Chapter 3 three

Now, time must fly forward, because the next four years will be the same, and there will be no difference.There have been quite a few changes in the past four years, but these changes happened little by little. Every small step is very ordinary and seems inconspicuous.The hunchback has been living with Miss Amelia, and the café has expanded.Miss Amelia began selling wine by the glass, and tables were brought into the shop.There are customers every night, and it is even more crowded on Saturdays.Miss Amelia also started serving fried catfish for dinner, for a quarter of a cent.The hunchback coaxed Miss Amelia into agreeing to buy a fine mechanical piano.Within two years, the place had ceased to be a shop and had become a proper café, open every evening from six to twelve.

Every night the hunchback strutted down the stairs.He always smelled faintly of turnip leaves because Miss Amelia rubbed hemp liquor on him morning and night to give him strength.She petted him unreasonably, but nothing seemed to make him strong; eating only made his hump and head bigger, while the rest of his body remained thin and misshapen.Miss Amelia remained outwardly the same.On weekdays she still wears wellies and overalls.On Sunday she wore a dark red dress, which hung oddly over her.Her demeanor and way of life, however, had changed considerably. She still litigated, but she wasn't so eager to entrap someone so she could squeeze a fine.Since the hunchback was so gregarious, even she was out and about sometimes--going to evangelistic meetings, going to funerals, and so on.Her medicine was as successful as ever, and her wine was better than ever—if that was even possible.The coffeehouse proved to be very profitable, and it was the only place to hang out for miles around.

So let's take these years in a nutshell, and just introduce a few bits and pieces.We see them go hunting in the pine woods one red-hot winter morning, the hunchback following in Amelia's footsteps.We saw them working in her field--Cousin Lymon stood by, doing nothing, and very good at accusing a worker of being lazy.They sat on the back steps chopping sugar cane on autumn afternoons.On bright summer days, they hid in the depths of the swamp, where the metasequoia trees were dark green and dark as sleep under their tangled foliage.Sometimes the path was cut off by a swamp or a blackened pool, and Miss Amelia could be seen crouching down to let Cousin Lymon climb on her back--wading through the water with the hunchback sitting on her back. On her shoulders, grabbing her ears or hugging her broad forehead.Sometimes Miss Amelia would turn the crank, drive the Ford she had bought, and take Cousin Lymon to a movie in Cheehaw, to a distant fair, to a cockfight; high.Of course, they passed each morning in their cafe, and they often sat for hours by the fire in the upstairs drawing room.This is because the hunchback is always uncomfortable at night, and is afraid to lie up and look up at the dark.He has a deep fear of death.Miss Amelia would not leave him alone with his fears.It might even be thought that the café was founded chiefly out of this consideration; that with it, he would have companionship, and enjoyment, and it would be easier to pass the night.Readers are now asked to use these fragments to piece together a general picture of these years.Let's not talk about these for now, let's talk about other things.

Now, an explanation is needed for all this behavior.It's time to talk about love, because Miss Amelia is in love with Cousin Lymon.This matter is already clear in everyone's eyes. They live in the same house and are inseparable.So, according to Mrs. MacPhail, a nosy old woman with a wart on her nose (who likes to move her pieces of broken furniture from here to there in the front room as soon as she's free), and several others Personally speaking, these two people are living in sin.If they were really relatives, it would have been an adulterous relationship between distant cousins ​​at most, and even that could not be proven.

Miss Amelia, of course, was a stocky, dashing creature, over six feet tall--and Cousin Lymon was a sickly little hunchback, reaching only to her waist.It was more interesting, however, with Stumpy MacPhail's and her rascals, for they were more interested in the less well-matched and wretched marriages.So let them talk.As for those who are good, they think that if these two people can be satisfied in each other's physical contact, it is only a matter between themselves and God.All reasonable minds are unanimous in this conjecture—they flat-out think it is nonsense. So, what is it like to be in love?

