Chapter 2 Chapter One

In 1919, Detroit, Michigan was one of the most successful industrial cities in the world.World War I is over.Detroit played an important role in the Allied victory.Here tanks, trucks and planes were provided to the Allies.Now, the threat of German Nazis has quietly loomed.Automobile factories can once again devote their production capacity to improving the production of automobiles.Soon, the daily output of manufactured and assembled cars in the factory has reached 4,000 (including transportation to the factory), so professional technicians and unskilled laborers gather here from all over the world, all wanting to find jobs in the automotive industry .Italians, Irish, Germans—they came like a flood.

Among the newcomers were Paul Templehouse and his bride, Frieda.Paul was an apprentice in a slaughterhouse in Munich.When he married Frieda, he got a dowry.They immigrated to New York with this dowry and opened a butcher shop.The butcher shop lost money soon after it opened.So they moved to St. Louis, Boston, and finally Detroit.Before they came to Detroit, they lost a lot of money everywhere they went. In the days when business was booming, people's lives became more prosperous, which meant that the demand for meat also increased.But the butcher shop run by Paul Templehouse was always losing money.Paul is considered a good butcher, but he has no business ability to speak of.In fact, his greatest interest is writing poetry, and his enthusiasm for writing poetry is far greater than making money.He can conceive the rhythm and artistic conception of his poems for hours, and write those "results" on paper and submit them to newspapers or magazines.But no one paid him any attention.In Paul's view, money is not important, anyone can owe him money.So such a sentence spread quickly: "If you have no money and want to eat meat, fresh meat, then you should go to Paul Templhaus."

Paul's wife, Frieda, is an ugly girl.She had absolutely no experience with men until Paul met her and proposed to her—or rather, Paul proposed to her father to marry her.Frieda had asked her father to let her accept Paul's marriage proposal.And the old man didn't need her to urge him at all, because he was very worried that Frieda would still not be able to marry in his old age.For this reason, he even offered a considerable dowry to allow Frieda and her husband to leave Germany for the New World. When Frieda met her husband for the first time, she shyly fell in love with him.Before that, she had never met a poet.Paul is a bit of an intellectual, very thin, short-sighted, and a little bald.After a few months of their relationship, Frieda believed that the handsome young man was truly hers.She knew very well about her own appearance.Her body is too bloated, like a big raw potato.The best of her features were her piercing blue eyes, as blue as gentian.As for the rest of the face, it was someone else's: her grandfather's nose, big and round, her uncle's forehead, tall and sloping, her father's chin, boxy, as if Always with a cold face.It seems that God deliberately played a joke on her and gave her this face and figure.In fact, Frieda's heart is very kind and pure.Of course, people can only see her unacceptable appearance.The only exception was Paul, who belonged to her.However, Frieda may never have thought that the reason why she attracted Paul lies in her dowry.Paul's point of view is: even if you give him a bloody steak or a big pig's head, as long as there is this dowry, he can just turn a blind eye and let it go.Paul always dreamed that he could do a business, earn enough money, and then devote himself to writing his favorite poems.

Frieda and Paul went to a small hotel on the outskirts of Salzburg to spend their honeymoon. This is a beautiful old castle, located by a beautiful lake, surrounded by woods and lawns.Frieda had thought about this scene on the honeymoon night a hundred and eighty times in her mind.Paul, she thought, would close the door and embrace her.Sweet words would be murmured while undressing her.His mouth would come to kiss hers, then move to her naked body.Like those little green books she'd been reading on the sly.Paul would also carry her to the bed (it might be safer if he walked alongside her to the bed), put her down kindly, and say, "Dear Frieda, I love your body, you don't Those shriveled little girls, you're a real woman."

In fact, she was completely wrong. Shortly after their honeymoon, Frieda began to see Paul in a more realistic light.Frieda grew up in the traditional customs of a good wife and mother in Germany, so she could obey her husband unconditionally.However, she is not stupid at all.Paul was only interested in his poems in life, and Frieda began to realize that his poems were not very good.Of course there was nothing she could do about it.But she clearly felt that Paul did not do well in any aspect she could think of.Paul hesitated in everything; Frieda was firm and decisive.Paul was unwise in business; Frieda was clever and capable.At first, Frieda just sat by and endured in silence.But the head of the family was so soft-hearted that he almost spoiled her good dowry.So when they moved to Detroit, Frieda couldn't take it anymore.One day she stormed into the butcher shop owned by her husband and took over the cash account.The first thing she did was put up a "No Credit" sign.This frightened her husband into a fool.But this is just the beginning.Frieda then raised the price of meat slightly, began advertising, and distributed pamphlets to neighboring areas.The business expanded overnight.From then on, it was Frieda who made the big decisions, and Paul could only follow the rules.Frieda became bossy from repeated frustrations.However, she found that she has the ability to handle things and control people, and has enough willpower.So Frieda made a series of decisions, such as how they should invest, where they should live, and when they should go on vacation.Then decide when they should have a baby.

