Chapter 7 Chapter Four

Pinkie peered through the glass windows of the laundromat on the corner of White Plains and 225th Street in the Bronx.There is an electronic clock on the back wall of the store, and the time is three thirty-three. The sky is clouded over.The air was suffocatingly hot, like a thunderstorm was approaching.The elevated railway of the Interdistrict MRT suddenly appeared in the sky, winding quietly along the curve of Baiyuan Road.As far as he could see, there were deserted streets.The surroundings were unreal.He figured it took more than an hour to get here from Manhattan's Riverside Park.For part of the trip he surreptitiously boarded a shunting car at New York's Grand Central Station, but then he stalked through countless sleepy residential neighborhoods, ducking his head whenever he caught sight of anyone.

Now he was beginning to feel safe, but his body was still shaking and trembling. He headed east toward the Italian Quarter. Apartment buildings were gradually replaced by villas in Southern Italian architecture, pastel pastels, complete with gardens and plaster saints.After a while, the houses thinned out, now and then small vegetable gardens, and overgrown clearings with sleeping bums and chained goats. At last he arrived at his destination, a weather-beaten, one-story pink stucco house at the end of an unfinished street with no sidewalks.The open space on either side of the hut was used as a dump.Oddly enough, it has a loft in Yamagata.Barbed wire fences surrounded the house and the front yard, which was overgrown with dead flowers and grass and yellowed with weeds, at a distance.In an alcove by the front door was a very emaciated, tortured marble crucifix covered in bird droppings.In other alcoves under the eaves, there are colorful plaster figures of saints who guard Italian peasants.

The front windows were all shut and their shutters drawn.Except for the faint sound of boogie dancing, the house seemed deserted. Pinkie leaps over barbed wire and onto a path that is inundated with overgrown weeds near the side of the house, carefully avoiding a concrete birdbath, an iron statue of Italian founding hero Garibaldi, and a zinc garden with artificial roses. Make large vases. A tall plank fence surrounds the expansive back yard.The back door leads to a trellis of vines with stubby leaves and dusty vine leaves.On one side is a dilapidated tool shed, adjoining a chicken coop and a rabbit cage.By the door of the tool shed, there is a female goat tied with a rope, staring at Pink Boy with wise and sad eyes.Beyond that are dirt vegetable gardens dying from lack of water and neglect.But there's a well-watered, well-tended field of marijuana over the back fence, next to the corrugated tin garage.

Pinkie stopped by the trellis, stood in the dark and listened.He was breathing choked up, tears streaming down his cheeks. Now Leyin was beating loudly and defiantly.Someone is playing with the wooden double-sided percussion board, making a ratchet-like rhythm accompaniment, and competing with the ding-dong-dong sound of the heavy piano.It sounds like a mix of bone knocking and bezel hitting. The two windows of the attic opened wide.Pinkie looked into the house through the left window and saw a harp piano with a kerosene lamp and half a bottle of gin on it.While watching, a black hand with short and fat fingers was raised from the piano remotely, grabbing the gin bottle.The rhythm of the piano changed.When playing with both hands in the past, the bass with a steady rhythm is combined with the beautiful notes that walk briskly in the treble; now the left hand repeats the same passage arbitrarily, wandering between all the keyboards.

The hand holding the bottle reappears, then withdraws, leaving the bottle behind.The gin was visibly reduced.Suddenly, the bass rejoins like John Henry's blacksmith, and the treble patters through the night like rain.Then, another black hand stretched out from the other end of the piano and took off the wine bottle.The sound of slapping the frame stopped, and only the sound of bone knocking continued.Tapping the side of the board stopped.Hands and bottles reappeared, and there was a wild thump.From the window to the right could be seen looming figures in sleeved shirts, and the shoulders of a black woman who was hugged tightly and swayed back and forth; though the weird music was sometimes at a normal tempo and sometimes not, the smooth dance steps remained steady.Hugging Bear and Georgia Coolie were slow-dancing, and the yellow light of a kerosene lamp reflected dark skin like oily shadows.

"Mr. Pink Boy." A soft voice came from the darkness. Startled, Pink Boy turned around hastily. A small black face, barely visible in the dark, blinked a pair of bright eyes.The thin, barefoot figure wore a patched adult overalls jacket. "Little ghost, what are you doing out at this time?" Pink Boy said rudely. "Can you, sir, please go up and buy two packs of heaven powder from Sister Bliss for Uncle Bud?" "Why don't you go and buy it yourself?" "She won't sell me because I'm too young." "Then why doesn't Uncle Bud buy it himself?"

