Chapter 16 Part Two Searching for Street Love and Destiny Called Happiness

Part Two Searching for Street Love and Destiny Called Happiness Mom is optimistic about my red wedding dress, don't let me die too early. —— "Wedding Dress" When I was three years old, there was a plant at home with three broad green leaves and a pink bud growing in a glass bottle filled with water.Mother had to change the water for it every day, and she said that when it bloomed, father would come back.So I look forward to it blooming every day.I often wake up in the middle of the night and peep at it silently; or pretend to have forgotten it for several days, and then look up at it abruptly.And it is always placed on a very high counter, the leaves are always green, and the buds are always pink, calmly.This has been going on for several years.Finally the day came when I lost any illusions about waiting for the flowers to bloom, and when I got tall enough, I suddenly discovered that the pink bud was plastic!I had a severe depression and refused to speak for days.I feel like my mother lied to me.But in fact, it's not.It's just that she thought that since "buds are plastic" is a self-evident fact, I also know it for granted.She said that the aquatic plant will not die because it is called "evergreen".Not long after she said that, Wan Nianqing died.My father never came back.

I remember that my mother and I were squatting in a dark room peeling peas, and my mother suddenly looked up, looked at me intently, and said in an unquestionable tone, my son, you, like your mother, must be a hard-working person when you grow up.This is fate, she said.I am aghast.I didn't understand why my mother had to say that, I was not yet four years old.I waited for my mother to explain further, but she is a terse person, so she didn't explain anything on the matter.She couldn't imagine that her daughter remembered her words so clearly like a witch.I don't know that maybe because of her irresponsibility, the words will really come true.She did not know where to find a blind fortune-teller. The blind man touched my Yintang with his skinny hand and said, you are too smart, you may be in danger, and you can only escape by escaping into Buddhism.You will live to be eighty-two, he said.

On the surface I was a shy and shy kid.I copied a lot of words in my boring childhood.I learned to write poetry, but it was of no use to a girl at the time except to be reprimanded by adults.When I was sixteen, I met a young carpenter from other places, which added a little color to my pale and barren adolescence.He was seven months and three days older than me, and he was dumb.I was always in his poorly lit workshop, watching the shavings from his plane fall to the ground.The rich smell of wood hangs in the air, and I often see him grinning.He can make a piece of wood as smooth as my skin.Later, someone came to my house with thirteen acres of land to propose marriage, and asked me to work as a junior for a squire in a neighboring village.When my mother hesitated, I walked into a stilted building hung with red cloth.It is on a traffic artery, and a woman lives in it, exchanging her body with passing salt merchants, shopkeepers, and porters for local currency until she is seventy years old.When I went upstairs she was lying in a hammock with her skirts open to show her drooping shriveled breasts, shaking a battered cattail fan.She knew it when she saw me.She cooed like a partridge and said, little girl, I know what you want.I stayed there all afternoon, drinking her hawthorn tea, rich in earthy flavors, and the sticky juice she made from meat, potatoes, and mushrooms.She started singing, but I was still very sad.She said, well, little girl, you go back to your carpenter.She gave me a pack of Chu Hong powder.I secretly swallowed the medicine with cold well water, then crouched on the ground and vomited.The next day my lower body started to bleed.On the fifteenth day, when I got up late at night to wipe my body by the well, my mother discovered the secret.She said, what a crime, you go, I can't keep you here.She said, who is that person, he will be killed by God.That night, a passing thief broke through the window into the little carpenter's workshop full of sawdust, and stabbed him several times with a Tatar machete.Almost all of the little carpenter's intestines came out, and the blood flowed all over the place. He called me by my baby name, and he died at dawn.My mother knew that her daughter was a disaster that could not be left behind, so she decided to send me to a remote Taoist temple.I wandered around in the sedan chair for three days and three nights.In order to prevent me from sneaking back along the old road, my mother made the porter blindfold me.The mother talked for a long time with a strict teacher, and finally gave her a piece of silver, and left in tears.I haven't seen her since.