In the first place, love is a shared experience between two people - but to say that it is a shared experience does not mean that it resonates equally in the two people involved.There are lovers and loved ones in the world, these are two completely different types of people.Often, the beloved is only the trigger for the kind of love that has been quietly accumulated in the heart of the lover for a long time.Everyone who is in love knows this to some extent.He felt in the depths of his soul that his love was a very lonely feeling.Gradually he came to know a new and strange loneliness, and it was this discovery that afflicted him.Therefore, there is only one thing for lovers to do.He must imprison his love in his heart as deeply as possible; he must create for himself a whole new inner world--a serious, strange world, entirely his own.I should add that the lover we speak of does not have to be a young man saving for a wedding ring—the lover can be a man, a woman, a son? Anyone.

As for the beloved, it can be any type of person.Even the wildest person can be a trigger for love.A trembling old man may still be in love with the strange girl he saw on the streets of Chehoe one afternoon twenty years ago.A priest may fall in love with a fallen woman.The loved one may be of bad character, oily, and possessed of bad habits.Yes, the lover sees everything as clearly as anyone else—but this does not affect the development of his feelings in the slightest.A most mediocre person can be the object of a love affair as passionate, wild, and beautiful as the poison poppy of the swamp.A good man can also be the trigger of a dissolute and depraved love, and a nagging madman may make a gentle and pure idyll appear in someone's mind.Therefore, the value and quality of any love depends purely on the lover himself.

Because of this, most of us would rather love than be loved.Almost everyone is willing to act as a lover.The reason is very simple. People have a dim feeling that the situation of being loved is intolerable to many people.The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with good reason.Because the lover always wants to strip the soul of his beloved.The lover craves desperately for every possible relationship with the beloved, even if the experience can only bring him pain. As mentioned, Miss Amelia had been married once.This strange episode might as well be explained here.Remember, all this happened a long time ago, and this was Miss Amelia's only personal experience of love before she met the hunchback.

The town was the same then as it is now, except there were two shops instead of three, and the peach trees along the street were more crooked and smaller than they are now.Miss Amelia was nineteen then, and her father had been dead for some months.There was a loom repairman in town at that time, named Marvin Macy.He was Henry Macy's brother, though if you knew them you would never think they were brothers.For Marvin Macy was the handsomest man in the land--six feet one, muscular, with lazy gray eyes and curly hair.He lived well, had a good salary, and had a gold watch with a picture of a waterfall on the back cover.From a material and mundane point of view, Marvin Macy was lucky; he got everything he needed without bowing to anyone.But when viewed from a more serious and profound point of view, Marvin Macy is not a man to be admired, for he is wicked by nature, and his reputation is at least as bad as, if not worse than, that of the bad boys of the county. Same smell.For years, when he was a boy, he carried in his pocket the dried and salted ear of a man who had once fought him with a razor and killed him.Just for fun, he chopped off the tails of squirrels in the pine forest.He kept prohibited marijuana leaves in his left hip pocket, and he helped those who were depressed and didn't want to live.But despite his bad reputation, there were still many girls in this area who liked him-there were several young girls in the county at that time, all with clean hair, soft eyes, and cute little buttocks, which were considered graceful.These gentle girls were ruined and humiliated by him one by one.Finally, at the age of twenty-two, this Marvin Macy picked on Miss Amelia.This withdrawn, lanky, strange-eyed girl was exactly the one he yearned for.He took a fancy to her not because she was rich, but because of love.

And love also changed Marvin Macy.Before he fell in love with Miss Amelia, the question could be asked whether he had any heart in such a person.However, the reason why his character has developed to this point is not without reason.The initial stage of his coming to this world was very difficult.His parents - such people are not worthy of being parents - have given birth to seven children they did not want.This is a pair of wandering young people who love fishing and wandering around the swamp.They add a child almost every year, and these children are a burden in their eyes.When they came home from get off work in the factory at night, they looked at the children, as if they were wild species that came from nowhere.When children cry, they have to be beaten. The first thing they learn in this world is to find the darkest corner in the room and hide themselves as quietly as possible.They were as thin as white-haired imps, and they didn't like to talk, not even between brothers and sisters.Their parents finally abandoned them completely, and it all depended on the kindness of the people in the town.It was a difficult winter. The factory had been shut down for almost three months, and every family had a hard time to recite.But this town wouldn't see white orphans starve to death in the streets.And so it turned out that the oldest eight-year-old went to Cheehaw and disappeared there—where perhaps he had climbed into a freight train into the great turmoil of the world.No one can tell.The other three children were fed in turn by the town, eating from one kitchen to the other.Because of their frail health, they all died before Easter.The remaining two were Marvin Macy and Henry Macy, who were taken in by the family.A kind woman in the town here, named Mrs. Mary Hall, took in the two brothers as if they were her own.They grew up in her home and were well cared for.

