Chapter 151 Fang Tong (4)
The plots of land available for planting at the base were fenced off and marked with wooden signs. After applying and hanging a nametag, they were free to plant whatever they wanted. She also took the time to claim a small plot of land between two rose beds and planted vegetables, which had been growing beautifully recently. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Michelle delivered a bag of pork ribs, so on her way home, she picked two radishes from the fields and dug up a basket of water spinach. She washed the radishes, cut them into pieces, and boiled water along with the pork ribs. Mrs. Ge had sent the shrimp paste, and she had picked the water spinach before adding it to the pot when Xie Zeyi returned.
These two dishes are the easiest to make, but whether they taste good or not is another matter.
On the other side of the shed was a small forest, with a few sparse, sturdy eucalyptus trees growing just outside. Two trees happened to stand outside their balcony, providing shade. So Xie Zeyi found some hemp rope, made a knot, and wove a rope bed, tying it between the two trees. She once saw him tie the knot—five times through the fish-eye ring, then five times through the copper coin knot. The steps were so complicated that watching her make a dizzy sensation. The resulting rope bed was certainly sturdy and beautiful, so she immediately asked him to teach her, but she quickly forgot the steps.
Beyond the rope bed was a fence, and beyond that a road. Driving back to the shantytown would inevitably lead her past this spot. So she sat on the rope bed, facing the road, poring over the "Shuxuexue" (Shuxuexue). The first few dozen pages were densely packed with illustrations of various male sexual positions. The book was very old. In the old days, people seemed comfortable with explicit depictions of naked male sexual parts, but nowadays, they're embarrassed. They use small pieces of paper to cover specific parts and then re-annotate the sexual positions and functions with a pen. It was truly a step backwards.
The less she wanted to see it, the more she wanted to see it. With this rebellious mentality, she used all her remaining energy to ponder the obscured parts of the six views, memorizing them by heart in just a few minutes.
After a while, the sun was shining in the west, and I had an open book on my face. I was about to doze off when I heard a young girl's laughter coming from the fence.
Their house was at the end of one side of the shantytown. There was an open space on the edge. Because of the good ventilation and the sparse trees, someone tied ropes between the trees to dry clothes. Later, people followed suit, and gradually that area was turned into a clothes drying yard.
Last night, many new people came, so the clothesline seemed to be insufficient, so the girls went to ask the soldiers for long hemp ropes; but the suitable tree trunks were too thick, and the girls were weak and could not tie the ropes too tightly. After listening to their chattering for a long time, she decided to go and see if John came back, she could invite him to come and save the beauty.
Just as I was about to get up, I heard a girl say in English, "Come over here!"
"who?"
"The one in the black shirt!" The girl tried to describe it more clearly and added, "He's very tall! How could you not see him?"
"Well, it's quite high, isn't it, Joe?"
The girl said, "What are you thinking? We're just asking kind passersby to come and help us!"
Several girls laughed: "Why are you blushing like this when you need help?"
One of them said loudly: "Not only tall—but also—very—handsome—"
Joe muttered frantically, "Oh my God, please shut up! I really hope his English is terrible!"
Chu Wang glanced sideways through the gap in the fence and caught a glimpse of his man crossing the clothes drying yard with an unknown round object the size of a basketball tucked under his arm.
Xie Zeyi also cooperated very well and pretended not to understand English. He walked past the girls very considerately and went straight home.
After a while, he stopped and turned back immediately.
Seeing him turn around, several girls suddenly started to make fun of him, making Joe blush. He walked over, speaking fluent pidgin English that he had learned from somewhere, and asked for a rope as an excuse, and then tied the rope for everyone, which immediately made the girls laugh, and Joe's embarrassment soon disappeared.
The girls hung up the clothes and quickly dispersed.
She lay on the rope bed pretending to sleep, secretly peeking out from the edge of the book.
A gentle breeze blew by, and the colorful sheets on the ropes danced wildly, making a rustling sound. He was wearing nothing else but the black shirt she had personally altered from her black windbreaker for summer wear. Mainly for coolness, with a touch of daring selfishness, the shirt was missing the top three buttons. Now that it was on him, she realized it was just a shallow V-neck, showing a hint of his collarbone and pectoral muscles.
The tailor has good skills and the man is really handsome, not bad at all.
When she got closer, she saw that he was holding a big, round watermelon between his arms.
He stood before her across the fence, motionless and silent.
She could only see his pants, and she had no idea what he was doing beside her, and she felt inexplicably terrified.
He suddenly bent down...
She stumbled and nearly fell off the rope bed.
"what you do?"
"who?"
"you."
"Everyone has been sent away, but can't you take a look at my wife sleeping?"
She didn't know that he suddenly changed his mind because he saw her sleeping in the yard and thought the group of people were too noisy.
Xie Zeyi held the melon and the rope he had begged for in one hand, a cigarette in his mouth, and stared at her with a smile.
All her attention was drawn to the cigarette, and she asked, "When did you start smoking again?"
He tilted his head, his words unclear: "Just to satisfy my craving for airs."
The cigarette in his mouth was unlit, indeed he was just satisfying his craving. His eyes were downcast, his face was full of anxiety, but his voice was so gentle that it was almost incongruous.