The teacher said to me after my mother left: Bitch. At the age of nineteen, I had already become the most famous and beautiful woman in the capital.I no longer live in the firewood house, but in the "Qingxin" Taoist temple, which was specially built for me by the prefect of the city, and the spice tax collected that year was used for this purpose.I still wear a nun's outfit and don't wear makeup, but the new-style women who are not afraid of criticism on the street always imitate my clothes, hairstyle and behavior, and the brand of spices I use is always sold out.Although I live in seclusion, those literati, sons, great merchants, and Beijing officials always come to the temple to burn incense, play the piano, recite poems, play with pine cranes, and do all kinds of things that are considered the most elegant nowadays.They often exchange a lot of money for my handwritten poems, and they are proud of it.I am loved and envied by thousands of people, and I spent the best time like this.

At the age of forty, I knew full well that youth was about to fade away completely.I began deliberately to retain some old acquaintances who were accustomed to nostalgia, but due to years of luxurious vices, it was inevitable that I fell into poverty.I had no choice but to dismiss all the maids, leaving only one maid named Luping.She was put in a basket by her mother and placed in front of the Taoist temple just a few days after she was born. I couldn't bear to keep her until now.Even though this little hoof was just an illiterate little country prostitute, relying on her good looks, she managed to recruit a few lovers in private.I pretended not to know anything, because she was still useful to me after all.In the end, because of her youth and coquettishness, she recruited the richest Mr. Murong, whom I swore to me, as her servant, even in front of me, she was rampant and frivolous, flirting and cursing.

One night, I sent Mr. Murong away, and I ordered her to fetch water to wash my feet, but she said coldly, Mistress, you don't know yourself, it's not what it used to be. In a fit of rage, I took the whip from the wall and whipped her head and face.She screamed, mistress, forgive me, forgive me—— I know, I'm old.I know that no matter how talented and magnificent I am, I can't compare with a twenty-eight-year-old whore.Luping's fault is only that she proved my aging so clearly. For women, this is the most intolerable.I couldn't stop whipping her body all night long.She screamed and died.In this way, I killed the maid Luping.I buried the body in the back garden. (Why is it the back garden again? This is also the traditional imagination of the Chinese people. All the love affairs, secret love and crimes are located in the back garden full of flowers and plants.) I planted tulips on it.These bewitching exotic flowers and plants grew wildly because they absorbed the flesh and blood of young women.Even though I eradicated them every day, they still grew into a frightening scarlet of blood, and attracted countless carnivorous bugs and flies, and soon attracted the policemen wearing red gauze.

They think I've committed a crime - and that's exactly what they say.No one spoke for me, although they all admired my poems and my young and attractive body, and although I never asked for payment, they still paid a lot of money to make me smile.Master Zhitang tried me, even though he once knelt down to me and begged me pitifully to kiss Fangze, he still planned to enforce the law impartially—his appearance on the bed was completely different from now.As a parent officer, this may be the only time in his life that he has been so impartial.He loudly declared that I was a whore, and the whole town agreed.I heard the cries of tens of thousands resounding over the city: Hang her—hang her—I am condemned to hang.

On the day of the execution, people from all over the city, including the most sedentary women and the youngest children, flocked to the streets from their homes to stop and watch.A slut and a murderer, is there anything more attractive than this? Wherever the prison van went, the shouts of women and children, obscene language and all kinds of garbage came to me.I didn't wear makeup that day, even though I was a slut and a murderer, even though I was pale as a sheet, I was beautiful.I am the culprit of the city's debauchery, and the beauty of all men, for I have deprived women of their officers, fathers, husbands, sons, and lovers, and I have won their hatred as well as their respect.I am tolerant, every man, no matter noble or humble, no matter whether it is silk or cloth shirt, has been comforted by me, and even shed tears, because they all saw here that their nature is fragile child.I am their lover, nanny and mother, taking care of their body and soul.