But the young mind of a child is a very delicate organ.Grim beginnings twist their minds into grotesque shapes.This is how the heart of a wounded child shrinks: for a lifetime it is as hard and as deeply grooved as a peach pit.It is also possible that such a heart will fester and swell, so that having such a heart in a body cavity is a misfortune, and even the most ordinary things can easily trouble and pain the person.The latter situation happened to Henry Macy.He happened to be the opposite of his brother, the kindest and gentlest man in town.He lent his wages to the unlucky.In the early days, on Saturday nights, when people went to the cafe to have fun and left their children alone, he would take the initiative to babysit them.But he is also a shy person.It was obvious from the outside that his heart was swollen and suffering.But Marvin Macy was getting more and more lawless and brutal.His heart is as hard as the horn on Satan's head.Until he fell in love with Miss Amelia, he had brought nothing but humiliation and trouble to his brother and the good aunt who had brought him up. But love completely changed Marvin Macy's character.He admired Miss Amelia for two full years, but never confessed.He used to stand near the door of her shop, cap in hand, and meek, wistful, dreamy eyes in his gray eyes.His behavior has also completely changed.He is very filial to his adoptive mother and very friendly to his younger brother.He saved his wages and learned to live.He even stretched out his hand in the hope of God's mercy. On Sundays, he was never seen sprawled out on the front porch, singing and strumming his guitar all day long.He went to church and attended all religious meetings.He also learned good manners: he trained himself to stand up and give up his seat when he saw a woman, he stopped swearing, fighting, and cursing in the name of God.In two years he passed the test, improving his character in every way.At the end of the two years, he went to Miss Amelia one night with a bouquet of bog flowers, a sack of sausages and a silver ring - the night Marvin Macy confessed himself to her love. And Miss Amelia did marry him.Afterwards, everyone was baffled.Some say it was because she wanted to scoop up some wedding presents.Others thought it was the result of the endless nagging of Miss Amelia's great-aunt in Chehoe, an unforgiving old lady.In a word, she strode down the aisle in her late mother's bridal gown, a gown of yellow satin which was at least twelve inches short on her body.It was a winter afternoon, and the bright sunlight shone through the ruby-colored windows of the church, casting a strange brilliance on the newlyweds before the altar.While the priest said the wedding blessing, Miss Amelia kept making a strange gesture--rubbing the edge of her satin gown with the palm of her right hand.It turned out that she wanted to touch her overalls pocket, but because she couldn't find it, her face showed an expression of impatience, dislike and displeasure.After the pastor's blessing was finished and the prayers were finished, Miss Amelia rushed out of the church without even taking her husband's arm, and took two steps before the leader. The church is not a few steps away from the store, so the bride and groom walk home.On the way, it is said, Amelia spoke of a sale she intended to make with a farmer for a load of firewood.Honestly, she doesn't treat the groom any differently than she treats a customer who comes in to buy a pint.So far, though, things had been normal; the town was happy, it was seeing love work on Marvin Macy, and it was hoped that his bride would be transformed by it.They hoped, at least, that the marriage would soften Amelia's temper, make her plump, as young married women usually do, and at last be a reliable woman. They are wrong.According to the little boys who peeped out of the windows that night, it really happened this way: the bride and groom had a big dinner prepared by Jeff, the little black cook in Amelia.The bride added to every dish, and the groom only pecked like a bird.The bride then goes about her daily chores—reading the paper, continuing to take inventory, and so on.The groom turned around at the top of the stairs, with a fluttering, demented, and beaming look on his face, but no one paid any attention to him.At eleven o'clock the bride took a lamp and went upstairs.The groom followed closely behind.So far, everything is normal, but what happens afterward is blasphemous. Within half an hour Miss Amelia came plodding downstairs in breeches and a khaki jacket.She has a dark complexion, so she looks black.She slammed the kitchen door and kicked it viciously.Then, under control, she turned on the fire and sat down with her feet on the grate.She read the Farmer's Almanac, drank coffee, and smoked a pipe on her father's pipe.Her facial expression was stern and cold, but her face gradually