Chapter 189
One night, Wang Jiazhi was drawing when she heard the older sister on the second floor knocking on the door.
She came in and sat down and said, "There's something I want to ask you. I wonder if you would be willing to help me."
"Um?"
The eldest sister said with some embarrassment that the family no longer wanted to sell old books because they really couldn't make any money, so they wanted to sell tofu and steamed buns instead.
"It's really not worth selling those old books as waste paper. In fact, even if we keep them, we won't be able to sell them. I told him it would be better to sell them for the same price as waste paper, so we can get some money and out of sight, out of mind. But he refused, saying he would rather have them piled up at home than like that. No wonder he was so unwilling."
My eldest sister said that our house was small and we needed to buy a tofu basket and other things, so we had no place to put the old books. She had a place here and asked if we could borrow them temporarily.
But judging from her embarrassed expression, she probably pushed it in the attic and didn't know when she would come to get it.
Wang Jiazhi smiled and said, "That's nothing."
"Oh, that's great. Why bother you like this?"
She smiled and shook her head.
When the couple from the second floor started bringing in piles of old books, she was shocked to see how many there were. The utility room was almost full.
The couple felt a little embarrassed and said, "We are really sorry for the trouble."
Apparently they thought if they told her upfront it was that much, she would refuse.
Wang Jiazhi shook her head and said, "It's nothing."
Both the husband and wife were fair-skinned and elegant, appearing to possess a certain scholarly air. The husband, perhaps, also dreamed of becoming a scholar, though his family's poverty prevented him from pursuing further studies. However, driven by his own desires, he chose to sell used books. Working with books, he was at least somewhat of a scholar. However, to make ends meet, he resorted to peddling. His reluctance to sell these books at a low price was likely a desire to preserve a last vestige of his desire.
When they finally finished moving and left, Wang Jiazhi thought there were probably several hundred books, tied together with hemp rope, stacked four high. She was just about to count them when the older sister knocked on the door again, bringing in some steamed buns and four pieces of tofu.
Wang Jiazhi quickly said no, saying she couldn't finish it all by herself. After a while of arguing, she felt that if she didn't accept some, the man would probably not leave, so she reluctantly accepted a few steamed buns and a piece of tofu.
After nine o'clock, thinking that no one would come to the second floor again, she counted the books. There were more than two hundred of them.
Although these are old books, they are still very good. But it is no wonder that they cannot be sold. All the literate young people in this town have left, and who will buy the remaining books, young or old?
Wang Jiazhi opened the top stack of movie magazines, which were from quite recently, a year or two ago, and even had color pages.
She really likes to read movie magazines, especially those with color pages, but they are too expensive to buy. She reads them from the front because they are new and she is afraid that they will be chased away if she flips through them for too long.
There's a still from "Gone with the Wind" on the cover, featuring Scarlett Johansson in a crimson dress, her hair piled high in curls. Perhaps the editor thought it looked haughty and stylish. She wasn't a big fan of it, as it looked old-fashioned and shrewd. She still liked the actress's white, cake-like dress.
Wang Jiazhi admired the heroine very much at that time. Although she thought she was in love with her first love, she could get married three times without any pressure and gave birth to a child with each husband.
She shook her head, thinking it was horrible to sleep with someone she didn't like and have a baby.
After she finished flipping through the first pile, she tied it up again and started on the second pile. This pile was quite old, and she had never heard of many of them before.
The cover of one book is "Tess", a very beautiful and pure girl wearing a white gauze dress, blonde hair and a straw hat.
Wang Jiazhi was very dissatisfied with the cover, as if this was a very beautiful story.
Many years ago, I read this story and couldn't help crying, but I didn't think much of it. But when I was about to die, I suddenly remembered it and it seemed like it was me.
Such a beautiful, kind, and responsible girl lived in a double hell of material and spiritual suffering, and was hanged in her twenties. Others continued to live their lives well.
The funny thing is that she is a direct descendant of the nobility, and hundreds of years ago her ancestors were as powerful and influential as her, yet she is suffering from torture worse than death.
Those old scholars will certainly speak in a pretentious and merciless manner, saying that this is the cycle of rise and fall, honor and disgrace.
It was as if she was bearing the retribution of her ancestors. She was just a poor little girl, why did she have to endure that terrible reincarnation?
Wang Jiazhi remembered that the book said Tess was raped in the woods. People said that girls would be changed when they entered the woods.
Thinking of this, the feeling of despair and pain came back again.
That house was nothing but a den of evil. She happily went in with them. She was clean before entering, but when she came out, she had been ruined, and she had to be willing to be ruined.
She threw the book far away. But she couldn't calm down for a long time. She felt that she had to do something, otherwise something bad would happen.
She took the matches and burned the book. She could just give them the money later, because she couldn't let it exist anyway.
She sat on the ground in a daze, and the kitten came over and meowed at her. She couldn't do anything right now, and sitting still would only make her thoughts wander.
The smell of something burning in the room wouldn't go away for a while, and it made me start to have wild thoughts.
Suddenly she remembered that he was burning something in the study, and the air was filled with this smell.
His thin and haggard silhouette looked so handsome in the firelight.
She told people that she didn't like tall guys and that tall boys looked stupid. It really started with him.
When I saw his silhouette in the firelight, I thought how could he be so handsome? If he was taller, he would not be so handsome.
At first he didn't allow her to enter the study, but later when he lived there, sometimes he would stay in for too long and she didn't dare to disturb him, but occasionally she knocked on the door a few times and he still let her in.
She turned off the lights, went to bed and covered her head with her hands. The smell of ashes reminded her of the past.
One time she sat on his lap, her head buried in the crook of his neck, and she could smell the strong smell of tobacco on him, which must have been a lot of smoking. They just sat there quietly.
I couldn't open the windows, and the smell of ashes in the room wouldn't go away for a while.
After a while, he said, "This is what burning paper smells like on a grave."
"Don't talk nonsense."
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