One evening she formally announced her last decision to Paul, and told him to follow through on the plan until the poor man nearly fainted. Three months after they started doing this, Frieda told Paul that he could take a break and that she was pregnant.Paul wanted a little girl; Frieda wanted a little boy.Turns out, the baby was a boy, which didn't surprise any of their friends. At Frieda's insistence, the baby was delivered at home by a midwife.All went well and the baby was born safely.But at this time, everyone standing around the bed was shocked.All aspects of newborn babies are normal, except that the genitals are different from ordinary people.The baby's genitals were extraordinarily large, like a distended oversized appendage, between the innocent baby's thighs.

His father was not born this way, Frieda thought with great pride. She named the child Tobias, after a mayor who lived nearby. Paul told Frieda that he would be responsible for the children's education.In any case, it is the duty of the father to raise the child. Frieda listened and smiled.She rarely let Paul get close to the child, and Frieda raised the child.She disciplined her children with a Teutonic fist, with no regard for the tender maternal ways.Toby grew up to be five years old and became a tall and thin man.His cold face, those bright gentian blue eyes, resembled his mother's.Thor adored his mother and did everything according to her will.He would have liked his mother to pick him up and hold him in her thick limp lap so he could sink his head deep into her arms.But Frieda didn't have time for these things, she was busy with the life of the family.She loved little Toby very much, and she was determined not to let him grow up to be as weak and incompetent as his father. No matter what Toby did, Frieda demanded that he do it perfectly.Toby started school, and she supervised his homework, and when there was something he couldn't do, she encouraged him: "Come on, boy, do it!" She would stand by him until he worked it out.The more Frieda was strict with her children, the more the children loved Frieda.If Toby did something to displease her, he would be terrified.Her punishment was timely, while her praise came more slowly.But she felt it was all for Toby's good.From the very first moment when she held the child in her arms, Frieda knew that one day the child would become a famous and important person.Although she doesn't know how or when she will be.But she knew it was bound to be, as if God had whispered it to her beside her.When her son was too young to understand what she was saying, Frieda told him that he was a wonderful man and kept telling him so.So, when Toby grew up, he knew he was going to be famous.Although I don't know how and why I am famous.But he knew that his mother was never wrong.

Toby felt his happiest when he sat in the big kitchen doing his homework and his mother stood by the big old-fashioned stove cooking.My mother would make a thick, fragrant black bean soup with a whole pig and beef sausage, and bake potato cakes surrounded by fluffy brown lace.Sometimes she would stand beside the cutting table in the middle of the kitchen, knead the dough with her big, powerful hands, then sprinkle some fine powder on the dough, and magically turn the dough into mouth-watering plum cakes or Ringo cake.Often Toby walked up to his mother and put his arms around her large frame, his face reaching only to her waist.There was always the pungent, musky scent of her woman in the smell of the kitchen, and a spontaneous sensuality would stir his heart.At this moment, Toby would be very happy to snuggle up to her.For the rest of his life, whenever he smelled fresh fruit and vegetables sautéed in butter, he would recall his mother's vivid presence.

When Toby was twelve years old, Mrs. Durkin, a chatty woman next door, came to visit them one afternoon.Mrs. Durkin had a lean horse face, aggressive black eyes, and a mouth that never stopped talking.After the neighbor left, Toby imitated her movements, which made his mother laugh out loud.It seemed to Toby that he was hearing his mother's loud laughter for the first time.From then on, Toby always tried to keep his mother happy.He imitated the customers who came to the butcher shop to buy meat, as well as some teachers and classmates, so his mother would laugh. Toby finally found a way to win his mother's approval.

He tried to act in a school play called "David with No Debts".We let Toby play the leading role.On the night of the premiere, as his mother sat in the front seat, applauding her son's success, Frieda knew how God's promise would become a reality. This is the early 1930s.The Great Depression had just begun.Movie theaters across the country do everything possible to attract customers.In order to fill the empty seats of theaters and cinemas with audiences, they set up music restaurants, set up night casinos with stacked cards and five-point rows, and hold dance parties where people can sing with the accompaniment of the band.