She watched with a mixture of amusement and heartache. Filters weren't common outside of Europe these days, so the thought of buying them in the Far East was sheer fantasy. She'd been through it all, and the lung cancer advertisements from later generations had already terrified her. She not only wanted to live with him into the 21st century, but also to travel the world there. It was only the beginning of the 20th century, so she couldn't afford not to quit smoking first.
Whenever she remained silent, Xie Zeyi knew her little head must be preoccupied with something, so he asked nonchalantly, "Is there soup tonight?"
She came back to her senses and said, "We have to wait a while before we can drink it."
He hummed and walked into the house.
She stood at the door and saw the melon cut in half with a knife, with a spoon stuck in each half. He turned around and waved at her. She immediately slipped into the house and sat down beside him obediently.
The standard 21st century way of eating has lost all its aristocratic air. Xie Zeyi, a colonial man from the colonial era, has almost been assimilated by her into a half-modern man.
The sun sets in the blink of an eye. The highlands have a dry climate, so the watermelons have thin, juicy skins. Each of us eats half a watermelon, which is refreshing, sweet, and satisfying.
The soup simmered for nearly three hours, and when I took it out of the pot, I looked back and saw him asleep on the sofa. His shirt was mostly undone, and he'd already fallen asleep from exhaustion before he'd even taken it off. The bare side of his chest rose and fell slightly, and the muscles of his arm were clearly visible under the rolled-up sleeves.
When I brought dinner to the table, I saw that he was sleeping peacefully and suddenly I couldn't bear to wake him up.
She moved closer and looked at his sleeping face carefully.
Under the tungsten light, his eyelashes rested on his face like little hands, looking so innocent that she felt that it would be imprudent or even a crime to kiss him secretly now.
She was lost in thought when he suddenly reached out and pulled her, causing her to fall heavily on him. Xie Zeyi moved, holding her in a different position, sighing in comfort.
"Did it wake you?"
"Just right. I had a bad dream."
"What did you dream about?"
"When my mother was alive, she never told me what the '正' in Ah Zheng meant. After she passed away when I was six, I returned to Hong Kong once. Someone, thinking I didn't understand Chinese, pointed out to me, 'His father was a chaff ferryman, a traitor who profited from national disasters. So the character 正 means 'turning evil and returning to the right path.'"
"You don't allow others to call you Ah Zheng, so this is why?"
"Yeah." He smiled. "Before I was six, I thought it was my fault that my father ignored my mother, so as long as I was sensible and well-behaved, maybe my father would change his mind one day. Later, I became the son of Prador. I have committed a heinous crime, but what should I do to turn over a new leaf?"
She couldn't help but recall that whenever she asked her parents the meaning of "致" as a child, they would always get different answers. "A gentleman sacrifices his life to fulfill his ambition" was just a dream, but she chose to believe its meaning.
She called softly, "A Zheng."
He murmured in agreement, "Yeah."
"Sometimes people who give names don't know why they chose them. Ah Zheng is Ah Zheng. Zheng means always being upright and will never go astray. There's no need to change..."
Seeing that she was speaking seriously, Xie Zeyi smiled, rubbed her hair, and picked her up to sit up.
She saw the knot on the sofa next to him and realized that he was tying the knot before he fell asleep.
Circle after circle, untying the knots like one ring after another, I asked curiously, "What kind of knot is this?"
"Perfect."
"Like a copper coin."
"It means perfection."
After hearing his explanation, she suddenly understood and couldn't help but want to try it.
But she obviously has no talent for handicrafts.
Xie Zeyi patiently instructed: "First, tie five double lines, and then like this..."
She listened attentively at first, but gradually her attention became distracted as she watched his slender fingers with blue veins clearly visible moving flexibly among the ropes.
Once she starts to get distracted, she must be having some weird thoughts.
She suppressed a smile: "Ah - is that so? I'll give it a try."
His fingers immediately grabbed the rope, pretending to be very serious, and wrapped the knot around his hand in a random manner.
Xie Zeyi stared at the knots that bound his hands tightly, then asked with a slow smile, "What are you doing?"
She knelt beside him, bent over and tugged at the two ends of the rope. After confirming that he couldn't untie it no matter what, she was satisfied and grinned condescendingly: "Nothing. Just some exercise before dinner."
Xie Zeyi looked up at her, a smile of expectation on his face, ready to be abused. His half-open, disheveled clothes, his unsightly bindings, combined with his expression, made him look as if he had already been maliciously abused by her.
She decided to try her hand first, so she placed one of his feet on her knee, bent her index finger joint, found the position, and fumbled to poke the Yongquan acupoint.
He didn't move.
She looked up at him and pressed down hard tentatively.
Xie Zeyi's brows twitched slightly, and he was caught off guard and stimulated by her so much that he let out a short, low groan.
She smiled and asked, "Are you comfortable?"
Xie Zeyi looked at her with a smile.
She jumped off the sofa, took out the book, and flipped through it very carefully, muttering to herself: "Zhongting, Shenque, Huiyang, Gumen..." Then she looked up at him, smiled and recited: "Chengfu, Dumai, Zuwuli, Renmai..."
Xie Zeyi asked, "Where are they?"
She leaned down: "Want to know?"
He nodded, "Yeah."
She went on to say, “The soundproofing isn’t very good.”
"Don't want anyone to hear?"
"Um."
"What should we do then?" He looked aggrieved, but with a smile on his face, he deliberately asked, "Be gentle?"
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