"I was sent because the other person wasn't feeling well. He's lost his faith." "Okay, give me the money." The child holds out a small hand holding two crumpled bills. Pink Boy went under the trellis and knocked on the back door. "Who is it?" An ethereal human voice came from inside. "It's me, Pinkie." Two white eyes like a crescent moon flashed on the glass plate above the door.The mortise lock clicked and the door swung open.Pink Boy's eyes gradually adapted to the darkness and recognized a faint human figure, a gray-haired old man in a blue cotton nightgown, who seemed to be wandering in the dark kitchen.The double-barreled shotgun held by the old man in his right arm glowed slightly blue.

"How are you, Saint Uncle?" Pink Boy greeted respectfully. "It's okay." The old man replied.His voice seemed to come from elsewhere in the room. "I want to go up to find Sister Bliss." "The feet grow on you, don't they?" Now, his voice seemed to come from the floor between Pink Boy's feet. Pinkie smiled submissively, then walked through the kitchen towards the stairs in the back hall. In the corner of the attic farthest from the light, he found the Sisters of Bliss seated on thrones.In the pitch-black shadows, she was wrapped in a dull black cloth, making her figure difficult to discern.A patient lay on a stretcher on the floor at her feet.Sister Bliss is a faith healer.Pink Boy dare not approach her when she is "medicating" for others.

"You're going to be happy," she hummed in an old, husky, slightly demented voice that still had the aftertaste of old music. "You'll be happy...as long as you have faith." Her body swayed from side to side to the slow, steady rhythm of the bass.The man on the stretcher said in a weak voice, "I have faith." She tiptoed down from the throne and knelt beside him. She held a silver spoon of white powder in her transparent, claw-thin hand, and held it out before him. "Suck it in," she said. "Take a deep breath and infuse the heaven powder into your life."

The man sucked four times in quick succession, each time getting stronger and stronger.She climbed back to her throne. "Now you will be healed." She hummed. Pinkie waits patiently for her to condescend to receive him.She is strictly forbidden to disturb. Sister Bliss prides herself on being a traditional faith healer and works in a practical and traditional way.So she hires old-school musicians who drink gin and instructs her clients in an old-fashioned belly grind, the first stage of a treatment she calls "de-bodiing."She had kept the black-key shorty by her side to play the piano for fifteen years, and Hua Teng, the percussion board, joined later.Both of them are old antiques. Hua Teng is holding the double-sided percussion board sandwiched between his legs, sitting next to the piano and playing with rabbit leg bones; the short black key knows how to play the piano in half steps.They were both gin and alcoholics, and the only two allowed to drink in her Paradise Clinic.There's nothing wrong with their performance, but she still has to use the heavenly powder to treat the patients who come to the doctor.

