Chapter 21
Popsicles
How delicious is the cheese.
Nie Weimin didn't know how to describe it, but he felt that he could finish the whole small aluminum pot by himself.
However, he was also the most filial one. He took a bowl and ate it. Seeing Erdan quickly scooped away half a bowl while still looking at the pot, he immediately took the pot outside.
"And Dad, he hasn't eaten yet. We can only eat one bowl each, no more."
Erdan really didn't eat enough, it was all because the cheese was too smooth and slid down into his stomach in one gulp. It was like Zhu Bajie eating the ginseng fruit but he couldn't even taste the flavor.
"Mom, can I just have one more bite? I'm still hungry." Erdan said while licking his lips.
It takes three pounds of milk to produce one pound of cheese. Chen Lina also thought that Nie Bozhao had never eaten it before, so she wanted to give him a taste of it. Naturally, she was unwilling to fill Erdan's bottomless pit.
However, the water that was filtered out when making cheese is still there. This water has the fragrance of rice wine and the milky flavor of milk. Add some sugar, put a chopstick in it and let it freeze outside, and it will be a natural homemade popsicle.
They had noodles for dinner, but since the three children were full, Chen Lina didn't cook much.
After dinner, they sorted out their needlework. Nie Weimin's little cotton-padded jacket was finished with a stand-up collar. As they couldn't buy buttons, they took off the buttons from other clothes and put them on the two little ones' clothes. Chen Lina was creative and made buttons for him.
The buttons are difficult to unfasten and tie, but once they are tied, they are really beautiful, much better looking than clothes with buttons sewn directly on.
The little boy has a white face and two round, thin-skinned, red eyes. He is as pretty as Zhang Ga, the little soldier in the comic strip.
Nie Weimin was very happy, but he didn't want Chen Lina to feel happy, so he sat and stood from time to time, showing off.
When eating the popsicle, he was very careful and didn't dare to mess up his clothes. He licked the popsicle with his neck stretched out.
The snow outside stopped and when the moon came out again, it was as bright as daytime.
As the saying goes, wear cotton jackets in the morning and gauze in the afternoon, eat watermelon around the fire. Three children sit by the fire wall, each licking a popsicle. They are hot on the outside but cool on the inside, and sweat covers the tip of their noses.
After eating the popsicle and brushing the teeth, it should be time for bed, but Erdan was sneaky, with his hands behind his back, ready to run out.
"Erdan, that popsicle is for dad, you can't take it away." Nie Weimin was sharp-eyed and shouted immediately.
Erdan is a bit stubborn but generous, so he said, "Chen Tiantian must want to eat popsicles too, I'll get her one."
"She doesn't want to eat, put the popsicle down." Nie Weimin is very stingy when it comes to food.
Erdan also became stubborn and said, "She definitely wants to eat it." Which child wouldn't like to eat sweet and icy little popsicles?
Chen Lina could see that Erdan was cheerful and generous, while Nie Weimin was more homely. The contrast between the two children's personalities was particularly cute.
Of course, it is said that when they become gang bosses in the future, one will be in charge of fighting and expanding territories, and the other will be in charge of collecting money. One is the hand and the other is the brain. Every gang has its internal fights, but these two, from their debut at the age of fifteen or sixteen to their final arrest and trial, even at the time of the public trial, they still hugged each other and scrambled for responsibility, like a rope.
Otherwise, why other gangsters were released after a few years in prison, but these two were shot to death? All their crimes were multiplied by two.
"Okay, Wei Min, I just asked, your dad doesn't like to eat cold things, take this popsicle, you all take it and give it to Chen Tiantian." Girls especially like to eat popsicles and ice cream. Chen Lina felt that she had to educate Nie Wei Min, who had a bad habit of being petty and called his grandson, to be more generous.
The two children looked at each other for a long time. Erdan was holding a popsicle, and Nie Weimin also wanted to show off his new cotton-padded jacket. The two brothers went out in the wind and snow, one after the other.
Although the two households lived next to each other, it was a snowy night after all. Chen Lina did not dare to be careless. She stood outside the door and waited until they knocked on Sister Wang's door and entered the yard before returning to the house.
Nie Bozhao was heating water and washing dishes in the kitchen.
He didn't dare to mess with Chen Lina now. No matter how he put it, he was most afraid of her acting coquettishly, or calling her a little princess or something like that. When he heard that, he got goosebumps all over his body.
So as soon as they finished their meal, in order to prevent her from acting coquettishly again, he took the initiative to help Chen Lina with the kitchen work.
When Chen Lina cooks, she doesn’t use oil like Day Huacai does. She cooks a pot of fishy mutton in a rusty pot and everyone eats it together. Therefore, the pot must be heated up before washing.
