Chapter 10 Soap

Mrs. Siming was pasting paper ingots with her eight-year-old daughter, Xiuer, with her back on the north window in the slanting sunlight, when she suddenly heard the heavy and slow sound of cloth shoe soles, knowing that Siming had come in, she did not look at him, but just pasted paper. ingot.But the sound of the cloth soles became louder and closer, and she felt that it finally stopped beside her, so she couldn't help turning her eyes to see Siming shrugging in front of her, fiercely pulling out the lapel of his robe under the cloth horse hanger. Back pocket. With great difficulty, he took it out in a zigzag way, and there was a small rectangular bag, sunflower green, in his hand, which he passed all the way to the fourth wife.As soon as she received it, she smelled an inexplicable fragrance that was like olives but not olives. She also saw a golden mark and many fine clusters of patterns on the sunflower green paper package.Xiu'er immediately jumped over to grab a look, but the fourth wife hurriedly pushed her away.

"Going to the street?..." she asked while watching. "Hmm." He said, looking at the paper bag in her hand. So the sunflower-green paper package was opened, and there was a thin layer of paper inside, which was also sunflower-green. When the thin paper was removed, the thing itself was revealed. It was smooth and firm, also sunflower-green, with fine clusters on it. There are clusters of patterns, but the tissue paper is beige, and the inexplicable fragrance of olives but not olives has become stronger. "Alas, this is really good soap." She held the sunflower green thing under her nose like holding a child, and sniffed.

"Hmm, you'll use this from now on..." When she saw him saying this, but his eyes were on her neck, she felt that the face below the cheekbones seemed a little hot.Sometimes she touched her neck by accident, especially behind her ears, and she always felt a little rough on her fingers. She knew it was old mud accumulated over the years, but she didn't really mind it.Now under his gaze, facing the foreign soap with sunflower green and strange fragrance, he couldn't help feeling a little hot on his face, and the heat spread continuously, reaching all the way to the ears immediately.So she decided to use this soap to wash desperately after dinner.

"In some places, acacia seeds alone cannot be used to clean them." She said to herself. "Mom, give this to me!" Xiu'er reached out to grab the sunflower paper; Zhao'er, the younger daughter who was playing outside, also ran to her.The fourth wife hurriedly pushed them away, wrapped them in thin paper, and then wrapped them in sunflower paper as usual, turned around and put them on the highest shelf on the washstand, took a look, turned over and still pasted the paper ingots. "Xue Cheng!" Si Ming suddenly called out in a protracted voice as if remembering something, and sat down on a high-backed chair opposite her.

"Xue Cheng!" She also called out to help. She stopped pasting the paper ingots, listened carefully, but there was no response, and seeing him waiting anxiously with her head up, she couldn't help but feel apologetic, so she tried her best to raise her throat and screamed sharply: "[纟全] Son!" This cry was indeed effective, and she heard the sound of leather shoes approaching, and after a while, [纟quan]'er was standing in front of her, wearing only short clothes, with oily sweat dripping from her fat round face. "What are you doing? Why can't you hear your father?" She said condemningly.

"I was practicing Baguaquan (2) just now..." He immediately turned to Siming, stood upright, looked at him, meaning to ask him what's the matter. "Xue Cheng, I'm going to ask you: What is a vicious woman?" "Vicious woman?...Is that a very vicious woman?..." "Nonsense! Nonsense!" Si Ming suddenly became very angry. "Am I a woman!?" Xue Cheng was so frightened that he took two steps back and stood upright.Although he sometimes felt that he walked like an old student on stage, he never regarded him as a woman, and he knew that he was very wrong.

"A vicious woman is a very vicious woman. I don't understand, so I have to ask you for advice? ——This is not Chinese, it's devil's language. I'm telling you. What does it mean, do you understand?" "I... I don't understand." Xue Cheng became more embarrassed. "Scary, I spent money to send you to the school, and I don't even understand this. It's too bad that your school is boasting about equal emphasis on words and ears, but it doesn't teach anything. The people who say this nonsense are at most fourteen or five years old. You're still younger, you can already chatter, but you can't even say what you mean, and you have this face that says I don't understand! —— Now go and find out!"

