I have longed for for seven years...

I felt as if I were standing on a red-hot grate, and the silence suffocated me, made me miserable.The cake was now covered with black and lazy flies, hunger and nausea, extremely uncomfortable nausea, combined into a choking bitter taste, which choked my throat.I start to sweat. I finally reached, hesitantly, for the shirt. "You," I said, my voice hoarse than before, "you... don't want?" "What do you want to change?" She asked coldly without even raising her eyes.Her dexterous fingers had picked the cabbage clean, collected the leaves in a colander, rinsed them with water, then lifted the lid of the pot where the oil was being refined, and poured the leaves into it.That mouth-watering sizzle reminds me of the past, like a thousand years ago, and I'm only twenty-eight years old...

"Hey, what do you want instead?" she asked now even more impatiently. But I'm not a merchant, no, although I've been to all the black markets from Cape Griner to Krasnodar. I was speechless: "Lard...bread...maybe flour, I think..." Then she raised her cold blue eyes for the first time and looked at me coldly. At this moment, I knew that I was finished... From now on, I will never know the taste of lard again, and lard is to me. Will always be just a painful memory of the smell... I was indifferent to everything, her eyes hit me, pierced me, and now I am empty inside...

She couldn't help but laugh. "The shirt," she cried sarcastically, "I can get a few bread-tickets for the shirt." I snatched the shirt from the chair, tied it around the neck of the screaming woman, and hung her like a drowned cat from the nails beneath the huge black crucifix, which Right above her head on the yellow-pink wall... I'm only doing this in my imagination, though.In fact, I grabbed my shirt, rolled it up, stuffed it into my handbag, and turned and headed for the door. The cat was squatting in the aisle, licking a plate of milk with relish. When I walked by it, it raised its head and nodded, as if it wanted to greet me and comfort me. There was a touch of humanity in the green eyes, a touch of indescribable humanity... But I was told to be patient, so I thought I should try again.First, in order to avoid the depressingly bright sky, I ran to an unknown place, passed the smelly puddles and pecking chickens under the strangely shaped apple trees, and came to an ancient linden tree not far away. A larger farmyard in Zhadi.The bitter taste in my throat must have blurred my eyes, and I didn't see until the last minute a stout country boy sitting on a bench in front of the house, speaking affectionately to two feeding horses.When he saw me, he smiled and shouted into the room through an open window: "Mom, here comes the eighteenth." After that, he patted his thigh very happily and filled his pipe He started to smoke, and his laughter was answered by a loud cooing in the room, and for a second a red-faced, energetic woman flashed in the window frame, her face like a shiny pancake.I turned right away and ran back past puddles and chickens and quacking geese.I was running like crazy, my handbag tucked tightly under my arm.When I reached the road in the village again, I slowed down and walked down the mountain I climbed half an hour ago.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw again the friendly gray serpentine road beneath my feet, lined with lovely trees.My pulse beats more steadily, and the bitterness lessens as I sit at the turnoff of the stony, barren, musty village road that leads to Yangguan Avenue. I was sweating profusely. Suddenly, I smiled, lit my pipe, tore off the dirty, old, sweat-soaked shirt, and quickly put on the cool and soft silk clothes, a sense of comfort arose spontaneously and flowed through my whole body , so all the bitterness disappeared and disappeared from me.I walked on the road to the train station again, and a longing arose deep in my heart, eager to see the ugly face of poverty in the city, because behind this ugly face, I often see human nature in difficulties .

Translated by senior students Xiao Maosao's proofreading from "Ms. and All Beings", Lijiang Publishing House, first edition in 1991 ------------ ① A place on the north coast of France. —— Annotation ② A city in the North Caucasus of the Soviet Union. —— Annotation