Moreover, if you want to avoid the indelible grease on the pots and bowls, you must add detergent.
But under the current conditions, it is difficult to even find a bag of laundry detergent, let alone something like dishwashing agent?
Therefore, family members generally used caustic soda, which hurt hands. Chen Lina took good care of her hands and could cook, but she refused to wash the dishes as long as Nie Bozhao was around.
"From what I heard, it seems that Wei Min still refuses to call you mom. Do you want me to talk to him at night?"
"I don't care about this. He is not my son after all. Forcing him to call me his mother will only make him hate me," said Chen Lina.
Nie Bozhao thought for a moment and praised his son again, "But my son is still very polite. For example, you see, he helped you carry the dishes today, and he also swept the floor for you. He told me so himself."
If two brothers walking in the mud on the ground can be considered sweeping the floor, then they have indeed swept the floor.
"That's because I respect him. If someone respects me one foot, I will respect him ten feet. No matter how old your son is now, he was still a good boy when he was young." Chen Lina also said with a smile.
Suddenly, Sandaner next door started shouting "Daddy, poop."
Chen Lina immediately kicked Nie Bozhao and said, "Go and clean it up."
"You have to wipe the butt. That's not your job." Nie Bozhao was shocked.
Of course, his three sons were brought up in a rough way. When they pooped in the countryside, their mother would just wipe it with a clod of earth and that was it. On the way back to Xinjiang, the children were always sticking their butts. Now, Chen Lina concluded that they got acne from wiping their butts with clods of earth in the countryside, and she was applying medicine for the children.
As for people, you can’t learn anything else, but laziness is the most contagious thing.
Nie Weimin had just become more diligent than he used to be, but his father became lazy again.
Chen Lina got anxious when she heard this. "Mr. Nie, everything I do now is to repay you for the favor you did me in my last life. Let's be honest. I'm a female college student with a soldier waiting to marry me. Why should I marry you? Why should I help your son wipe his shit and urine? They didn't come out of my belly. If I'm happy and willing to do it, I'll do it. If I don't want to, you have to wipe it."
"Don't talk to me about the previous life again, Comrade Xiao Chen. I am a materialist and I only believe in Marxism-Leninism. I roughly know why you are here. Please, just don't mention Nie Bozhao from the previous life. He is a bastard."
Chen Lina burst out laughing. To be honest, if she hadn’t been reborn, she wouldn’t have believed in such a thing.
So she said, "Maybe I really am a Soviet revisionist. Now you should believe it, right?" Oh, she is acting coquettishly again.
The key is that this girl is beautiful, with fair skin, a slender waist, and an allure that makes men feel itchy.
"You can't provoke me, but you can't hide from me. OK, OK, damn it."
Nie Bozhao got up in a hurry as he spoke. He was tall and the kitchen door was narrow, so when he went out, Chen Lina heard a bang, which must have been a bump on his forehead.
However, although he looks clumsy, he is very careful when taking care of his son's affairs.
Sandan filled a small basin specially used for washing with hot water and added soap. He washed the child thoroughly and then applied the medicine for treating moles and acne on the child.
Well, the two-year-old little baby is white, clean and fragrant. In this way, Chen Lina is willing to sleep with the warm little butt in her arms at night.
Nie Bozhao seemed quite uneasy.
He was reading the English magazine Time. On the cover was a photo of Chiang Kai-shek, with a line of small words underneath: after eight years far, the battle of feace, which means war or peace.
In this era, foreigners are also paying attention to the situation in Greater China.
Of course, scientific researchers like Nie Bozhao, whose adoptive parents are veteran red cadres, are more concerned about the national situation.
"Don't worry. Believe me, I can't defeat them, whether it's the Soviet Union or Chiang Kai-shek. We have two bombs and one satellite." Chen Lina added.
Nie Bozhao put the magazine aside and didn't pursue anything else. He probably also rejected the idea that his two sons would become gangsters in the future. He only held on to one point: "Comrade Xiao Chen, let's assume that you really have a previous life and you really were married?"
"Of course I have been married. If I hadn't been married, how could I have married again?"
"Who is the man?"
"My cousin Nie Guozhu, you have seen him before."
Nie Bozhao was obviously very shocked, shocked to the point that Chen Lina had never seen such an expression. In other words, he was jealous. When he was jealous, his eyebrows knitted slightly, his face was serious, and he looked like a typical old cadre, which was cute.
"You married Nie Guozhu?" Nie Bozhao suddenly became tough. "That boy, when I first went back to my hometown, he was already a teenager, wearing pants with no buttocks, with his bare buttocks exposed. You actually married him?"
"That's because our family was poor, but being poor has its advantages. During the Four Cleanups and Five Antis Movement in 1966, he was a member of the Five Red Categories. I put a lot of effort into marrying him in my previous life," said Chen Lina.