Sometimes, they also hold amateur competitions.Frieda read carefully the theatrical sections of the newspaper to find out exactly where the competition was being held.Then, she would lead Toby there.She sat in the audience watching Toby imitate the likes of Al Jolsen, James Cagney and Eddie Cantor, and exclaimed, "My God! What a talented kid." !” Toby won the jackpot almost every time. He has grown a little taller, but is still very thin.He is a sincere and upright boy with bright eyes on an innocent face.As long as everyone sees him, he will immediately think of the word "pure".When people saw Toby, they wanted to hug him with both hands and protect him from the torments in life.They like him.When he performed on stage, they cheered him on desperately.For the first time Toby knew what he was meant to be, a star.It was for his mother first and God second. Toby's sexual instinct began to germinate when he was fifteen years old.He would masturbate in the bathroom, where he could do it without worry.But that wasn't enough, he decided, he had to find a girl. One night, the married sister of one of Toby's classmates drove Toby home while he was running errands for his mother.The woman's name was Clara Connors.She was a beautiful blond woman with high breasts.It was in her that Toby experienced sexual pleasure for the first time. Among Toby's classmates, some are football players, some are better looking than him, and some are rich-but they all fail to find girlfriends.Only Toby succeeded.He was the funniest, smartest man the girls had ever met.The girls looked at his innocent face and eager eyes, and couldn't say "no" at all. When Toby was eighteen and starting high school, he was called into the principal's office one day.Toby's mother was there too, with a grim expression on her face.Also in the room was a weeping little Catholic girl of sixteen named Eileen Henigan.And the girl's father, a police officer in uniform.As soon as Toby walked into the house, he knew he was in big trouble. "Let me tell you straight, Toby," said the Headmaster, "Arryn is pregnant, and she says you're the father of her baby. Have you had sex with her?" Toby's mouth suddenly went dry.All he could think of was how excited and greedy Ayrin was at that time, but now he has become like this. "Answer the headmaster, you little son of a bitch!" growled Ayrin's father. "Have you ever touched my daughter?" Toby stole a look at his mother.She sat there and watched him discredited, which was the most embarrassing thing for him.It was he who dishonored his mother and humiliated her.She would be hated for his mistakes.Toby made up his mind: if God can create a miracle and help him through this difficult time, then he swears that he will never touch another girl again in this life.He's going to go straight to the surgeon and castrate him so that he doesn't even think about sex, and... "Toby..." his mother said, her voice serious and grim, "did you sleep with this girl?" Toby swallowed, took a deep breath, and muttered, "Sleep, Mom." "Then, you're going to marry her." There was still an indisputable tone in her voice.She looked at the crying girl whose eyes were swollen from crying. "Is that what you think?" "Yes," Arryn cried, "I love Toby." She turned to Toby. "They must make me tell. I don't want to tell them your name." The police officer, the girl's father, declared in front of the room: "My daughter is only sixteen years old. According to the law, this is rape. You can send him to prison and let him stay in prison for the rest of his life. But if he wants to If you marry my daughter..." Everyone looked at Toby.He stammered again: "Yes, sir. I—I'm sorry it happened." No one spoke as he and his mother drove home.Toby sat next to his mother, feeling very sad, and he knew how much he had broken her.Now, he had to find a job to support Ayrin and the kid.Maybe he'll have to work in the butcher's shop.Now all his dreams, all plans for the future, had to be forgotten. When they got home, his mother said to him, "Come upstairs." Toby went upstairs with his mother, biting the bullet and preparing for training.But he saw his mother take out a small box and start packing his clothes.He looked at his mother, not sure what was going on. "What are you doing, mother?" "Me? I didn't do anything. You did. You have to get out of here immediately." She stopped talking.Then she turned to him and said, "Do you think I'm going to let you ruin your life for that worthless girl? You admit that you slept with her and she's about to have a baby. That proves two things--first, you're human; Go to New York! When you become a famous star, you will pick me up again." He blinked, held back his tears, and threw himself into her arms.She embraced him in her broad arms.Toby suddenly felt a sense of loss.When he thought about leaving his mom, he was terrified.But at the same time, there was a kind of hope, a kind of motivation in his heart, and he was excited about entering a new life.He will be in the acting industry.He must become a star, must stand out. His mother said so.