"What are you doing here, Pinkie?" she asked suddenly. He was startled; it did not occur to her that she had seen him. "You must help me, Sister Bliss, I'm in trouble." He blurted out. She stared at him. "You were beaten?" "It's so dark here, how can you tell?" "You don't have the usual milky white radiance on your face." After thinking for a second, she immediately said sternly: "If this was done by the police, you leave immediately, I don't want to have anything to do with the police." "It wasn't the police," he said evasively. "Well, tell me what's going on later, I don't have time to listen now." "Just one more thing," he said, "there's a kid in the backyard who wants to buy two packets of Paradise Powder for Uncle Bud." "I'm not selling to punks," she snapped. "It's not what he wants, it's Uncle Bud who wants it. And you don't have to give it to him, just let me give it to him." He said. "Hmph, give me the money." She said impatiently. So he handed over the two crumpled notes.She examines the notes displeased. "The price per package is no longer one yuan. At least, not at this time of night." She took out a small square paper package from under the layers of clothes and handed it to him. "You give this to him and tell him it's two dollars a pack," she ordered, whining, "these miser's want to get treatment for a dollar, but they'd rather pay a fortune for something else. s things?" "One more thing," he faltered, "I'm dying, I want to get an injection." "Go to your friend," she said curtly, "and he'll give you a shot." "He's not my friend anymore, he's been caught." She turned abruptly from her throne. "Don't tell me you're involved in street fights, if you got into trouble with the police to come here, I'll hand you over myself." "I wasn't with Jack when they got him," he evasively denies. She stared at him sharply, as if she could see clearly in the dark. "Okay, go down and open the male rabbit and take out the pills," she said with a slightly relaxed attitude. "You can only take one. It's very powerful. You can use one. Make sure to close it. The injection needle is in the drawer of my dresser." When he was about to turn around and leave, she said again: "Don't think you can hide anything from me, I'm not done with you yet. Just wait, I'll find time to talk to you later." "I want to talk to you too," he said. The people on the stretcher writhed in time to the music. "That's great, Sister Bliss," he said, with the tone of a convert testifying, "I have a really wonderful faith." The black key shorty's steady left hand is stacking a series of low notes, while his right hand seems to be playing wantonly on the dry and hot turf in a nudist camp.And the deep grunt made by tapping the board Huateng is like a boar sharing a room with a shed full of sows. The frantic excitement mixed with the smell of sweat and adrenaline poured out of the window and diffused into the stuffy air. But none of that mattered to Pink Boy.All he wanted was to get an injection, and he wanted to scream.He went down the stairs leading to the hallway and through the kitchen. St. Peter emerged from the shadows with a double-barreled shotgun. "I'll be right back," said Pinkie. "Sister Bliss asked me to open the rabbit." "Don't tell me your troubles, I'm not your father." Saint Uncle said as he opened the door, his voice sounded like it came from the bottom of a well. A little boy in overalls is waiting for Pink Boy under the grape trellis.He found bunches of grapes, but he dared not taste even one. "Did you get anything, Mr. Pinky?" he asked timidly. Pink Boy took out a small paper bag from his pocket. "Take it, give it to Uncle Bud, tell him the price has gone up, Sister Bliss said, don't even think about getting treatment for nothing." The little boy reluctantly accepted the paper bag.He only bought one pack, and he knew that he would inevitably be beaten frequently, but there was nothing he could do. "Yes, sir," he said, walking slowly into the shadows. Pink Boy walked to the rabbit cage, reached into the small door, picked up the rabbit ears and grabbed the male rabbit.The left hand deftly peeled off a small piece of adhesive tape that was attached to the rabbit's rectal area, and then removed a long rubber plug with a small metal piston attached like a sink stopper.The rabbit didn't move, but looked at him with big, stupefied eyes.He pressed on the rabbit's belly and a small aluminum capsule popped out.He put the capsule in his pants pocket and re-tucked the rabbit. He was puzzled, wondering where other Tibetan medicines were stored by Sister Ji Le?Although he is her nephew and her only living relative, she always keeps him secret.He guessed that she was probably going to kill the rabbit to eat, otherwise how could she let him know so much. Back at the kitchen door, he greeted St. Bo politely again. "I'm going to get an injection in Sister Bliss' room." "You probably think I'm a recording angel," St. Peter muttered in a voice that sounded like it was coming from an oven. "Even if you go to hell, it's none of my business." Pink Boy knew it wasn't true, but he didn't refute it.He knew that if he hadn't told him where in the house he was going, he would have scolded him badly. The top drawer of the dresser is like the last struggle of a depressed patient.He found hypodermic needles lying among syringes, thermometers, hat pins, barrettes, plucking clips, and shoe buckles, along with old-fashioned glass stoppered vials of multicolored poisons, enough to wipe out a small army of addicts.An alcohol lamp was blatantly placed on a marble table in the corner, alongside a battered teapot and a collection of colorful test tubes.There was a spoon in the sugar bowl on the bedside table. He lit the alcohol lamp and sterilized the needle by holding it over the flame.The powdered cocaine and heroin in the aluminum capsules are then poured into a spoon and melted over the fire.Then pour the liquid drug into the syringe, hold the needle with his right hand, and inject the cocaine and heroin into the blood vessels of his left arm while the cocaine and heroin have not cooled down. "Ah, ah..." He whispered out as the medicine was injected into the blood vessel. Then he turned off the light and put the needle back in the medicine drawer. Strong medicines work right away.He walked lightly back to the kitchen. He knew Sister Bliss wasn't ready to meet him, so he hung out with the old gunslinger. "How long have you been a ventriloquist, Santa?" "Hey, I've lost my own voice so long ago that I don't even know where it went," said St. Peter, sounding like it came from the bedroom Pinky had just left.He casually laughed at his own joke: "Ha, ha, ha..." The laughter seemed to come from the back door. "If you keep making noises like this, maybe one day it will really disappear," Pinkie said. "Then what's your business? Are you my guardian?" St. Peter muttered and whined, like a ghost lurking under the floorboards. Upstairs, Blackkey Shorty's left hand was playing fast again, and Pinky knew the gin bottle was against his mouth.On the other hand, Hua Teng was shaking like an unbearably itchy skeleton, waiting for his turn. Pink Boy heard the sound of steady footsteps on the wooden floor.For him, everything was clear again.He knows what to do.It's just getting later and later.