Xue Cheng agreed "Yes" from the bottom of his throat, and exited respectfully. "It's really outrageous," Siming said generously after a while, "the current students are. In fact, during the Guangxu period, I was the one who advocated the opening of schools. The disadvantages are so great: Liberation, freedom, no practical learning, only nonsense. As for Xuecheng, a lot of money was spent for him, and it was all white. It was easy to get him a compromise between Chinese and Western. In the school, English is emphasized equally on oral and oral English. You think it will be fine, hmph, but after studying for a year, I don’t even understand vicious women, so I’m still studying rote. Scary, what kind of school has it produced? ? I simply said: They should all be turned off!"

"That's right, it's better to turn off all of them." The fourth wife said sympathetically, sticking paper ingots. "Xiu'er and the others don't need to go to any school anymore. Girls, what kind of books do you study? Eunuch Jiu said this before. When I opposed women's schools, I attacked him; but now it seems that it is the old people who are right. You think , women walk on the street one after another, it is already very indecent, but they still want to cut their hair. What I hate the most is those female students who have their hair cut. I simply say that soldiers and bandits are justifiable. They are the ones who are disturbing the world, and they should be dealt with very strictly..."

"That's right, it's not enough for men to look like monks, women have come to learn from nuns again." "Xue Cheng!" Xue Cheng was walking in quickly holding a small and thick gold-edged book, and presented it to Siming, pointing to a place and saying: "It's kind of like that. This...." When Siming looked at it, he knew it was a dictionary, but the characters were very small and scribbled horizontally.He frowned, leaned towards the window, narrowed his eyes, and read the line that Xue Cheng pointed out: "It's called the Masonic Society [4] founded in the eighteenth century. ——Well, that's not right.——How does this sound sound?" He pointed to the word "devil" in front and asked.