After washing her hands, she turned around and found Nie Bozhao, who was originally sitting on the chair, standing behind her. "Then you must have slept together before?"
Chen Lina chuckled and pointed at the box in the bedroom and said, "What's so strange about this? After marriage, you are husband and wife, so of course you have to sleep together. You have been married too, don't you know?"
"You... have done it before?" The voice was very low, and his Adam's apple was still a little tight. Nie Bozhao still looked incredulous.
"Did you and Sun Gong just lie side by side on the kang and recite the leader's quotations? Then how did these three children come about?" Chen Lina was frank and felt that Nie Bozhao was unreasonable.
"Nie Guozhu was a soldier in the provincial capital of Hongyan."
"Yes, of course. The place of residence is not far from our Women's Normal University." said Chen Lina.
"I feel that you have never talked about it in your previous life. I'm afraid there is something you haven't explained clearly. Comrade Xiao Chen, you'd better tell the truth. If I really want to investigate, I can send a telegram to the provincial capital of Hongyan, and I can check your files in the provincial capital clearly."
Nie Bozhao didn't care about this, after all, he was also a burden, but he had to explain the matter honestly.
"Tell me the truth." He suddenly grabbed Chen Lina's wrist. The soft and smooth touch was indescribable, just like an electric current. Nie Bozhao was so scared that he let go of his hand.
It was so slippery that he didn't know how to describe it.
Chen Lina's two big watery eyes, with wet snow cakes on her hands, slowly painted her hands, lowered her eyebrows and glanced meaningfully, "Why, didn't you say you didn't care about this at first? Now it seems that not only do you care, but you're also jealous."
Nie Bozhao's face immediately turned red, but he still insisted, "Why should I be jealous?"
"If you're not jealous, why don't you dare touch me?" Chen Lina chuckled and turned into the bedroom.
"Comrade Xiao Chen, can we discuss something?" Nie Bozhao chased after him again.
"say."
"Can you please not mention my previous life from now on? If I can find Nie Bozhao from my previous life, I will beat him to death."
Chen Lina laughed so hard that she couldn't stop.
However, when she went to the small bedroom to record the accounts, she found that Nie Bozhao had locked the door of the small bedroom.
"There are only a few things in your house, in the small bedroom, including Sun Gong's original diary, account book, and books. I also have to record the total expenses for the day. Why did you lock the door?" Pulling the small key, Chen Lina was confused.
"An Heshan was a Soviet translator during the two bombs and one satellite era. He had access to core information in the field of physics in our Republic. You and him must have met at a high school social gathering. His daughter's name contains the character 'Na', and your name is Lina, and you love Russian.
So he took the initiative to communicate with you, taught you Russian grammar, and sent you many Russian books. Comrade Xiao Chen, Comrade An Heshan may just treat you as a pen pal.
But if Su Xiu or some people with ulterior motives try to get close to you and gain your trust, even if he lets slip a few words in the letter, you can extract very important intelligence." Nie Bozhao said straight to the point.
Well, he finally started talking about her pen pal.
An Heshan, who once lived in Tacheng, was also a scholar who had studied in the Soviet Union and a Russian translator.
"How is he doing now? Is he still in Tacheng? If I have time, I really want to see him again. He also said that if I go to Tacheng, he will definitely invite me to dance with "Moscow Evening"."
Nie Bozhao thought to himself whether this girl really didn't understand or was she just pretending. If she was really pretending, then, well, her pretending was too perfect.
"An Heshan once told you a lot about the development of the two bombs and one satellite in a letter. You should also know how many scientific martyrs sacrificed their lives on this land and were buried in the Gobi Desert for the strength of the Republic and for the people to no longer be slaves of a conquered country. And why did they sacrifice themselves? It was so that children like you, Weimin, and Erdan could grow up safely, and so that our great China would never be divided up by foreign powers. You were born in New China and are still a college student. I won't preach to you because you understand. It doesn't matter if you don't tell me why you are here, but from now on, you can't enter my study anymore."
"What if I'm willing to sleep with you? Whatever I want to ask, will you tell me? For example, the core secrets of your work field?" In fact, Chen Lina flipped through the books and found that there were very few work-related things in his study.
He has always been a cautious person. He only reads papers and academic materials at home and would never take any confidential documents from his work out of the laboratory, even for a step.
"Then I will pick you up and throw you out right now, into the drainage ditch under Mulan Farm." The man said immediately.
Chen Lina looked at her old man with a smile, haha, he looks so young, tall and handsome.
In later life, she always thought that he looked most handsome when he wore a well-tailored suit and talked to foreign businessmen in fluent English.
Well, now she thinks that a man who can bathe a child, speak righteously, is not tempted by beauty, and protects state secrets is more handsome.