faded back to normal.Sometimes she stopped to scribble some tidbit from the Yearbook onto a piece of paper.Towards dawn, she went into her office and took off the case of the typewriter, which she had just bought and was learning how to use.This is how she spent the whole wedding night.After dawn, as if nothing happened, she went to the backyard to do carpentry work.She was making a rabbit cage, which she had started last week, and was going to sell to someone else when it was done. A groom can't take his beloved bride to bed, and the whole town knows about it. The embarrassment and distress of his situation can be imagined.When Marvin Macy came down that day, he was still dressed in his wedding dress, but his face was full of sorrow.God knows how he got here that night.He walked around the backyard, watching Miss Amelia, but always keeping her distance.Near noon, he came up with an idea, and set out to walk in the direction of Society City.He bought some presents—an opal ring; a bottle of pink nail polish that was popular at the time; a silver bracelet with a heart-to-heart pattern on it; and a box of candy for two dollars and a half.Miss Amelia surveyed the fine presents, and opened the candy box, for she was hungry.The other presents, she estimated shrewdly in her mind, were put on the counter for sale.This evening was also the same as the previous, except that Amelia had taken down her feather mattress and made a bunk on the kitchen kang, and she slept soundly. Things went on like this for three days.Miss Amelia tended her business as usual, and was interested in rumors of a bridge being built on a road ten miles from here.Marvin Macy still followed her in and out, and it was plain from his face that he was suffering.On the fourth day he did a foolish thing: he went to Chehoe and got a lawyer back.Then in Miss Amelia's office he signed a document distributing to her all his property--in this case a ten-acre woodland which he had bought with his savings.She studied the file for a long time with a sullen face, trying to figure out if there was any ghost in it, and then put it in the desk drawer solemnly for filing.That afternoon, while the sun was still high, Marvin Macy took a quart of whiskey to the moor alone.Towards dark he came back drunk, his eyes wet and wide open, and he went up to Miss Amelia and put his hand on her shoulder.He was about to say something, but before he could speak, he was punched in the face by her, so violent that he threw his neck back and hit the wall, breaking one of his front teeth at that time. What happened next can only be roughly sketched.Opened her head, Miss Amelia beat her man without saying a word, as long as her man came within her reach, and as soon as she saw him drunk.At last she threw him out of the house, and he had to be humiliated in public.During the day he was always hanging around outside Miss Amelia's property, and sometimes he would sit there with a crazy face, holding his rifle, cleaning it, and staring blankly at Miss Amelia.If Miss Amelia was afraid, she didn't show it.But her expression became more severe, and after a while, she spit on the ground.The last foolish thing he did was to climb in through the window of her storefront one night and sit there in the dark for no purpose until she came down the next morning.For this, Miss Amelia immediately set off to Cheehaw's court, thinking that she could charge him with "trespassing" and put him in jail.Marvin Macy left town that day, and no one saw him go or where he went.As he went, he slipped a letter under Miss Amelia's door. It was a strangely long letter, half written in pencil and half in pen.It was a passionate love letter, but it also contained threats.He vowed to exact revenge on her in this lifetime.His married life lasted a total of ten days.The whole town was filled with the special satisfaction that one often feels when one sees someone destroyed by an evil, terrible force. All of Marvin Macy's property went to Miss Amelia--his woodland, his gold watch, everything he owned.But she didn't seem to think much of them.That winter she cut up his Ku Klux Klan robe to cover her tobacco seedlings.In fact, all Marvin Macy did was to make her richer and get her love.But, strangely enough, she gritted her teeth at the mention of him.She never used his first name when speaking of him, always sarcastically saying "the maintenance guy who married me." Miss Amelia was overjoyed later when the dreadful story of Marvin Macy came back to the town.Because once freed from the fetters of love, Marvin Macy's true character is finally revealed.He became a criminal, and his picture and name were in every newspaper in the state.He robbed three gas stations, and with a sawn-off gun he robbed Atlantic Pacific in Society City, an American supermarket chain with branches in every city and city. .It is also suspected