"Oddfellows." "No, no, not this." Siming suddenly became angry again. "I tell you: that's a bad word, a curse word, a curse word for people like me. Do you understand? Look it up!" Xue Cheng glanced at him a few times, but didn't move. "What kind of boring Hulu is this? You have to explain it clearly first, so that you can teach him to look it up carefully." Seeing Xue Cheng's embarrassment, she felt pitiful, and said as if she was dissatisfied. "It was when I was buying soap in Guangrunxiang on the street," said Siming, exhaling, turning his face to her. "There are three more students in the store shopping there. As for me, from their looks, I am naturally afraid of being too trivial. I looked at six or seven items in one go, and they cost more than four cents, so I didn't buy them; , and too bad, no fragrance. I thought, not as good as Zhongtong's, so I picked the green one, with two corners and four quarters. The guy was originally a snob, with his eyes on his forehead, he had already pouted. I hate it, that bad boy, the student, winks and laughs. Later, I have to open it and have a look before paying: it’s wrapped in foreign paper, so how can I decide whether it’s good or not? Who knows? Not only did the snob refuse to obey, but he was also very unreasonable, and said a lot of hateful nonsense; It's a bad word." Then he turned to Xue Cheng and said, "You just have to look it up in the bad words category!" Xue Cheng agreed "Yes" from the bottom of his throat, and retreated respectfully. "What are they talking about about new culture and new culture? This is not enough?" He kept his eyes on the roof beams and continued talking. "Students have no morals, and society has no morals. If you don't think of ways to save it, China is really going to die.——Do you think, how lamentable is that?..." "What?" she asked casually, not surprised. "My filial daughter." He turned to her and said solemnly. "On the street, there are two beggars. One is a girl, who looks to be eighteen or nineteen years old.—Actually, it is not appropriate to beg at this age, but she still begs.—and a The sixty or seventy-year-old, with white hair and blind eyes, sat begging under the eaves of the cloth shop. People often said that she was a filial daughter, but the old one was a grandmother. As long as she begged for something, she would give it to her grandmother. To eat, I would rather be hungry. But is there anyone willing to give to such a filial daughter?" He shot her eyes to pin her down, as if to test her insight. She didn't answer, and only fixed her eyes on him, as if she was waiting for him to explain. "Hmph, no," he finally answered himself. "I watched for a long time, and only one person gave a small penny; the rest surrounded a large circle and joked instead. There were also two bachelors who said brazenly: Ah Fa, don't look at this dirty thing You only need to buy two bars of soap, and wash all over your body, it's very good! What do you think, what is this?" "Hmph," she lowered her head, and after a while, asked lazily, "Did you give me any money?" "Me? ——No. One or two money, I'm too embarrassed to take it out. She is not a usual beggar, she has to..." "Hum." Before she could finish speaking, she stood up slowly and walked down to the kitchen.The dim yellow only seemed thick, and it was already dinner time. Siming also stood up and walked out of the yard.The sky was brighter than in the house, so Xuecheng practiced Bagua boxing on the corner of the wall: this is his "court training"[5], an economic law that makes use of the time between day and night, Xuecheng has practiced it for nearly half a year.He nodded slightly approvingly, then paced back and forth in the empty yard with his hands behind his back.Not long after, the broad leaves of the evergreen bonsai, the only bonsai, disappeared into the darkness, and stars flashed among the white clouds like tattered cotton, and the night began.At this time, Siming couldn't help feeling excited, as if he was about to do something big and declare war on the bad students and society around him.He became more and more courageous, his steps became louder and louder, and the sound of cloth soles became louder and louder, so frightened that the hen and chicks who had already been sleeping in the cage were chirping loudly. There is a light in front of the hall, which is a beacon to call for dinner, and the family members gather around the central table.The lamp is on the lower side; at the top is Siming, who is alone in the center, with a round face like Xue Cheng's, but with two thin beards. In the heat of vegetable soup, he occupies one side alone, much like the God of Wealth in a temple.On the left side is the fourth wife with Zhao'er; on the right side is Xue Cheng and Xiu'er.The sound of bowls and chopsticks rained like rain. Although everyone was silent, it was a very lively dinner. Zhao'er turned over his rice bowl, and half of the table was drained of vegetable soup.Siming opened his narrow eyes as wide as possible and stared at her until she was about to cry, then he looked away, and stretched out his chopsticks to pick up the choy sum that he had taken a fancy to earlier.But the cabbage heart was gone, he glanced left and right, and found that Xue Cheng had just stuffed it into his wide-open mouth, so he had no choice but to eat a chopstick of yellow cabbage leaves in boredom. "Xue Cheng," he said looking at his face, "have you found out about that sentence?" "That sentence?