that he killed the famous mugger Squinting Sam.All these cases were connected with Marvin Macy's name, so that he became a big villain known in several counties.In the end, the law caught him anyway.He was drunk that day and lay on the floor of a hostel with his guitar thrown aside and fifty-seven dollars in his right shoe.He was tried, convicted, and held in a prison near Atlanta.This satisfied Miss Amelia. Ah, all this happened long ago, and this is the story of Miss Amelia's marriage.People in the town laughed for a long time because of this strange event.Although the appearance of this love affair is sad and ridiculous, you must remember that the real story takes place in the soul of the lover himself.So, for this or all other loves, who else but God can be the highest judge? On the night when the cafe opened, a few people suddenly remembered the dark prison squatting in the distance The down-and-out groom.In later years, Marvin Macy was not entirely forgotten by the townspeople.People just never mentioned his name in front of Miss Amelia and the hunchback.But the memory of his love affair and his crime, of his condition in the prison cell, always seemed a disquieting accompaniment to Miss Amelia's delightful love affairs and the joys of the café. Under the atmosphere.So let the reader not forget this Marvin Macy, for he will play a dreadful part in what is to come. In the four years since the store was turned into a café, the upstairs rooms have remained unchanged.This part of the house was as it had been in Miss Amelia's birth, as it had been in her father's life, and probably as it had been in her grandfather's time.As I said before, the three rooms upstairs were immaculate, and the smallest objects had their place.Every morning, Jeff, Miss Amelia's servant, dusted and wiped everything clean.The front room belonged to Cousin Lymon--it was the room in which Marvin Macy had been allowed to spend a few nights in the shop, but earlier it had been Miss Amelia's father's room.There was a large wardrobe, a small mirrored wardrobe covered with a stiffly starched lace cloth, and a marble-topped table.The bed was huge, an old-fashioned one with four pillars carved in ebony wood.The bed had two feather mattresses, long bolsters, and little hand-woven ornaments.The bed was high, and there was a two-step wooden ladder beside the bed—no one used it before, but Cousin Lymon pulled it out every night and climbed up the steps solemnly.Besides the ladder, there was also a porcelain chamber pot with pink roses painted on it, which was pushed out of sight for the sake of beauty.There was no carpet on the bare dark floor, and the curtains were some white stuff with lace trims. At the other end of the drawing room was Miss Amelia's bedroom, which was smaller and very plain.The bed is narrow and made of pine.There was a little wardrobe with a mirror in which she kept her breeches and shirt and Sunday clothes, and she had driven two nails into the closet to hang her big wellies.There are no curtains, carpets, or decorations of any kind. The large room in the middle, the living room, was rather particular.In front of the fireplace stood a sandalwood sofa covered with worn green silk.Marble-topped tables, two Singer sewing machines, a large flower pot of pampas grass--everything was grand and ostentatious.The most important piece of furniture in the living room is a large cabinet with glass doors, which contains many precious souvenirs and curios.Miss Amelia added two treasures to the collection--a large acorn harvested from a water oak tree, and a velvet box containing two gray acorns. Pebbles.Sometimes, when Miss Amelia had nothing else to do, she took out the velvet box, stood in front of the window, poured stones into her palm, and looked at them carefully, with an expression of fascination, reverence, and a little fear.These were two of Miss Amelia's own kidney stones which had been removed by a doctor in Chehoe some years before.The operation had been a dreadful experience from beginning to end, and her only gain had been the two pebbles; which of course she must take with the utmost care, or the deal would have seemed even worse.So she kept them, and in the second year of Cousin Lymon's stay with her, set them as charms on a watch-chain, and gave the chain to Lymon.Another addition to her collection, the big acorn, was even more dear to her—but whenever she looked at it, her face was always sad and perplexed. "Amelia, what's the point of such things?" Cousin Lymon asked her. "Oh, it's just an acorn," she answered. "I picked it up the afternoon Big Daddy died." "What does this mean?" Cousin Li Meng insisted. "I mean, it's just an acorn I found on the ground the other day. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. But I don't know why." "The reason for the collection is also quite strange," Cousin Li Meng said.