—Not yet." "Hmph, look, I don't have any knowledge, I don't understand the truth, I only know how to eat! Just learn from that filial daughter. She became a beggar, but she still blindly obeyed her grandmother, and she was willing to go hungry. But how do you students know this? You are unscrupulous. In the future Just like that bachelor..." "I've thought of one, but I don't know.—I think they're talking about Altpur, perhaps." "Oh yes! That's it! That's the sound they say: Wicked man. What does that mean? You're one of them: you know." "Meaning—meaning I don't quite understand." "Nonsense! Keep it from me. You're all bad bastards!" "Heaven doesn't beat people who eat, how can you lose your temper today? You even beat chickens and scolded dogs during meals. What do these children know." Fourth wife said suddenly. "What?" Siming was about to say something, but when he turned around, he saw that her sunken cheeks had bulged and changed color, and her triangular eyes were shining with a terrible light, so he quickly changed his words and said, "I also I didn't lose my temper, I just should be more sensible in teaching courses." "How can he understand what's in your heart?" She was even angrier. "If he was sensible, he would have lit the lanterns and torches a long time ago and found the filial daughter. Fortunately, you have already bought her a piece of soap here, so you only need to buy another piece..." "Nonsense! That's what the bachelor said." "Not necessarily. Just go buy another piece, wash her whole body, and offer it up, and the world will be peaceful." "What? What does that matter? Because I remembered you had no soap..." "Why is it irrelevant? You bought it for a filial daughter with sincerity, and you went to wash it off. I don't deserve it, I don't want it, and I don't want to be honored by a filial daughter." "What are you really talking about? You women..." Siming faltered, his face was also sweating greasy like after Xue Cheng practiced Bagua, but most of it was also due to eating too hot food. "How about us women? We women are much better than you men. You men are either scolding eighteen or nineteen-year-old female students, or praising eighteen or nineteen-year-old girls begging for money: it's not a good intention. Sigh, it's simply Shameless!" "Didn't I already say that? That's a bachelor..." "Si Weng!" A loud cry suddenly came from the darkness outside. "A Daoist? I'll come!" Knowing that it was the famous He Daotong, Siming happily said loudly as if he had been pardoned. "Xue Cheng, hurry up and turn on the light to illuminate Old Man He to the study!" Xuecheng lit a candle, and led Daotong into the west wing, followed by Bu Weiyuan. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Siming came out and cupped his hands, still chewing his rice. "How about eating light meals in the dormitory?..." "It's already passed." Wei Yuan went up to meet her, and also cupped her hands, saying. "We came all night just for the topic of the 18th Essay Call for Yifeng Wenshe. Isn't it every seventh day tomorrow?" "Oh! Sixteen today?" Siming said suddenly. "Look, what a fool!" Tao Tong yelled. "Then, I have to send it to the newspaper overnight and ask him to publish it tomorrow." "I've already drawn up the title of the article. What do you think, do you need it?" Daotong said, and he dug out a note from his towel bag and handed it to him. Si Ming walked to the candlestick, unfolded the note, and read it word by word: "Respectfully draw up the words of the people of the whole country to appeal to the President of Guizhou University to issue a special decree to pay special attention to the Bible and worship Mother Meng [7] so as to save the quintessence of the country." - very good very good.But are there too many words? " "It doesn't matter!" Daotong said loudly. "I've done the math, and there's no need to add more advertising fees. But what about the title?" "A title for a poem?" Siming suddenly became respectful. "I have one here: filial piety. That's a fact, and she should be commended. I'm on the street today..." "Oh, that won't work." Wei Yuan waved her hands quickly, interrupting him. "That's what I saw too. She is probably an outsider. I don't understand her words, and she doesn't understand mine. I don't know where she is from. Everyone said she was a filial daughter; but I asked her if she could write poetry. , she shook her head. It would be nice if she could write poetry." "However, loyalty and filial piety are great festivals. If you don't know how to write poetry, you can get by..." "That's not true, but who knows otherwise!" Wei Yuan spread her palms, ran towards Siming shaking and pushing, and tried to say. "If you can write poetry, then it will be interesting." "We," Siming pushed him away, "use this title, add explanations, and publish in the newspaper. First, we can praise her; second, we can use this to criticize society. What is the current society like? After looking around for a long time, I didn't see anyone giving me a piece of money, isn't it heartless..." "Ah, Si Weng!" Wei Yuan rushed over again, "You are simply scolding the monk for being bald. I didn't pay the money, and I just didn't have it with me at that time." "Don't worry, Wei Weng." Siming pushed him away again, "Of course you are outside, it's another matter. You listen to me: there is a large group of people in front of them, no respect, just joking. There are two more Bachelor, that’s even more unscrupulous. One of them simply said, Ah Fa, you go buy two bars of soap and wash them all over your body. It’s very good. Think about it, this..." "Hahaha! Two bars of soap!" Daotong's loud laughter broke out suddenly, shaking people's ears [kouhuang] [kouhuang]. "You buy it, haha, haha!" "Daoweng, Daoweng, don't yell like that." Startled, Siming said in a panic. "Crack, crack, haha!" "Dao Weng!" Siming's face darkened, "we're talking about serious business, why are you just messing around and making people dizzy? Listen, we'll use these two topics and send them to the newspaper office immediately, and ask him to As soon as it's posted. It's just a matter of both of you." "Okay, that's natural." Wei Yuan agreed. "Hehe, wash it up, heck... Xixi..." "Dao Weng!!!" Si Ming shouted angrily. Daotong gave this a drink and stopped laughing.They drew up the explanation, Wei Yuan copied it on the letterhead, and ran to the newspaper office with Daotong.Siming took the candlestick, sent it out the door, and returned to the outside of the main room. He felt a little uneasy, but after a little hesitation, he finally stepped through the threshold.As soon as he entered the door, he saw the small sunflower-green rectangular bag of soap in the middle of the central square table. The gold seal in the center of the bag shone brightly under the light, and there were small patterns around it. Xiu'er and Zhao'er squatted on the floor under the table to play; Xue Cheng sat on the right side and looked up the dictionary.Finally, I found Mrs. Fourth on a high-backed chair in the shadow farthest from the lamp. Where the lamp was shining, I saw that there was no joy or anger on her rigid face, and her eyes were not looking at anything. "Shoot, slap, shameless..." Si Ming slightly heard Xiu'er talking behind his back, and when he looked back, he didn't make any movements, only Zhao'er scratched his face with the fingers of her two small hands. He felt that he couldn't stay, so he put out the candle and walked out of the yard.He paced back and forth, and accidentally, the hen and chicks started chirping again, and he immediately stepped lightly and walked a little further away.After a long time, the lamp in the main room moved to the bedroom.He saw the moonlight all over the place, as if it was covered with a seamless white gauze, and the moon like a jade plate appeared among the white clouds, without any gap. He was a little sad, and seemed to be like a filial daughter who became a "people without notice" (8), lonely and lonely.He slept very late that night. But by the next morning, the soap was hired.This day he got up later than usual, and saw her lying on the washstand and wiping her neck, the soap bubbles were like the blisters on the mouth of a big crab, piled high behind her ears, compared to when she used acacia before. There is only a very thin layer of white foam, and the height is really different.From then on, the Fourth Wife always had an inexplicable fragrance that seemed like olives but not olives; after almost half a year, it suddenly changed, and everyone who smelled it said that it seemed to be sandalwood.March 22, 1924. 〔1〕This article was originally published in the Beijing Morning Post Supplement on March 27 and 28, 1924. 〔2〕Bagua boxing is a kind of boxing technique, which mostly uses the palm method and operates according to the specific form of the gossip.At the end of the Qing Dynasty, some princes and ministers and the feudal retroists around the "May 4th Movement" advocated it as the "quintessence of the country". 〔3〕 Regarding the establishment of schools during the Guangxu period, before and after the Reform Movement of 1898 (1898), under the impetus of the reformers, my country began to establish modern education and opened schools.At that time, these schools had disseminated modern Western scientific culture and social theories to varying degrees. 〔4〕Oddfellows, also translated as Freemasonry, is a secret society that appeared in Britain in the eighteenth century for the purpose of mutual aid. 〔5〕 "Ting Xun" "The Analects of Confucius Ji Shi" contains: Confucius "taste independence, carp (according to Confucius's son) tends to pass the court", Confucius asked him to learn "poetry" and "ritual".Later, some people often called the father's teachings "court training" or "court training". 〔6〕"Altpur" is a transliteration of English Oldfool, meaning "old fool". [7] Meng Mu refers to Meng Ke's mother, who was said to be a "virtuous mother" who was good at teaching children. 〔8〕The term "people without notice" comes from "Book of Rites · Kingship", which says: "the four are lonely, lonely, widowed, and widowed, and the people of heaven are poor and have no notice."No complaints, nowhere to tell if there is suffering.